Understanding the Rise in Thyroid Epidemic
Episode 170
Thyroids play a vital role in the metabolism, growth, and development of the human body. It helps to regulate many body functions by constantly releasing a steady amount of thyroid hormones into the bloodstream but this balanced release of hormones can be disrupted by several inside and outside factors leading to different thyroid conditions and this is what we will be learning on The Integrative Wellness Radio along with Dr. Nicole as she will dive into why there is a rise of the epidemic of thyroid conditions. Interested in learning more about Dr. Nick & Dr. Nicole’s courses, memberships, or private work? Learn more at Integrative You . Have a quick question, Would you like to schedule a call, or just want to say hi? Text us at 732.913.0009. Our mission to innovate humans & Healthcare does NOT start and stop with us! This is why we are also dedicated to helping other practitioners in evolving healthcare too! If you are a healthcare leader and are looking to up-level your clinical + business excellence Learn more about our course membership: Limitless Healthprenuer and start boldly disrupting this industry! Noteworthy Time Stamps: 03:14 What your body needs will always be different 06:51 Your prescription might just be a temporary fix 12:30 Debunking the myths about hormones 15:21 Your PMS is influenced by your immune system 20:31 What we do day-to-day can disrupt our hormones 27:18 Thyroids in a bad neighborhood 30:25 Toxicity plays a big role 41:41 Switching thyroid medication will not work
Topics: thyroid, hormones, conditions, epidemic, immune, unknown, dealing, understanding
Key takeaways from this episode
- ## Understanding the Rise in Thyroid Epidemic
- Individual physiological needs are constantly changing and require personalized approaches.
- Prescription thyroid medication may not always address the root cause of the issue.
- Hormonal health is intricately linked to immune system function and overall well-being.
- Daily lifestyle choices and environmental toxins significantly impact thyroid function.
Pull quotes
Imagine if medicine actually looked at you as a whole opposed to looking at you as a bunch of separate systems.
Nick and Dr. **Unknown:** Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine to learn about what the limitations are with testing and what you can do to start your health journey.
Welcome. **Unknown:** So today in particular, as we kick off and, and talk more about hormones this month, uh, we're really going to start by talking about thyroid conditions.
Transcript
**Unknown:** I been up all night, no sleep. Imagine if medicine actually looked at you as a whole opposed to looking at you as a bunch of separate systems. Dive into Integrative Wellness Radio with Dr. Nick and Dr.
**Unknown:** Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine to learn about what the limitations are with testing and what you can do to start your health journey. Sometimes I tend to lose myself when I'm out here on my own. Hello, everyone. Welcome.
**Unknown:** So today in particular, as we kick off and, and talk more about hormones this month, uh, we're really going to start by talking about thyroid conditions. I feel that this is something that's really important to create some clarity around, primarily because there are so many people that are dealing with some level of a thyroid condition. Some of us are dealing with a hypo or hyperthyroid, um, either just low functioning or high functioning, and then some of us are dealing with autoimmune thyroid conditions as well. So I think it's really important for us to really establish what is the big culprit behind why so many people are dealing with different types of hormonal issues to ...
**Unknown:** as a whole, but also why is there such an epidemic of thyroid conditions as well. So as we dive in tonight, we're going to really uncover a lot of those different topics and really understanding some of the limitations with the testing that exists and also some of the limitations with our conventional methods of working with thyroid conditions as well. Tonight we're going to be talking about hormones. We're gonna talk about thyroid.
**Unknown:** We're really gonna establish that you don't know what you don't know when it comes to your hormonal imbalance, uh, because there is a lot of issues the way that we look at hormones. We think that they are just dysfunctioning on their own and that the hormones are not being affected by infections, toxins, stressors, and even just emotional stress. So we're gonna connect the dots a little bit more to understand the bigger picture, and we're also gonna really talk more about what are some of the limitations with the testing that's available for hormones because our run-of-the-mill blood work is not always necessarily giving us all the information that we need. And when you get your thyroid levels back and they're either high or low, that also doesn't really give you much insight as to why that's happening.
**Unknown:** So it's really understanding what can you do that could give you more information about really getting to the root and resolving your thyroid condition once and for all. So first and foremost, I always bring this up, is that you don't know what you don't know, and it is not your fault that you don't know, and it's very, very difficult to navigate the sea of information that we are dealing with. We are dealing with an abundance of information that is telling us that, you know, we should avoid goitrogen foods because that's gonna affect our thyroid, and then we should also make sure that we're on an anti-inflammatory diet, and then we should make sure we take adrenal supplements 'cause our adrenals might be burnt out, and that might be causing our thyroid to dysfunction. And then we need to, you know, drink celery juice and we need to do all these different things.
**Unknown:** And what it comes down to is that what your body needs is gonna be very different than somebody else who maybe has a similar thyroid condition. Every single person's needs is very, very different, and it is important for you to seek out testing so that you can understand what is going on with your body and what is the root cause for why you feel the way you do. So it's extremely, extremely important for us to kind of take this away and also not be paralyzed by the amount of information that's out there because I get it. I get how it can be so confusing that you just throw your hands up, and you're just like, "I can't ...
**Unknown:** I can't even navigate all this, so I'm just not gonna do anything at all." So a very, very important piece to kind of understand before we really get into the thyroid and hormone piece is that when it comes to understanding integrative and functional medicine and the way that we think differently about the body is that we're thinking of the body as an integration of systems. And I personally feel that one of the biggest detriments to the way medicine is being done is we are assuming that everything is working independently. We are assuming that the gut has no relation to the thyroid, that the thyroid has no relation to the brain, and that the brain has no relation to the reproductive organs. And this also causes us to seek out a specialist and/or the expert in our hormonal condition.
