What Causes Hypothyroidism?
Hypothyroid Causes - Primary Hypothyroidism Pattern 1
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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| Hi, everyone, Dr. Shook here. In this video what we're going to do is we're going to go through one of probably six patterns. I may have a few more that I'll share but there are six primary patterns that I see in practice that result in people having low thyroid symptoms. Some of these patterns, like this pattern, is actually going to be due to low thyroid hormone levels. Most of the people that I see in practice don't have low thyroid hormone levels. They have a problem utilizing the hormone that is already in their bloodstream, that they're either taking orally or that their body's making, resulting in them not feeling like they have enough thyroid hormone. This is a pattern is a common pattern and I'm going to explain to your guys how this occurs, what this is. Primary hypothyroidism is where the thyroid itself cannot make enough t4 or t3. These are your primary hormones. |
| Ninety-three percent's t4, seven percent's t3. T3 is the most physiologically active hormone. It's the one that stimulates the cells and drives your metabolism. This is basically going to be where you don't have enough of these two. Let's review just how the body gets to this point. What does your body do to produce and manufacture these hormones? How does you actually get to this step where your thyroid makes these hormones? It all starts in the brain. Remember, in the brain there's a central structure called the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus produces a hormone called thyroid releasing hormone or TRH. TRH stimulates another brain structure called the pituitary gland. It sits right here. It's between the eyes. It's like a little bulb on a stalk and it's called the pituitary gland. The pituitary gland releases thyroid stimulating hormone or TSH. Remember, that's the hormone that's commonly checked by your doctor. |
| That's the most commonly checked hormone to screen for potential problems with thyroid production. They use that as an indirect marker to try to give them a better idea of what's happening here with your thyroid hormones. This is also often the hormone that is checked when they're trying to determine the appropriate dose of hormone for you. What THS does, THS stimulates the thyroid. It stimulates enzymes inside the thyroid to go through this complex process to manufacture t4 and t3 which are released into the bloodstream. Then when these t4 and t3 levels, if they are too low, if your t3 and t4 levels are low what happens is, your brain, the hypothalamus is consistently monitoring the amount of t4 and t3 in the bloodstream. The brain is constantly saying, how much is there? How much is there? |
| If the levels get low, if the levels of t4 and t3 are low, then what happens is your brain is constantly monitoring that and it will increase the production of TRH which will stimulate the pituitary gland to increase the amount of TSH. It increases TSH, increased TRH, which should ramp up the ability of the thyroid to produce more t4 and t3. That should raise these levels. The levels should come up. This is a scenario where if these are low, the brain is monitoring those levels, then the brain says, we need more thyroid hormone. Make more thyroid releasing hormone. The thyroid releasing hormone stimulates the pituitary to product more TSH. TSH goes up. When TSH goes up, remember the job of TSH is thyroid stimulating hormone, is to stimulate the thyroid to produce more t4 and t3. If this is all working properly, this feedback loop, when t4 and t3 go down the brain is going to produce more TRH, more TSH. |
| That's why when you get your TSH checked and your doctor is like, TSH is high, you're hypothyroid. They're thinking that the brain is trying to tell the glands to make more hormone, because that's what the TSH in effect does, is it signals the thyroid to make more t4 and t3. They've just reasoned, you don't have enough of this. It's low, so the brain's pumping out more of these hormones. They give you a replacement and they might check TSH again in a few weeks, a few months, and see if TSH has come down, and if it has then in their mind they've done their job and everything's balanced because they're really looking at the brain signaling of the gland by looking at TSH. This is how it works. |
| If you have too much t4 and t3, like maybe in Graves' Disease or if you have a hot nodule that's overproducing or if you're over medicated, which is something that it does happen quite often and it's easy for someone to do that because they're trying to help you feel better and if the only tool that they have is to give you more hormone, then they try to help you out, because a lot of the markers that I order which are usually about nine total are not frequently checked because they're not considered medically necessary. Your doctors are trying to help you. They're not bad people but because they're not medically necessary under an insurance panel then what happens is they can't order them or you have to pay cash for them. There's a lot of complexities to that, which is a completely different video. Anyway, if these were high for maybe Graves', hot nodule, maybe you're taking too much medication, then what's going to happen? It's going to be just the opposite. If these are high the brain's monitoring and saying, thyroid hormone's high. |
| I want to decrease the output of TRH, the thyroid releasing hormone. I don't want the gland to make more. There's already enough. I'm going to lower my TRH levels, thyroid releasing hormones. I'm going to drop TSH because I don't want any stimulation, which TSH is thyroid stimulating hormone, of the gland because I've already got too much of this. It suppresses this pathway. Higher levels of t4 and t3 decrease the stimulation of the brain to the thyroid. That's where you'll see TSH that's point zero one two. Really the ideal range is for TSH that I see in practice, I typically want to see it somewhere between about one point eight to about two point five. That's only the TSH. You've got to look at the whole picture. If I just had TSH, I'd say if everything else is working properly it's probably going to be one point eight to about two point five under the patients that I see and the distance clients that I work with. |
| If I see it below one point eight then I'm thinking there's some suppression of this pathway. Why is it suppressed. Remember, Graves', hot nodules overproduces hormone, over medication, when you get too much of this, will suppress this. The brain will monitor it and say, you know what? There's plenty of hormone. I'm not making any. If that happens for a long period of time you can actually suppress the output of these hormones. You lose this feedback loop and the brain no longer monitors the blood. That's where you really are on these thyroid hormones for life. It's okay if you are. Thyroid hormone is vital to life. You do not want to be deficient in it. You have to have it. It's like when you're talking about insulin, to regulate blood sugar, you've got to have it. Every cell in the body requires thyroid hormone. Please, you need to take it and it's going to help you live a good quality of life. |
