Autoimmune Hashimoto’s Thyroid

Hashimoto's Disease Treatment Quick Navigation

Updated by: Brad Shook, DC January, 11th 2023

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment Overview

Treatment of Hashimoto’s disease, also called Hashimoto thyroiditis, falls under the umbrella of traditional medicine.

Complementary and Alternative medicine is not considered a Hashimoto’s disease treatment but rather plays a supportive role.

Hashimoto’s disease treatment typically consists of observing symptoms and prescribing thyroid hormone replacement to support declining levels of thyroid hormone.

In some cases, thyroid hormone output is not compromised and your medical doctor may decide to monitor your symptoms and thyroid hormone levels before prescribing medication.

Thyroid hormone is essential to life, and if you are prescribed thyroid hormone replacement you will likely need to take it long-term. If you do not have the ability to make thyroid hormone naturally, thyroid hormone replacement is very important. Low thyroid hormone levels increase the risk of neurodegeneration, infertility, bone loss, fatigue, depression, goiter development, and accelerated aging.

Because there is no Hashimoto's disease treatment, but rather only treatments for the symptoms of Hashimoto's disease, you may be wondering if anything can be done to complement treatment or cure Hashimoto’s naturally?

The first thing to understand is that Hashimoto's is an autoimmune disease.

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment Contents

Hashimoto’s Autoimmune Disease

Hashimoto’s is an autoimmune disease. An autoimmune disease is a condition where the body’s immune system attacks itself rather than a foreign invader like a bacteria or virus.

In a normal immune system response, the immune system can differentiate between your thyroid and a foreign invader.

Hashimoto’s autoimmune disease is considered a chronic inflammatory autoimmune thyroid disease that progressively destroys the thyroid gland resulting in too little thyroid hormone, and slow, or lowered metabolism.

According to Harvard Medical School, there is no Hashimoto’s disease cure or autoimmune disease cure. Our current understanding of Hashimoto’s disease and Hashimoto’s treatment is that once the genetic expression of autoimmunity has been turned on, there is no known way to turn it off.

I discuss the leading theories on Hashimoto’s disease cause in another article you might like to read.

There are several complementary approaches to Hashimoto’s disease treatment that we will discuss in the “Hashimoto’s Natural Treatment” section.

Next, let’s discuss Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis diagnosis.

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment Contents

Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis Diagnosis

Hashimoto’s Blood Testing

When trying to make a Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis diagnosis, it’s important to understand that we are primarily talking about testing the blood for elevated thyroid antibodies.

Hashimoto’s blood testing is a topic of debate, and it’s my observation that in the clinical setting most primary care physicians will not order thyroid antibodies because it does not change the medical management of Hashimoto’s Disease.

Research published in 2018 demonstrates several reasons for the medical necessity of testing thyroid antibodies to detect Hashimoto's Thyroiditis as early in the disease process as possible.

The research connects the progression of Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis to hypothyroidism, thyroid lymphoma, and papillary thyroid carcinoma.

Routinely testing thyroid antibodies is commonly considered “not medically necessary” by insurance companies and is based on “best practice guidelines” established by some of the most authoritative organizations, like the America Association of Clinical Endocrinologists.

You might think that your doctor would want to know if your immune system is attacking your thyroid resulting in progressive destruction of thyroid tissue, but the reality is, they don’t have a treatment for Hashimoto’s disease, so why would they check for elevated antibodies if it doesn’t change the treatment?

Wouldn’t testing for a problem that has no medical treatment be a waste of money?

For many years the medical position on testing thyroid antibodies has been not to test, because there is no treatment available, and it doesn’t change the prognosis.

Research is now providing several excellent reasons to consider testing thyroid antibodies on a more frequent basis. If anything, there is an argument to made that thyroid antibody testing is not ordered frequently enough.

Hashimoto’s thyroiditis treatment is no different than hypothyroid treatment in allopathic medicine. If you are hypothyroid, the standard of care is to initiate thyroid hormone replacement therapy.

Your doctor will likely prescribe a thyroid hormone replacement medication, but they will not typically check thyroid antibodies as it does not change their treatment plan.

It’s not that your doctors don’t care, it’s just that they don’t have any tools in their toolbox to help the Hashimoto’s autoimmune process, but they can help you with the worst side-effect of Hashimoto’s, low thyroid hormone levels.

If you’re hypothyroid, research suggests you have a 90% chance of having an autoimmune thyroid condition called Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis as the cause of your hypothyroidism.

Some physicians will order TPO antibodies and TSH to help them determine if you have subclinical hypothyroidism (elevated TSH with normal thyroid hormone levels) and if they should treat it. The Mayo Clinic Proceedings suggests the evidence for the treatment of subclinical hypothyroidism is inconclusive with a TSH between 5.1 and 10mlU/L.

There are several lab tests with Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism that are beneficial in helping you understand if there is a physiological breakdown in thyroid chemistry not commonly considered if you have Hashimoto’s disease.

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment Contents

Thyroid Antibodies Testing

Thyroid antibody testing is a test that measures the number of thyroid antibodies in your blood. If high, these antibodies suggest that your immune system is attacking your thyroid gland, which is an abnormal response.

Your thyroid makes thyroid hormones that regulate cellular energy production, and it has a significant impact on metabolism, energy levels, body temperature, mood, and just about every function in the body.

Every single cell in your body requires thyroid hormone to function.

Antibodies are made by the immune system to tag and identify foreign invaders like bacteria, viruses, parasites, fungi, basically anything foreign. If antibodies attach to your tissues, this is called an autoimmune response, and it can lead to an autoimmune condition like Hashimoto’s.

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment Contents

Commonly Evaluated Types of Thyroid Antibodies

The immune system can produce a tremendous number and variety of antibodies. Thyroid specific antibodies usually do one of two things, cause an overproduction of thyroid hormone or they tag the thyroid tissue for destruction by other immune cells.

Thyroid Antibodies Associated with Hashimoto's Disease:

TPO - Thyroid peroxidase antibodies are most commonly a sign of Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, also referred to as Hashimoto’s disease.
Tg - Thyroglobulin antibodies - found in 70% of Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis cases and 30% of Graves’ Disease cases.
Thyroid Antibodies Associated with Graves’ Disease
Thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) receptor antibodies
Tg - Thyroglobulin antibodies - found in 70% of Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis cases and 30% of Graves’ Disease cases.

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment Contents

Why do you need thyroid antibodies tested?

Elevated Inflammatory Levels

Determining if you have an inflammatory condition like Hashimoto’s can be helpful in better understanding your symptoms and help develop strategies to support the inflammatory process.

The leading cause of hypothyroidism is Hashimoto’s disease. If you have hypothyroid symptoms and your TSH is normal, the autoimmune process against your thyroid may be causing some of your symptoms even though your thyroid lab tests are normal.

Keep in mind all hormones in the body must go through four phases physiologically to be properly used by the body, or you can develop symptoms associated with the hormone.

The four phases every hormone must go through in the body:

Production (T4, T3)
Transportation (thyroid hormone binding globulins)
Sensitivity (cellular receptors)
Detoxification (biotransformation)

The immune response associated with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis can increase inflammatory levels in the body and is associated with hypothyroidism, thyroid lymphoma, papillary thyroid carcinoma and other autoimmune diseases.

Elevated inflammatory levels have been shown to dampen cellular receptor responsiveness to thyroid hormones. Disruption of thyroid hormone sensitivity is the third phase of hormone physiology that every hormone must go through, and when disrupted, can create symptoms.

Disruption of thyroid hormone sensitivity could cause thyroid like symptoms even though thyroid hormone levels (production) are normal. This is a prime example of how you could have normal hormone levels and still not feel well.

There are many ways thyroid hormone physiology can breakdown other than just a problem with the amount of hormone, or production.

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment Contents

How are thyroid antibodies tests performed?

To test your thyroid antibodies a simple blood test will need to be performed. Usually a healthcare professional will draw a small amount of your blood that will be collected in a vial and sent to the lab for analysis. Your results are typically returned within a few days.

Do you need to fast for thyroid antibody testing?

Unless instructed otherwise by your doctor, there is no need to go to the lab fasting or make other preparations for a thyroid antibodies test. If you are having other blood work done at the same time then your doctor may give you specific instructions that need to be followed. Just make sure to ask your provider if they do not give you specific instructions on how to prepare for the test.

How do I interpret thyroid antibody testing results?

There are a few possible outcomes when you get your thyroid antibodies test results that you want to be aware of.

Positive antibodies to TPO and possibly Tg. This suggests you have Hashimoto’s disease.
Positive antibodies to TSH receptor antibodies and possibly Tg antibodies. This suggests you may have Graves’ disease.
Negative antibodies suggest your problems are not caused by Hashimoto’s or Graves’, but it’s important to know that some people test as seronegative.

Seronegative means that you do not show detectable antibodies to your thyroid but you still have an autoimmune disease.

This is more common in people with a suppressed immune system.

Do the number of thyroid antibodies correlate with the severity of my Hashimoto’s?

No research to date has indicated that higher antibodies correlate with more severe autoimmunity, though in one study, elevations in Tg antibody levels showed increased risk of differentiated thyroid carcinoma.

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment Contents

Hashimoto’s Autoimmune Disease Imaging

Can Hashimoto’s disease be diagnosed with Ultrasound or Fine Needle Aspiration (FNA)?

An ultrasound and FNA can also be helpful in determining if you have Hashimoto’s as they both provide information to help your doctor determine if the immune system is attacking the thyroid gland.

It’s important to understand that Hashimoto’s is a clinical diagnosis that is made based on your health history, exam, and blood test results.

There are some common changes to thyroid chemistry that often occur in people with Hashimoto’s disease and hypothyroidism that are very important to understand and consider when trying to best determine how to improve symptoms.

Six Patterns of Thyroid Chemistry Breakdown You’ve Never Had Checked

The six most common patterns of functional physiological breakdown of the thyroid that I observe clinically are:

Primary Hypothyroidism (most commonly due to Hashimoto’s)
Pituitary Hypothyroidism Pattern (common with stress and high cortisol)
Thyroid Under Conversion Pattern (common with a nutrient deficiency)
Thyroid Over Conversion Pattern (common with PCOS, elevated testosterone)
Thyroid Hormone Estrogen Pattern - Elevated Thyroid Binding Globulins (common with birth control)
Thyroid Resistance Pattern (common with being overmedicated)

Now let’s discuss Hashimoto’s Thyroid Disease Treatment.

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment Contents

Hashimoto's Treatment

Hashimoto’s Disease Cure

It’s very important to understand that there is no Hashimoto’s treatment, or Hashimoto's disease cure.

Why?

Hashimoto’s is an autoimmune disease, and there is no current treatment for autoimmunity other than using medications like anti-inflammatories, steroids, and immunosuppressants to mitigate the symptoms.

Treatment and management of hypothyroidism, one of the most significant consequences of Hashimoto’s disease is possible with thyroid hormone replacement.

Thyroid hormone replacement does not cure or treat Hashimoto's thyroiditis, but it does treat the number one symptom and side effect of Hashimoto’s, which is hypothyroidism or low thyroid.

Thyroid hormone replacement is an essential treatment for people with hypothyroidism, and there are several medications that your doctor may consider. We will discuss Hashimoto’s medication in the next section.