**Unknown:** And one of the stories that I'm gonna tell you guys in the next few minutes is gonna blow your mind. So I'm going to help you guys connect the dots that this is a person that came to me with a thyroid condition, but the root cause of her thyroid condition was completely, completely off of her radar. And really this brings me to the second point of understanding that when it comes to basic physiology, when you look at the connection, one of the biggest connections to our hormones is actually how well our liver functions, and that's because your liver is actually in charge of getting rid of excess hormones like estrogen. So you might be thinking, "What's going on with my thyroid?
**Unknown:** I can't seem to lose weight." But sometimes you can't lose weight because you have so much excess estrogen in your body that is actually not being filtered out by your liver. So there is a massive connection when it comes to your liver as well as your hormones. So one of the most common things that people ask me is, "Why doesn't everybody do what you do? Why doesn't everybody look at the body the way that Integrative Wellness Group does?" And my response to them is that the foundation of medicine is based on chemistry.
**Unknown:** So when we look at the body from a chemistry standpoint, AKA blood work, we are really looking for-Things that are off in the chemistry, AKA your hormone is too high or it's too low, and then we're going to use a solution to try to manipulate that chemistry. And the way that we primarily do that is going to be pharmacology, medicine. So when we look beyond just what's going on in our blood work and we look beyond what is showing up in our chemistry, we start to have other tools that are outside of just relying on medicine. And that's how you're really able to decipher what is the root cause, but you're able to then get results that actually last.
**Unknown:** So the other piece of this too is when, especially when we're dealing with a thyroid condition, we're always thinking that if we just take the medication that we're prescribed, that that is going to solve our issues. And yes, that medication or that thyroid pill might actually manipulate your chemistry and make it look like your thyroid is improved. But so many of the people that I work with still tell me that they feel like crap, and they're still tired, and they're still freezing, and their hair is still falling out, and they still can't lose weight. So despite your blood work looking better, that doesn't always mean that your thyroid is actually functioning better and you are healing.
**Unknown:** So it's really n- not always about those chemistry levels. It also is about how do you feel? Do you actually feel better? Do you actually feel like you're improving?
**Unknown:** So one of the really fascinating things, one of the, the patients that I worked with in the past is she had a very, very rare situation. She actually came to me and had Hashimoto's, which is autoimmune low functioning thyroid, and she also had Graves' disease, which is autoimmune hyperthyroid, high functioning thyroid. That's pretty rare to see that. So this woman's thyroid was in such disarray that she was manifesting both autoimmune conditions, and her thyroid was on a seesaw.
**Unknown:** She would have days that she was having racy heart, heart palpitations. That was when the thyroid was really high, and then she would bottom out and crash and not even be able to get out of bed. So this actually manifested after she had some dental work. So if you really just think about anatomy and you think about the mouth and you think about the location of the thyroid being in the throat, very close in proximity.
**Unknown:** The major thing between the two organs is tonsils, which unfortunately a lot of us don't have because your tonsils are actually a filter. They're a protective mechanism to keep things out of the lungs and also to keep things out of the throat and keep things out of the thyroid. So this was a woman who had, uh, twelve amalgam fillings. Those are the silver fillings in the mouth.
**Unknown:** She had these for many, many, many, many years. So she started to read up on maybe this was bad, and that she really wanted to get her fillings out, and she wanted to get them swapped to the white because she wanted to, uh, potentially resolve any capabilities of getting dementia or Alzheimer's because her mom passed away from Alzheimer's, and it wa- it was a very devastating thing for her to deal with. So she was like, "Okay, how can I prevent Alzheimer's?" And one of the ways was to make sure that you get your silver fillings out of your mouth. So she went, and she didn't know that you actually need to seek out a very, very special dentist to do this.
**Unknown:** So she sought out, um, a traditional dentist, a dentist that she was going to for many years. And what the dentist did was he went in and he started to crack and pop out all of her silver amalgam fillings, and he did them all in one shot. So all twelve were removed over the course of a couple of hours, and then they were all replaced with the white. So she slowly started to have some symptoms.
**Unknown:** She started to have some pretty significant brain fog. She was having a lot of headaches, and that is when she also started to have a lot of issues with heart palpitations, racy heart, fatigue, temperature regulation. And she read up on that and realized, "Oh, I might be having a thyroid issue." And that's when she was diagnosed with the Hashimoto's and Graves combination. So the thing that you have to understand about this is that this was a person who had dental work that went in, cracked these silver amalgam fillings that released mercury vapor that absorbed into the lymph nodes, which then started to also absorb into the thyroid.
**Unknown:** And that was the primary stress on why she had all of this dysfunction in her thyroid. So when it comes to toxicity, there is a lot of other components to this. But having dental work, especially dental work that is not properly done, can be a huge, huge reason for why you developed a thyroid condition in the first place, especially an autoimmune thyroid condition. When you actually get your silver amalgam fillings removed, you as well as the dentist are supposed to be wearing pretty much a hazmat suit to protect you from the mercury vapor.
