Osteoporosis and Hashimoto's Connection?
Is there a connection between osteoporosis and Hashimoto's thyroiditis?
| Hey everybody, Dr. Shook here. This is another sauna session. Looks like that the only times I'm going to speak to you, at least right now, are when I'm taking time for myself and in this case that's when I'm in the sauna. Let's talk today about something that's a very interesting topic that a lot of you may not be familiar with but that's really, really important when we're talking about poor thyroid function whether it be hypothyroidism or hyperthyroidism and also this comes into play when we're talking about Hashimoto's. Okay, so what we know is that people that have hypothyroidism, right? They have decreased thyroid hormone in their body, what ends up happening is that they have an increased risk for fracture. |
| Their bones tend to be weaker, now there's something that's really, really important we need to talk about when we start talking about fracture risk with hypothyroidism or hyperthyroidism and that is that people who tend to be, that are hypothyroid, so low thyroid function, right, or low thyroid hormone function or levels. They tend to have higher than normal bone density, okay? There's more to the bone being able to resist fracture than just the density because the density is how hard or dense the bone is so it does not have to do though with the quality of the bone because density of bone and quality of bone are two different things. |
| People that are hypothyroid tend to have more bone density but a weaker microarchitecture. If you look at a bone under a microscope it has this trabecular pattern, they call it, or this microarchitecture. For a bone to be able to resist fracture it has to have a good microarchitecture, it has to have good, the collagen content and quality has to be good, the mineralization has to be good, the bone turnover rate has to be good and it does have to have a certain amount of density. People that are hypothyroid, they tend to have more dense bones but a poor microarchitecture so they're actually at a greater risk for fracture. Okay, so that's hypothyroid. |
| The interesting thing is that people hyperthyroid, they tend to have less bone density so they're also at a risk for fracture. Hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism both tend to predispose you to an increased risk of fracture. Now, there was one of the studies that I've looked at, they actually showed that when a person that was hyperthyroid returned to normal levels the risk for fracture persisted. There's a lot of factors, as I said, that may come into play for fracture but it's something that is really, really important if you guys are hyperthyroid or if you were hyperthyroid with graves, if you had you know radiation iodine, or you took the medications to suppress it and now you're normal, listen, you still have a risk for fracture. The things that we try to do to make sure that you don't have these problems is first of all you want, number one, you want to make sure that your thyroid physiology is now optimal, right? |
| Everything from the quantity, the level in your body to your body's ability to use it, right? You want to make sure that you can transport it, that you can use it, that you don't have high levels of inflammation that could make the body less sensitive to the thyroid hormone. You want to make sure that you don't have excessively high levels of cortisol and that you have normal cortisol rhythm production throughout the day. There's a daily rhythm production of cortisol. These are all things that can interfere with conversion of thyroid hormone and then your body's ability to use the thyroid hormone as well. You want to look at things like stress, you know, when we talk about like people that have all these problems with their thyroid you know you can be autoimmune and we can address all of these food triggers, environmental triggers. We can address these infectious triggers, and yeah, these things are important but what if you do all that and the person doesn't get better, all right? They don't really improve? |
| You have to look at the whole person, right? I'm going to tell you guys right now, this is really, really important because I'm trying to give you guys ways that you can help yourself but just know that there are limits to things that you can try without getting testing and investigating it further. There are some things that are really important because testing is not the end all be all, right? There are things that are beyond that too that we have to take into consideration like stress levels. When people will tell be that they are under tremendous amount of stress, I mean, there are some people that have unbelievably stressful lives, like unbelievably. I mean, your heart breaks when you hear their stories and what they're going through, they're in an abusive relationships, they're in terrible jobs, they're, you know, all kinds of things that are putting this unbelievable amount, they're financial stresses, everything that are putting this incredible amount of stress on them. That stress will stimulate an autonomic response, basically, you're involuntary nervous system will put you into a fight or flight mode. |
| I think, you know, that's something that's really being missed when we're considering how do people improve with these thyroid problems and these autoimmune problems. Yeah, you're going to look at these triggers that we can measure then you also have to look at the person as an individual and say you know what is this person, are they under a tremendous amount of stress because that will drive inflammation? The stress response is not just the way you feel, you feel the way you feel because your chemistry changes, right? You have measurable changes in chemistry like cortisol levels will spike, and you'll have an increase in blood sugar, and you'll have surges in inflammatory chemistry and all of that can trigger autoimmunity. I mean I'll see people that they do really, really well with the protocols and the things that we teach them and that they learn and then something really stressful in their life happens and they're whole world falls apart, right? Then they'll have flare-ups and they feel like they are starting over. |