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment Contents

Hashimoto’s Thyroid Disease Treatment

Conventional Medicine Treatment of Hashimoto’s

Hashimoto’s disease causes progressive destruction of the thyroid gland resulting in a decreased capacity for thyroid hormone production. Thyroid hormone is vital to life, and without thyroid hormone, every cell in the body is compromised in its ability to optimally function.

Thyroid preparations have been used for hundreds, if not thousands of years in several cultures. In the 1809s, medical textbooks described methods of thyroid gland preparation, and in the 1940s desiccated thyroid glands from cattle and pigs were used for thyroid hormone replacements.

In 1955 Synthroid was developed and was a medical breakthrough. Synthroid provided a standardized dose of T4, which at the time, was not possible with desiccated thyroid hormone preparations. Today, thyroid hormone replacement is highly standardized, including forms of Natural Desiccated Thyroid, or NDT.

The good news is that thyroid hormone replacement therapy can be very successful in the treatment of the most common complication of Hashimoto's disease, low thyroid hormone levels.

It’s important to first understand the mechanism for declining thyroid function. If you have Hashimoto’s, then you are more likely to have at least one more autoimmune disease, and these other autoimmune conditions are often not yet identified.

There are several different types of thyroid hormones prescribed by physicians.

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment Contents

Hashimoto’s Medication

Thyroid Hormone Replacement Therapy

Synthetic Thyroid Hormones

Hashimoto’s disease destroys thyroid tissue resulting in a lowered capacity to produce thyroid hormone. This decreased capacity to produce thyroid hormone typically results in low thyroid hormone levels and high TSH, indicating hypothyroidism.

If you are hypothyroid it’s likely that your doctor will recommend thyroid hormone replacement therapy, which is usually in the form of the synthetic thyroid hormone levothyroxine. The most commonly prescribed thyroid hormone replacement is Synthroid, synthetic T4.

Synthetic T4 brands approved by the FDA

Levo-T
Levothyroxine - generic
Levoxyl
Novothyrox
Synthroid
Unithroid
Tirosint - promoted as low excipient. Learn more on Tirosint’s website.

Synthetic T3

Cytomel - brand name. Visit the manufacturer’s website here.
Liothyronine - generic

Synthetic T3:T4 Combination

Thyrolar - brand name
Liotrix - generic

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment Contents

Natural Desiccated Thyroid Hormones (NDTs)

NDTs, or Natural Desiccated Thyroid Hormones have been used successfully to treat hypothyroidism. NDTs are dried thyroid glands from pigs or cows. The dried or desiccated thyroid glands provide a source of T3, T4, and other thyroid hormones found in humans.

NDTs have at least been used since the early 1800s, but ancient cultures may have used thyroid glands from other animals for thousands of years.

There are several brand name NDTs prescribed in the United States, even though they are not approved by the FDA for thyroid disorders.

Many celebrities have thyroid conditions and some report taking NDT as part of their treatment.

Bioidentical T3 and T4 Combination Thyroid Replacement Hormones

Armour - brand name (Armour website)
Westhroid - brand name, same formula as Nature-Throid (Westhroid website)
Nature-Throid - brand name, same formula as Westhroid (Nature-Throid website)
WP Thyroid - brand name (WP-Thyroid website)
Desiccated Thyroid - generic

An important fact when considering NDT hormone replacement is that the T4 to T3 ratios (4:1 in NDT) are typically not the same as those found in humans (approximately 16:1).

A low T4 to T3 ratio (i.e 4:1) means that taking NDT tends to produce hyperthyroidism in some people, and this is why many physicians do not recommend it.

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment Contents

Taking Thyroid Hormones The Right Way

Taking thyroid hormones on a schedule is critical to maintaining optimal thyroid hormone levels.

Three keys for taking thyroid hormone replacement are recommended by most doctors:

Take it every day at the same time, typically before breakfast unless you speak with your doctor and they clear you to take the hormone at another time of day, such as at night, before bed.
Take it with water only, and on an empty stomach
Do not eat or drink anything other than water 30 minutes to one hour after taking it

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment Contents

What time of day should you take thyroid hormone medication?

The most common recommendations by physicians’ are to take thyroid hormone in the morning on an empty stomach, and wait at least one hour before eating or drinking anything other than water.

Other recommendations are to take thyroid hormones four hours apart from food, medications, and supplements.

Recent research demonstrated lower TSH levels and higher thyroid hormone levels when thyroid hormones were taken at night before bed.

Make sure to ask your doctor if taking thyroid hormone before bed is right for you. People that take T3 may have problems with their sleep.

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment Contents

How to find a doctor that prescribes T3 and NDT thyroid hormone medications

It’s important to know that most primary care physicians will only prescribe T4 medications.

T4 is considered a safer medication to prescribe because it’s only 25% as physiologically active as T3, and therefore, less difficult to manage and understand the patient's response.

Some patients report doing better on T3, or T3:T4 combination medications, but finding a doctor that is comfortable prescribing these medications can be difficult.

One of the best tips I’ve learned to help you find a doctor that prescribes T3 medications is to call your local pharmacies and ask the pharmacist who in your community prescribes these medications.

Once you have that information you can research the doctor and look into scheduling an appointment.

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment Contents

Monitoring Thyroid Hormone Levels

Typically doctors monitor your thyroid hormone status by checking your TSH (Thyroid Stimulating Hormone).

TSH is produced by a brain-based gland, your pituitary gland. TSH stimulates thyroid hormone production and is a way to observe the signals from the brain to the thyroid, so it’s believed to be the best way to determine the thyroid hormone needs of the body.

The pituitary gland is part of the HPT axis (Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Thyroid Axis), the brain-brain-thyroid feedback loop the body uses to regulate thyroid hormone levels.

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment Contents

Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN)

Some people have seen improvement in their autoimmune symptoms through the use of Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN).

Naltrexone is a medication that is used in higher doses to help people with opioid or alcohol withdrawal.

The potential benefits of LDN are believed to be due to its immune regulatory impact.

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment Contents

Substances That Affect Thyroid Hormone Absorption

There are some substances that can affect thyroid hormone absorption, so make sure you take your hormone away from food.

Substances known to cause thyroid hormone absorption problems:

Iron Supplements
Some antacids
Calcium Supplements
Some ulcer and cholesterol medications

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment Contents

Hashimoto’s Natural Treatment

Is There A Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis Natural Treatment?

Before we discuss alternative and complementary medicine treatment of Hashimoto’s, it’s important to understand that there is no Hashimoto’s thyroiditis natural treatment.

The only treatment of Hashimoto’s falls under the umbrella of allopathic medicine.

No matter what you read on the internet, there is no Hashimoto’s “natural treatment,” but rather there are ways to support and focus on the improvement of systemic health and physiology by using diet, lifestyle, and temporary nutritional supplementation.

Let’s talk about some of the complementary and alternative approaches to Hashimoto’s disease.

Complementary medicine is not a treatment for any condition but is focused on playing a very important supportive role.

Alternative medicine is a concept where a system of healing would be used in place of medical care.

I do not recommend alternative medicine for Hashimoto’s because it’s my opinion that combining traditional medicine with complementary medicine gives us the best chance for optimal outcomes long-term.

Let’s look at some of the evidence and strategies behind a complementary medicine, and a systems biology approach to Hashimoto’s disease and autoimmunity.

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment Contents

Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis Diet

Research suggests “an online diet and lifestyle program facilitated by a multidisciplinary team can significantly improve health-related quality of life and symptom burden in middle-aged female subjects with Hashimoto's thyroiditis.”

After working with thousands of people in the clinical setting, it is obvious that diet is one of the most critical and impactful things we can do to decrease systemic inflammation, support immune regulatory function, balance blood sugar, and improve digestive function.

I developed an online diet and lifestyle program with a built-in support group to help my clients and the general public access a clinically validated, simple to implement system, that has worked for hundreds if not thousands of people with Hashimoto’s and autoimmunity.

In an ideal scenario, everyone with Hashimoto's would be tested for immunological triggers.

Food sensitivity testing, pathogen testing, and chemical immune reactivity testing are ideal when developing a bioindividualized plan to determine the best starting point.

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment Contents

Lifestyle Changes for Hashimoto’s

Sleep, stress reduction techniques, and exercise have an impact on inflammatory pathways in the body.

One study on sleep showed an association between asthma, RA, SLE, and IBD. Decreased sleep was associated with higher CRP, IL, and PGs.

It’s interesting that when I work with clients they will tell me they have trained their body to work with less sleep, but the reality is they have taught their body to accept diminished performance and systemic health.

Red flags you’re not getting enough sleep:

You need an alarm to get up
Drowsiness when waking or throughout the day
Fall asleep in less than 5 minutes
Most adults need 7 to 9 hours of sleep, and some of my autoimmune clients required up to 10 hours of sleep every night.

In the clinical setting one of the most powerful changes we can make with a client is the optimization of sleep.

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment Contents

Vitamins for Hashimoto’s

Research demonstrates multiple nutritional factors that appear to increase the risk of Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis.

Key nutrient insufficiencies research suggests play a significant role in Hashimoto’s:

Vitamin D - supports immune regulatory function
Selenium - supports the production of glutathione peroxidases that remove excessive hydrogen peroxide
Iron - supports thyroid peroxidase (TPO) production, which is a haem enzyme that becomes active only after binding haem. TPO is required for thyroid hormone production.

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment Contents

Bioindividualized Systems Biology and Functional Medicine Approach to Hashimoto’s

Clinically, I look at Hashimoto's from two perspectives, is there a loss of normal Immune regulatory function, and is there active immune reactivity to antigens (something foreign to the immune system).

To help determine if someone has immune system dysregulation or an active antigen, the first step I take is to try and detect these problems through a process of investigation using laboratory testing.

Once I have gathered and reviewed the test results, a plan to remove active antigens (food sensitivities, pathogens, chemicals) and replenish vitamin and mineral levels to support Regulatory T-Cell function is started.

After removing immunologically reactive foods, pathogens, and chemicals, and supporting better immune regulatory function I transition to a plan more focused on repairing damage to the body’s barrier systems like the intestinal lining.

The overall approach I take is called a “systems-based approach,” or “systems biology approach.”

The systems-based approach to optimizing human health seeks to move people toward health, rather than away from disease, and tries to incorporate as much information as possible about the possible triggers and drivers of the autoimmune process.

To learn more about the three-phase, systems-based process of Detect, Remove, and Repair that I use clinically to support Hashimoto's, you can visit my website here.

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment Contents

Do you need help understanding thyroid and Hashimoto’s blood tests?

If you would like to learn about the nine thyroid tests required to better understand your thyroid guidebook I created, click here.

Hashimoto's Disease Treatment References

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment Contents

Hashimoto's Disease Treatment Video Series

Hashimoto's Treatment - Three Core Videos

The number one condition contributing to low thyroid function or hypothyroidism is an autoimmune condition called Hashimoto's Thyroid, or thyroiditis.

Women are most commonly diagnosed as hypothyroid, this is believed to be due to hormonal changes, and possibly dietary changes that could promote "leaky gut" or intestinal permeability.