**Unknown:** So if you were wearing anything less than that, then chances are you released mercury vapor into your body, which maybe is causing a thyroid issue, maybe it's causing a neurological issue. There are many, many ca- possibilities when you're talking about toxicity because some people it will affect thyroid, some people it will actually affect their brain and neurological system. So when it comes to wha- some of the ways that we look at hormones and some of the ways that we really understand the bigger picture behind thyroid conditions is we're looking to at all different factors. We're looking to see is toxicity a part of the puzzle?
**Unknown:** Is dental work part of the puzzle?Is this person having a lot of chemical exposure due to personal products? Is there a lot of blood sugar instability? Is there circulation issues? Is there just a ton of stress and emotional trauma the person's been through?
**Unknown:** Are there gut issues or are there other types of infections that are affecting either the sinuses or even the reproductive organs? All of these things are extremely, extremely important because they can all traumatically affect your thyroid. So some of the biggest myths about your hormones is, number one, that your PMS is normal. Number two is that food has nothing to do with your hormones.
**Unknown:** Also, that your hormones do not play a role in your mood physiologically. I think every woman can attest to having, you know, a menstrual cycle that made their mood shift, but I'm talking about your sex hormones that actually manipulate your neurotransmitters, like your serotonin and your dopamine, which are your feel-good hormones. And then that your hormones are completely not affected by any type of infections or, or autoimmune conditions, and that your hormones are also not affected by toxicity. All of these things are not true, and now we're gonna uncover why.
**Unknown:** So number one, PMS is normal, and we just have to deal with it. So why do some women have PMS, and why do s- other women not have PMS? So it comes down to there's clearly a difference for why some women deal with it and some women don't. So number one is that PMS is heavily influenced by hormones that can be in the body, and this could be due to hormones that we're exposed to through our food, through personal products, as well as through our liver function.
**Unknown:** So for those of you that have been listening for a while, one of the things that I mentioned is that your liver is in charge of getting rid of excess estrogen. So if you have had a lot of liver issues, maybe you had your gallbladder removed, which is connected to your liver, then you might actually have trouble getting rid of excess estrogen because your liver is not working at its best. Also, more relatable is if you have high cholesterol, chances are your, uh, liver is stressed 'cause your cholesterol is made by your liver as well. So secondary to that, it...
**Unknown:** you might be thinking, "Well, why do I have excess estrogen in my system?" So we can have excess estrogen in our system because there are different things that come from food. One of them is soy. You might be thinking, "Well, I don't drink soy milk, and I don't eat soy." Well, if you eat conventional meat, AKA you don't necessarily always eat organic or grass-fed, then you are being exposed to soy every time you eat animal products, and that's because most animals are being fed a soy diet. So despite you consuming soy, tofu, all that, you're being exposed to soy if you consume animal products that are not organic and not grass-fed.
**Unknown:** So then in addition to that, we also deal with a lot of different things that are hormone disruptors from a personal product perspective. So the other most fascinating thing about PMS is that your PMS can actually be heavily influenced by your immune system. So let me explain this. So what happens is that when you are leading up to getting your menstrual cycle, your body has to kind of derail.
**Unknown:** So if your energy of your body and the energy of your cells is consumed because maybe you're dealing with a low-grade infection, or maybe you get a lot of sore throats, maybe you have a lot of sinus infections, maybe you get a lot of UTIs, maybe you have a lot of gut problems, then your immune system can be really busy trying to handle all of that. So then you start getting close to your period, and then your... all of your, your body has to shift into preparation for your menstrual cycle, which takes a lot of energy. So all that energy that was being given to your immune system now starts to hone in on preparing your body for your menstrual cycle.
**Unknown:** So now different infections can start to come to the surface because the immune system can't deal with it because it's getting you ready for your menstrual cycle. So this is why some women get headaches, some women get loose bowel movements, some women get constipation, some women just get moody, and this has a lot to do with things that are going on in your system that you're unaware of that are more so stressing your immune system. So when it comes to PMS, PMS is not normal, and it is not something that we have to deal with. It's really happening because there is either an overabundance of hormones that are not being filtered out properly, or it comes down to there is something stressing your immune system that hasn't come to the surface yet because you haven't done the right testing.
**Unknown:** So another big piece of this, which I've already scratched the surface on, is food and hormones. So for those of you that are, you know, maybe in your 50s, a little bit older, one of the most common conversations that I have is people not getting the organic thing. They're just like, "I don't get it. Why should I spend the money on it?
**Unknown:** You know, I never used to eat organic growing up. We were all fine." And one of the things that I always explain to people is that when we look at the younger generations of females, w- I think it's safe to say that a lot of us are noticing that females in their early, early teens look like they're in their 20s. They're very developed. They're tall.
**Unknown:** They have breasts.And people are noticing this and they're like, "You know, what's the deal with these girls being so developed at such a young age?" Well, the reason is, is all of the hormones in the food. There is a ton of hormones that is going into the livestock. So not only are we having these hormone disruptors from the soy that is either hidden in our cereals, granola bars, et cetera, but they're also feeding soy, because it's cheap, to the animals. So every time your kid consumes cheese, milk, beef that is not organic, that is not grass-fed, none of that, they're getting exposed to soy and they're also getting exposed to growth hormone.
**Unknown:** So it's very, very important for us to not necessarily just kind of brush that under the rug because food is a huge reason for why our hormones are really off. So you might be thinking, "Okay, well, let me just, like, be really, really cautious, avoid all of those foods, and my hormones will completely correct on their own." Unfortunately, it's not always how it works because if you've already accumulated some of these toxins and you've already accumulated this abundance of hormones, you might need to go in and help your liver to function more optimally to flush this stuff out and also to open up that filtration pathway again. So it's really, really significant to know that it's not always just about altering your diet. It also has a lot to do with fixing the damage that may have already been done, and having the right tools to do that so you're not always trying to figure it out on your own.