| Every cell has to have it. Keep that in mind. Now that I've explained a lot of the physiology let's talk about a few other things. The other thing that I want to mention here, primary hypothyroidism is where the gland can't make enough of these. This is where a thyroid hormone replacement is required to supplement t4 and t3. There's a lot of different reasons the gland may not be able to have enough output and it's pathological but the most common reason of hypothyroidism is ...? What is it? You guys can tell me, I know. Hashimoto's. Hashimoto's is the most common cause of this. What's happening? With Hashimoto's, inside the thyroid, your TPO, thyroperoxidase, and possibly your thyroglobulin, which I'm just going to write TG, which sometimes it's written as TG. Sometimes it's written as TGB, but it's thyroglobulin. |
| It's a protein in there and TPO is an enzyme in there. What they do is these are typically the targets for the immune system because remember, Hashimoto's is an autoimmune thyroid condition. It comes in these cells, the cells of your immune system destroy TPO and thyroglobulin, decreasing the thyroid's ability to make t4 and t3. T4 and t3 go down as a result of this autoimmune process. Then these levels are low and it requires your doctor then gives you a supplement to try to brings these up. What happens is, this is not a constant attack against the thyroid. These autoimmune conditions, it's not steady. It waxes and wanes. It flares up, you destroy more of it at different times. When it flares up you destroy more TPO and thyroglobulin meaning that you have less t4 and t3. Your demand for thyroid hormone would go up and then maybe the next week, that calms down, and the next week you have normal capacity to make your thyroid hormone and your levels naturally come up. |
| What happens is you're on this roller coaster of up and down with the thyroid hormones, which can cause you to have symptoms of hypo or low thyroid function and hyper, so anxiety, heart palpitations, a lot of other things, because you're on this roller coaster and the doctor's trying to give you a thyroid hormone to smooth it out, but the fact is is that it's basically, the roller coaster's, the levels are this but when they give you thyroid hormone you just stack on top of that and now it's like this. You've typically have more peaks and valleys. Every case is unique and sometimes there's just not enough thyroid hormone and the person's constantly hypo or low. Here's my point with all this. If you have primary hypothyroidism for any reason, really other than Hashimoto's it's something that's not treatable nutritionally or with diet. Typically it's not and something that requires thyroid hormone replacement, but if it's due to Hashimotos, which in the U.S. what's the percentage of people that have primary hypothyroidism due to Hashimoto's? |
| How many? About ninety percent. Ninety percent. Nine out of every ten people that you know that have a thyroid problem have hypothyroidism because of Hashimoto's. This is what's happening. What could you do? Hashimoto's, in a lot of cases you can improve it significantly with diet and nutrition, because what you do is you detect the drivers of the auto immunity, the things that are promoting the autoimmune condition, partially digested food proteins. You look at chronic infections. You look at environmental chemicals. You look at cortisol elevations. These are all things that can promote this and if you would detect what's driving those you remove those, then you support the healing and improving the physiological functions that have been damaged due to this autoimmunity and what you do, the goal is remission but you decrease and dampen the autoimmune process so that you don't have as much destruction of the thyroglobulin and the TPO and then the gland can have a more normalized output. |
| In a case like that is there a possibility that you might not need your thyroid hormone? Possibly. If you dampen and improve the reason which is an autoimmune process called Hashimoto's in nine out of ten people, if you can dampen it or quench that autoimmune process to the degree that they have the capacity to make enough hormone, do you need a hormone replacement? Maybe not. It just depends on your ability to dampen this. That's why diet and nutrition and good testing to help figure out what's driving the process can be critical and can make a huge difference. This is primary hypothyroidism and really what I want to share with you guys is just that primary hypothyroidism as a whole is caused by Hashimoto's, nine out of ten people have Hashimoto's that are hypothyroid and if you dampen or work on the autoimmunity which is Hashimoto's you may be able to significantly improve your t4 and t3 production and this entire system, so you may not have to take the medication long term. |
| It just depends but you have to work on the Hashimoto's first. There are a lot of cases where if Hashimoto's is progressed for a long period of time it destroys the gland and the gland gets smaller and it decreases its capacity to make these hormones. The longer that you have Hashimoto's the less likely you are to have normal production because the gland gets destroyed and then you're going to have to take something externally. The other thing is there's certain medications that can suppress thyroid output. There's other potential problems but the majority of peoples it's due to Hashimoto's. It's being ignored for the most part because your doctors don't have tools to address the autoimmunity because really unfortunately they don't understand this approach. It's not because they're not intelligent enough to. They are. They just have not been exposed to it. |
| The system that they practice within does not allow them to practice this way. If you see, like I might see four people to seven in a day. The average primary care physician is going to see forty to fifty. When you have seven minutes with someone this is not a possibility. Discussing this, figuring this out, working with someone nutritionally, it changes your entire practice and the insurance companies are not designed to reimburse around that. Things need to change but that's why we're teaching. That's because I want to help you help yourself and we're going to figure out what we can do to help you take your health back. Dr. Shook, I wanted to explain hypothyroidism. This is video number one and then I'm going to go through several other patterns that will work off of this physiology and I'll expand on it. I hope you guys have a wonderful day and thank you for hanging out with me. |
