The Complete Thyroid Episode: Labs, Meds, Diet & Root Causes Explained

Welcome to the Autoimmune Doc podcast. As always, this is your host, Dr. Taylor Crick, and I love breaking down and explaining the mechanisms behind chronic and complex conditions. And today's episode's about the thyroid. And for being such a simple little organ, there's quite a or gland rather. There's quite a bit of complex, you know, physiology behind thyroid. And so that's why a lot of people, you know, you've heard their labs look normal, but they've still got thyroid symptoms. So, we're going to talk through this.

My co-host is Ryan A. Allen. So, if if you haven't heard him on any of the past episodes, Ryan's beginning to join me on the podcast as a some help with our, you know, social media direction and things like that, but also just asking some questions and guiding some of these conversations because Ryan, as he'll tell you, has his own autoimmune journey. So, he's pretty knowledgeable because of his own journey that he's been through. And then he also owns a lab testing company. So he's really knowledgeable in like the functional space and things. But I also think Ryan, you you ask questions from a little more of a lay person, a little more of a patient perspective. So I think you ask me good questions and then I try to try to answer them. But that's our goal today is like everything thyroid.

The other thing that I'll say too before I let Ryan talk, I've got thyroid issues. You know, I talked about that in the past. we touch on it, but I don't I haven't spent a lot of time on it because even for the last couple years, I haven't been as good as at keeping up on my labs. Now, this year, I I have been and my thyroid is my major target that I've been working on. So, I could share some of that, but I'm also in the middle of working on some of these, but I just have personal experience with thyroid. It's not nearly as common in a male as it is in a female, but sure enough, here I am, and it's not impossible. But there all those things give me, you know, some knowledge and expertise on thyroid because I've worked with, you know, hundreds if not th I mean, it's got to be thousands. I mean, it's got to be thousands of hypothyroid patients or Hashimoto's patients. So, I've worked with, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people and my own personal journey and taken hours and hours and hours of seminars and all these things. So, that's Ryan's job is to ring some of that information out of me that's helpful for you guys. So Ryan, why don't you say hi and I'll stop rambling.

>> Hello guys. Well, thank you for tuning in today. I think my job, as Dr. Taylor said, is just to play play the patient. You know, I'm someone with my own autoimmune journey and um I'm just going to sit in that role today and and ask the questions that a typical patient would and that I'm curious about. So, Dr. Taylor, when what are the three things you see most commonly with thyroid? Because there's hypo, there's hyper, and there's a million things in between.

>> Yeah. So, let me go in order of like rarest to most common. Most rare, hyper. Now, I've I've as an autoimmune specialist, I do see it. It's just not nearly as common. I mean that statistically, like literally, but also like coming into my practice, it's not nearly as common. But some of the stories that I have of hyper thyroid are like great stories like people who were on the verge of getting their thyroid removed and and long story short never had to you know were able to avoid that and their labs normalized and things like that. So I've got a couple good healing stories of hyper but that one's by far the most rare. The second one is hypo. super common, but most people are already medicated. And so they come to me and they're like, I was diagnosed 20 years ago with hypothyroid and I've been on levothyroxine for 20 years and I've been on the same dose or they've increased it or whatever their, you know, medication journey is. Or a lot of times they'll be like, I started on Levo and then went to Armor and then my insurance changed and they had to change me to NP Thyra and like whatever. they've got a medication journey that they that they I want to ask them about, but that's hypo. Now, occasionally I see somebody that's hypo and they're not medicated and then it's like, well, crap, we got to get your thyroid back on track or you need medication. That's where I was. That's where I've been at right now in in 2026, too, is like my thyroid was low, like lower than it had been in the past. And it's like, oh crap, if I don't get this back on track, I'm going to need medication. And that's also too, Ryan, that's what I believe. I'm very anti-medication in all senses, but you need thyroid hormone. Every cell in your body needs thyroid hormone. You cannot function and heal and and do metabolism and things like that without it. So like if I if I were hypothyroid and I'm not able to solve that, I would resort to taking thyroid meds and it'd be the only med that I take and it' be the only, you know, I've hardly ever taken hardly any meds. But um I'm I'm not opposed to that. But I also have faith that we can fix it too or that I can fix you know mine. But that's that's the second most common is hypo. The third most common is let's say mystery like somebody has Hashimoto's which is thyroid autoimmunity but their labs are normal. Their labs are good meaning their thyroid hormone is good. So then if they have symptoms they're like is this because of my thyroid or is this because my autoimmunity? Sometimes the thyroid gland is doing a fine job producing hormones. It's producing a lot. You got a lot of thyroid hormones. You can measure that really easily and it's like, "Oh, you got a lot." But the immune system is attacking the gland. And so that's a concern because sometimes just the autoimmunity that's involved with that can cause a b a bunch of symptoms. You know, it can cause, you know, brain fog, fatigue, pain, inflammatory symptoms, gut issues. But you test your thyroid and your thyroid is fine. replacing thyroid hormone isn't what needs to be done, but calming autoimmunity is. So, I see I don't know what we'd call it, silent Hashimoto's all the time. Or I see people who maybe don't have perfect labs, but they don't they're not hypothyroid yet. So, they're like kind of in that middle space or they've got all the thyroid symptoms, so they think they have thyroid issues. and everything on Google and the internet and Instagram says, "Oh, you got thyroid because you got you're you got weight gain and you're losing your hair and you're tired." But sometimes they've checked everything thyroid and it's like maybe it's not your thyroid. What else could it be? But hyper, hypo, and somewhere in between would be the type three people that I see.

>> Let's break down hypo because it's incredibly prevalent. Um it seems like everybody knows someone in their life with hypothyroid. Um so let's say someone comes into your office and they are that individual that you mentioned that let's say they got diagnosed with um Hashimoto's 20 years ago and they've been on medication and they don't love taking medication like you like you laid out. they um they want to eventually maybe get off of it and they want to take a more holistic approach to fixing their thyroid. How how do you advise them in that process?