| Really, here's the thing. What I try to do is teach people, empower you to help yourself, because listen things are going to happen in life that are going to stress all of us tremendously, right? What we want is we want to have tools that we can then utilize when something like that happens. If, for example, you know if my patients they lose a loved one or something and they fall apart because of their stress, well, you know it's going to take time to heal. Maybe they need counselling, you know, maybe they need some help with that, that's not unreasonable. Hopefully, they have a support network of people that can help them with their grieving and can help them you know really to deal with that stressor itself. Then so what are some other things that we might want to do? Possibly we want to make sure that their diet is as healthy as possible, right? |
| We don't them to just fall apart and abandon all their changes in their diet and their healthy eating. We want to make sure that they are doing things, if they can, to help decrease stress, you know, even if it's prayer, meditation, if it's yoga, if it's gentle walking, whatever their stress coping mechanisms. If it's something like heart math, or breathing, right, these are all things that are reasonable to help with that stress response. Then possibly temporary use of some nutriceuticals, some things to help improve and dampen the adrenal, the cortisol, blunt the spikes in the cortisol so that you don't have such exaggerated releases of cortisol. Maybe we do something to support permeability of the gut or potential permeability of the gut because we know that inflammation from the stress and the spikes in cortisol that that can break down the tight junctions of the GI tract wall. Maybe we want to support the leaky gut even just anticipating that these changes could promote this permeability again and flare up your autoimmunity. |
| We take on some of these things temporarily maybe for a week, maybe for a few weeks, right? Maybe for a month or so and then what we do is we try to taper, you know, they want to taper off that and they can kind of get back to where they were before, hopefully. It is, you know, everything is dynamic and changing, you know, nothing is just set in stone so what we want to try to do is consider you as a whole person and not just sit there and treat you like you're just, it's just these foods, or it's just something else. I mean one of the most beneficial things that we can do, and I think you all need to know, is that someone needs to help you with your expectations for what's happening with you, right? |
| I will tell you, like, autoimmune diseases aren't curable, right? If we can identify triggers and we can manage our life a little bit better then maybe we can dampen it so that we significantly decrease the symptoms and the problems that it's causing. Maybe we can put in remission, maybe we can do that but it's something that we'll live with and we need to be, you know. The thing is that I try to be empowering, be an empowering practitioner to teach you tools to help yourself because we don't cure anything. I mean you don't cure autoimmunity, we don't know of any way to cure an autoimmune disease. Once the gene is turned on, it's on but if you can identify the triggers and you can dampen these environmental factors that are flaring and pushing the immune system to promote the autoimmunity then you can actually do something to make an impactful, long-term change in that person's life, right, and really help them. |
| That's really the goal and I think the most important thing is to understand that, that you're going to get cured. I mean when you work with someone they are not going to cure you of autoimmunity. I think that's probably one of the most, you know, I don't want to say tragic but it's definitely something that I think people are being, the doctors aren't sharing that with them. I see people that come in and you know they're kind of, they feel defeated, they've worked with someone and they're like, "Well, I thought I was going to heal my leaky gut, and all these things were going to be better, and my life was going to be better." I think they have this expectation that I've got a problem that we are going to be able to work on and then it's going to be completely gone and I'm going to be better, right? |
| Setting the expectation, to help people understand that this is something that you are going to be living with and that the goal is to put it in remission and so that essentially it's not even there if you were checked for it, right, it's not detectable and that it's not affecting you but you have to understand that you're always going to live with this. If things like these emotional events or triggers can absolutely do that, so they can flare you up and can put you back, you know, can cause you to regress so you're always going to go, that's something that's got to be considered. Setting expectations is huge and understanding what you're dealing with is huge and empowering, right? Give the person power but don't, you know, don't tell the person, don't work with someone and, which I've seen, and they have an expectation that they are going to be better. This is going to be the thing that fixes everything. |
