Transcription
Hey, this is Dr. Berry. In this quick video, let's talk about Hashimoto's thyroiditis and five things you should know about it.
Hashimoto's thyroiditis is the most common autoimmune condition in the US and probably in the world. Over 35 million U.S. citizens suffer from this, and that number is probably much higher, but it's so under-diagnosed and misdiagnosed that we really have no idea. But definitely, at least 35 million people suffer from this. It's mostly females who suffer from this, but also males can absolutely be affected. So, this is an important thing, and let's talk about that now.
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Now, let's talk about Hashimoto's. Hashimoto's thyroiditis. What causes it? That's the first question. That's the first thing you need to know is what causes this. This is not a problem with your thyroid. This is a problem with your immune system inappropriately attacking your thyroid gland or some part of your thyroid function. Your immune system is supposed to know the difference between you and not you, between friend and foe.
So, so many doctors treat autoimmune conditions with medications that beat down the immune system, effectively turn off the immune system, because their paradigm is that autoimmune conditions come from your immune system being too strong or too active or overactive. And that's a dumb way of thinking about this, okay? We want our immune system to be strong. We want it to be very active, but we just don't want it to attack parts of our own self.
So, the proper paradigm to think about autoimmune conditions is that the immune system is stupid, temporarily. It's confused. It's, it's, it doesn't understand what's going on. It's running around like a berserker, attacking parts of you that it shouldn't be attacking. So, we don't want to beat down the immune system. We want to help to calm it down so that it can remember, "Oh yeah, that's a part of her. I shouldn't be attacking that, right?"
And so, what causes it is an overactive, inappropriately active, confused immune system. And so, that's what we really have to focus on. It's how we're gonna get your immune system to calm down and remember that it's supposed to be attacking non-you, not you.
Now, the next thing we need to know about this is what symptoms. What symptoms will I have if I have Hashimoto's? So, so many doctors don't ask patients, "How is your energy level? How are you sleeping? How is your sex drive? How do you feel overall?" Do you know why doctors don't ask this question? They don't ask that question because there's no FDA-approved pill to treat those conditions. And so, if your doctor were to accidentally ask you, "How's your energy level?" and you said, "Oh, doc, it's, it's rotten. My, I have severe fatigue." He can check some lab work. He might do this or that, but when the lab work that he checks comes back normal, he is effectively impotent to treat your fatigue. And so, he's not gonna ask that question. And you, you guys, probably a lot of you listening, going, "Yeah, my doctor never asked me about my energy level." And that's because he doesn't want to know the answer, because if you say you have fatigue, there's nothing he can do about that.
So, if you have a good doctor and he's asking you, "How's your energy level? How are you sleeping? How's your motivation, your get-up-and-go?" he'll immediately detect the symptoms of Hashimoto's thyroiditis because a classic picture of someone with Hashimoto's is someone laying on the couch with no energy, no get-up-and-go, no drive, and they want to change the channel, but they really don't want to reach over and pick up the remote to do it.
So, the symptoms are chronic fatigue. You can sleep all night, you're still fatigued the next day. Weight gain. You're always cold. You're always constipated. Your skin and hair dry and flaky and brittle. Those are the rough symptoms of hypothyroidism, but also the symptoms of Hashimoto's because Hashimoto's, even before it's detectable, the average doctor's lab work is already giving you hypothyroid-like symptoms.
So, the next thing you need to know is how is it diagnosed? So, you have all these symptoms and you think maybe you have Hashimoto's, and you go to your doctor, and he checks the TSH level, and he says, and he comes back and he says, "Hey, I checked her thyroid. It's fine. You don't have any thyroid problems." And you go home thinking, "It must be all in my head. I must be crazy. I'm just lazy."
But in actuality, what should have happened is your doctor should have checked a full thyroid panel. And here's why: you can have raging, severe Hashimoto's thyroiditis and have a normal TSH. Yeah, you can have severe, debilitating Hashimoto's and all the symptoms that go with it and have a normal T4 level. Yeah. It usually takes the average doctor 10 to 15 years to detect your Hashimoto's because that's how long it takes for your TSH to become abnormal. So, if you're thinking, "What the hell?" Good. I'm glad, because you should, because that's ridiculous.
So, if you want to know the full panel that you can write down and take to your doctor, it's on a website called Stop the Thyroid Madness. And I don't make a penny off this website. I just think it's a great resource for people with low thyroid symptoms. I'll link to it down in the notes below.
So, the next thing you need to know is how it's diagnosed. And it's diagnosed by checking a TSH and a free T4 and a free T3 and a TPO antibody and a TG antibody and a reverse T3. And even checking your adrenals and checking your vitamin D. All these things are very important for thyroid health. And but if he doesn't check a TPO antibody and a TG antibody, he may never diagnose you with Hashimoto's thyroiditis, and you may go through your entire life suffering from this and just think you're crazy and lazy because it must be all be in your head because your thyroid is fine. And that, to me, is malpractice. And hopefully, one day soon, that's something medical boards will start looking at, but we'll see as time goes on.