>> Uh cautiously because if you've been on med for 20 years, your thyroid might not ever kick back on. You know, it's kind of like if you've been walking on with crutches for 20 years, you probably ain't going to be getting back to marathon running anytime soon. like you're gotten so used to crutches that your legs might not work the way they used to or whatever we want to say. So it and it's totally possible, it's totally probable that somebody needs to be on medication because either the thyroid is damaged enough that it ain't going to work again. It's kind of like your tires. If your tires are worn down enough, you're not putting rubber back on them. You got to put a new tire on. You know, it it doesn't work in both ways. it it um so there is the possibility that somebody needs to stay on their thyroid hormone, but it's also like even if that's the case, it's like let's work on everything else. Let's look at, you know, I don't want to say the basics, but like the lowhanging fruit, let's look at your vitamin D. Let's look at your omega-3s. You know, I talk about that so much because so often I find that people aren't picking the lowhanging fruit. They're like, "It's the parasites, is it heavy metals? Is it toxins?" They're like, "You're vitamin D deficient. You're never going to solve this if you're vitamin D deficient. You know, I saw this girl the other day. I don't want to ramble too much, but she's got crazy serious stuff. She just had a stroke. She's my age. She had a COVID induced stroke and she's got Hashis, but her vitamin D is like, I don't know, 14 or something. And like, you know, vitamin D is not going to fix this, but you cannot do it without it. But, so some of those lowhanging fruits, that's what we look at. Let's look at the gut. So, I see a ton of people that are on thyroid hormone. And I'm like, "Hey, maybe you should stay on your thyroid hormone. Let's work on everything else." And they and then they're like, "Boy, I feel great. I've got less headaches. I've got less brain fog. I've lost 5 lbs. I'm less bloated." You know, they're symptomatically they're feeling better. So, going back to your original question, we approach that cautiously. I don't I don't tell people stop your thyroid meds. I never It's not legal for me to do that. And I tell people, too, it's like your medication is outside of my scope to tell you that you should change it or what you should do about it. I can give people some thoughts and some suggestions and they can bring that to their prescriber like hey have you ever considered a armor or have you ever considered a T3 T4 combo or have you considered getting this compound and so I can give people considerations but I I approach meds cautiously no matter what because it's not within my scope. So I'm like hey maybe that's not maybe you need it maybe you don't. Let's work like heck to see if we can get off of it and if you can't it's not the end of the world and if you can great. I've had tons of people get off their thyroid hormone and maintain normal labs. Period. I've also had people get off their thyroid hormone and a month or two later we're like, "Oh crap, you need to go back on it." And that's another thing too when I say cautiously is like you work on everything else. you see what happens. But then if somebody chooses to not take their thyroid anymore or their prescriber is, you know, okay with that, you you darn well better be keeping an eye on it because sometimes people like, I feel fine without my thyroid hormone. I feel great. I don't think I ever needed it in the first place. And in the background, their TSH is going up to 30 or 60 or something like that. It's like, oh crap, you better keep an eye on that because sometimes the labs and the symptoms, there's a lag time. There's a lag time where somebody's like, I feel great. even though their numbers are dropping or somebody's, you know, like I feel like crap even though their numbers are normal, there's a lag time. So, doing repeat labs and cyclical labs is is important, too. Uh, which is another, you know, not that you asked this, right, but like the top mistakes that I see people make in general is probably like not picking the lowhanging fruit and not following up with their labs often enough. So, like for me, I'm about to order my third set of labs this year and it's March right now. So, I don't know when we're going to release this, probably soon. But, I did labs in January, I did labs in February, and I'm going to do labs again in March. And I'm going to do labs again in April, I guarantee it. And I'm going to keep doing them just to see what the trends are. You know, all my trends are improving, but they're not out of the woods yet. So, I want to keep an eye on those trends. And I don't think people do labs often enough a lot of times or they do like $1,500 of labs one time and then they're like, "Why am I not getting better?" It's like, "I'd rather see you do $100 labs for 15 months in a row than do $1,500 in January and then wonder why you're not getting better in June." But all those things. Now I don't even remember what your question was, but that's if somebody comes to me with hypo and they're on meds, we're not messing with it.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

>> Do you have a preference in the sense of um obviously you're not recommending meds-wise anything to people, but like just if you were in those shoes um which one of those medications because there are a few different options from Armor to um some of the other ones that you laid out?

>> Yeah. You know, my short answer might be different than what people expect is no. I don't have a preference because you know and and again I think that as somebody that's naturally minded as somebody that's anti-drug anti-surgery all those things doesn't do it for myself doesn't give it to my kids kind of person there's nothing wrong with synthroidid everybody out there thinks like well it's synthetic I need something natural I need something bioididentical and it's like that might sound trendy and right and it sometimes is so sometimes croidid has some downsides or has some filler or has some things, you know, somebody might might on Instagram might hear this and be like, "This guy doesn't know what he's talking about. Synthroidid is the devil." No, it's not. And I don't see that. And that's why millions of people worldwide are on it with no problem. Works pretty well. But sometimes if somebody's like their T3 is low and their T4 is high, that's a conversion issue. There's all these different patterns in the thyroid, Ryan, that like like I've taken a bunch of uh thyroid education from Dr. Karazzian, like like probably 50 hours of of continuing ed from Karazzian, but he goes into all these different details of what the meds have, what's included in them. So, I'd have to bone up on it to even give you a better answer. But if somebody's thyroid T3 is low and their T4 is normal, they might need a T3 T4 combo or some people will be on like a leoyro. Is it leothyronine? It's like a L. It's a T3. And they might be on a I don't know like the the the a lot of practitioners that I see even in the natural world, they try to get fancy with like compounding and they're like, "We're going to give you this much T3 and this much T4." And it in my opinion, I've seen way more people that are on like a roller coaster of thyroid hormones, whereas a lot of people it's like here's your levothyroxin dose and it's like a a flat line. And then let's say 5 years from now they might have to bump up the dosage. So we want to avoid that. But I think that a lot of the times that I've seen people it's like I started on synthroidid and I was on it for 5 years then I went to a natural doctor who said I need to go on NP or armor and I then I got a million symptoms and then they started increasing my T3 or decreasing my T4 and increasing this and it's like and I've been on this roller coaster ever since. And that's kind of how I feel with hormone replacement in general too is like the more tricky and nuanced you try to get the more it jacks things up. I would say like with estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, you know, I'm not a big fan of those those replacements. I think that hormones are an effect more than a cause. So, I'm more like work on the causes, you know, detoxify and and work on the gut and stress and all those things. But I don't have a preference medication. Now, for me, if I need a thyroid hormone, Ryan, cuz again, not to try to put that toothpaste back in the tube. But if I need a thyroid hormone replacement, I'm going to probably do some careful looking and do some more research and like look into it. And I might go for something like Armor or Naturoid. So, I again, I would I do steer towards more natural things over synthetic, but I don't see a big problem with Synthroidid, even though it gets demonized in the natural world. And if and if synthroidid was my best option, I'd be like, "Okay, give me synthroidid. Let's see what happens." But I might try something like armor. Um, but and I used to have like all the like, you know, numbers and things memorized of like what they all are and this one's this many grains or this one's this percentage or this one's this, you know, bio identical breakdown. I I I don't right now just because it's not top of mind to me. But I I if I had to go on Synthroidid, I would not be that discouraged. I'd be discouraged because I have to go on med. But I'm not that scared of Synthroidid. Synthroidid also, just FYI, is T4, synthetic T4. And that's what they do. That's that's the gold standard for 90% of people and that and it works well for them, but it's T4. And T4 is the inactive form of thyroid. It has to be converted to the active form of thyroid. And so you hear a lot of people out there talking about this. It's like, oh, if you're hypothyroid, it's got to be your conversion. It's like, well, let me see the labs. You can measure T4 and measure T3. And you can find conversion uh patterns in people all the time. It is true. But what if you don't have that pattern? You might take a armor thyroid with T3 in it, and you get heart palpitations and insomnia and you lose 10 pounds and it's like, oh, that ain't good for you. So it it it there are some nuances to that in the conversion process and the labs and things like that. Um, but yeah

>> and so when it comes to labs, what type of labs do you like to do if you're seeing somebody who has hypothyroid?

>> Kind of depends on what they have.

>> Mhm.

