6 Patterns of Hypothyroidism
Thyroid Hormone Resistance
We understand that thyroid problems are complicated and that is why Dr. Shook has created several resources so that you can be your own advocate and take your health back!
Dr. Shook created “The 6 Week Hashimoto’s Transformation Program” to help people figure out the diet, lifestyle and nutritional supplementation they need, and do it with a built-in support group. This is a clinically tested program that we can help people get their health back. If you want to learn more click here: https://hashimotosdoctor.com/auto-webinar-registrationwhq2lzrf
You may want to begin with Dr. Shook’s lab guide, “9 Tests Required to Understand Your Thyroid,” and take a look at a a few of the resources below:
1) HAIR LOSS "How Can I Prevent Hair Loss With Hashimoto's?"
https://hashimotosdoctor.com/free-guide-plus-hostin g-feeqht…
2) THYROID LABS "9 Tests Required To Understand Your Thyroid"
https://hashimotosdoctor.com/free-book-pageqpuqvcr1
More...
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You can read the transcript of this video below, The 6 Patterns of Hypothyroidism, #6 of 6 Thyroid Resistance Pattern
| Hi everyone I hope you're doing well today. Dr. Shook here and what I want to talk to you about is another pattern of thyroid dysfunction, that can result in hypothyroid feelings. You don't have proper thyroid stimulation in the cells, resulting in you feeling hypothyroid even though your labs look normal. |
| This is number 6 on of 6 common patterns that I see in practice. In this particular pattern it's Thyroid Resistance. Let's go through the physiology, how it works. Let's talk about where it's breaking down. The way it works is that the brain begins this high process of producing thyroid hormone. The essential structure in the brain called the hypothalamus, makes thyroid releasing hormone. The thyroid releasing hormone stimulates the pituitary gland, also a brain structure right behind your forehead. The pituitary gland then is stimulated by TRH to make TSH. The pituitary makes TSH, thyroid stimulating hormone, that's the most commonly checked hormone. |
| The doctors will order and use trying to determine if you have adequate thyroid levels or not. It's an indirect measure, they use that because they're depending upon the brain and the brain's ability to sense the need for more quantity of hormone here. When it works hypothalamus makes TRH, TRH stimulates the pituitary gland, the pituitary gland makes thyroid stimulating hormone, or TSH. TSH, what it does is it stimulates the production of T4 and T3 by the thyroid, so the thyroid pumps out T4 and T3. 93% of your hormone that comes from the gland is T4, 7% is T3. This T4 is not really physiologically active, it's very weak. T3 is very strongly physiologically active, that's actually what we want more of. What happens is it that the T4 is taken to the liver and the GI tract, and it's converted from T4 into T3. |
| The majority of this T4 is going to be converted in the liver. About 20% of is going to be converted in the GI tract. A smaller percent is going to be converted in peripheral tissues, like the heart, can convert it itself. This T4 conversion occurs primarily in the liver and the T3, which is what we want to stimulate the physiology of the cells and give us the benefits of the thyroid hormone, is put into the blood stream. When it's in the blood stream it hitches a little ride on these blue things here, which are called thyroid binding globulin. They're little proteins in the blood that the thyroid hormone attach to and transported through the blood stream, and the dropped off when they're needed by a cell for use. |
| As long as the T3 or the T4, whatever, is bound to a protein it can't be used by the cells of the body. It has to be dropped off and made into free floating T3, not bound T3 but free floating. The free floating T3 then stimulates the cell. It goes into the cell, attaches to the DNA and stimulates a proteomic response, or a cellular response. It gives up our metabolism and all the benefits. This is how it should work. This pattern is Thyroid Resistance, so in this pattern what you'll see is that everything looks fine. The entire physiological process looks fine, but the cell is unable to use the hormone that's around it. Everything's in balance; the free hormone balance, the bound T3 hormone's balanced. Everything looks good. If you look at the labs TSH is normal, T4 is normal, T3 uptake normal, free T3's normal. |
| If you looked at total T3, if you looked at reversed T3, if you looked at the thyroid index, they all would be normal. You don't have to have Hashimoto's, you can have negative antibodies. Everything can be normal, but you still have resistance. Why, what causes that, how to do you know, right? Here's what causes it. These are the 3 things cortisol, cytokines, and inflammation. Let me explain what that is, because I know you might not know what cytokines are and let me explain it. What happens is that elevations in cortisol, which is your primary stress hormone ... if you're under a lot of stress whether it be emotional stress, whether it be physical pain, or whether it be chemical stress what it will do, is the brain will signal and drive cortisol by the adrenal glands, which sit on top of your kidneys. |
| Elevated cortisol creates resistance so that the thyroid hormone cannot stimulate the cell appropriately. Everything can be completely normal but elevations in cortisol can create this resistance. What would you do for that? You would address whatever is driving up the cortisol. If it's inflammation you would seek out, and try to determine the source of the inflammation so that you can decrease the inflammatory load and it's production of cortisol, so that you're not producing as much cortisol. You balance the cortisol. If it's physical pain, then you reduce the physical pain. If it is emotional stress, can you decrease the emotional stress or help a person identify what he's to better cope with it, like exercise, deep breathing, meditation, prayer. A lot of different things, and if they can do it obviously ... Even body work types of things, like massage, chiropractic, acupuncture. |
| A lot of these different things are all relevant to helping decrease he stress response. The stress response in decreasing cortisol and normalizing cortisol is really important to improve this pattern, to improve sensitivity of the cell to hormones. If you don't then you can have this resistance to the cells and you still feel hypothyroid. The point here is that everything in the body's connected, in that understanding some of these relationships can be very beneficial to help you understand and help you get some insight into the fact that ... Trust your body, trust the fact that if you don't feel well, you don't feel well. Believe in yourself. If your doctors don't understand it, as long as they're not condescending in their approach, as long as they respect you and what you tell them, then they're doing the best that they can for you. |