So, now you've been diagnosed, or maybe not, but you think you have Hashimoto's. How do you slow Hashimoto's down? How do you stop the damage? How do you feel better naturally? So, what you've got to remember is, again, this is not a thyroid problem. This is an immune system problem. Your immune system is running around berserker style, attacking parts of you that it shouldn't attack. And so, you've got to do the things that it takes to calm down your immune system.
And the first step is knowing what's got my immune system pissed off. Well, it's your diet, almost always. It's 90% your diet, a few percentage points your stress level, and then maybe you're low on some supplements you may need to take, maybe not.
So, what do you need to get out of your diet immediately? Now, if you're, if you're already eating keto or low-carb, high-fat, you know the answer to this. But if you're not, you need to pay close attention because these things are vital to calm down your immune system so that it can remember what's you and what's not you and stop attacking you.
You've got to get rid of all grains out of your diet. All grains, including wheat, but all grains to some extent are inflammatory in nature. They inflame your gut lining, and that leads to inflammation all over your body. And that inflammation confuses and irritates your immune system, making it more likely to start attacking parts of you. It can attack your, your TPO. It can attack your TG. It can even attack your TSH receptor. It can attack the, the T3 receptors on your individual cells. All these things can be affected by your immune system, and some of them, there aren't tests for it. And so, you've got to get grains out of your diet.
The second thing you've got to get out of your diet is all of the vegetable oils. And I do air quotes because it was a beautiful marketing scheme to name these things vegetable oils, but in reality, they have no vegetables in them at all, ever, none. Okay? So, I'm talking about canola oil, which is really the oil of the rapeseed. R-A-P-E. I'm talking about safflower oil. I'm talking about corn oil. I'm talking about sunflower oil. Even though sunflower seeds are not that bad for you, the oil is not great. I'm talking about soybean oil. Any of these oils have a high, messed-up omega-6 to omega-3 ratio. They are expressed from the seeds and beans by chemical process in high pressure, high heat, not natural, right? You can take an olive and squeeze it and get oil out. You can take a piece of bacon and hold it up, an oil will drip off. That's where you should be getting oils from, not from things that you have to send to the chemical factory to chemically express the oils from them. So, get the inflammatory vegetable oils out of your diet.
And then, for a lot of people, any kind of liquid dairy that's less fat than heavy cream will tend to annoy their immune system and make it more likely to attack. So, you don't want an inflamed gut. You don't want an inflamed body. And you don't want a berserker-style immune system attacking parts of you because if it's, if it's confused enough to attack your thyroid system, then it can also be inflamed enough and confused enough to attack other parts of your body. And that's why if somebody has one autoimmune condition like Hashimoto's, they're at great risk of having a second or even a third autoimmune condition, because their, their immune system is on a rampage and it's not thinking straight. But you can help, help it remember what's friend, what's foe by getting the inflammatory processed crap out of your diet.
So, how is it treated? You've finally been diagnosed 15 years later. How should it be treated? Most docs will put, when you do develop hypothyroidism or low thyroid, they'll put you on levothyroxine or Synthroid, which is synthetic T4 or fake T4. It's not real. The only way they could get a patent on that molecule is to change it. You can't get a patent on water or on iodine. You can't get a patent on that. You have to change that atom or change that molecule a little, then you can get a patent on the unique molecule. It's much better, in my opinion, for virtually everyone to take a desiccated natural thyroid replacement product like Nature-Throid, like Armour, like Euthyroid, which you can get in Canada, I think, or WP. I don't have a penny of financial interest in any of these. I just find that they help my patients feel their best when they have symptoms of low thyroid.
You also want to make sure that your vitamin D is optimized. That's going to help to calm down your immune system. You want to make sure you're getting the selenium contained in one or two Brazil nuts. That's going to be enough selenium to help your body optimize your thyroid function and your thyroid hormones. Almost every American and Canadian is deficient in magnesium. And so, making sure that you've got multiple good food sources of magnesium in your diet is excellent for your thyroid function and your thyroid health. I find that one or two drops of 2% Lugol's solution, which also, I don't have a penny of financial interest in, helps my thyroid patients tremendously, even my patients with Hashimoto's. I agree with Dr. Wentz and multiple other thyroid specialists that you don't need to take mega doses of iodine. You don't need high doses of iodine. But the iodine containing one or two drops of 2% Lugol's each day is far less iodine than some people in other countries get just through their daily diet. In countries where they eat a lot of seafood and sea vegetables and seaweed, they get far and more iodine than that. So, it's kind of silly to call that a mega dose when there are people getting that in their normal daily diets.
But all those things are going to help your fatigue symptoms, your lack of regeneration and recuperation symptoms, your hair, your skin symptoms, your motivation, your drive symptoms. Those are all the things that you need to know about Hashimoto's.
Now, if you enjoyed this video, or you know someone who would enjoy this video, if you know someone whose life this video might change, please share this on their Facebook or on your Facebook. Share it on your Twitter. Send them a text message. Send them an email with a link to this video. You could literally help me change their life, okay?
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