>> So you'll be shocked to hear that I have a nuanced answer, but I a lot of people have good enough thyroid labs. Meaning if they've got here's the con. Let's say this. Let's start backwards. Like what does the doctors look at? TSH and T4 typically because that's how they dictate do you have hypothyroid? Yes or no. TSH. And is your levothyroxine dosage correct? Yes or no. So that's why insurance covers TSH and T4. Now, a more, let's say, savvy doc might add on T3 or might add on a couple other markers, but in the conventional system, they're usually doing two, three markers at the most, maybe for the first time you're in or something like that. Or an endocrinologist might do free free T3 or free T4, but they're they're very rarely doing a full panel. A full thyroid panel to me would be TSH, T4, T3, free T4, free T3, Hashimoto's antibodies, reverse T3, and maybe a T3 uptake because that all just gives they're all just different markers. Like what if you got a lot of T3, but it's not you're not getting good uptake? Well, that can be affected by estrogen, testosterone, other things. But it's like sometimes you can't how could you see that if you're like, "Hey, you got a good T3." It's like, "Why do I feel like crap?" Well, maybe you're not uptaking it. Or maybe you got a lot of total T3, but then how do you know if it's free T3 or reverse T3? You know, you got to look at the whole puzzle and there's a however many I just named, there's about 10 parts to a full thyroid panel. So, let's say somebody comes to me with every thyroid symptom under the sun and they're like, "I don't know what's going on." And I like, "Has anybody ever checked your thyroid?" Like, "No." Then I'd be doing all those. Very rarely is somebody coming to me like that. Usually they're coming to me like, "Hey, I got I got my thyroid checked and I was hypothyroid and they put me on this med, but now I feel worse." Like, you know, I'm not usually their step one or even if they've gone the natural route or the alternative route, they've they've had labs. So, I'm like, let's see where it's currently at. Let's see where these numbers are at. But a full thyroid panel is the what I want to see with thyroid. Now I also want to see like if we're going to do blood labs, we're doing a CBC, we're doing a metabolic panel, we're doing vitamin D, we're looking at their omegas, we're looking at their homocyine, their C reactive protein, their iron, all uh maybe their vitamin A. You know, I don't do that every time, but vitamin A is just particularly important for thyroid. So, we're looking for other things. But if you're just saying if we want to see how the thyroid is working, we look at thyroid labs. And it's hard to solve a 10piece puzzle with only three of the pieces.

>> Such a great point. And the beauty about the thyroid blood labs that you just suggested is that although some of those aren't covered by insurance, they're not that expensive.

>> Right. That's why I don't do though, like I don't do TSH receptor or uh thyroid stimulating aminogabulins. I think those are the same I think those are the same alias, but they're expensive. So like even in the labs that I run, if you ask me sometimes, well, why do you do that one and not do that one? Sometimes it's straight up because of the cost. So, you know, if it's an expensive marker, I don't do it that often. If it's a $20 vitamin D marker, I do it all the time. Or a $20 homoyine, I do it all the time. Bang for the buck is an important thing for me. It doesn't mean that we, you know, cut any corners with care, but it's like at what cost are we getting these answers and there's a certain point where it's like you're paying too much for the answers you're getting.

>> Yep. And often times when somebody is hypothyroid, let's say they're taking their medication, they're in range, but there's still symptoms going on, whether that is hair loss or weight gain. Um, what are your steps by steps there? So, it's the first one is low hanging fruit and then what are like the component elements to that low hanging fruit? I know you mentioned vitamin D, omegas, anything else there and then what are those next steps after you kind of cross off those?

>> Yeah. So, good good call. So, first off, the symptoms can be confusing, too, because like even for me, like I'm I was straight up hypothyroid in January. My TSH was high, my thyroid was low. It's like my labs were not good. But I felt great, you know, like I'm not I'm not overweight. In fact, I'm skinny. I would love to put on weight.

>> I'm my hairline ain't what it used to be, but it's not like losing. My outer third of my eyebrows would be the my most evident thyroid symptom.

>> But it's like I felt great. I'm going to the gym every day. I'm like skiing. I'm like not your typical thyroid like dragon, you know, kind of person. So, the symptoms could be confusing in both directions. But when people come to me in general, the first thing that I'm looking at is mechanisms. What are the mechanisms? And meaning like of your symptoms. So there's one, you know, questionnaire that I use, Ryan, that is, you know, we do like an extensive paperwork, you know, and an extensive intake form, but there's one that's called a metabolic assessment form. And each there's categories. So, it's like if you check a bunch of boxes in category 8, that's the thyroid category or whatever. I might be saying that wrong. But category 9 is the adrenal category. Category 2 is like the gut category. So, right away before I even meet somebody, I'm like, "Oh, wonder what's going on with your gut. You got bloating, constipation, gas. Like, wonder what's going on with your gut." So, right away I'm the first thing that I'm looking at is what are your mechanisms? Regardless of labs, regardless of low hanging fruit, what are your mechanisms? And so if somebody comes into me, I'm like, "Your mechanisms sound like thyroid. Have you ever had your thyroid checked?" And do you have any of these signs or symptoms? And if they have never had it checked, it's like, "We want to look at that." Or, "Your mechanisms sound like gut. Have you ever had your gut checked?" Okay, we want to look at that. So the mechanisms are queuing me into what we need to start supporting and what we need to look further into. So when somebody when I work with somebody, we're doing that step one because if we order thyroid labs or we order gut labs or we order, you know, toxin labs or whatever, they might take a few weeks to get back. So we're not like sitting by idly. We're like, let's start working on these mechanisms. And like for example, I had this lady was in today and she we just met 3 weeks ago or four weeks ago and she was like, I think I'm doing better already. I was like, good. That's what I hope. But the first round of supplements we put her on were more for histamine cuz that was a mechanism that I thought was involved for her. And now today we got her gut, we got her labs back and it was like, hey, you got H. pylori, you got all these food sensitivities, you got leaky guy, you got, you know, blah blah blah. So that that's where I'm starting is with the mechanism of what I think is going on. And then we're looking for what are the again like the I I would say I I'll a lot of times I'll draw this out of like shortterm, middleterm, long-term. The short-term things when I meet somebody are like let's do this right away. Let's start targeting inflammation. Let's take some anti-inflammatories. Let's start targeting your nervous system. Let's take some anti-anxieties things. Let's start targeting your histamine. Let's take some antihistamine things. And then the middle term is like what's going on in your gut or what's going on with the detox. And the reason those are middle term is because that we don't have to do them forever. But gut health, you might work on it for two, three months and then it's like, hey, good, your yeast is gone and your microbiome is balanced, your leaky gut is fixed. And detox, same thing. You might do it for two, three months. You could do either one of those for more, but it just doesn't happen overnight. And it doesn't have to be a year or something like that either. And then in the long term is more the lowhanging fruit. So then I might say like, hey, if your vitamin D is low, it's like, well, none of this is going to work without that. Or if you're under too much stress, it's like none of this is going to work without that. Or if you live in mold, it's like none of this is going to work without that for sure. So we're looking for those long-term things while we address middle-term and shortterm. And so that's again just kind of how I put things into order of like first steps, second steps, third steps. And even again for this lady this morning, it was almost like an afterthought cuz she's got an inflammatory skin issue and she's, you know, been up to Mayo and had all this lab work and done all this stuff and nobody's able to help her with her inflammatory skin issue. They put on prennazone and it helps, but other than that they're like, we don't know. And I told her today, I was like, your omegas are low. But I was like, that might not matter right now. The gut stuff matters right now, but in the long term, you might want to add that in and do that for a long time because it takes some time to raise omegas and you need to take them at fairly high doses and things like that. And I said, it helps with a little bit of everything. They resolve inflammation. They're good for brain health and avoiding Alzheimer's. They're good for arterial flexibility and heart health, but if they're low, we just want them to be high. So, we might be doing short-term, middle-term, and long-term all at the same time. Or we might be kind of picking and choosing and saying, "Hey, these omegas matter, but they don't matter today. Today we got to get you out of your inflammatory flare." And then we can raise your omegas, your D or things like that. They almost those D and omegas, those low hanging fruits are like always relevant. My low hanging fruit that I would say is D's, B's, and omega-3s. if there's lab signs for those. If there's not lab signs for those, I'm like, why are you taking a B vitamin? Not not to say there's any bad, there's nothing wrong with a B vitamin. They do it does everything. But we're like trying to solve problems. And if you're taking something for a problem that might not be there, then it ain't solving your problems. It's just a good thing to do. But those are the kind of the action steps when somebody comes to me is again very nuanced because a lot of people have boatloads of labs and boatloads of supplements. But we want to make sure that we're hitting all three of those areas. And and we do that with quite frankly with a lot of success. I would say if anything like if you ask me like what is the condition that I feel the most success with it's it's Hashimoto's for sure because a lot of people get to the point where they're like I I feel pretty good. I just have this Hashimoto's process in my body but the brain fog, the bloating, the fatigue that I came in with, I no longer have. Um, yeah. I also say too, while I'm rambling about it, the two most common things that I see root cause-wise in thyroid Hashimoto's are yeast in the gut and methylation issues. Now, whether that's, oh, I got MTHFR or not, we'll see it on like an oat test or we'll see it on a homoyine or we'll see it on an MCV, which is a anemia marker, but we'll see like, oh, you got some methylation issues and we'll just leave it at that. But those are by far the two most common things that I see.