One of the most unsettling discoveries I made along my journey of trying to help myself with ADD, IBS, psoriasis, and autoimmunity against my thyroid was that up to 90% of people that are hypothyroid are actually hypothyroid due to an autoimmune process call Hashimoto's against their thyroid gland, and the process is almost totally ignored in the US medical system today.

What this means is that if you are hypothyroid, you may not have a true primary thyroid condition, but rather an autoimmune condition called Hashimoto's, or Hashimoto's Thyroiditis that affects 9 of 10 people that have a low thyroid condition! This is a huge problem because if you ignore the autoimmune process against the thyroid it could expand to other tissues and predispose you to other problems and declining health.

Many people with hypothyroidism or symptoms of a low thyroid are never diagnosed as having an autoimmune condition, and if they do, the typical medical protocol is to ignore the autoimmune condition.

With what we know about autoimmune conditions today, and from the contemporary indexed medical literature, autoimmune conditions are rarely singular.

What I mean is that if you run a laboratory test on tissue antibodies (they tell you if your immune system is attacking your own tissues, which it should not) that we find most people with one confirmed autoimmune condition actually have multiple tissues being attacked, this is called autoimmune expansion.

These antibodies against other tissues are called predictive antibodies because they "predict" future organ failure. That's right, over time your immune system will destroy your tissues leading to major problems.

The goal of what I do is to help identify the immune system triggers or things that are flaring up the immune system so that your immune system can be supported and calmed down, with the goal of putting your autoimmune condition into remission.

There is no cure for autoimmunity, but my goal is to help people dampen the process, get into remission and have vibrant health.

I know this well because I have autoimmunity against my thyroid, psoriasis and have dealt with many of the driving factors my clients and patients have faced that are believed to drive the autoimmune process.

I have used precision medicine, functional medicine and genomics to put my autoimmunity into remission.

You can learn more about the latest science in the natural support of autoimmune thyroid conditions like Hashimoto's Thyroiditis from in the video series below.

Hashimoto’s Disease Treatment Contents

Autoimmune Hashimoto's Thyroid Education Series

Natural Support Options For Hashimoto's Thyroiditis and Low Thyroid or Hypothyroidism

The Natural Approach To Autoimmune Conditions

Why your labs for autoimmune thyroid with Hashimoto’s may be false negative.

Why you may have False Negative Labs for Hashimoto’s Thyroid

[Start 0:00:00]

Hey, Dr. Shook here!

In this video, what I want to talk about is your ability to show up as actually having antibodies to your thyroid. A lot of people don’t realize this, but with autoimmune conditions, you have to be healthy enough or fit enough to actually make antibodies or enough antibodies that they will show positive if you get your blood drawn on a blood test.

A lot of patients that are autoimmune, what you have to do is you have to look at their total white blood cell count and see if it is low. If it is low, that can be an indication that they don’t have enough capacity to make enough antibodies to actually show positive on the test.

Now when you go to LabCorp or any of the commercial labs, when they look at your thyroid antibodies, what they’re actually looking at are the IgA antibodies. Whenever we go through Cyrex Labs, we get testing for autoimmunity through them, they look at IgA and IgG combined, so you get more antibodies combined, so you get a greater quantity and it’s a more sensitive test. It’s what it comes down to.

But it’s a really important point to know that if your immune system is suppressed, not only are you not going to have enough white blood cells but you’re also not going to have enough of your T and B cells. They’re going to be lower. The B cells are what make antibodies. Those antibodies, what the antibodies are is they’re tags. It’s kind of like walking up to something, sticking a sticky note on it, and by tagging it and writing on there, “Kill this if you see this in the future.” That’s how your immune system becomes autoimmune or develops immunity.

If your total white blood cells are suppressed, your T and B cells are both suppressed, you may not have the capacity to produce antibodies. If this is the case, then you may show as false negative on your lab testing.

I’m Dr. Shook. I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate you taking time to visit us and learn more about your health. If you have us any questions or anything, let us know. We’d love to hear from you.

[End 0:02:09]

The Problem with the Typical Medical Approach to Thyroid Disorders

Transcription: The Problem with the Typical Medical Work-Up of Thyroid Disorders

[Start 0:00:00]

Hi, Dr. Shook here!

In this video, what I want to talk about are some of the common problems with allopathic or traditional medical approach to thyroid disorders.

With the typical patient that has a thyroid condition, you go to your primary physician, your primary care physician, and you will tell them that you have symptoms of fatigue. Your hair is falling out. You have brain fog all the time.

One of the things that they’re going to do is they’re going to order a thyroid marker or panel. Typically, what you get in this panel is one marker and one marker only and that is TSH, which is thyroid-stimulating hormone. That hormone is actually not a thyroid marker at all. It is an indirect measurement of your thyroid function.

What that is, the TSH is a hormone that’s made by your pituitary gland. If you go right here behind your eyes, between your eyes straight back, there is a small gland that looks like it has a little stalk and a little bulb on the end of it. It’s called your pituitary gland.

The pituitary gland makes thyroid-stimulating hormone. The thyroid-stimulating hormone signals your thyroid to ramp up its production of enzymes and to manufacture T4 and T3, which are your thyroid hormones. That is the only thing that’s typically measured.

If that number is high, then your doctor will reason that the gland is trying to signal your thyroid to make more hormones, so you must be low in thyroid hormone.

If that number is very, very low, then your doctor reasons that the pituitary is not telling your thyroid to make more hormone so you must have normal, or if it’s really low then you must have hyper or too much production of thyroid hormone.

In a lot of cases, most of the time that number is higher, which indicates or signals that your thyroid production is probably low. Okay, so what they do in that case is they’ll prescribe you a thyroid replacement hormone and say, “Okay, take this and let me know how you do.”

In a lot of people, what ends up happening is they don’t feel any better, or they might feel better for a short period of time, then they feel worse. Then there’s another scenario where patients go in, everything looks good. They say, “You know what, I think you’re fine. Everything is fine. Here, take an antidepressant.” That is a very common scenario.

The problem with this is that there is no appreciation for why the person feels the way they do. There’s absolutely no further investigation. Here’s the thing: it’s not that your doctor doesn’t mean well because they do mean well, but that’s how they’re trained. That’s what their training is, and that’s how it works.

I mean it can be a very frustrating system to be put into, but you know thank God we have our primary care physicians because they do so much for us; but with a lot of chronic and inflammatory diseases, it’s not a great system at this point in time.

A lot of your primary care physicians, they’ll tell you that. I mean there are some shortcomings, and this just happens to be one that’s a very, very big one.

Here’s the scenario: with this type of problem, what really needs to be done is they really need to be ordering a more expanded thyroid panel.

But here’s the issue: they’re not going to do that because they don’t really know how to use a lot of those different numbers. What they’ll do instead of doing that, they’ll refer you to an endocrinologist.

A lot of times, the endocrinologist will order a more expanded panel. With an endocrinologist, you are more likely to get tested for Hashimoto’s or for Graves’ disease, which are both autoimmune conditions to the thyroid, which 90 percent of low thyroid is an autoimmune condition called Hashimoto’s thyroiditis or Hashimoto’s thyroid.

The reason for that is because it is a very common autoimmune condition. A lot of patients think that they have a primary thyroid problem, or your physicians think that you have a primary thyroid problem when in reality the reason that you feel bad and the reason that your TSH and your markers are off or that your TSH and markers are normal but you feel bad is because you actually have a primary autoimmune condition called Hashimoto’s disease.

The real problem with this is that the medical community is not finding it, and if they find it, unfortunately addressing what drives or causes an autoimmune condition is not being done.

What is done is that typically you’re placed on a steroid or some type of immune-suppressing drug, or there are a lot of other more invasive, more radical procedures, which sometimes aren’t necessary. But the steroids and a lot of times these anti-inflammatories or these immune-suppressing drugs, they do nothing to identify why you have an autoimmune condition. They do nothing for your symptomatology except to stop the thyroid tissue destruction by your immune system.

What I want to do is just touch on the major problems in the diagnosis and workup of thyroid disorders within our primary care medical system or allopathic medicine. If you have any questions, let me know.

I’m Dr. Shook. I appreciate you taking time from your day to learn more about your health. If you need anything or have any questions, just let us know.

Thank you!

[End 0:05:30]

Autoimmune Food Triggers, Including Hashimoto's Thyroiditis

Transcription: Autoimmune Food Triggers, Including Hashimoto’s Thyroid Conditions

[Start 0:00:00]

Hi, Dr. Shook here!

In this video, what I’m going to talk about are autoimmune triggers. Now autoimmune triggers, you may wonder, how did I get an autoimmune disease in the first place?

Well first of all, you have to have a genetic predisposition to develop an autoimmune condition, and then you have to have environmental factors that turn those genes on so that you express autoimmunity, so that you lose self-tolerance and your body or your immune system no longer recognizes that your tissues are indeed you and not something foreign.

That’s called the phenotype, which is environment plus genes is your phenotype. That’s what it takes: environment plus a genetic predisposition, and then you express autoimmunity and your immune system attacks yourself.

Some of the things that we see that promote autoimmunity, and in particular, they promote we’re talking about Hashimoto’s thyroiditis or autoimmune thyroid conditions, but really, this applies to any autoimmune condition.

One of the really, really common things with Hashimoto’s and that’s been found in the literature is a relationship is a gluten sensitivity or allergy. I mean there’s research where a population of people that have been diagnosed with Celiac disease, they have a higher incidence rate of Hashimoto’s than general people in the population that don’t have Celiac disease. Basically, if you have Celiac disease and a full-blown gluten allergy, then you are more likely to have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.

Gluten has been around. A lot of people have heard that, and lot of people researching thyroid know this that you need to avoid gluten if you have an autoimmune thyroid condition. However, the foods a lot of times people go gluten-free and they think that they’re home free. “Okay, I found my gluten-free foods and I can eat other things that are very similar.”

There’s always great gluten-free foods out there that are wonderful or at least you think they are. But here’s the catch: you see there are foods that are called cross-reactive foods, and this is what I’m going to tell you about is this is cutting-edge science. This is immunology, and what I’m going to tell you is something that is going to just throw another kink in the equation, but here’s the thing: knowledge is power.

You take the information that I give you, and you use it to make your life better because a lot of people that have gone on gluten-free diets, for example, they have Celiac disease or that have Hashimoto’s, have gone on a gluten-free diet, and maybe they don’t feel better. I mean there are a lot of people that have Celiac disease that are gluten-free, but they’re nonresponsive. The reason for that is because of what I’m getting ready to share with you, something called cross-reactivity.

There are a number of foods that will react in your body just like gluten does. The reason for that is because the proteins, which are your body is mounting an attack against, your immune system is attacking the protein of gluten for example, okay. This gluten molecule gets into your bloodstream typically through a permeable gut or a leaky gut. Your immune system sees this protein, this molecule, and it says, “You know what, whoa I have no idea what is that.”

It launches an attack against it, and your B cells go out and they put these sticky notes all over, which are called antibodies that circulate through your body. Then the T cells, they come along. The T cells, they destroy the protein, but a lot of your own tissues look like some of those proteins that leak in. Well, this cross-react to foods. Let’s say for example that you have an allergy or sensitivity to gluten. These cross-reactive foods, they will react the same way in your body that gluten does.