**Unknown:** So in addition to that, when it comes to the soy and it comes to the growth hormone, there's a lot of other things that mess up our hormones that's in our food, and that's everything from pesticides, things that are called dioxins. Dioxins are in a lot of fish. Um, dioxins are also found in tampons, which are massive hormone disruptors. So females, think about that.
**Unknown:** We're putting a hormone disruptor into the vaginal tract, which is one of the most absorbent areas of the body, and that is getting absorbed directly into our bloodstream. Like, this is a huge, huge problem, and it is something that nobody's really talking about. So outside of that, there's also different things when it comes to BPAs, phthalates. These are not just in food.
**Unknown:** These are in plastic water bottles. These are also in a lot of our personal products, which is one of the things that we're gonna talk about as well. So it's really, really important for us to really understand that things that we're doing on a day-to-day basis can be a huge contributing factor to why our hormones are off in the first place. So another very interesting connection is that a lot of times when we feel hormonally off or we have bad PMS or we have really rough menstrual cycles, we also find ourselves feeling anxious or we feel depressed.
**Unknown:** And what's interesting about this is there is a massive, massive connection to our feel-good hormones as well as our sex hormones. So it's not that one affects the other. They actually affect each other inversely. So what I mean by that is you can have excess estrogen, and maybe that's because of all the soy in your diet or all the on- non-organic meats, but if you have excess estrogen, you can actually then have excess serotonin.
**Unknown:** Serotonin is what we call the feel-good hormone that, um, everybody gets put on, uh, SSRIs, which are serotonin reuptake inhibitors, when we're depressed. So that's what an antidepressant is. But the tricky thing about this is that neurotransmitters have to be in perfect balance. This is not about them being too high.
**Unknown:** This is not about them being too low. So if you have excess serotonin, you might think, like, "I should feel amazing," but you don't. You actually feel anxious. So it's very important to acknowledge these things, 'cause the other thing too is if you think about this vice versa, if you've been on an antidepressant for many, many years and maybe you have excess serotonin because of that, you can easily have excess estrogen, and that could be the big culprit why you can't lose weight or why your periods are so painful.
**Unknown:** Another token, we also have dopamine. Dopamine is another feel-good hormone. Dopamine is the hormone that's actually very connected to addictive behavior. So if you have low dopamine, it's very typical that you are, have an addictive, you call it an addictive behavior, but all you're doing by consuming either alcohol or cigarettes or even a mocha latte or a chocolate bar, all you're doing with those things is boosting your dopamine temporarily to make you feel good in the moment.
**Unknown:** But because your dopamine's not fixed, that's why you go back for that food or that vice over and over again. So the interesting thing about this is dopamine, low dopamine specifically, will cause your luteinizing hormone to be low, which then will cause your progesterone to be low. So if your progesterone is low, you're gonna have irregular periods. You might not even get your period.
**Unknown:** That is a big, big culprit behind being irregular with your menstrual cycle. So this can definitely be connected, and it can also work vice versa. So having low progesterone can also be a culprit behind in having, or behind having low dopamine, which can definitely induce those addictive behaviors. It's not about, you know, this sh- I don't want this to be like, "Oh my gosh, this is so confusing.
**Unknown:** This is so overwhelming. Like, how do you possibly fix all of this?" It's that when you do the right testing, you figure out how the body needs to be supported. You figure out, like, what is the root cause, and does this come down to just cleaning some things out of the body, or does this come down to, yes, we need to support the hormones, or yes, we need to support the s- the neurotransmitters? It's really just a matter of doing the testing so that this doesn't seem overwhelming to you.
**Unknown:** Um, the other big thing too is when it comes to low dopamine in men, this is a big part of low testosterone. So-I'm not gonna say that every man that has low testosterone, um, has low dopamine levels, but it is definitely a very common connection. And then women that are dealing with higher testosterone, this is a big reason why women develop cysts on her, on her ovaries, um, especially if it's polycystic ovarian syndrome. This is when we have an abundance of cysts on our ovaries, but we're also dealing with a lot of, um, weight gain because we're having something called insulin resistance.
**Unknown:** So the biggest thing to take away from this is that your mood and your hormones are very connected, and it's not because you're a crazy person, and it's not because, you know... I- it's not for no reason. There is a physiological connection, and if you can correct your hormones, you can definitely improve your mood. Or if you can correct your neurotransmitters, you can correct your hormones as well.
**Unknown:** And sometimes that's what the person needs, but sometimes you really just need to fix the liver function or even any stress that's happening on the immune system, and that's gonna kind of dive into some of the, the other pieces that we're gonna talk about. So hormones are very, very, very affected by infections. So if we wanna get really specific on the thyroid, we just need to think about this logistically, and we need to think about anatomy here. So if we have...
**Unknown:** We have mouth, we have sinuses, we have tonsils. Again, a lot of us don't have these. And then we also have lymph nodes, and then we have our thyroid. So if you are a person who has had a lot of sinus infections, you have postnasal drip, you've had a lot of dental work, you've had, um, a lot of oral infections.