>> And what do you do for those methylation issues? Because the gut issues are a little bit more straightforward. It seems it seems it's give B vitamins.

>> Yeah, give them B vitamins generally depending on the person because if they're like, "Oh, I tried B vitamins and they wrecked me." So sometimes I don't because some people are very very sensitive to certain bees. But the short answer is give them B vitamins and see if the numbers change because then instead of like is do I take seeking health B vitamin? Do I take this other one that do I take Cellcore? Do I take this brand? You know, whatever. It's like this is numbers based and it's whatever gets this MCV down. It's whatever gets this homoyine down. It's whatever changes these numbers or helps you feel better. Otherwise, why are we doing it? Otherwise, and it's not a bad idea to take B vitamins. They literally they do everything in the body, but they're made by the gut. A lot of them are made by the gut. So, it's like, why are you not working on the gut? But some of them like B12 you need to get from your food and absorb that. But and I I think I'm saying that accurately, but there's a lot of bees out there and some people are sensitive to B12 and they're okay with B9. And in the methylation world, a lot of people that are trying to solve their methylation puzzles get worse because they take the wrong things and they're like, man, I got anxiety, insomnia, things like that. But the short answer is give them B vitamins and see if their numbers come down. seems like for you with um hypothyroid and probably with most things is letting the labs tell the story and making sure we're ordering the right labs for what your symptom profile is.

>> Yes. Letting the labs or what I tell people, Ryan, is we want to see subjective improvement or objective improvement. If somebody takes a B complex that I give them and they're like, "What was that? I feel better." I'm like, "Boom, we hit something." and not like problem solved. But like okay, we that let's keep on that one. It clearly is working for you if you feel better and you're like boy my energy is crazy, you know. Um and quite frankly like that I've seen more of that happen with non-methylated bees than with methylated bees. You know, I hear people I heard this dude yesterday. He was like, "You need to take a methylated bee because it's better absorbed." And I'm like, "You just heard that somewhere." Like, it is it is, you know, the methylated bees are, you know, further down the action line of like MTHFR of like methyl tetrahydropholate is what MTHFR is for. But as far as the clinical application and helping people, we either want to see subjective improvement or objective improvement. Meaning if you take the a B vitamin and your MCV doesn't come down, well we got to get your MCV down. That's the point. Or your homoyine doesn't come down, well your homoyine still have it. Homoyine is a heart attack risk marker. It's a Alzheimer's risk marker. It damages arteries and it's lowered by B vitamins and methylation processes. So if it's high, I'm like, I don't care which brand you take. We got to get your homoyine down. And you know, so that's more what our goals are, but it's subjective improvement and objective improvement because we might not be retesting that often because there's a cost perspective and things like that too. But absolutely and we're looking for also Ryan in the short term, middle-term, longterm, we're looking for like which you know vitamin D is like you take more the levels come up, but how much? Sometimes two people take the same dosage and one of them doubles and one of them goes up five points. But same thing with the the um I guess what I was trying to say I guess is like looking for what are recurrent themes. If your homoyine was high in 2024 and it's high in 2025 and it's still high in 2026. It's like this is a recurrent theme and we need to work on it and and see how we can get that to come down. Even though it might not solve all your problems from a symptom standpoint, we got to get that number down because it's just not good that it's high.

>> And in that short, intermediate, and long-term, what does diet look like in that time period? What are you recommending for people?

>> That's another great question. You know, it it's nuanced again because the majority of people that I see have sensitivities beyond just like avoid gluten. They've got FODMAP or histamine or like oh I'm bloated all the time or like oh I've had diarrhea for a year or all those things. They've got symptoms. But I'll tell you in general gluten is number public enemy number one for thyroid. You know, I've saw somebody recently and she's like, "Well, I know gluten's a problem because when I get off of it, my TSH comes down and when I get on it, my TSH goes up and when I get off it, my TSH comes right down. Like, boom. Okay. So, guess what? I lab

>> Yeah. And then I'm like, guess what? I don't need to tell you what to do. You just told me what you need to do. Don't eat gluten. But that So, gluten is is public enemy number one. There's other foods that can crossreact with gluten. So dairy, corn, o uh oats, rice, millet, maybe not rice, yeast, but there's like six or seven foods that can cross right after dairy. So, and what or with gluten, excuse me. But I'm more of a fan of like grain-free. Like if you're going to go gluten-ree, just go grain-free. So like this lady again this morning, I she had gluten on her sensitivity. She had millet and she had dairy and eggs. And I was like, just do an egg-free paleo diet. And I told her, I said, "One of the reasons I say that is because it's an easy search term. You go to Google and you type in egg-free paleo breakfast ideas, you're going to get a thousand ideas in 5 seconds." And then her test also had like banana and red wine and some other things. I said, "You might need to do more than this, but egg-free paleo diet is just real easy search term." term. So, I love a paleo diet in general because it's easy search term. And there's a million Pinterest boards and like, you know, other there's books out there, you know, there's tons of stuff that's paleo friendly, but that's that's uh avoiding triggers. Another thing that's in general is if somebody tolerates it, if somebody has no gut symptoms, high fiber, high fiber and high variety, because somebody might eat two salads a day, but they don't get a lot of variety. So, the fiber variety is crucial for the microbiome. Crucial for the microbiome. So, and then I'm like moderate, you know, glycemic index. Ites might not be low carb. It might not be keto, but it's just like don't be spiking your blood sugar either. Um, but diet-wise is always changing. Now, another thing too, right, again, maybe not for thyroid specific, but a lot of people I see at the beginning, I'm like, you need to eat regularly and often because you don't do good with blood sugar drops. And that's more of an adrenal thing, too. So, I'm like, you need to eat, it's called metronome eating. I learned that from a teacher of mine, Eric Dorninger, who's who's awesome. He's out of Boulder. Um but he he calls it metronome which is like tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick and doing it with rhythm and regularity every day to avoid blood sugar drops and to set your circadian rhythms with that. But then let's say we do that for a month and then somebody comes in and they're like I'm doing a lot better energy-wise. They're like hey maybe you try skipping breakfast. Maybe you try doing some more intermittent fasting. You know and I'm not you know I I've got a lot of experience with keto and fasting and things like that. I've had people do 28 day fasts, you know, etc. But, um,

>> that's crazy.