Here’s the list. I’m going to read a list. We use Cyrex Labs Array Number 4, which is the Gluten-Associated Cross-Reactive Foods and Food Sensitivity Panel. Here are some foods that have similar see your protein is made up of a bunch of links in a chain. Well, those links are amino acids. When you put amino acids together, you make a protein.

This gluten has a sequence of proteins. These foods that I’m going to tell you about, a lot of them have a very similar sequence of amino acids that gluten does. Therefore, your immune system can mistake these foods for gluten and attack it as well, and you have the same response to these foods that you do to gluten.

Let me just read some of these foods. Rye, barley, spelt, Polish wheat, cow’s milk, and then there’s casein, which is the protein in dairy. There’s alpha-casein and beta-casein. Those are things that we have to check because milk and dairy can react in your gut as well just like gluten can.

There’s casomorphin, which is a compound that if you listen to this, -morphin and morphine is similar. These can be very addictive substances that your body metabolizes, but also you can have an autoimmune attack against it.

There’s whey protein, chocolate milk. There is oats, yeast, coffee. This is a devastating one for a lot of people, and it is because there’s an addiction to coffee, but here’s the deal. Mainly we’re talking about instant coffees. Instant coffees are processed, and a lot of times, they can be cross-contaminated with gluten or wheat. It can have it in there, and you’ll have a response to it. But this actually checks for coffee, sesame, buckwheat, sorghum, millet, hemp, amaranth. Now I’m going to hit you with another one – quinoa.

A lot of people eat quinoa. They’re on gluten-free diets and they think they’re doing the best thing for themselves. You know what, you might be but you might not. You can cross-react to quinoa.

Tapioca, tapioca is another one. It’s very common in breads and in pizza crusts and things. It’s one of the more palatable replacements for gluten, and you can react to it as well.

Teff, soy, egg, corn. Here’s a major, major one: corn is bad for a number of reasons, but we’re talking about cross-reactivity, corn I mean a lot of people are like, “You can’t take my corn because I’ve got my corn chips. I’ve got my corn tortillas. I’ve got all these things that are corn that I can have.” Here’s the deal, folks, if you cross-react to it, it’s got to go. I mean there’s just no other way to do it.

Here’s another one: rice and potato. That’s right! You could cross-react to potato.

All these foods, you can react in your body, cause inflammation, perpetuate autoimmunity, and be an autoimmune trigger.

This is why we wanted to do this test, so we can figure out what’s going on with you, get out of your diet, decrease your inflammation, heal your gut, get your body healthier. Then address any type of anemias, dysglycemia, blood sugar issues, gut, liver problems, and also fatty acid metabolism, so you can absorb your fats for your brain, for your nerves, for your hormones, so that you can get your vitamins, your A, D, E, and K.

This is the Gluten-Associated Cross-Reactive Foods and Food Sensitivity Panel. I have done this panel on myself, and I react to a ton of these foods. I mean actually more than most of my patients.

You know it is what it is. I didn’t like it, but I want to live longer. I want a better life, so this is what we got to do to figure it out. You want to get better; you got to run the tests. I mean there’s just no other way to do it.

You can do an elimination diet and you could take every single thing out, and strip it down, then you can add foods back in. But what we’re learning about that process is that when you add the food back in, you know I used to give it three days, but the delayed response can actually be 14 days later.

You eat your food and then 14 days later, you have inflammation from it. I mean if you want to add one food back in 14 days at a time and be unbelievably strict and keep a diary and a journal, you got a good chance at adding these foods back in. But that’s a very difficult thing to do.

You want to get results, you want to do the best thing, we’re going to have to do some testing, and we’re going to do some advanced immunological testing. I would say go to Cyrex Labs. You can learn more about it. That’s C-Y-R-E-X Labs dot com, cyrexlabs.com. That’s what we use and that’s what I recommend.

I just want to share with you some autoimmune triggers because there are some things out there that people are not aware of.

Now in the next video, I’m going to talk about some other physiological changes in your body, but in this video in particular, I want to cover cross-reactive foods and molecular mimicries.

Thanks! I’m Dr. Shook. Thanks for taking time to learn more about your health. If you need anything, just give us a call and let us know.

[End 0:09:09]

Physiological Triggers to Autoimmunity, Including Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis

Transcription: Physiological Triggers to Autoimmunity, Including Hashimoto’s Thyroid

[Start 0:00:00]

Hi, Dr. Shook here!

In this video, what I want to talk about are physiological stimulators or triggers of autoimmune conditions.

One of the major things that we see in our clinic is blood sugar dysregulation or dysglycemia, and it doesn’t matter if you have high blood sugar or low blood sugar. What happens when your blood sugar spikes or dips is that you stimulate an inflammatory chemical called interleukin-6 and you stimulate its production.

Interleukin-6 stimulates the Th17 system that is part of your immune system. The Th17 system, basically, if you think of it it’s like acid or if you’ve ever seen any of those movies, Aliens, and the saliva that the alien puts off will melt the metal, that’s kind of what the Th17 is. It is this very toxic, highly inflammatory response that it creates. Interleukin-6, through the spikes and dips in blood sugar, will promote Th17. You don’t want Th17 to be produced because that is the system that promotes autoimmunity.

I just wanted to talk some of the physiological triggers to autoimmunity. I mean anytime we look at a patient that has an autoimmune condition, we’re just trying to improve their health, we look for the most foundational aspects of their health.

First of all, are they autoimmune and do they have inflammation? If they do, then we use specific approaches to treat this physiology, treat how your body works to improve that.

Then the next thing that we look at is their anemia. Do you have the right size and enough quantity of red blood cells because they are very important because they carry oxygen to all of the tissues in your body? Without oxygen, the cells of your body can’t make energy, so you’ve got to have oxygen.

The third thing that we look at is we look at dysglycemia. Dysglycemia, as you already know, causes a lot of problems with the upregulation or increase in interleukin-6, and that stimulates the Th17 system, which is like the acid from the alien, right?

The fourth thing that we look at is we look at your gut and liver. Now, we look at the gut and liver because a lot of patients that have Hashimoto’s, your digestive health actually plays a

big role in your thyroid. That’s because what we know about neurogastroenterology, so the nervous system of the gut, is that most of your nervous system is actually in your intestinal tract.

Whenever you have inflammation of your intestinal tract, it can become leaky and porous, so you can actually leach proteins, bacteria, and things through the intestinal wall into the bloodstream, which is on the other side, that shouldn’t be there. That promotes autoimmunity. That’s actually the leading theory on how autoimmune conditions begin.

So your gut, it plays a major role. We look at that. That’s our fourth priority is gut and liver. We look at the liver because it is involved in so many chemical processes that are just countless and it’s extremely vital at the conversion of T4, which is the primary hormone made by your thyroid gland, into T3. Sixty percent of the thyroid hormone that’s made gets converted in the liver to T3, which is the most active form in your body.

Imagine if your liver wasn’t working properly. You wouldn’t have much T3 and you could have symptoms of low thyroid, even if your quantities of T4 were normal and your TSH was normal.

Then, the last thing that we look at is we look at fatty acid metabolism. We look to see are you absorbing your fats. We can do that a number of different ways, but that’s really important because your fat and the fat itself that you consume dietarily is important for all of your hormone production, for the integrity of your cells because every cell in your body has a wall.

That wall is made up of phospholipids. Those are fats, so you have to have adequate fat. You have to absorb it, and the one thing that’s also key with fats are your fat-soluble vitamins. Those are vitamins A, D, E, and K. Those are all fat soluble; without absorption of those, you’re going to be deficient.

I just wanted to share some of the physiological triggers of autoimmunity so that you would be more aware if you’re having problems regulating your blood sugar, that’s something that absolutely has to be addressed. We use a lot of protocols and nutraceutical support to help you figure out how to do that, so that we can transition you into eating a diet that’s not a specific diet and not using any kind of supplementation.

We want you to be healthy, but you got to get your blood sugar under control and that’s going to promote autoimmunity.

Molecular Mimicry, Immune Response to a Food and Hashimoto’s

Molecular Mimicry, how an immune response to a food or antigen that could predispose you to an autoimmune thyroid disorder.

Many of these foods cross react to thyroid tissues or enzymes. Many of these foods are foods people are eating on the Paleo diet! This is very, very important

Transcription: Molecular Mimicry, Immune Response to a Food and Hashimoto’s

[Start 0:00:00]

Hi, Dr. Shook here!

In this video, I want to talk to you about a rather new concept that is really revolutionizing the way that we look at autoimmune thyroid conditions.

There’s a concept and there’s something called molecular mimicry. Molecular mimicry is where in our case something that becomes present in the body, looks a lot like on a molecular level, so looking at the molecule, or the shape of the proteins, or anything in your body, any kind of food in particular, and some of your own tissues.

Molecular, they’re similar; they mimic one another. They look close enough that the body can’t distinguish them as being something that is different. Okay, that’s the key concept.

What they discovered, and this is through some fantastic research that Dr. Datis Kharrazian has been involved in. He’s been one of my instructors, and just a fantastic person that has provided so much information and research and dedicated his time to furthering our knowledge on autoimmune conditions, and thyroid conditions, and brain conditions. That we really owe a lot to him because he and some other fantastic doctors are working together in pioneering some information that really is changing the way that we approach autoimmune conditions as a whole.

But Datis has done some amazing work. In particular, they did this thing where they looked for molecular mimicry in the body, and in particular, they looked at 200 foods. They discovered that of these foods, they had at the time, there were about 40 foods that they found if you had basically if your immune system was sensitive to those foods and it would initiate an immune response to attack and destroy those foods, it saw those foods as foreign. You had a sensitivity to them that those foods were close enough on a molecular level to tissues or enzymes involved in your thyroid that your immune system could mistakenly attack your own tissues because of exposure to those foods.

Let me just repeat that. Foods that you eat can look close enough on a level of the molecule to your own tissues. So similar as far as the shape of the molecule, that if your immune system becomes sensitive to foods and your immune system launches an immune response against those foods, those same cells that are circulating and trying to find the molecules the food that you eat, if they come across your thyroid tissue or 5-deiodinase, which is an enzyme that converts thyroid hormone, if those immune cells come across your thyroid, those enzymes, there’s T4, T3, and also there’s one other, 5-deiodinase, the TSH receptor, so it’s something on the outside of the cell and the thyroid, just know this: it will tag.

Your immune system will mark those parts or enzymes that are involved in thyroid function. It will mark those as being foreign as if it were one of those foods that you ate. Then what happens is, your immune system now thinks that that thyroid tissue is actually some of that food that you ate, which your immune system thinks is foreign. It’s a foreign substance. You launch an immune attack every time you consume that food, not only against the food but also against your thyroid. Therefore, that’s it. It creates an autoimmune thyroid condition.

Listen, this is cutting-edge immunology here. I mean these guys, Datis and the doctors that are doing this work with him, I mean this is truly amazing, amazing information.

What I want you to know is we have a panel now. We have an immune system blood panel that we can run, that looks at 200 different foods to see if you react to them. If you do, then we’ve got to get those foods out of your diet if you have Hashimoto’s because what that means is they can molecularly mimic those thyroid tissues. We don’t want those because that will create an immune response and that could, if you’re not already attacking those tissues that could put you at risk for attacking those tissues in the future.