**Unknown:** Maybe you get cold sores, maybe you get canker sores, maybe you have a lot of sore throats. Maybe you had so many sore throats, that's the reason why your tonsils were removed, or you get swollen glands or swollen lymph nodes. All of these things are going to impact your thyroid. The most common thing that I see affecting the thyroid is strep, Epstein-Barr virus, the virus that causes mono, sometimes staph because you can get staph infections in your sinuses, and mold.
**Unknown:** Those are the absolute top reasons that people have thyroid dysfunction. I see it every day in my practice. Most of the women that have autoimmune thyroid conditions have had their tonsils removed, or they have had a variety of different procedures done orally, everything from fillings to bridges to root canals, et cetera. So there is a huge, huge connection, and if you think about this logistically.
**Unknown:** So autoimmune conditions are when the immune system is attacking tissue. And they say this just happens. We don't know why, but, you know, your immune system turned on your thyroid, and now it's attacking it, and you just have to manage it through Synthroid. So your immune system's job is to fight bad stuff, to fight infections, toxins, or anything that is foreign to your body.
**Unknown:** So if your thyroid is being affected by infections that have maybe come from your sinuses, maybe have come from ear infections, maybe have come from throat infections, then it makes sense that your thyroid can easily be in the line of fire. One of my patient's husbands that was here, and I was explaining this to him, um, because she had a very severe case of Hashimoto's. He's like, "So you're saying that her, her thyroid's in a bad neighborhood?" I was like, "That is exactly what I'm saying." So I feel like that was just such a, a good way to put it because it's not always that the... it's just the thyroid.
**Unknown:** It could easily be that either there is an infection in your tonsils or an infection in the lymph nodes, and your immune system is coming to the scene to clean everything up and do its job. But unfortunately, it's creating a massive inflammatory process, which is starting to affect your thyroid. So the same thing really goes for reproductive infections. So for those of you that are familiar, your thyroid talks to your pituitary gland, which is the control center.
**Unknown:** Your thyroid, pituitary gland also talk to your adrenals. They also talk to your reproductive organs, so that's what we call the H, uh, PA axis. So all of those systems have to communicate with each other in synchrony in order for you to have balanced hormones. So going in and trying to just manipulate one of those, AKA thyroid medication, just trying to fo- fix the thyroid, chances are you can't because you haven't maybe considered, is this coming from the pituitary gland?
**Unknown:** Is there an adrenal involvement, or is there something going on in the reproductive organs? And one of the most common things in the reproductive organs is infections. A lot of women are dealing with yeast infections. They're dealing with bacterial vaginosis.
**Unknown:** They're dealing with discharge. They're dealing even with UTIs, urinary tract infections. So the urinary tract and the vaginal tract are in extreme close proximity, and most of the time, the same things that are in your urinary tract are also affecting your vaginal tract. So if you have constant, like, yeast infections or bacterial issues, that can definitely throw off the hormones being produced by your ovaries, which can then start to affect the axis.
**Unknown:** It can affect your adrenals. It can affect your thyroid. So we cannot just look at the thyroid as being this, this organ that functions independently because it is known physiologically to work with the brain, work with the adrenals, and also to work with the reproductive organs. And it's a matter of making sure that they are all synced up and that they are all working in conjunction with each other.
**Unknown:** So sometimes when I work with women-Sometimes just being able to work on their chronic yeast infections is actually what resolves their thyroid issue, because now the communication is working again and everything is in balance. So the other big thing outside of infections is toxicity. And one of the most common things that I find to be a massive, massive, massive hormone disruptor is mold. And mold is something that is getting a little bit more press these days, um, primarily because a lot of physicians, especially integrative physicians, are looking at mold when they run into roadblocks with helping their patients to get better because mold is something that's not always the easiest to, to test for, but mold is one of these things that, yes, it can come from mold in your house, yes, it can come from a water-damaged building, but it can also come from frequent use of antibiotics.
**Unknown:** It can come from food. So some of the most common high mold foods are peanuts, peanut butter, cheese, especially the stinky ones like blue cheese, gorgonzola cheese, coffee, wine, and wheat or gluten. So these are some of the foods that are highest in mold, so most of those foods we all love. So it's very important to know that when it comes to the mold conversation, yes, this can be from, you know, knowing that you lived or worked in mold, but this can also be from too many antibiotics for whatever, for whatever reason, but this can also be from consumption of foods that are high in mold.
**Unknown:** And wine is a huge one, and peanut butter, cheeses, like I said, coffee. Most of us drink coffee every single day. So with that being said, when it comes to mold, one of the things that it does the most is it lowers your progesterone levels. So lower progesterone levels will definitely lead to lower dopamine levels, which makes you have more addictive behavior.
**Unknown:** It also really throws off your menstrual cycle. It makes you extremely irregular, or it can even cause you to not have periods at all. So outside of the mold, which is definitely the most common thing that I see affecting women's hormones, we also deal with an array of different things that we get exposed to from our personal products. So for those of you listening, definitely, definitely download an app called Think Dirty.
**Unknown:** It's a free app. You can download it onto your phone. Think Dirty will blow your mind because it will analyze the personal products that you use, and it'll reveal the toxicity of that personal product, but it will also reveal if you are being exposed to hormone disruptors, which a lot of these hormone disruptors are in these personal products in the form of fragrance or in the form of parabens. BPA, that's the big thing that we keep hearing about with plastic.