>> I'm not I'm not pushing everybody towards that by any means. A lot of times when we work on somebody's blood sugar, a lot of people come in to me and they're like, I could never fast. I I'm going to die if I fast. And then a month later, they come in or two months later and they're like, guess what I'm doing? I'm fasting. I'm like, I told you you'd be able to. you know, so that we get that energy a little bit more stable and then they're able to go miss a meal without feeling like they tank or crash. But a lot of times at the beginning I'm like, "No, you need to eat more often right now." And then get your metabolism back on track, get your adrenals and energy back on track, and then maybe we can utilize some of these strategies like going lower carb or doing some intermittent fasting and do them strategically so we don't tank the thyroid. Cuz that's another thing too is that keto and low carb could take the thyroid because the body thinks it's starving and so it slows down the metabolic rate so you don't burn off. It's like if you think you're going broke, you don't want to burn off all your money. So you slow down your spending rate. So uh that those things are all intimately involved with the thyroid and the metabolic rate that thyroid controls. But that's how I handle diet is like there's general advice. I mean, it's kind of like the short, middle, and long term. There's general advice that everybody should follow. But then most of the people I see can't follow that because they eat broccoli and they feel like they're going to explode or they eat, you know, tomatoes and they have diarrhea because it's histamine or whatever it is. There's a lot sometimes a lot of nuance to that. But otherwise, if somebody's guts doing pretty good, then it's like high fiber, low glycemic, anti-inflammatory, high variety. Those are some of my foundational focuses.

>> Two of the two of the symptoms that uh just from personal experience with the people I know in my life with hypothyroid uh that they experience is hair loss and anxiety. What's going on there?

>> lots of stuff. You know, the hair loss is again like just metabolic rate. You know, things slow down. Your gut slows down, your brain slows down, your healing processes slow down. So, and hair loss from a symptom standpoint, Ryan, is like a super tricky symptom. Like there's autoimmunity like alopecia, there's thyroid, there's iron, like not too much, not too little, but both can cause that. And so there could be oxidative stress, there could be all these different mechanisms. I I don't I would say the metabolic rate is the main thing, but there's also there's these involvement with, you know, if somebody has hypothyroidism, it's like why do you have hypothyroidism in the first place? You've got in more inflammation, you've got more oxidative stress. The thyroid produces I don't know if this relates to your question as far as the hair, but the thyroid produces more reactive oxygen species per gram of tissue than any any other tissue in your body. And it's particularly susceptible because of that to toxins particularly susceptible to toxicities and different things like you know fluorides and things of that family play a particularly important role with the thyroid because they can compete with iodine receptors and things like that. But, uh, going back to the hair loss. Now, the anxiety is another one, Ryan, that's like that is a hallmark symptom of hyper because you got too much thyroid and your brain's like vroom vroom vroom vroom. It's like, but in hypo, it's like, well, why would I have anxiety when everything's slowed down? And that, I would say, is a reflection of inflammation. Inflammation, oxidative stress. Anxiety is probably the single most common symptom that walks into my office.

>> So it's not

>> what

>> anxiety is the single most common.

>> Yeah. Yeah. I think that's safe to say. So but not everybody has thyroid issues. A lot of people have their thyroid looks perfect or they've got, you know, eczema, they've got psoriasis, they've got some other autoimmune condition and they've got anxiety. Well, why? Because body inflammation drives brain inflammation. Gut inflammation drives both of those. So, when your body's more inflamed, whether that be from toxins or it be from gluten or it be from an infection or it be from a donk on the head or whatever it is, uh when the body's more inflamed, the brain's more likely to be inflamed. And so, I think of that with the anxiety. I think of depression being a part of it, too. But depression might also be if you're low thyroid, your brain's just not functioning fast. You're like, I feel sluggish. I feel like Eeyore or I'm just kind of dragging. But if the brain is inflamed, you feel pretty crummy. You feel depressed. You feel sad. You feel anxious. You can't stop thinking about things. You can ruminate on things. So, I think of those things just like I don't know that they're necessarily caused by thyroid. The hair loss is caused by thyroid. You know, you cut somebody's thyroid out, they're going to start losing hair, you know, in clumps. But the anxiety I think is more a side effect of whatever's underlying, you know, the ox the inflammation, the oxidative stress, the autoimmune progression or whatever it may be. Um, more so than like, oh, this is why you're anxious, your thyroid's 2.0. But the hair loss, like, oh, this is why you're losing hair. Your thyroid's 2.0. So, and in thyroid, what it does, too, is again metabolic rate. It speeds up metabolism of your mitochondria so they can produce more ATP and that's energy. That's cellular energy. So you need cellular energy for every process in your body. Hypothyroidism is associated with every symptom. But if you don't have and then your body if you don't

Have a lot of energy, it's going to prioritize the most important things. Like it's important to keep your heart beating and your lungs breathing and your brain thinking and it's not important to keep your hair growing. So it's going to slow down some of those things that we that are really, really, really, really bothersome to people. They're like, "I don't care if my brain is sluggish, but my hair. Oh, my poor hair." Like that's the things that bring people in. And they're like, "I, oh, I take Neutrifol. I've taken biotin. I'm doing all these things for my hair." I'm like, "Oh, your vitamin D is 14 and you've got yeast in your like." So, they're just kind of missing sometimes the targets. And not saying any of those things are bad. Just saying like, don't start with Neutrifol. Start with the low-hanging fruit and then that might be more effective. Yeah.

>> I think that that is great advice for people because I think that a lot of people their first uh thing that they do is Neutrifol.

>> Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of the supplements that are the most well-advertised are the crappiest now because Neutrifol is on like uh, you know, like tonight the USA plays World Baseball Classic. There might be a Neutrifol ad on the outfield, you know. Uh uh.

>> Yeah, they're everywhere.

>> They're everywhere, you know. And then there's some others too in the supplement world. I'm trying to think of some others that are well-advertised, but those are the ones that people come into me and they're like, "Oh my gosh, I tried Neutrifol. My hair got worse. I lost more hair." I'm like, "Oh, okay." I'm sure it's helped millions of people or thousands of people or whatever. I'm sure it's not not all bad, but these are the people that I see that they've already tried some of the more obvious things. They Googled, "Why is my hair falling out?" And they started taking Neutrifol and it, they tried that for 3 months and then they're coming to me. Um, yeah.

So, let's moving on to the hypothyroid or the Hashimoto's but good labs. What would you call that?

>> Uh, you know, and I don't know if I'm using the term properly, but there's a term called euthyroid, which is like...

