Transcription
Foreign [Music] s are taking thyroid medication like Synthroid or levothyroxine or tyrosans or some combination and they find themselves feeling just as lousy taking those thyroid medications compared to when they're not taking them. One month your blood work shows that your TSH levels are too high and a few months later your blood work now shows that your TSH levels are too low. You feel like a yo-yo. Well, if I've caught your attention, stay tuned because in this thyroid video series on the reasons that you have low T3, I'm going through several different scenarios that might be affecting you. It might be causing your thyroid to work less than optimal.
Hey there, I'm Dr. Hagmire and last week I talked about the role that the liver and the kidneys play when it comes to low T3 and some of the conversion shoes. Well, if you've had your T3 levels checked or your free T3 levels checked and they were low, have you stopped for a moment and wondered what might be causing them to be low? Right? While there are medications that you can take like leothyronine or cytomel or armor that can provide your body with some T3 supplemental T3 thyroid hormones. Taking these medications won't fix the reason your T3 levels are low in the first place and this again is why I put together this video series together for you. I want you to have answers, not Band-Aids.
Last week I talked about again the liver and the kidneys and I mentioned an enzyme called the iodinase enzymes and I talked about how important they were as it relates to conversion. Well, it turns out that this enzyme needs a few important minerals to make it work properly. One of the reasons low T3 comes comes down, it really is to deficiencies, iron, zinc, and selenium.
Now let me give you a quick recap on what's Happening when you have low T3. Right? When you take tyrosine or Synthroid or levothyroxine, you again are taking synthetic man-made laboratory hormones that are designed to act and function like the T4 hormone made by your thyroid gland. Most of what the thyroid gland makes is T4, but most of it you can't use. It's inactive. It really doesn't do much. What needs to happen is your body needs to take this T4 and it needs to convert it into something called T3. T3, as I like to say, makes the magic happen in the body. Helps you lose weight, helps you burn fat because it influences your metabolism, increases your energy, helps your hair, skin, and nails grow. It's important for digestion and gut health. It's important for mental health. It helps prevent leaky gut and the list goes on and on. But this is where a lot of your troubles with your thyroid really start. Many people who take thyroid medications complain of never feeling better because they have low T3 levels due to this conversion issue.
Now, if you can improve the way your body uses Synthroid or tyrosine or levothyroxine, or you can improve the way your body naturally converts T4 into T3, you can start feeling good again, right? If you want to improve your T3 levels and be a better thyroid converter, you need to make sure that your thyroid is getting iron, it's getting zinc, and it's getting selenium because these nutrients and these minerals, they activate an enzyme that converts T4 into T3. So just like taking Synthroid or levothyroxine won't fix your T4 levels, don't think that for a minute that taking synthetic T3 in the form recital Mel or Leo thyronine will fix these problems either. Both these scenarios are Band-Aids, they really are. What I call the topping off approach, similar like a gas tank that's showing empty. You can keep dumping gas and putting gas into the in the tank, but if the reason your gas tank reads empty is because of a leak, you have to fix the leak. You can't just keep putting gas in. You have to repair the leak, not just top the levels off every time your your levels are low.
So let's first talk about iron because this is by far one of the most common nutrient deficiencies in women with thyroid disease and Hashimoto's and it's so easy to test for. Many women with thyroid disease have hormonal imbalances between estrogen and progesterone and this imbalance of estrogen progesterone leads to a lot of heavy menstrual cycles, frequent bleeding and this is again one way that many women become deficient in iron and ferritin. Many women with thyroid disease also have some kind of irritable bowel syndrome or some other gastrointestinal issue. Sometimes it's an infection with H pylori or an overgrowth of bacteria or yeast in your small intestines like sibo or sifo or it's some other kind of gut overgrowth. The other thing is many women also struggle with inflammatory bowel disease or have some kind of internal bleeding caused by either celiac disease or Crohn's or ulcerative colitis. Again, all of these scenarios can lead to plummeting iron levels and ferritin levels.
Now, why do I tell you all this? Well, number one, I bet if you're watching this video, you're probably dealing with these problems at the same time you're dealing with a thyroid disease. But number two, these are the most common reasons for an iron deficiency and low ferritin. And again, iron is needed in almost every aspect of thyroid Health. Iron is required for the production of uh thyroid hormones. It's important for the conversion of T4 to T3. It's required for the utilization of T3 once it gets inside the cell. So you can see that devastating effects that low iron stores can be on the thyroid gland as it affects production, conversion, and utilization of thyroid hormones.
Now, additionally, low iron levels have been linked to the formation of a goiter in children. This is because when you have an iron deficiency, it's been shown to decrease the effectiveness of iodine supplementation and iodine uptake in the thyroid, which leads to a goiter. This means that to prevent a goiter, iron and ferritin levels should also be checked to make sure that those levels are adequate for Effective iodine uptake into the thyroid follicular cells. Very, very, very important. Again, for all these reasons, iron and maintaining healthy iron levels are important when it comes to thyroid disease.
Now let's spend a few minutes talking about zinc. Zinc again is one of those important critical nutrients. Has many functions in the body and efficiency impacts the immune system, hair growth, skin health, tight junctions, and leaky gut. Zinc's involved in more than 300 known enzymes in the body, activating them and zinc is also the second most abundant element in the body, second only to iron. Zinc again is very effective for many problems related to thyroid function and a deficiency in zinc may result in what we call subclinical hypothyroidism. That's when your lab tests are normal, but you have all the thyroid symptoms. Adequate zinc levels are needed to properly metabolize vitamin D and vitamin A, both again, which are vital to thyroid Health.
Now, in summary, when it comes to minerals and nutrients needed for the T4 to T3 conversion, you don't want to overlook iron, zinc, and selenium, as all of these are critical to thyroid function. Okay, all right. So there you go. You have questions or you're struggling with low T3 levels caused by poor T4 to T3 conversion, one area that I highly suggest you consider is your nutrient and mineral levels and some of the reasons why those nutrient levels may be deficient.
Now, if you have any questions about today's video, again, drop them in the comments section below. I'll always do my best to try to answer those questions for you. If you're interested in finding out how to work with my clinic, you can reach out to me by visiting my website. I also have a free download, a free thyroid guy that's available and you can download that by visiting my website. If you click on the section that says free guide section, you can you can download that there. And lastly, if you like today's video, after you subscribe to my channel or comment, I want to know and you want to know even more ways to improve your T3 levels, I recommend that you watch this video in the series next.