**Unknown:** All the plastics are BPA free now because they found that the BPA in plastics was a huge hormone disruptor. Phthalates, dioxin. For those of you that have been listening the whole time, dioxins are the primary thing that is in tampons. So again, we're taking a tampon that is toxic, putting it into the most absorbent part of our body, our vaginal tract.
**Unknown:** And if I told you more about tampons, you'd be completely horrified, but outside of the dioxin, um, one of the other things... I actually did a toxicology report on tampons, and one of the most interesting things about them is that they contain fiberglass. And the reason they contain fiber- fiberglass is because if they do, you bleed more and you use more tampons, which is a big marketing ploy to buy more tampons. So yes, this is how corrupt this industry is.
**Unknown:** There are many, many toxins in most of the things that we are using, and if you're getting these big name brands from your traditional Rite Aid, Walgreens, et cetera, you are being exposed to these chemicals that I'm talking about. So use the app Think Dirty. It will definitely be amazing for you to be able to get that clarity on the things that you're using and if they are hormone disruptors. So this is one of my favorite patient stories.
**Unknown:** So I had a woman, she came in to see me, and she was adamant about her thyroid. She's like, "Listen, I have a thyroid condition, and I need you to fix it because I need to lose weight, and that's the end of the story. This is my primary problem, and I need you to just give me support to fix my thyroid so I can lose weight." And I was like, "Okay." I was like, "Well, you know, we're gonna figure out the, all the pieces of the puzzle, and we're gonna make sure that, you know, it is your thyroid, and we're also gonna address if there's anything else going on." And she was like, "No, no, no. It is my thyroid.
**Unknown:** I know that it is, so just fix it." And I was like, "Okay, let's just do the testing, and we'll go from there." So, um, so we did the testing, and also as we did her consultation, we talked about a lot of different things, but some of the other things she revealed is she was having pretty bad mood swings and memory loss. So she actually owned her own business. She had a pretty successful business, and one of the things that she said was that she had to have her assistant follow her around and write everything down through the day because she could not remember things that she said or did almost 10 minutes after she said. And then in addition, she was also lashing out at a lot of her employees and then having to, like, apologize because she was almost like...
**Unknown:** She's like, "I al- almost don't know why, but I'm very, like, it's, I'm not in control, and I do it, and then I, you know, apologetic because I don't really know where it came from." So she also was, uh, dealing with adrenal fatigue. That was one of her diagnoses. She had really low cortisol levels, and then she also said that she had headaches. She didn't have migraines, but she had pretty low level headaches.
**Unknown:** She had them for a long time. They were pretty much her normal. She, um, she honestly didn't even really wanna talk about the headaches. She's like, "Listen, they're no big deal.
**Unknown:** You know, I have a, a pretty consistent headache, but it's low grade, and I, I power through." I was like, "Okay." So we did her testing, um, and we pieced it together with her history. So as we started to piece it together, um, one of the things that came up was she had her tonsils removed at two years old because of chronic sore throats. Um, she had a lot of antibiotic use because of the sore throats and also ear infections as a child. The other thing that she said is that growing up, she was always really small for her age.
**Unknown:** So for those of you listening, you might be like, "I don't know how that's relevant." But being really small for your age growing up means that there's something that is, uh, prohibiting your growth, and one of the most common things for that is a small pituitary gland. So the pituitary gland is in the brain. It is the control center of your hormones.So when you have hypoplasia or a shrinking of the pituitary gland, that is a huge part of very, very slow development and slow growth as a child. So I started to kind of think, "Okay, I wonder if something's been going on with her pituitary gland since she was a kid." So another thing that she said was that she had cold hands and feet.
**Unknown:** She was eventually diagnosed with Raynaud's. Raynaud's is, like, very extreme cold hands and feet and really poor circulation and even poor nerve firing into the hands. So outside of that, uh, she also ha- started to have the severe memory loss. So she mentioned that in the history saying, you know, "My memory is really bad, and that's why I have my assistant follow me around." And I said, "Okay." So really piecing all of this together is I started to think, "Okay, she had her tonsils removed, so clearly there's potentially some infections that are affecting her lymphatic system that are causing her thyroid to maybe be stressed." The other thing is that maybe she has some mold exposure because of all the antibiotics that she used 'cause by the way, when it comes to antibiotics, penicillin, amoxicillin, ampicillin, anything in the cillin family is made from a mold called penicillium.
**Unknown:** So most antibiotics are made from mold, for those of you that did not know that. Also, if you're allergic to penicillin, amoxicillin, ampicillin, you have toxic mold in your body. That's the reality of it. So again, so I'm thinking, "Okay, is there something going on in the lymphatic system?
**Unknown:** Is there something that is around the thyroid stressing it out? Does she have mold in her system because of all the antibiotics? Does she have a pituitary problem because of her development?" And also, does she have a circulatory problem because of the cold hands and feet? So the connection here is that when you have circulatory issues, especially cold hands and feet, think about it.
**Unknown:** The other thing that is farthest from your heart is your brain. But in addition, your heart has to pump blood up against gravity, so getting blood into the head is actually a lot more difficult than people realize. So with that being said, this is a huge red flag for me because if you're not getting proper blood flow to the head, yes, you can get low-grade headaches. Yes, you can have memory loss.