>> Yeah. Yeah. Like everything, I think like everything looks normal, but you still have all the thyroid symptoms. I've also heard it said some people uh here's what happens with autoimmunity is that autoimmunity will attack the thyroid and if that attack lasts long enough, the thyroid will be damaged. But a lot of people that that attack hasn't damaged the thyroid yet. So they've got these elevated antibodies and the antibodies are what indicate that there's an attack process going. Now let me talk about that for a sec too because I'm a little bit in the middle right now of like my traditional understanding of it from Dr. Carzian and and you know, some of my mentors is like thyroid antibodies don't matter. Now, what do I mean by that? They matter because they diagnose Hashimoto's, but when they go up, it doesn't mean you're worse. And when they go down, it doesn't really mean that you're better. It's still, but it's still an important marker. Like, I'm still tracking what my antibodies are doing right now cuz I want to, I think if they go down, it's like it's got to be a sign that it's better. Like, what if they go down to zero? Then I don't have Hashimoto's anymore and that's remission. But I think that the point of what they're saying is that in other autoimmunities like even in Graves, it does matter because the antibody is binding to the receptor and it's stimulating that receptor and so that receptor is always turned on. Or the same thing with the OCD or PANS PANDAS like you bind a dopamine receptor and you're telling the body like that that that key is in that lock at all times and it's like revving up these certain processes. Thyroid antibodies don't do that. They bind to these proteins. So there's two Hashimoto's antibodies. They're called TPO antibody, thyroid peroxidase, which is also called microsomal antibody. Somebody like on the MyChart's labs or things like that. So you're looking through your MyChart, but and the other one's called TG, thyroglobulin. And again, off the top of my head, I'd have to like look back, but like TPO, they both do major things with iodine with the iodine import of iodine into the thyroid site and then attachment of iodine and then, you know, there's also the cleavage of iodine which is like T4 stands for four iodines and then that gets converted to T3. So one of them gets cleaved, cut off and you got three iodines and that's T3 and that's active thyroid hormone. That's why iodine is really important. But and I'll say this too, I'm rambling, maybe not answering your question directly, but worldwide the number one cause of hypothyroidism is iodine deficiency. So iodine matters, but in the US iodine deficiency is very rare. So in the US, the number one cause of hypothyroidism is Hashimoto's, like 80%. So iodine matters. Those antibodies matter. I don't even remember what you asked now, but you could measure those antibodies. And I'll tell you this too, and you're about to tell me, but sometimes I see people that are like their antibodies are like 2,000 and they're like, "Really? I have Hashimoto's? Wow, I feel fine and I'm skinny and I go to the gym every day and my hair is great." And then other people their antibodies are like 35 and they're like, "I feel like death. I cannot get out of bed in the morning." So, I think that those antibody levels matter. They tell us that there's an autoimmune process occurring, but they don't necessarily mean like higher is worse, lower is better. But I do think that your trends are important. But ask me again what you asked me, right? Cuz I forgot. I just rambling about it. But it was like that that that euthyroid or that like your labs look normal, but you have Hashi. I think that's what you asked about.

>> Yep. Uh, just I think I, I think I just asked the name of what it was called. I think I, I don't even remember.

>> Well, it doesn't matter. Hopefully that was helpful for somebody.

>> That's also where my thyroid has been at in the past was like, "Oh crap, I got Hashimoto's, but my levels are fine."

>> So, I was like, "Oh crap, okay, I got Hashimoto's. I got autoimmunity situation like for that."

>> Everything, everything that I do for anybody anyway, you know, and just, you know, with autoimmunity. And I learned this again from a mentor of mine, uh, Dr. Tom Coloulton,

>> who, he, who's a thyroid expert. Um, he talks about like he says he has five scratchers, you know, his five fingers and he's like, if you're in, if you scratch, it feels good at first, but if you keep scratching, scratching, scratching, eventually you're going to damage your hand, you're going to be bleeding. So he's like, what's the answer to that? Stop scratching. So what are the scratchers? What are the five fingers? It's food and gut. It's toxins. It's stress. It's hormone fluctuations. And it's hidden infections. So all those. Now going back to again, women versus men, the hormone fluctuations, that's what women have more than we do. You know, I don't got a lot of fluctuations in mine, but puberty is a common time for autoimmunity to present itself. Pregnancy is a very common time for autoimmunity to present itself. And perimenopause is another one. And out of those three, Ryan, you and I only get one of them. We get puberty. We don't ever get pregnant. We don't ever hit menopause. So, we don't have that risk factor with the hormone fluctuations, but that's what we do. If somebody has an autoimmune process anywhere, it's like, hey, you have an autoimmune process, let's work on decreasing the things that drive an autoimmune process. So getting out of toxic exposure, get fixing your foods and gut, you know, looking into it with testing, looking at hidden infections, you know, do you have, you know, Epstein-Barr virus that's reactivated? Do you have biofilms? Do you have strep? Do you have Klebsiella, Pseudomonas, you know, whatever, Mycoplasma? Do you have these infections or a high pathogen burden that we need to reduce? But those are my favorites is the people that come to me with autoimmunity. And it's like, we want to calm down the autoimmune process no matter what. But we're not really focusing on the thyroid gland. We're focusing on the autoimmunity. You know, and all the other podcasts that I have about TH1 and TH2 and, you know, autoimmune, you know, T-cell and things like that. That all plays into these people. They just don't have to go on thyroid med because they're that hypothyroid. Yeah. But we take the exact same approach.

>> Gotcha. Yeah. So, and it seems like it's a similar approach to how you do most things, which is let's...

>> take these labs.

>> It is. But...

>> I don't want that to sound generic, but it is. I mean, it's like you got, you got...

>> generic though because it's like, you know, let's look at what's going on. Let's, let's do um, um, an intake form and we'll see and we'll let that dictate what labs we need to do and then we'll let the labs dictate what our approaches whether that is diet, supplement, and everything else.

>> 100%. Or the symptoms too. If somebody's like, you know, my gut is perfect. I have a, you know, perfect bowel movement every day and I'm never bloated or constipated, but I've been menstrually bleeding for the last 50 days. Like, okay, let's start with your hormone. You know, the symptoms guide us to what's the most urgent and and and most important one. You know, the trickiest one of all, Ryan, dead serious, is toxins because people come in with dysfunction. And dysfunction is a sign of toxicity. But it's not like, oh, this toxin causes fatigue, this toxin causes hair loss, this toxin causes this. It's like toxins just drive dysfunction, and they're a little trigger to test for, but detoxification is on my radar for everybody. And sometimes we might find a a a toxin in somebody's body that is more particularly dangerous for the thyroid like perchlorate. Perchlorate is one that's, I don't even remember the details of perchlorate, but it's in, it's it could be in water and it can be particularly damaging to the thyroid or sometimes it might be the uh, like I don't know, there's other toxins that might come from dry cleaning or might come from, you know, PCBs that are chlorinated bis, what are they? I don't remember the names now, but they're like they could compete with iodine receptors. So anything in the fluoride or chloride, you know, family is the halides, as I believe it is, is like particularly important for iodine and iodine is particularly important for the thyroid. So, but heavy metals are important, mold toxins are important, but detox is sometimes the trickiest one to just say, let's test for it right away. But, uh, yes, that that we do take a similar approach to everybody whether it's rheumatoid arthritis or it's Hashimoto's or it's lupus. I'm treating them about the same is like, what do you need?

>> What do you need? Let's look at your nuance, but also uh, yeah, what do you, what do you need? But gut, toxins, stress...

>> and...

>> Yep.

>> So last piece of the puzzle is hyperthyroid and I know it's not as common, but uh, what, yeah, yeah. So well, if somebody has Graves, then they could have uh antibodies that bind the uh receptor and it's stimulating the thyroid to produce hormones. So the thyroid is being told to produce hormones and so it's doing what it's told and so we got to shut off that signal too. But you can also, a lot of, if somebody's been hyper, it could be a sign of Hashi. In Hashimoto's, the thyroid will go up and down and up and down and so when the thyroid gets damaged, it spills out thyroid hormone. It dumps out thyroid hormone. So you're hyper because you're dumping out thyroid hormone and then that thyroid hormone gets metabolized and used up and then you're hypo because of the damage. So in Hashi, depending on when you take the snapshot, the TSH could be normal, the TSH could be high, the TSH could be low. And so in somebody going back to your last question, if I see somebody with Hashi that thyroid is perfectly normal, I'm like, this still matters and it might just be a snapshot in time of if it was just their TSH, it might just be a snapshot in time. But sometimes hyper can be Hashimoto's, 100% and this is well known in in the literature of like thyroid damage causes temporary, I think they call it transient thyrotoxicosis, which means you are dumping thyroid hormone, but it's transient, it's not going to last forever. Just because I just, you know, opened your tire and your tire's spilling out air, but then your tire is going to be flat by the when that air is all gone, you know? So that is sometimes with Graves, but otherwise it's just an autoimmune process. Now I'll tell you again, maybe one or two stories, but one that always stands out to me is this girl that came in and this was, this is like the, I can remember when it was because it was like co, cuz she was scheduled to get her thyroid removed. She was young. She was relatively healthy. She might have just had a baby like a year before. You know, there's like a pre, there's like a, it was Graves. It was Graves. And they were like, "We're going to take your thyroid out." And long story short, in this part of it, they had her thyroid removal scheduled, but it got postponed because of COVID. So, it like bought us a little time. It bought us like a month or two. And when she came in, I was like, "Hey, you're about to get your thyroid removed. You better work like heck on this." And I was like, "You need to do an AIP diet right away." So, she went AIP right away. And she, she acted on all this. And long story short, she never got her thyroid removed. She's still doing great. You know, I still talk to her and still know her and she's still doing great. But we bought a little time, but she did an AIP diet right away. We tested her, got, I forget what else we tested, you know, blood lab wise or whatever, but we started working on some of these things and the takeaway is that she still has her thyroid, right? But there's other people. A very important note. That's that's...