| The cortisol will create cellular receptor resistance. Cytokines are chemical messengers produced by the immune system. Cytokines, one of the things ... I talk about them a lot of times and I refer to them as these inflammatory chemical, but they're not necessarily inflammatory, they're just chemical messengers. Some of them can promote inflammations, some of them can dampen inflammation. With cytokines, you'll see cytokine load increase with autoimmune. If someone is autoimmune, if they have Hashimoto's or they have another autoimmune process, typically if the autoimmunity has not been investigated ... The drivers of the autoimmunity have not been investigated, and the person has not implemented a strategy to reduce the things that are triggering the immune process, then they're likely going to have a high cytokine load. They're going to have a high amount of these cytokines, which will do the same thing, decrease the sensitivity of cells of the hormone and you won't have the proper proteomic response, or stimulation of the cell. You'll feel hypothyroid even though everything's normal. Everything looks normal. |
| Believe yourself if you don't feel well, believe yourself. Now, inflammation on the other hand, the third thing, when I'm talking about inflammation here I'm really talking about a homocysteine. A homocysteine is a byproduct of normal metabolism, but needs to be de-metabolized and broken down properly. If homocysteine levels elevate it can really be a risk factor for a lot of other problems, like neurodegenerative conditions, brain, brain based. Also it's associated with a lot of potential problems, like cardiovascular disease. It's an inflammatory chemical that you do not want getting significantly elevated. With homocysteine, if homocysteine's elevated it decreases the cells sensitivity. |
| Now that you know these things that create thyroid hormone receptor resistance, what if you had all 3 of these happening at once? What if you were under stress and had high cortisol? What if you were autoimmune and had high cytokines? What if you had an MTHFR genetic mutation called a snip, MTHFR snip, and you couldn't convert your B vitamins into an active form that helps you break down homocysteine? You had higher homocysteine, higher cytokines, higher cortisol creating major resistance here, and nothing was abnormal. Who's going to find that? Very few people find that, very few doctor's find that. In the traditional model this is not taught that much, it is not a focus of practice, we're doing it for a lot of other serious conditions. Unfortunately a lot of people have this thyroid resistance, this pattern and they look complete normal. |
| A lot of time these might be people that could be potentially given or are recommended that they take an antidepressant, that may not be appropriate but the doctor's just trying to help you figure something out. Sometimes someone might say, "Well, you look like you're hypothyroid, but I'm just trying to help. Maybe you take a small dose of thyroid hormone and see if it makes you feel better." Sometimes they do and sometimes they feel better for awhile, but after the honeymoon period's gone ... See thyroid hormones when you initially start taking them they have an antiflammatory effect, but that wears off after a month or so. Then people say, "I felt great taking it, then I don't feel well." It's because some of these mechanisms have not been identified. |
| That's why we check inflammatory markers. It's why we get cortisol tasting done for a full day, not just a single blood draw. We're looking at one point in time, how we look at cortisol. Cytokines we just know if the autoimmunity is not dampened or regulated, then we're going to have a very good likelihood of having high cytokines. Imagine if all of this is going on, you're having these problems and ... have you seen any of my other videos, if you haven't look at the other videos where I go through these common 6 patterns that I'll see in practice. Now notice in these other videos, any of these problems can be overlapped upon one another. You can have all these issues plus you might be taking a birth control or hormone replacement, that can cause you to have too many of these little carrier proteins making less thyroid hormone available for the cells. Further perpetuating and driving this whole process. |
| Maybe you have an imparatibility to convert T4 to T3, but you have way too many of these hormone. You have this soup of problems, this web of dysfunction. It's why you cannot not just look at the labs alone. It's why you have to look at every detail of the health history. You have to look at the labs. You have to say does this make sense? Based on all these physiological process and patterns, where do we start helping this person? It's why you can see things like inflammation, like infections. A dampening autoimmunity by looking at partially digested food proteins that can trigger the immune response. Looking for chronic infections that can trigger an immune response and autoimmune, looking for environmental chemicals that can trigger an immune response and autoimmune, all of these these things. Looking at genetics that can potentially cause problems, when you have snips. Then looking at the stress the person's under, measuring cortisol, looking at sex hormones. It's why everything is relevant, because it's all connected. |
| I hope you guys have learned a lot from this 6th ... this is actually the 6th video of a series of videos that I'm working on, and presentations that I've made for you guys. I hope that this is helpful. I hope this helps to empower you. Remember become your own advocate, become educated, work on helping yourself, be a better partner with your doctor. Try not to be adversarial, it doesn't get you anywhere. It's hard to work with someone who's constantly fighting you or trying to completely dictate care. I have patients that want to dictate their care, and it's cool to be a partner and that what I want. I expect a partner, I don't expect a ... I'm not going to dictate care to you, I'm not going to have you dictate what you want to me. I'm definitely open to hearing anything that you have in suggestions, and being very open working with you, wanting your ideas. The thing is you've got to be your own advocate, you've got to take some responsibility for your health here. |
| I hope this has helped you guys out a lot. I really appreciate you. Please share this information with people so that they can learn more about their health, so that they can learn more about their thyroid. So many people are suffering with thyroid problems and have no idea that these types of things can be driving the process. Please do share this information with people. If you have any questions post them below, let us know, give us feedback. Remember we're here to help you if you need need help. I sincerely appreciate you guys coming here and listening to me teach this. I hope it's helped you out. I hope you have a wonderful day. |