If we run the immune panel, that’s another panel through Cyrex, and we identify that yes, you do have autoimmunity attack those tissues, then we follow up with this 200 food panel. We discover that you’re attacking some of those foods that will cross-react due to molecular mimicry, then we’ve got to get those out of your diet because you’ve got to calm down the immune system, stop it from attacking the tissues. You do that one of the ways is by removing the triggers.

I hope this makes sense on molecular mimicry. It’s really cutting-edge science and some things that I think are going to change the way that we manage the thyroid. Basically, what it comes down to is we can dial in and fine-tune a diet it for you. That’s critical because the food triggers are so huge with Hashimoto’s.

If you have any questions, let me know. I appreciate you taking time from your day to learn more about your health and what you might do in order to help yourself or someone that you know or love.

Thanks!

[End 0:05:30]

How Tuna Could Be Making Your Autoimmune Thyroid (Hashimoto’s) or Autoimmune Condition Worse

Transcription: Why Tuna could be Making your Autoimmune Thyroid (Hashimoto’s) or Autoimmune Condition Worse

[Start 0:00:00]

Hi, Dr. Shook here!

In this video, what I want to talk about is how tuna can be making your thyroid condition worse or predispose you to Hashimoto’s disease.

We have some new science that is telling us that tuna and the protein in tuna, uncooked not cooked tuna, molecularly mimics some of your own thyroid tissue and enzymes within the thyroid. This molecular mimicry means that some people, if they become sensitive to tuna, which can happen, a lot of people with the Paleo diets and they’re gluten-free, that also have thyroid and Hashimoto’s conditions, whenever they consume that food, their body can become sensitive to it.

A lot of times, what you’ll find is that people, they’re on a Paleo diet, they eat a lot of certain foods, and they don’t have that much variety. What ends up happening in those cases is that a lot of times, your body lacks variety. If it sees the same thing over and over and over, it can become sensitive to that food, which is basically an immune response to the food that is silent. It’s not something that it even causes you GI distress and it’s not anaphylactic like you swell up.

The problem with this is that if you develop a sensitivity, and typically this happens if your gut becomes leaky or if you develop leaky gut or intestinal permeability. This is a process that occurs with inflammation there’s a lot of different mechanisms that can bring that about, making your gut porous that tuna will leak into the bloodstream through the gastrointestinal wall and through your intestinal wall. Your immune system will see that tuna as foreign and attack it.

Because the tuna protein is like a lot of those tissues in the thyroid and enzymes within the thyroid, your thyroid tissues and enzymes can be attacked mistakenly. Your body is actually attacking the tuna protein mistakenly, but the problem is that the proteins, large proteins from tuna don’t usually leak into your bloodstream unless you have a leaky or hyperpermeable intestinal tract.

Usually, that protein gets broken down into amino acids, which are the building blocks for protein, and then those are smaller molecules and they can go through your intestinal lining safely into the bloodstream for use by the body.

I wanted to share this with you because tuna is one of at least 40 foods that have been shown to mimic your thyroid tissue or look like it, so that if you become sensitive to those foods and you eat them and they stimulate an immune response that can cause you to have an attack on your thyroid and either predispose you to developing an autoimmune thyroid condition or perpetuate and make your current autoimmune condition exacerbated or worse.

I’m Dr. Shook. I appreciate you for taking time to know more about your health. If you need anything or have any questions, feel free to give us a call.

Thanks!

[End 0:03:08]

Do you need to be on thyroid replacement therapy if you have Hashimoto’s?

Transcription: Do you need to be on Thyroid Replacement Therapy if you have Hashimoto’s

[Start 0:00:00]

Hi, Dr. Shook here!

In this video, I want to answer a common question that I get.

The question is, “If I have Hashimoto’s or an autoimmune thyroid condition, do I need to take my thyroid medication?”

My answer to that is, first of all, I’m not going to tell you to take or not take any kind of medication. What I will tell you is that if you don’t have enough thyroid hormone, you need to be taking your replacement.

The reason for that is because every single cell in the body, brain included, everything they have receptors for thyroid hormone on them. The thyroid hormone acts like the gas in your car. If you don’t have it, it slows down the energy production of every cell. Therefore, that’s why one of the symptoms with hypothyroidism is just low energy, just completely sluggish and you feel terrible. That is because you don’t have enough circulating thyroid hormone.

If you’re going to ask me a question about thyroid hormone, if you’re deficient, you need it. It doesn’t matter. I mean you’ve got to have it. You want to take it, and then while you’re working through quenching and dampening your autoimmunity to try to be in remission, then yeah, I mean you need to do those things together.

My answer is absolutely. Then I’ll tell you that if you quench the autoimmunity and you get a more stable baseline because now you no longer have an autoimmune attack, destroying the gland periodically and releasing more hormones into the bloodstream, spiking and causing spikes and dips, you can get a better baseline for what levels you actually need if you can keep it in remission and see what indigenous production capability your thyroid hormone actually has. Therefore, the primary care physician or endocrinologist will be better able to regulate those levels.

A classic symptom of Hashimoto’s is having to adjust over a period of time constantly adjusting your thyroid hormone up, up, up over years, and they just keep going up. That typically is a sign that your gland has been repeatedly destroyed and every time it’s destroyed, probably it’s [unintelligible 0:02:25] you have less capacity to produce thyroid hormone; therefore needing to titrate up or increase your dosages of your hormone levels over time.

I’m Dr. Shook. I hope that you found some useful information from the video. I appreciate you taking time from your day to learn more about your health. If you have any questions or need anything, just call.

I’ll see you in the next video.

[End 0:02:47]

Which Thyroid Hormone is best?

Transcription: Which Thyroid Hormone is Best

[Start 0:00:00]

Hi, Dr. Shook here!

In this video, what I like to do is answer a very common question, and that is which brand of thyroid hormone should I be on?

Typically, there are either synthetics or there are bioidenticals. It really just depends on the physician’s preference as to what most patients get put on, and that’s just really a physician bias and opinion, but in reality, there are some considerations that you need to consider.

The bioidenticals, like Nature-Throid and Armour, they are bioidenticals, so it looks just like your T3 in your body. Those are primarily T3, so T3 is the more active form. T4 is the less active form. I mean some people will say it’s not active at all, but T3 is what’s really active and creates your energy levels and creates all of the positive effects that you want.

If you give Armour or Nature-Throid, those are primarily T3 and if someone that’s autoimmune and has autoimmune attacks against their gland, every time that tissue is destroyed, it releases T3 that’s stored in the gland into the bloodstream, and that causes a spike or rise in circulating T3.

If you’re taking T3 through a bioidentical source, you’re just going to increase that. For some people, that creates more insomnia, more restlessness, and more of the symptoms of the anxiety and the hyperthyroidism. Some people just don’t do well there.

Also, there are fillers or binders. I mean how they keep those capsules together is that they put something in there that allows it to stick and pack together. Those fillers tend to be cornstarch, and for people that are gluten sensitive, which we know is a big issue for thyroiditis or Hashimoto’s and autoimmune thyroid conditions, for those people that tend to be gluten sensitive, they often and if you’ll look back into the video, you’ll understand this. If you don’t, they often cross-react to the cornstarch that’s used to bind it, which is not a good thing at all. Some people would do better with a synthetic T4.

What they found and what’s known from research years ago with a lab that one of my mentors and teachers, Dr. Datis Kharrazian, he and some of his colleagues discovered was that people that really progressed with Hashimoto’s would develop autoimmunity to their own thyroid hormones.

With Hashimoto’s, it’s typically the binding globulins, TPO, which is thyroid peroxidase or thyroid binding globulin, is what you typically attack, but you can attack a lot of other tissues. If it’s really progressed, you can actually attack your own T3 and your own T4 hormone.

Think about this: if you had progressed and you are attacking your own thyroid hormone, your immune system was attacking it, and then the practitioner came along and gave you Nature-Throid or Synthroid, which is primarily a bioidentical. It looks just like your hormone, and you took that, you would increase the levels of T3, your bioidentical T3, putting a bigger target in your circulatory system. It can really cause your immune system to have a much bigger target and a much larger inflammatory response, so not a good thing.

A lot of people just typically would do better with a synthetic T4 and it’s just a better way to go for them, but that’s a very common question that we get. A lot of patients will say, “My doctor wants to give me Armour because it’s bioidentical.”

They have a preference because they usually just like something and maybe they’d just use it and had to get results with it, but the fact is that really it’s an issue being an individualized approach, I mean depending on which one is best.

I mean you can see maybe you need a synthetic and you don’t need Armour or Synthroid. Those bioidenticals can be really problematic. You can see from my explanation. It’s just like with all healthcare. I mean it really all has to be tailored to you. If someone is not willing to take the time to tailor it to you, you need to find someone that’s willing to try and help you figure out, customized help for your body.

I hope that helps to answer your question, and I hope you guys learned something from this.

I’m Dr. Shook. I appreciate you taking time from your day to learn more about your health. If you need anything or have any questions, just call or just shoot us an email.

Thanks!

[End 0:04:33]

Did you know that low thyroid hormone promotes brain degeneration?

Transcription: Did you know that Low Thyroid Hormone Promotes Brain Degeneration

[Start 0:00:00]

Hi, Dr. Shook here!

In this video, I want to talk about how a low thyroid promotes brain degeneration.

A lot of people don’t realize this but the fact is when you have a low thyroid, your mental fatigue, and your brain fog, and your, just in general, lack of energy is not just due to the lack of thyroid hormone itself.

What they found is that whenever you have an autoimmune thyroid condition, your immune system sees the thyroid gland as a foreign substance. It attacks the gland and destroys it periodically whenever the immune system is exacerbated or triggered. What we found is that people that have Hashimoto’s, where they have antibodies against their thyroid itself also, in a lot of cases, develop antibodies to their cerebellum.

Now cerebellum is we call it the little brain. It’s in the back of the brain, the back of the head here. It has two lobes and looks like a smaller version of your cortex or the larger part of the brain. All input from your body goes into the cerebellum. To keep this simple, it goes to the cerebellum and it’s processed there first. It is responsible for balance and coordination. It can affect vertigo and dizziness, your ability to walk.

What happens is through this molecular mimicry, and remember I talked about this in another video, but that’s basically where a tissue for example the cerebellum is molecularly so on the level of the molecule, the shape is similar to that tissues of the thyroid or enzymes within the thyroid and so similar that the immune system does not differentiate them and can’t tell them apart.

What ends up happening is that you develop antibodies to the thyroid, a lot of people with Hashimoto’s we found will develop these antibodies to the cerebellum. Not good. What ends up happening here is that the autoimmune attack not only attacks the thyroid gland, it attacks the cerebellum, destroying brain tissue. This is not science fiction. This is absolute fact.

There’s a few other things I want to mention, and I will at the end not this video – that are also cross-reactive through molecular mimicry, other targets. But what ends up happening is as this progresses, people that have Hashimoto’s, a lot of times, this just goes unnoticed, and what you’ll see is that this people with Hashimoto’s will start to develop issues with some balance disorders or dizziness.

They’ll get cases of vertigo, and they’ll think it’s just through either blood sugar or that they have neuritis or there’s something along those lines. This mechanism of cerebellar autoimmunity is almost never recognized. I mean this is something that is new, within the science. It’s new within the literature.