| This is one of the reasons like whenever I'm considering working with someone or if I can accept someone's case is what are their expectations? What is their attitude towards this problem? Do they understand it? That's why I try to educate them but you know sometimes people they don't understand this yet and I don't get upset with them. I mean, it's they just want to feel better, right? I know at the same time that if what the model of support that I use, if it does not match and the outcomes are not such that I know that they are going to match with that person's expectations then I can't work with them, all right? That's when I decide whether or not I can accept a case. Is their attitude towards their problem congruent with what I think is going to result in a successful outcome? |
| I just want to share with you guys, and really we started talking about bone density and then here I am I get off on these things that cause these autoimmune conditions to fall apart, and then setting expectations, you know when you're working with this understanding the problem better. I hope this is helpful but I just really want you guys to kind of understand what you're dealing with here so that you don't beat yourself up, you know? Just realize that you are living with something, and I am too, you know I'm autoimmune as well, so we live with this and the goal is to help ourselves, right? Help ourselves become educated as to what we're dealing with and understand that we can do things so that this autoimmunity doesn't control us. |
| What we've got to do is we've got to help people, people need to be educated and aware of this before this gets to you know the third stage of autoimmunity where there's massive destruction, right? We might still be able to significantly help someone in that stage but it becomes much more difficult and expectations as to what our outcomes are, we don't really know how well we are going to be able to dampen it because once your body starts losing tolerance to all your tissues and environmental chemicals and it's just off the charts. It becomes extremely difficult to really help, you know and once someone is taking immunosuppressants it can become a very, very difficult thing to work with because none of the interventions we can do are going to stimulate the immune system which sometimes we want to do. |
| Most of the time, initially we want to dampen it and calm it down but once you're on an immunosuppressant you can't really measure a lot of the, you can't measure some of the antibodies that you're looking for to see what they are reacting to. You can't do a lot of things, so that's the ultimate goal is to help people avoid getting on these immunosuppressants and a lot of these other medications and to catch this earlier, right? Before it becomes a problem that is you know very, very severe because then I would still try to help someone but it just becomes a lot more difficult to do, okay? |
| Anyway, Dr. Shook, I have gone on for about fourteen minutes. I just want to start out this talking about bone density and hypothyroidism or hyperthyroidism and then we got into a little bit more detailed stuff but that's kind of how this goes, right, because there's a lot of things that, it's all connected. Like the body and the systems of the body, they're all connected. I hope this has been helpful if you guys have any questions or you need anything let us know. I'll try to help you as much as I can. I'll just tell you guys like we are getting so many questions and so many comments and everything. I just, you know, I've got a team and it's three of us and even with three of us we cannot get to you guys, we just can't get to everyone. |
| I'm doing the best that I can, we're doing the best that we can to try to answer questions, and help you out, and give you tools to empower yourself. I mean, listen, we will try to give you everything free that we possibly can give you without literally paying for you to have access to something. A lot of these guidebooks and things that I create, literally, if we charged seven dollars we're just trying to cover our technology costs, right, for some of these things. If we give it to you like truly, like free, like we give it to you free we are going to be paying, literally, because we have to pay money to make these things available. We have to pay for that, so we will actually be paying for you to have access to it. Know that we are just trying to give you guys access to things, and give you tools, and I'll share as much as I can with you in these videos, and give you as much free information as possible about what you might want to consider doing. |
| It is, you know everyone has such unique problems and drivers of their condition that it is not easy because, you know. First of all, I can't give you medical advice, right? I can just talk you know about cases that I've seen, what might work, and what I've seen work for a lot of people in the past. That's why we've created these programs and I've created our six week Hashimoto's transformation program which is for hypothyroidism, people who have autoimmune conditions, I mean it's fantastic for autoimmunity even though it says Hashimoto's. |
| Anyway, just want to share that with you guys. I really appreciate you, if you have questions let us know, you know if there's something I can talk about, a topic, you know post it. I'm trying, I know there's a lot of people who have questions about leaky gut so I'm going to try to do that in another video but I really want to use a whiteboard for that so that I can do some illustration. Okay, appreciate you guys. I hope you have a wonderful day if you need anything let us know. Thanks. |
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
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