**Unknown:** Yes, you can also have a very small pituitary gland, which then can cause you to have a thyroid issue or other hormonal issues, and that's exactly what was going on for this person. It also turned out she was talking about her stress level, and she's like, "Listen, I think a lot of this comes back to stress for me." And I was like, "Well, what are some of your biggest stressors?" And she said, "Well, one of the stressors is that, you know, I obviously have a lot of demands because I run a big company, and the other one is is I'm taking care of my mother who has vascular dementia." And I was just like, "This makes a lot of sense." So genetically, this is a woman who definitely had a predisposition to circulatory issues, and then due to strep and some toxins and things she was exposed to over time, she started to develop what we call atherosclerosis, which was a narrowing of her vascular system. And this really, really started to affect circulation everywhere, but it was extremely... It was affecting her brain to a severe capacity.
**Unknown:** So this was causing what we call the early stages of vascular dementia, which starts with something called CCSVI, which is, um, a venous insufficiency. So blood was getting in, and it was very difficult for the, for the blood to drain out through the venous system. So this was the reason for her memory loss. This was the reason for her neurotransmitters being imbalanced, which was making her super angry and irritable.
**Unknown:** This was also the reason why her hormones were off and also her thyroid condition was off. So this is should be so eye-opening to those of you listening because this is not something that your endocrinologist is looking at. No one's looking at you for, for vascular dementia because think about it. Dementia is neurologist.
**Unknown:** Vascular dementia is cardiologist. And then thyroid is endocrinologist. These are all s- separate specialties, and nobody's talking to each other. Nobody's piecing the puzzle together.
**Unknown:** So when you work with integrative physicians, we look at the bigger picture so that you can actually get to the root cause and not be on this merry-go-round of, "Okay, here's my thyroid medication. I've been on this. This isn't working. Let me up the dose.
**Unknown:** Let me lower the dose. Let me, let me add another one. Let me switch medications." I have people that have come to me that have been on thyroid medication for 30 years, and their thyroid still looks bad. It's still dysfunctioning.
**Unknown:** It still has an autoimmune attack on it. So when we think that we're just gonna fix our thyroid with Synthroid, it's not gonna work. Also, for those of you listening that are maybe celiac or maybe you know that you have a gluten sensitivity, there is gluten in Synthroid, so you potentially are causing more inflammation in your body by taking a medication that you're hoping will help your thyroid. So it's really, really important to know that these thyroid medications, most of them contain fluoride, most of them contain aluminum, and then most of them also contain gluten.
**Unknown:** So it's really, really important to seek out what can you do naturally that will help this. So if you haven't figured this out by now, you don't know what you don't know, and it's impossible for you and this woman that I just told you the story about, it was impossible for her to know that her early onset of vascular dementia was the cause to why she had a thyroid condition. And if you don't do the right testing and you don't work with someone who looks beyond your thyroid, you're also not gonna know, and you're not gonna figure that out, and you're not necessarily gonna get the results that you hope for.So the point of all of this is that it's really a matter of stop just accepting that this is your new normal. "Oh, I have Hashimoto's, this is my new normal.
**Unknown:** Oh, I have a low functioning thyroid, this is my new normal." It's really trying to understand why and knowing that there is a solution out there to fix it that maybe you just haven't heard of yet. So it's really just stop accepting these symptoms as your new normal, and also stop thinking that all of your symptoms are separate. Because if we have fatigue and depression and we can't lose weight and we feel cold all the time, we kind of assume that all of those things are really separate, and we don't necessarily think that there is a connection or a common denominator that's causing it. So a lot of times your symptoms are overlapping, and they're very connected to the root and the foundation.
**Unknown:** So the other biggest thing to know is that if you understand the root cause, anything is possible. I know for those of you that are listening that have been diagnosed with Hashimoto's or you've been diagnosed with Graves' disease as an autoimmune thyroid condition, they've told you that this is permanent, there's nothing you could do about it, and it will never go away, and that's not true. And especially if your antibody levels are low, and, you know, they're barely out of range, yes, you can reverse it. You can stop that.
**Unknown:** But I have seen antibody markers drop hundreds of points without me even working on the thyroid just by helping someone detox from mold, or helping someone get their circulation working better, or helping somebody to heal their gut. So it's really just a matter of knowing what is your root cause, because your root cause is probably very different from someone else. So something that I said early on, and rarely do things look like the textbook. So very rarely are you going to look like the textbook of a hypothyroid person, or you might actually match it completely.
**Unknown:** Because unfortunately, thyroid symptoms are all too relatable. You know, talking about can't lose weight, talking about feeling cold all the time, talking about fatigue. How many of us are dealing with that? There's so many of us dealing with that.
**Unknown:** But it doesn't mean that that is what needs to be fixed. Your thyroid very easily can be an effect of other things that are dysfunctioning. So it really is a matter of maybe your treatment protocol shouldn't match the thyroid protocol. Maybe it needs to be completely different.
**Unknown:** So this kind of brings me to understanding a little bit more about this concept of functional integrative medicine. So number one, when it comes to conventional, which is, you know, traditional medicine, working with an endocrin- endocrinologist. So for those of you that have been with me the whole time, it's really establishing that, yes, they're gonna look at your thyroid, they're gonna constantly measure your TSH and maybe your antibody levels, and they're just gonna make sure that that TSH level is right where it needs to be to be clinically okay. They're not gonna ask you how your symptoms are.
**Unknown:** They're not gonna ask you if you feel better. They're gonna say, "I did my job because your level is within normal ranges." So that's, that's conventional. And then they're also going to put you on a medication that maybe has gluten in it, and maybe you have a gluten sensitivity. I can't tell you how many endocrinologists don't even know that there's gluten in Synthroid.