What we do is we order a laboratory test through Cyrex Labs. It is a multiple tissue antibody test. What we do is we find out if you’re autoimmune. We order that test, and we get that test so that we can see if you have cerebellar antibodies, if you have GAD65 antibodies, which is an enzyme. That’s one of the things that I’ll talk about in the end, but we want to see if you’re getting other tissue destruction because what we’re going to do is predictive. It’s predictive of tissue death and damage, future problems with that organ.

Are we concerned about your cerebellum being destroyed through autoimmunity that goes unchecked? Absolutely! Because what can happen is, you develop like I said problems with balance, with dizziness. You can develop ataxia. Ataxia is where you can’t even walk, and then you can develop a tremor. These are all things. Your cerebellum is vital. I mean your entire brain is vital, but it’s something that we cannot let it go unchecked.

If we don’t check that, then sometimes when we do this, we want to find out what else is there because it explains a lot of other symptoms that someone is having, and it also lets us know how urgent and dire the situation is because if you’re having multiple tissue attacks, your cerebellum is going. You have GAD65 antibodies. You’ve got these antibodies to your transglutaminase in your intestinal tract. You’ve got antibodies to your thyroid. These are major issues.

The only way you can address those is by figuring out the triggers; removing the things that are pushing this process along; support the immune system; help the person to heal so that you can put that autoimmunity in remission because you cannot afford to lose brain tissue, thyroid tissue, gut. I mean all these things are vitally important.

What ends up happening is that these people that have Hashimoto’s or these thyroid disorders, their physician it’s just missed, and there’s no support for the brain.

One of the ways that you can tell if this is something that could be happening to you is if you get absolute fatigue, you just get exhausted when you try to use your brain for example to read, but you do no physical activity. Because what does that is it taxes the brain, and it taxes the ability, the metabolic capacity of the brain to work. If you become exhausted from trying to use it just for mental activities, that’s not a good sign. That’s something.

What we do is we look at the thyroid, but then we also assess the brain. By assessing the brain, just like with personalized approach to healthcare. It means what you have to have. We look at what’s going on, see if we can identify the mechanism. It is a problem with your brain endurance and it’s a circulation issue where you’re not getting enough oxygenation, you have hypoxia, not enough oxygenation to the brain. If that’s the case, then we want to identify the mechanisms and see if we can increase circulation to the brain.

If it’s a blood brain barrier issue, because you have a barrier called the blood brain barrier. It keeps larger molecules and inflammatory molecules out of the brain tissue. If that barrier is compromised and you are letting inflammatory chemicals into the brain and you’re activating the immune system of the brain, which are called microglial cells.

These microglia, they’re extremely protective of the brain. They will destroy everything and create massive inflammation and that can cause a lot of issues with the brain that can cause issues with transneuronal degeneration, which is where the brain shrinks. There’s so many problems there.

Then we’re going to look at things like you have serotonin and dopamine issues where you’re not producing the normal brain neurotransmitters and that can cause a number of problems from system function to brain function.

We want to assess the brain. A lot of people, that is one of the things that kind of they’re taken aback almost like, “Wow! My brain is affected by this?” Absolutely! I mean absolutely the contemporary literature and science behind this all show us that this is occurring and this is happening. Basically, what we do is we just look to see what’s there, and we address it appropriately.

That’s part of looking at the thyroid, too. A lot of times if you’re watching my other videos, you know one of the things that we have to do is we have to do a lot of testing. We have to do the testing because if you have a problem, it has to be identified. We cannot customize or tailor a program to help you without this testing. At this point, you can’t afford to waste time and that’s really because time could be brain tissue. It could be thyroid tissue. That could be quality of life. I mean these are not things that we can take lightly, so we get the tests.

We order a lot of tests through Cyrex Labs because they are the cutting edge. It’s the only place where we can get a lot of these antibody tests. It’s the only place that we’ll do the IgA and IgG antibodies combined, which is more sensitive. I mean, I digress. But anyway, I just wanted to cover this and talk about this topic and you know why you can have brain degeneration with thyroid, especially Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.

I’m Dr. Shook. I hope you found this informative. If you need anything, just let us know. If you have any questions, shoot us an email. I appreciate you taking time from your day to learn more about your health. I look forward to sharing some more information with you in the future.

Thanks!

[End 0:08:27]

An important step we take when working with patients that have Hashimoto’s.

Looking at Other Autoimmune Conditions with Hashimoto’s Thyroid

[Start 0:00:00]

Hi, Dr. Shook here!

Today, I want to talk about something that we commonly see with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.

What we look for initially, most patients have not had thyroid antibodies checked, and typically we’ll screen patients using something called a comprehensive metabolic panel. This panel is a very expanded blood panel that lets us survey your physiology and look for a lot of potential problems. But included in our thyroid portion of that panel, there are about 10 to 12 markers. It just depends really on what I decide based on your history.

We look at TPO antibodies, which is thyroid peroxidase. We look at the binding globulins, thyroid binding globulin antibodies. If you have antibodies to those things, it means that you have Hashimoto’s. Now you could have euthyroid Hashimoto’s, which means that you’re asymptomatic. Your TSH levels are normal, but you have an inflammatory autoimmune condition that is considered Hashimoto’s. You don’t have to have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis where there’s an increase.

There’s a few different ways that we can describe Hashimoto’s. The first thing we do is we look to see are there antibodies to the thyroid. If we have antibodies to the thyroid, the next thing we want to do because we know that autoimmune conditions are expansive. An expansive autoimmunity means that if you have lost self-tolerance, meaning your immune system is attacking your own tissues, you are likely to have other tissues that are being attacked that you are not yet aware of.

What we do is we order Array 5 through Cyrex Laboratories. That is a Multiple Tissue Autoimmunity Panel that surveys your entire physiology. It surveys your blood, not entirely, but it surveys a number of tissues I think 24 or more tissues. What we look is we’re looking for where else is this autoimmunity.

What we tend to find is that someone that comes in with an autoimmune condition, they will have other symptoms, and those other symptoms are typically not really recognized but you know that they’re there. You might have some joint pain or have low blood pressure, or you may even have some issues where you’re not digesting your food that well, but it’s not something that is bad enough that you’re actively seeking treatment for. But once we survey your physiology, we ask you this question on your history, we pick up on those things, and we start to put this puzzle together.

When we order Array 5, what it shows us is do you have antibodies to these other tissues. For example, if your blood pressure is low, you could have some antibodies to your adrenal glands. Your adrenal glands are essential because they sit on top of the kidneys. What they do is they help with the regulation of your blood pressure. If they’re being attacked by your immune system, you could be developing some Addison symptoms, which is like Addison’s disease. It’s a disease of autoimmunity that relates to basically your inability to produce cortisol, which those glands make.

We’re looking for these antibodies to other tissues. Let’s say your joints may hurt some as well, so maybe you have some antibodies to your cartilage, rheumatoid-like symptoms. Maybe your inability to digest your food properly is actually because you have antibodies to some of the cells in your stomach that make your stomach acid. We start to find these other things. We want to know what else is going on with you because we need to know the overall picture of what’s happening.

See the problem with conventional medicine is that autoimmune conditions are not diagnosed until there’s visible tissue destruction. If you have rheumatoid arthritis, I cannot diagnose it until there is joint deformity, or if there is Addison’s disease, or if you have antibodies to your adrenal glands, that’s not going to be diagnosed until your cortisol has flatlined, more or less.

Basically what we want to do is determine we’re going to look at these predictive antibodies and that’s the key word: it’s predictive. If you have antibodies to a tissue, that is predictive of future organ or system autoimmune attack and possible failure. We want to know what else is your immune system attacking. When you got one autoimmune condition, very likely, very likely autoimmune conditions are expansive. If you don’t have it now, you will likely have it in the future. It’s very important that we know what’s happening now.

We’ll get Array 5 to better survey your physiology to know what else is happening. That can be very important for your treatment for us to support your health properly. That’s one of the places we start. I just want to clarify that and share that with someone that is interested in having someone work with their autoimmune thyroid condition. It’s one of the reasons that you want to have that test done.

I’m Dr. Shook. I hope you found this informative, and I appreciate you taking time out of your day to learn more about your health.

Have a great day!

[End 0:05:02]

Why your TPO antibodies may go up with Hashimoto’s thyroid as you get healthier.

Why your TPO antibodies may go up with Hashimoto’s thyroid as you get healthier.

Why the Paleo Diet doesn’t work for a lot of autoimmune conditions.

Transcription: Why I don’t Recommend the Paleo Diet for Autoimmune Conditions like Hashimoto’s Thyroid

[Start 0:00:00]

Hi, I’m Dr. Shook!

I like to talk with you today why I don’t recommend the Paleo Diet for patients with Hashimoto’s thyroid.

The Paleo Diet has really become I guess a cultural trend and phenomenon over the last 5 to 10 years. It is basically a diet that looks to our ancestry into how we ate before we were more civilized and before we had agriculturalism and before the Industrial Revolution, before we were farmers basically, when we were more of a hunter and gatherer.

It basically eliminates a lot of grains and a lot of things from the diet, and it can be a very, very good diet for a person, and it can help with autoimmune conditions. But I would just tell you, I don’t recommend that diet. There are a lot of potential problems with the Paleo Diet.

I can’t go into an exhaustive list of why I don’t like it, but let’s just take a few things for consideration. A lot of patients that have autoimmune conditions also have digestive disorders. A lot of autoimmunity and immune system issues are in the gastrointestinal tract, and if you don’t know this, this is the first time you’ve heard it, it’s absolutely true. The majority of your immune system is actually in your GI tract.

A lot of the foods that we eat cause gut inflammation, and not in every single person, but if you’re autoimmune, 80 percent to 90 percent of my autoimmune patients have drivers or causes of their autoimmune problem that are dietary and food related. Even foods that you might think are good for you like you’re eating asparagus for example. You say, “Asparagus can’t be bad for me.” It could.

What we do in our clinic is we put people on an elimination program because we want to know what foods cause you inflammation. But I’ll you that with the current science, the state of science today, what we are starting to do is have everyone order immune system tests for the different types of foods that they eat.

We have like 200 foods that we can run, testing on in a cooked and a raw form, a lot of which are on the Paleo Diet to see if your immune system reacts to them. What that means is that if your immune system reacts to that, you’ve got to get that food out of your diet or that’s going to cause inflammation that will tend to perpetuate and push the autoimmune condition. You have to decrease inflammation, and to decrease inflammation, you have to get all of the antigens or the triggers of the immune system out of the diet and out of the body.

An antigen can be a food, which we’re talking about here, but it can also be bacterial infections, dysbiosis and overgrowth of good bacteria in the gut. It can be H. pylori, which is a bacteria that can live in the stomach or the GI tract. It can be a fungal infection like a yeast overgrowth. It can be a parasite. I mean it can be a number of different things that we have to identify, we have to kill that stuff or get it out of your diet, or you’re going to have continual inflammation.

The Paleo Diet, although it’s good, it has a lot of foods in it that can feed SIBO or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. A lot of patients that have thyroid problems or autoimmune conditions also have digestive issues. These digestive issues can come from a number of different problems. It can come from you having sensitivity to the food that causes an immune response, which I’m talking about. It can be that you have an overgrowth of bacteria that live and feed off of FODMAPS.