>> Yeah, that's exactly. But I don't, a lot of these people it's like, I don't remember what we did, but we, because we did a bunch of stuff.

>> Yeah. It's in the file. It was in the file and it worked and it's like she's happy and then she's probably referred her friends, you know, that's how my practice grows and works is like, you know, people have success in their journey and then they tell their friends and they tell their family or whatever. But she, that's that's long story short. Another person. Well, I can't remember the details of this story, but another one I, and the only reason that I could, I'm even thinking of this one right is because we, I see this girl's daughter now. I don't really see the mom hardly ever, but I saw the daughter. And I'll tell you, this person had hyper and maybe it was hypo too. But this person, the mom, she had like, I think she had three or four parasites. Like she's one of the most we've ever, most, maybe the most that I've ever seen as far as like, like not one parasite, but it's like, oh, you got three. That's odd. You know, and so there we're looking for what do people have and what do we have to do? And then we can see their symptoms improve. Like if their, you know, temperature regulation and their metabolism and their sleep and anxiety improve right away, it's a good sign that we're making progress. And then there, so that might be month one. It's like, let's work on your symptoms and let's work on the low-hanging fruit. And then month two might be like, okay, now we're working on your gut. And the whole time we're doing maybe AIP diet, but then we're working on like what we found in your gut labs. Like, okay, we need to pull weeds in your gut. We need to plant seeds in your gut. You know, if you've got four parasites, we better be pulling weeds in your gut. But most people don't have that. So, it might be like, pull weeds, plant seeds. You know, microbiome work is what I mean when I say that. But, um, yeah. And again, I don't even remember this. This is it's funny because this woman was like suffering real bad when we met her and now she's like pretty good. Good enough to the point where like we mostly talk about her daughter now, but I don't remember what we did or what her timeline was. But I've seen, you know, other people like that. But Graves, you know, comes across my office like occasionally or true hyper. Hypo is like, you know, six people a week probably or or, you know, thyroid stuff is a lot. But um, yeah, I don't have anything else.

Now the other thing I would say that we sometimes use is like there is an antioxidant lotion that Apex makes. It's called Super Oxycel and again, Karazzian formulates it. Um, but I'll have people rub that directly on their thyroid because it's like, yeah, we want antioxidants in your whole body. So, we might be taking glutathione or vitamin C or whatever, but it's like we want it right on that. And it's direct absorption. It's direct.

>> And is that for hypo, hyper?

>> Okay.

>> Either, just thyroid damage. If something's damaging the thyroid, we want to calm down that damage.

>> Do you sell that online or is that only...

>> Well, great question, Ryan. But Apex, who knows why, but I don't, I mean, I understand why, but we can't sell Apex products online very clearly. It's behind a password-protected firewall and things like that because you got to be working with me for us to at least for us to post about Apex supplements or for us to sell them. Now, if we private label them, we could post about them and sell them. So we private label some Apex supplements, but that Super Oxycel, I use it like in, you know, four people a year maybe. Um, whereas some of their other products I use it in four people a week. So we private label those. But that Super Oxycel is something you can look up and, you know, you can buy it on Amazon. It's going to be like four times more expensive. But you can get it through my store. You can get it through my online store. It just might not be front and center when you go to the homepage because there's some more rules. We'll put the link in the description to...

>> Exactly.

>> Exactly. It's not impossible to find. You just might have to jump through some hoops, but we can we can help you if you want it.

>> We can help you do that.

>> Yeah. And another one. So, that's another, that's one a little more obscure. And then and I don't know, you didn't ask this, Ryan, but it's like, what are some of the tools that I use? It's like that there's other thyroid, you know, supports, thyroid glandulars. There's about three or four that we use depending on the pattern type. If it's a conversion pattern, I'm using a supplement to support thyroid conversion. If it's a pituitary pattern, I'm using a different product that supports the pituitary. If it's just the straight up hypothyroidism, I'm using a different product to support the thyroid in general with the glandular. Or if it's thyroid inflammation. So there's four things right there that I commonly rotate in or out depending on the type of pattern. And then the e, the etc are like vitamin D, B vitamins, omega-3s, the gut stuff, all the things we've already mentioned. And then the last one that I sometimes use, and this isn't one that I necessarily sell or encourage people because I don't have an easy way to be like, this is what you should do, but I've been using myself a red light on my thyroid and I want to see what it does. You know, it's in, I'm into the idea. I'm into the concept. I'm into the mechanism and the science. And I've heard people out there that they're like, "Oh, I used a red light and my antibodies went away." I'm like, "Really?" You know, sometimes I hear things and because I've seen hundreds of people do hundreds of things, I'm like, I don't know if that's true. I, I believe that it worked for you, but if you did that in a hundred people and it worked a hundred times, I'm sold, but I just don't believe that it would work a hundred times repeatedly. But I'm, I'm, it's an easy thing to do. So, I've got a red light device that's like the size of my thyroid and and I do that and I'm trying to see what happens with my numbers. Again, my numbers improved from January to February and it wasn't that drastic, but they're trending in the right direction. So, now I'm kind of like, let's see from February to March if they keep trending in the right direction or what do we have to do? Cuz everybody and everything, Ryan, and again, this is me too. I like to go hard on things, but we also try to solve things with the minimum effective dosage. So, if I can, you know, solve my thyroid without giving up gluten, heck yeah, I'm going to. But I, I, I've given up gluten, so I'm not trying that. But if I could solve my thyroid without taking 25 million supplements every day, heck yeah, I want to. But it might mean I'm still taking a couple. But the minimum effective treatment is what we want. Now, sometimes that might be five things for the gut and three things for the thyroid. And that's the minimum effective treatment. You got to be doing all of them. But as that healing goes up, the supplements should come down. So that's when it goes back to the short-term, middle-term, and long-term goals. If we're doing everything in all three of those, people are going to be on 12 supplements a day and they're going to hate me and they're going to burn out financially. And they're going to get supplement fatigue. So, it might be like, hey, let's do this first and then when you've got a fire, this is your extinguisher and then let's do these things for the next 60 days and see what your numbers do and then let's come back to your guy. You know, we're that's the art of what we do is like not trying to shoot at all the targets at once and hoping for the machine gun approach or is it like you're bound to hit something, but more like sniping in on something and be like, for the next 30 days, this is our goal and let's retest at the end of 30 days and see if we're trending in the right direction and then move on to a different goal or keep working on that one too. But that's how we piece things together in the short term, middle term, and especially the long term.