**Unknown:** So then we move into the functional medicine model, and the function med- functional medicine model is going to do better testing. Maybe they'll do, um, you know, they'll do blood testing on your, your thyroid, do a more expansive panel. Maybe we'll do a urinary test for your neurotransmitters. Maybe we'll do, um, a saliva test to look at your cortisol levels and really be able to look at the interconnection of all of your hormones.
**Unknown:** But then when it comes to the tools, the toolbox is diet and supplements. So instead of us maybe doing Synthroid, maybe we're doing a natural product that will manipulate your thyroid. Um, and then maybe we're going to, you know, make sure that we cut things out of your diet that cause inflammation or cut things out of your diet that could cause your thyroid to be inflamed, like goitrogens. Maybe we'll do that.
**Unknown:** But unfortunately, that doesn't always work. So that's where the integrative model comes in, and that's really where I have moved towards in the past eight years. And I did this because I used to work with people and focus on hormones. You used to come to me, you know, I would say you would have all these hormone symptoms, and I'd say, "Okay, let's hone in on the hormones.
**Unknown:** Let's do a bunch of fancy tests on the hormones." And then we would work on the hormones. They would feel better. But as soon as you changed your diet or got off your supplements, you went right back where you were, and I didn't like that. I didn't feel that I was serving people by creating no level of sustainability with their healing process.
**Unknown:** So when we decided to explore this concept of integrative medicine, which really is just looking at all of the pieces. It's looking at the brain, it's looking at the gut, it's looking at the, the adrenals, it's looking at the thyroid, it's piecing every single one of those aspects together, and it's also working with a bigger toolbox. It's working with, does this person need to detox? Does this person need to rehab their neurological system?
**Unknown:** Does this person need to do physical therapy because they have a lot of scar tissue or it's many different pieces of the puzzle so that you can fix the foundation and not just assume that it's a thyroid condition that needs to be addressed through either supplements or diet for the rest of their lives. So when it comes to what your goals are, if you're a person that's been dealing with Hashimoto's or, you know, another type of thyroid condition and you're just tired of being ti-You're so sick of not feeling your best. You can't lose weight. You can't ...
**Unknown:** You know, you're trying to work out, you're trying to eat well, you're trying to do all these great things, and you just keep falling flat with your progress. Then you being able to understand, you know, first of all, what's affecting your thyroid, is there other things that are affecting your thyroid or contributing to your symptoms, and also being able to know exactly what you need to do to fix these issues is priceless. But overall, I, I really wanna thank all of you guys, uh, for being here with me because I really love doing these because I love being able to help you guys piece the puzzle together to understand that there's more to the story when it comes to your thyroid condition or your hormonal imbalance. It's not necessarily just a definitive of this is it for you, this is how you have to just live, and you just have to deal with this.
**Unknown:** So I really hope that this was an amazing educational experience for you guys. But when it comes to doing your testing and figuring out what your body actually needs, that's when this becomes a breakthrough experience because this can literally transform your life in such a deep way, but also prevent you from going down a road of having ... You know, living in fear of, am I gonna get cancer? Am I gonna get dementia?
**Unknown:** You know, am I gonna get something more serious? It's kinda scary the world that we're in right now, that so many people are suffering from these types of, of illnesses, and we feel a little scared and powerless because we don't really know exactly what to do to prevent them. And it really starts with digging a little bit deeper and doing better testing on yourself. So not only can you feel good and, like, live your life and be happy and have energy and sleep great and do all those things, but it's also to really be empowered to know what your body needs to stay healthy.
**Unknown:** The biggest question I always get is if I lay out a three-month program for someone, they always go to me, "Well, what, what do I do after that?" Like, I, I like, "You know, what, what's next? How do I maintain this?" And I always say to them, I go, "You will learn so much about your body through this process, and you will learn where your weak points are. And those weak points are what you need to maintain long-term." Like, for me, my weak point was my lymphatic system. So I was a person that I never sweat.
**Unknown:** I thought it was great. It actually turned out that my lymph nodes, which is a major filtration system and a major part of your immune system, was really, really, um, not healthy for me. So instead of me taking a multivitamin every day thinking that that's my best maintenance plan, I actually use an infrared sauna once a week, and that's how I maintain my health, is by making sure that I sweat to cleanse out things that are gunked up in my lymph nodes. So that's the really cool thing about it is you're able to really understand your body in a way different level than you ever have before, and you're able to walk away really knowledgeable and really empowered.
**Unknown:** So thank you guys again for being here with me. Um, check out our website if you have any more questions. Uh, we have tons of podcasts about hormones, and I really, really enjoy doing this, and I really hope you guys enjoyed it too. All right.
**Unknown:** I will see you next week. Definitely feel free to hop on one of those strategy calls if you guys have more questions. We thank you for being a listener and subscriber to Integrative Wellness Radio. If you're looking to learn more about Integrative Wellness Group as well as Dr.
**Unknown:** Nick or Dr. Nicole, you can check out integrativewellnessgroup.com. All night, no sleep. 'Cause I feel like I'm always dreaming.
**Unknown:** Wide awake, that's okay
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About Integrative You Radio
Integrative You Radio is a root cause medicine and integrative medicine podcast hosted by Dr. Nicole Rivera and Dr. Nick Carruthers — two integrative doctors who build personalized wellness protocols from your DNA, minerals, hormones, gut, and nervous system rather than from a population template. Looking for an integrative doctor who reads your labs together instead of in isolation? This is the show.
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