Now I do an entire separate video on FODMAPS, but FODMAPS are a group of short-chain and medium-chain. Basically, it’s different types of sugars and compounds that those bad bacteria in your gut, the small intestinal bacteria that overgrow, they feed off of it. What they’re going to do is they’re going to produce gases that they’re going to ferment. They’re going to cause you to be gassy and have diarrhea or they’re going to cause constipation. You can’t have that with an autoimmune condition.

The Paleo Diet is full of full of FODMAPS, full of FODMAPS. That’s one problem. It also has nightshades in it. Nightshades, which are a group of plants that have compounds in them that can stimulate a leaky gut or a hyperpermeable intestinal tract that is another video that I do but my point with this being that the Paleo Diet is not the right diet for everyone. It might help you. It might not.

I want to let my patients and people that are considering a Paleo Diet know, don’t be defeated. If you try something like that, and it helps you a little bit but you’re not better, or you go through periods of feeling better and worse, or you just feel worse altogether, there’s a reason for it.

Here’s the best diet. I can tell you exactly what the best diet is: it’s a diet that’s right for you, the diet that works for you. Every single person needs to eat an individualized diet. Now we can get in the ballpark, depending on what we know about your general health. But what we do and I want to get people better, we want to get people better here.

What we do, through Cyrex Laboratories we can order and I talked about it briefly – a 200-food antibody sensitivity panel. Basically, what that panel will tell us is it will tell us what foods you’re reacting to right now. Guess what we’re going to do?

We’re going to get that panel. We’re going to get all those foods out of your diet. We’re going to focus on healing your digestive tract. We’re going to focus on other priorities that you have metabolically, and we’re going to see what happens. We’re going to follow up with you, and we’re going to address what’s left, and we’re going to keep following up until we’ve worked through this problem.

In our clinic, we have to order advanced diagnostic labs so that we can figure out what’s going on. If you don’t do the right tests, you can’t figure out how to help somebody. You can just do diets, but listen you’re talking about a process that can take years to work through, to figure out what’s going on, and sometimes you’ll feel better and then worse and you just don’t know.

You’ve got to order the test to figure out what’s going on, to come up with the right plan, to help you restore your health.

I’m Dr. Shook. I just want to talk about why the Paleo Diet and really any diet, there is not one diet that works. It’s what diet is best for you. I want to talk about diet a little bit because it comes up quite a bit.

There’s a growing trend about Paleo with autoimmune conditions, and yes, it can help. It has helped a lot of people because a lot of people have problems with grains, and grains are highly associated with Hashimoto’s, but there are so many patients with Hashimoto’s that have cross-reactivity. Basically, there are a lot of foods that will react in your body like gluten does, which comes from wheat and it’s in other grains, so you’ll have to look at these cross-reactive foods, too.

I mean you can try it and see how you do, but these generalized diets are actually a lot of people think that’s going to be the thing that helps them, that’s going to be the magic bullet. The fact is if you try it and it doesn’t work or your symptoms wax and wane, then you’re missing part of it.

Don’t be defeated! I’ve just seen that way too many times where people they become defeated and they lose faith that they can never get better. There is a way that you can best work with your body to help it heal.

I’m Dr. Shook. If you have any questions, let me know. I appreciate you taking time from your day to learn more about your health.

[End 0:07:49]

Latex and autoimmune Hashimoto’s Thyroid

Translation: How BPA, Latex and Fire Retardants cause Problems with Autoimmune Hashimoto’s Thyroid

[Start 0:00:00]

Hey, Dr. Shook here!

In this video, I want to talk about something that you may not have heard much about in the world of autoimmune thyroid conditions.

As a lot of people that find me, they either suspect that they have an autoimmune problem by researching what can they do for their low thyroid symptoms or I have patients that have been confirmed, diagnosed with Hashimoto’s, or they have another, maybe Graves, but primarily I work with hypo or Hashimoto’s patients. They come to me and they are looking for help. A lot of people find me through things that I publish either videos or text on the current topics and issues with autoimmune thyroid conditions.

This topic that we’re going to talk about in this video is something that in the contemporary literature, so what is being published today and what we know about just in the last year or so, is very relevant, very important. I think it is a game changer in regards to how we approach autoimmune thyroid conditions and autoimmunity in general.

We’ve known that autoimmune conditions typically they’re created or they’re started with a trigger. A trigger can be an antigen, something that flares up the immune system. That flaring up of the immune system is typically the reason that your body attacks itself and not just what you’re exposed to, that antigen that thing that you’re exposed to because your immune system react is because of something called molecular mimicry.

I’ve talked about this in a lot of other videos, but briefly molecular mimicry when you’re exposed to something. That’s something, whatever it maybe whether it be a protein in a food or whether it’s been an environmental compound, which is what we’re going to talk about in this video, it looks enough on a molecular level. If you look at that as a molecule as the structure of the molecule, it’s similar enough to your own tissues that your immune system when it marks and tags that thing and circulates these cells to search for more of that to make sure that it’s all out of your body or that it’s all identified so that your immune system can destroy it, some of your own tissues look like your cells that you’re exposed to.

That’s why it’s called mimicry because you’re exposed to it. It looks like your own tissues. Your immune system tags it and says hey this is bad, circulates through your body. It just so happens that some of your own tissues such as with Hashimoto’s disease where we have autoimmune disease against thyroid, there are several tissues that look like your thyroid tissue and not just the thyroid gland itself that very commonly get tagged mistakenly. Then your immune system every time it’s exposed to either a food that you have a sensitivity to or an environmental compound, which we’re going to talk about three major ones in this video that have molecular mimicry to your own tissues, you get tissue destruction at the same time.

What you have to do is you have to identify what are these triggers. Get them out of your body. Get them out of your life. Regulate the immune function. Heal the barrier systems. Stop the things that are perpetuating your autoimmune condition so you can put it into remission, so you no longer have thyroid damage, or you no longer have cerebellar damage, or GAD antibodies, or these other antibodies because if you have these antibodies that we find, they’re predictive for future damage or failure of the organ or the tissue.

Okay, so let’s talk about environmental compounds. We know that foods create molecular mimicry and they will cause an immune response and can cause you to have an attack against your own body. Regarding Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, there are some environmental compounds that have been found to very, very strongly mimic on the molecular level your own tissues. If you’re exposed to them, it can cause you to attack your own tissues in particular your thyroid.

Here they are: it’s latex, BPA, which is bisphenol A, and then there’s also tetrabromobisphenol A.

Okay, so latex for example we know latex is used in everything. It’s used in plastic bags. It’s used in gloves. It’s used in so many different things. If you’re exposed to that and that gets into your system, your immune system if it recognizes it and sees it, it can attack it and that can perpetuate and drive an autoimmune attack.

Now bisphenol A, used in plastics and there are a number of ways that we get exposed to that, but it’s a major, major, major problem. It’s in plastic bottles, every plastic bottle. One of the number one ways that you get exposed to it, number 1, this actually shocked me – you get exposed to it by drinking those coffee lids, those plastic coffee lids that you can get it any of the major chains at Starbucks or anywhere else. Those plastic lids when they are exposed to acidic liquids like coffee and heat like hot coffee, it releases BPA into the liquid and you consume it, I mean literally.

We’ve heard about BPA in baby bottles, in chew toys, and all kinds of other things, but even the things that aren’t BPA free, they’re not good either. But BPA in particular, now BPA is something that creates this molecular mimicry. If you’re exposed to it, it can perpetuate and exacerbate and cause you to develop an autoimmune condition to your thyroid.

Now the tetrabromobisphenol A, it’s a fire retardant. It’s sprayed on everything including furniture. It’s beds and beds and anything that have to meet these certain fire guidelines that they don’t combust too quickly, they spray the stuff all over it. This is a major molecular mimicker to your own thyroid tissues. I mean these are major, major, major problems.

Here’s the deal: what do we do? Well, one of the things that I’ll order is Cyrex Labs. You’re going to hear me talk a lot about Cyrex Labs. A lot of patients have come to my office, you’re going to get Cyrex Lab testing. You’re going to because if I’m going to help you to figure out what’s going on, we’ve got to work together and you’re going to have to get some labs done. Cyrex Array 11 looks for environmental compounds that you have exposures to because here’s the deal. If you got high levels of tetrabromobisphenol A, then guess what, we’re going to have to figure out where are you getting that exposure, and wherever you’re getting that exposure, we’re going to have to eliminate that exposure because that’s causing you to perpetuate your autoimmune thyroid condition.

Let me tell you: if this stuff is not being looked at and your doctor is not staying current on the contemporary state-of-the-art of the stuff, I mean this is what you got to do. So I got to talk about these environmental compounds. Now I want to talk about something else, too very briefly. A lot of people have heard of chelation therapy using compounds like DMSA, DMPS, and EDTA.

Listen to me, I’m not saying that chelation is bad, but I will tell you this. If you don’t have good barrier systems, if your gut is not healed and your blood brain barrier, which is the barrier that keeps bad stuff out of the brain, if that’s not intact and you try to chelate, there is literature, there is research, not just my opinion that shows the DMSA, the DMPS, the EDTA, which are chemicals that they use, that a lot of doctors will use to chelate. To chelate means to pull heavy metals out of the body, and the idea is that we pull them out of the tissue, so they get into the circulatory system and they’re passed out of the body.

Here’s the deal, folks: we know that those compounds I just mentioned have been shown to redistribute heavy metals to the body. That isn’t good because here’s the deal: heavy metals have an affinity or attraction for areas of high metabolism within your body. Guess what one of the areas of highest metabolism is? Right here, it’s in your brain.

You want to pull these things out and then get them into the circulatory system and get them into the brain, you’ve got to have an intact blood brain barrier and barrier system. Your gut and your brain barrier have to be intact or you are going to redistribute the stuff into glands that have high metabolism, endocrine glands, and into the brain, neurological tissue, which will cause a major immune response and could cause you to develop something like antibodies to your brain tissue. We call that multiple sclerosis.

Just please, please, please there are ways. I’m definitely not anti-chelation, but I will tell you this: your systems have to be very healthy. It’s like one of the last things that I would recommend that you even consider doing.

As you work through improving your health, you have to be intact. Very, very, very few people that I have ever seen, I would say, “Okay, give that a shot.” Because if we maximize your detoxification pathways in your liver, you maximize glutathione, your glutathione systems and glutathione levels in your body, we consider and talk about infrared sauna detoxification through sweating, we can eliminate a lot of these compounds. It is a fantastic way to do so, but you got to do it the right way.

Okay, I think that’s all I’m going to share. There’s a lot of other compounds we can talk about, but I’m going to go on for over 10 minutes here.

I’m Dr. Shook. I appreciate you visiting the website. I appreciate you listening to some of this information because it could literally make a difference in your quality of life and really help you out. If you have any questions, you need anything let us know. Please come back and we’ll have tons of information that we’ll be posting on autoimmunity because I work with autoimmune conditions. I work with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and autoimmune thyroid conditions.

I have Hashimoto’s myself, and I have psoriasis and there’s a lot of things I want to help people with this. I’m serious about it and I want you to get the information that’s current, and I don’t want you to get hurt. I want you to get the best results possible because you only have this one life, and I want to help you make it the best possible.