And for those that don't know, just to end this conversation here, could you just give like a high picture oversight of like your own thyroid journey?

>> Yeah. So, first I found hypothyroidism in my dad. And my dad was like me, which is scary because my dad's dead, but he, he was like, no symptoms, no signs, healthy, like active, like could run a 5K, you know, 65 years old. Now, he died of cancer. So obviously nobody wants that. But from a health standpoint and from a lab standpoint, he was like pretty picture perfect, which is also, you know, sad. But he had Hashi. And then I was like, "Oh, you have Hashimoto's." And he's like, "What? Oh, okay." Uh, and then but then I found out myself once I started doing lab work, you know, 10 years ago or whatever, I started getting in the functional world. I did it myself and I had Hashi, but my thyroid would look perfect. So, I always call it an incidental finding, but it led me down the rabbit hole of like, I want to learn everything there is to know about thyroid and about autoimmunity. That's what started my progression that led me to here. You know, I got an autoimmune based podcast and see these autoimmune people. But that's kind of what started it was like I was already into wellness. I was already teaching nutrition and detox and doing chiropractic and stuff like that. And then I found this autoimmunity and I was like, "Oh, okay. I need to learn everything there is to know about autoimmunity." And I, I did, or I tried to. I still do. Still really into it. But my journey's been really uneventful until the last couple months. So in the last couple months, now I got an actual problem to solve. So now I'm actually working on it. And so my thyroid journey isn't as eventful as you know, a lot of people were. They're like, "Oh, I was suffering. I was struggling. I had all these symptoms." Even when I found my hypothyroidism or when I had hypothyroidism in the last three months, like I said already, I, I felt pretty stinking good skiing, coaching hockey, coaching basketball, coaching baseball, pretty active. I wouldn't call myself lethargic. I'm like, you know, I get tired. I got three little kids and I'm in my 40s and you'll understand it someday, Ryan. But like, but then once I found it, I was like, man, am I tired? Like, man, I could take a, you know, I could take a nap right now. Is that my thyroid? Like, maybe I am more tired than I thought, you know? And I do think in January, I probably was more tired than February and March. And right now, I'm like, voom voom, like get out of my way. I got a ton of energy. But, um, it was a little more incidental that led me down this path and I'm grateful for that, you know, but, uh, but I haven't suffered a terrible amount with those things. My own personal suffering has come more from mold and the things I went through when I was living in mold and, you know, anxiety and nasal polyps and had to go to the ER and all these steroids and different things that was more my health journey. It wasn't like a thyroid crisis. It was like a mold toxicity crisis. But I, and I already knew I had Hashi before that. So it wasn't like the mold created my Hashi. But I think that it pro, you know, I don't know. It's like mold probably contributed to it. But um, but yeah, so that's my thyroid journey and kind of where I'm at with it now, too. And the other thing, too, that you know, for people that follow us, follow me, follow us on Instagram, things like that. I haven't talked about it that much yet. And I've told you, Ryan, like I'm planning, I want to talk about it, but I want to see the success first and then be like, here's how I got my numbers down or I got them up and whatever. And again, they're trending in the right direction. January. The other thing with labs too that we don't talk about that often is like 90% of my labs were perfect. And that's the case with almost everybody I see. So you sometimes you forget to celebrate the wins. It's like, hey, 90% of these labs are perfect. We are talking about the 10% that aren't. We're talking about where there are levers that we could pull. But my cholesterol, my vitamin D, a lot of my labs were like literally perfect. But I had elevated liver enzymes and I had thyroid markers. So I stopped drinking. My liver enzymes are now normal. They're perfectly fine when I retested. And my thyroid levels, I started doing red light, started doing supplements, went completely gluten-free. You know, honestly, my liver and my thyroid is like if I had one culprit, I'd be like beer, you know, cuz gluten, alcohol kind of combined, you know, and and I was drinking beer, which for years I did not drink any beer because I was gluten-free. And I've just loosened the reins in the last couple years, but now I'm back on no gluten and I haven't had any. Um, maybe a little bit here and there, uh, but very, very, very, very little over the last 3 months. But anyway, that's kind of where I'm at in my journey. And so I will share more. I will share cuz I'm not like hiding it. I don't mind being transparent with it. But I just would rather share the success after I've seen the success rather than share the journey while I'm going through it because I'm not really struggling. I'm just working on things. It's kind of like my golf game. It's not struggling that bad, but it could be better and I'm working on it.

>> As always. Well, well, great. And uh, if you guys want us to do like a full episode on Dr. Taylor's full health journey from all the stuff he dealt with from mold and the thyroid and like his exact process of the labs he did and the supplements he took and all that fun stuff diet-wise what he did. Let us know cuz that could be a whole separate hour and a half conversation of us just deep diving Dr. Taylor's story because there's a lot of fun stuff there to uncover.

>> Well, and I love talking about it too, Ryan, be because, you know, it's, it's like literally my own life. But one of the things that I'm careful of in my podcast and in my Instagram and things like that is like, I'm not trying to act like I am somebody that I'm not, you know, and I'm not trying to act like I'm this, you know, biohacker that wakes up every morning and jumps in the cold plunge and then meditates for 30 minutes and then, you know, works out all day long and, you know, makes all of his own, grows all of his own food and all those things. We do all those things. We're, you know, been in the health space for a long time. So, a lot of these things we just kind of do. We kind of avoid toxins and eat clean and things like that. But even, you know, with three little kids, like tonight I'm going to the Blackhawks game with my son and we ain't eating gluten-free paleo. I, I'll eat gluten-free, but he'll get some candy or something. I don't, you know, it's like a treat, you know, it's for his birthday, but it's just we live life also. But, uh, so I don't want to say that it, what I do is perfect. And I don't also don't want to say it's not do as I say, not what I do. So I do do these things, but I think that you got to be able to live life. And I think a lot of people out there are like, you can never touch gluten again. You got thyroid issues, you can never touch gluten again. It's like, well, best of luck at a birthday party or things like that. Now, I, you, you can avoid things, too. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying like you can't, but we get, what I want is get people to the point where they can live life like normal. But if you start eating too much gluten, you start drinking too much alcohol, you start doing too much bad things, you're going to have problems again, but it doesn't, it's not an all or nothing thing. There's so again with the nuance, like that might be a good closing point. There's a lot of shades of gray between black and white. And I think it's very easy to come onto the internet and be like, you got to do this, you got to do this, you got to do this. And then people do it and they're like, I'm not any better. I'm like, well, cuz you don't got to do that. You got to do, you got to look at the whole system as a system and all the little pieces to it. But anyway, I'm happy to talk about my stuff as long as I throw that out there that it's like, I'm not perfect and I'm not claiming to be and I'm not really asking for your, you know, critiques either. This is just what I've learned and what I do. Um, but yeah, I love talking about it.

>> No doubt. Well, thank you guys for listening to this. Um, we are going to be consistently putting out all these type of videos. So, if there's any things you guys want covered, we're reading the comments. We're listening to you guys. Um, and we will definitely get to it. So, please let us know if there's anything you want us to touch on more.

>> Yeah. And I'll say one other thing, too. I've got two upcoming podcast interviews with big names in the thyroid and autoimmune space that are just talking about, I don't know, just a, the different things that are their expertise or experts on and especially from a dietary perspective. So, just keep your eyes out for those interviews. Uh, still doing the interviews too, but, um, yeah, stay tuned for for upcoming episodes.

>> Stay tuned. Thank you guys for listening. Catch you next time.