I’m Dr. Shook. If you need anything, have any questions, let us know, shoot me an email. I’ll try to help you out if I can.

[End 0:10:57]

How do you detox chemicals that trigger autoimmune conditions like hashimoto’s thyroiditis?

How do you Detox Chemicals that Trigger Autoimmune Conditions like Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis

[Start 0:00:00]

Hi, Dr. Shook here!

In this video, what I’d like to talk about are environmental toxins basically that trigger autoimmune conditions, and specifically we’re going to talk about Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.

Now on a previous video, I talked about three major environmental compounds that have been discovered to be triggers and that can exacerbate Hashimoto’s and that’s through a process called molecular mimicry or cross-reactivity. I also talked about that in a previous video and that is basically the process where a compound, which can be in this case environmental toxin, looks similarly or similar to your own tissues on a molecular level.

If you look at the structure of the molecule, it’s similar to your own tissues or your own thyroid tissue, and your immune system when it sees this foreign toxin, which we’re going to talk about the three toxins and how your body can eliminate them, it mistakes it for your own tissues and it triggers an autoimmune attack where exposure to that toxin cause an immune response that also causes your tissues to therefore be attacked because of the similarity in how they look.

What we’re going to talk about are some of these toxins that are covered in a previous video. Particularly, what I’m going to talk about one is a fire retardant. It’s a very common, something you can be very, very commonly exposed to with your furniture, in your bed, and anything that any fabric that’s fire retardant, treated with a fire retardant, and that is tetrabromobisphenol A.

The other thing that we’re going to talk about is BPA, and BPA is bisphenol A.

The third thing we’re going to talk about is latex.

This is something, all three of these things the BPAs are found in plastic bottles and a lot of different types of plastic products, anything from toys, I mean anything. These are very, very common exposures. Then obviously, the tetrabromobisphenol A, the fire retardant, is on anything that’s fire treated. That’s a lot of fabrics, a lot of different things are treated with this type of retardant. Then latex. You can just imagine anything from grocery bags to plastics, prep surfaces, things you might prepare your food on. Even cutting boards could be latex. There are a lot of things to really consider here.

We use Cyrex Labs in our office. If you come to my office for treatment or if you ask for our help, you have to get tested. I mean I can’t take patients on without the proper information. We can guess. You can make assumptions as to things that are in your environment or foods that you need to remove, but to get good results and not to waste time, you’ve got to do testing. Cyrex Labs is who I used for with majority of the testing that we do in our office because it’s immune system testing, and it checks for things that I can’t get with other labs, and if I can get some of the tests, we order in other labs like LabCorp, for example, they don’t check combined antibodies. Basically, the tests in other labs aren’t as sensitive.

I know the people that run that lab, Cyrex, and it is in my opinion, the best lab in the world for immune system testing. I trust it with my own health, and I have Hashimoto’s and psoriasis.

Here’s the deal. These three compounds, we’re exposed to them. We need to limit exposure first of all. This is one of the reasons we order a panel to see if your body is reacting to those. If your body is reacting to those, we know that you’re getting exposed, and we need to identify where you’re getting exposed to those compounds. Remove the exposure, and we need to figure out how we can get those out of your body.

These things aren’t things that really chelate and chelation I talked about this in a previous video. That’s not something that I’m an advocate of. Chelation is a process that pulls metals out of tissues in your body with the goal of eliminating them. I’m not saying chelation is bad, but most people can’t tolerate chelation because they have compromised blood brain barriers. They have compromised gastrointestinal barriers.

What ends up happening is these chelating agents that are given to patients to remove these heavy metals and try to eliminate them actually have been shown in the literature it’s not my opinion they have been shown in the literature to redistribute those heavy metals, which have an affinity or an attraction to areas or tissues that have a high metabolic activity or rate, which is your brain and your nervous system tissue.

We don’t want those metals redistributed there because it can create a metabolic or an inflammatory response and could trigger an autoimmune reaction. We don’t want autoimmunity to any tissues and especially not nervous system tissue because those nervous system tissues, those cells you’re born with the ones that you have. When your cells die off, they don’t go through a process of mitosis, which is cell division where the cells duplicate and regenerate. You’re born with the ones you have and that’s what you got. If you lose those tissues, they’re gone. The strategies, what we want to do to get these out of your body, there’s basically two different ways that detoxification of anything occurs with your body.

Basically, there’s a process called biotransformation. Biotransformation is the terminology that’s used in the scientific literature to describe liver detoxification. The liver uses two different chemical pathways: phase 1 and phase 2. Those are biochemical pathways that your body uses to capture, metabolize, break down in your liver and eliminate toxins from your body. We know that that occurs, but what we don’t really know is the timeframe and how well that occurs. There’s not just enough literature on that.

If that’s not scary, these things are all through our environment. We need to know what they do, how our body eliminates them. It’s unbelievable.

Biotransformation, these are glutathione pathways. Glutathione is one of the things that we use in our office with a lot of our patients to improve and maximize biotransformation or this process of detoxification, but these chemicals that’s not the only thing. See a lot of these chemicals are not just floating around in there. What they’ll actually do is a lot of these chemicals, this latex, the tetrabromobisphenol A, and the BPA, they will bind to human tissue. I said bind, so they will attach to human tissue. In that case, they will not chelate. You cannot eliminate them through biotransformation through the liver or liver elimination.

What you have to do is you actually have to wait for cell division or mitosis where the cells divide and the tissues are attached to to die, so that they sloughed off and they can be eliminated, so that process can take months. That’s one thing.

The other way that we can eliminate those things is through sweating. One of the things that we will use with some of our patients and I will advise is infrared or sauna therapy where you go through a protocol to eliminate these things from your body, but here’s the deal: you still have to have good barrier integrity. You have to get your body healthy enough to tolerate that. It’s a very, very valuable tool because when you sweat and you perspire, you can eliminate a lot of these compounds or things that are in the bloodstream.

There’s a right way and a wrong way to do it. It’s not something that you can’t just jump into a sauna for an hour because you have a lot of negative nasty side effects on the individual, their ability to tolerate heat, to sweat. I mean some people they go on there for a few minutes and some people can’t even do that. It’s a lot to consider.

I just wanted to cover how do you eliminate these toxins from your body that are known triggers for Hashimoto’s. This is current literature. This is very contemporary science right here, and this is how if you have Hashimoto’s where you have an autoimmune condition because if these things are cross-reacting and triggering an attack against your thyroid, we know that there is molecular mimicry with a lot of different foods and things that are like thyroid tissue.

If you find foods that are like thyroid tissue, it’s very likely that they could also be like some of the other tissues in the body that also get attacked at the same time that most patients with Hashimoto’s, they’ll also have other tissues that are being attacked like the cerebellum, this part of your brain, GAD65, your pancreas. There’s a number of different things that can be affected.

I just wanted to cover this briefly because it’s something that needs to be considered. That’s why you have to do the right testing to figure out what’s going on, so you can develop a plan that actually works.

I’m Dr. Shook. I appreciate you taking time from your day to learn more about your health. If you have any questions, you need anything, give us a call. I’m glad to help you out if we can. I’ll give you some more information.

Have a great

[End 0:08:54]

Common traits of people that have good outcomes with functional medicine for Hashimoto's.

Transcription: Common Traits of People that have Good Outcomes with Hashimoto’s Thyroid Recovery

[Start 0:00:00]

Hi, Dr. Shook here!

In this video, I want to talk about something that is an intangible. It’s something that is very important to the recovery of any autoimmune condition, but it’s something that I’ve seen consistently with patients that make a successful or have successful outcomes with functional medicine treatment.

Well, first of all you have to be your own advocate because once you’re diagnosed with an autoimmune condition or autoimmune Hashimoto’s, which is the most common form of autoimmune thyroid, once you’re diagnosed, you’re kind of on your own in the healthcare world because the approach that your primary care physician and endocrinologists take is not that seeks to address or help you with treating the root cause.

By coming and learning about, listening to what I have to teach and reading and becoming a scholar and actually learning about your own condition, you will know more than most physicians know. That is the absolute truth because they don’t study the drivers of these processes, the triggers of these processes, and any dietary lifestyle or nutraceutical approach to help and support your healing so that you can put it in remission, so that it’s no longer active and destroying your body and progressing to degeneration. You have to become a scholar. You have to be your own advocate. That’s one of the most important qualities.

Another thing that is very, very important and whenever people come into my office and they apply to become a patient, we have a process where we have you fill out forms in advance that you have to submit to us because I don’t take every patient. We don’t have room for everyone. If I don’t think that you have good outcomes with what we do, I don’t take you as a patient. It’s just very straightforward with you.

Of the patients that I’ve worked with, what I find is that people that have a negative mental attitude, that don’t have a support network, that don’t have people that care about them, or they’re in a bad job that are really just miserable in life, they don’t recover as well. I mean when I see that on the intake packet, I can just about tell you if that person is going to have a successful outcome. Whereas if you contrast that to someone that when they come to see me, their spouse is with them, holding their hand, they are in a loving relationship, have a lot of support, not constantly under psychological stresses, they tend to do better.

I’m not being hard on someone that has stresses in their life because we all have stresses, but it’s really about the support network. What it comes down to is when you are under stress and you have all these different stresses in your life, you don’t have support, you’re in a bad job, what ends up happening is that your body produces inflammatory chemicals. They’re called cytokines. In particular, you increase interleukin-6. Interleukin-6 is a cytokine that is pro-inflammatory. What it does is it stimulates the Th17 system, which promotes autoimmunity. We know that from the literature.

Psychologically, your psychological state affects your body and your chemistry. That’s a fact. We know that that occurs. If you’re chronically stressed and just in this bad environment, then you got to change your life. You got to get out of that relationship. You got to quit or find a different job that’s not stressful because that prolonged stress creates a prolonged inflammatory environment that will cause difficulty you in recovering. It doesn’t matter what supplements you take or what you do. You have to address that. That’s something that’s really a key. To a lot of people, it’s intangible that a lot of people miss and don’t realize.

It’s something that we found and other doctors have also noted. That’s different when you have a positive mental attitude and you got support in your life and passion and love, what it ends up happening is that your body produces opioids. Opioids actually help to stimulate regulatory T cells. Regulatory T cells have to regulate your Th1 and your Th2 immune system, so it balances the immune system.

I just want to share that because I think it’s a really important thing that people know, that patients know is that it’s not just about what we do. If someone has a really bad negative attitude, I mean I’ll probably not going to be able to help you because your psychology plays into your physiology.

I hope that makes sense, and I’ll give you some food for thought especially if you’re under a lot of stress because I’m not being hard on you, and I’m not saying that I won’t try to help you as your doctor, but I can tell you for sure it promotes inflammatory chemistry and promotes autoimmunity.

I hope this has been helpful. I hope it gives you something to think about.

I’m Dr. Shook. If you have any questions, let us know. I appreciate you taking time from your day to learn more about your health.

Thanks!

[End 0:05:04]

About the Author:

Dr. Shook has psoriasis and Hashimoto's disease and has trained extensively in functional medicine, epigenetics, and human performance optimization. DrBradShook.com is a resource to help people with Hashimoto's disease, thyroid dysfunction, and other autoimmune conditions learn more about how they can complement their current medical care and support their thyroid and autoimmunity naturally.

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