Last week I put together a brief presentation entitled” bugleweed vs. antithyroid medication”, and because of its popularity I decided convert it into a blog post.  I’m also working on a research-based blog post on how antithyroid medication affects the gut microbiome…and so stay tuned!

If you would prefer to watch the video Click Here

Here is the edited version of the transcript:

Many know that I personally dealt with Graves’ disease. I was diagnosed in 2008 and I’ve been in remission since 2009. Since then, I’ve worked with a lot of people who have hyperthyroidism and Graves disease. Many of these people choose to take antithyroid medication, such as methimazole, sometimes PTU, and there’s also carbimazole. Some places in different countries use carbimazole, which converts into methimazole. So I’m definitely not opposed to my patients taking antithyroid medication. That being said, when I dealt with Graves’ disease I personally did not take antithyroid medication. I took the herb bugleweed and I also took motherwort. I started out with bugleweed.

And the bugleweed did help. I definitely noticed a difference in my resting heart rate and palpitations. But I was still experiencing some palpitations even while taking bugleweed, and so I added motherwort. There are a few different scenarios that I wanted to discuss to give you a better idea of whether you should take bugleweed or antithyroid medication…because I get asked all of the time, “Should I take Bugleweed? Should I take Methimazole or a different type of antithyroid medication?” So let’s talk about the different scenarios.

Scenario #1: Someone is already taking antithyroid medication and they’re doing fine and are okay with staying on the meds: In this case I’ll encourage them to stay on the medication because they’re doing fine with it and the medication is working. The one thing about antithyroid medication is that it is almost always effective. The problem with antithyroid medication is that side effects are common. So if the person’s feeling okay, if their liver enzymes are okay, if their white blood cell count is looking good, then I’m certainly not going to talk them out of taking the medication. In fact, I never tell someone to stop taking a medication because it’s prescribed by someone else. In addition, I’m not a medical doctor, so I won’t tell someone to stop taking medication. And in this scenario, I think it’s probably a good idea for them to continue taking the antithyroid medication.

Scenario #2: Someone is already taking antithyroid medication and they’re doing fine but they don’t want to stay on the medication. Of course nobody wants to stay on the medication. In most cases of hyperthyroidism, antithyroid medication should only be taken temporarily to manage the symptoms. But let’s look at a scenario where I have a patient that starts up care with me and they’re on, let’s say, methimazole, and everything’s going well, but they don’t want to stay on the medication.

Once again, I’m not going to tell them to stop taking the medication, but if they want to make the transition to bugleweed, then what I’ll usually do is I’ll have them take both the medication and herb at the same time.  Again, I’m not going to tell them to stop the medication, but I’ll have them add the bugleweed. And then over time they’ll need to do follow-up blood tests. And the goal is to not necessarily become hypothyroid because that’s not a good thing either, but to get their numbers towards the hypothyroid side. And then the prescribing doctor will typically reduce the dosage of the antithyroid medication based on the thyroid panel results. And then eventually the goal is to just be on the bugleweed and then the next goal is to not be on the bugleweed.

So again, like I mentioned, I was diagnosed with Graves’ disease in late 2008, and I took bugleweed and I took motherwort. I was on bugleweed a little bit longer because again, I started that before the motherwort. So I was on bugleweed for about nine months and I have not been on bugleweed since 2009. So I was on it for a while, but I’ve haven’t taken it since then. Nobody wants to stay on the medication. And again, you don’t want to stay on the bugleweed either. You want to get to the point where you don’t need either one of these, but there are some people that absolutely don’t want to be on the medication.

So once again, you could argue that nobody wants to be on the medication, which is true, but many people are actually okay with it because they know it comes down to risks vs. benefits. And the medication is helping to prevent them from getting an arrhythmia or going into thyroid storm. So some people are perfectly fine taking the medication, but then there are those who fit under scenario #2 who absolutely don’t want to take medication. And like I said, in that case, I can’t tell them to stop taking the medication, but we could put them on bugleweed and this can help them get off the antithyroid medication sooner under the guidance of the prescribing doctor.

Now of course, there are some people who will just take themselves off of the medication or reduce the dose on their own. And that’s up to them, as I can’t control what the person does, but all I’m saying is I’d never tell someone to stop taking antithyroid medication.

Scenario #3: Someone is already taking antithyroid medication and is experiencing side effects.  So for example, maybe they’re taking methimazole and are experiencing side effects. And so when this is the case, once again, I’m not going to tell the person, “You’re experiencing side effects so you should stop taking the antithyroid medication.” What I would do is tell them to go see the prescribing doctor.

Usually, it’s an endocrinologist. The downside of course, is that many endocrinologists will say, “if you can’t take the antithyroid medication, then you need to get radioactive iodine or thyroid surgery”, which isn’t always the case. There are other options. So another option is to take bugleweed, which is what this discussion is about, bugleweed vs. methimazole or bugleweed vs. antithyroid medication. But another option is to switch to a different type of antithyroid medication.

So if someone is on methimazole or carbimazole and they’re getting some type of side effect, so maybe they’re experiencing a rash or dizziness or some other type of symptom. Again, maybe it’s affecting their blood test, the liver enzymes, the white blood cell count, etc. So if this is the case, they could try switching to PTU. And some people absolutely don’t want to do that because they might have read that PTU can put more stress on the liver, which is true in some cases, but there are people who don’t do well on methimazole, but they do perfectly fine on PTU. So, taking a different type of antithyroid medication is at least an option to consider.

But of course, there are natural approaches such as bugleweed. And there’s also L-carnitine. I haven’t spoken about L-carnitine yet here, but L-carnitine when taken in higher doses (i.e. 2000 to 4,000 milligrams per day), also has antithyroid properties. I do find the bugleweed to be more effective, but I’ll add that it depends on the person, and it depends on the brand of bugleweed. Not all herbs are the same, as there are different qualities of herbs, different potencies. So if someone takes bugleweed and it doesn’t seem to work, then maybe it’s not a good quality herb, or it could be a lower potency.

So a lot of people will take Herb Pharm Bugleweed or Thyroid Calming Formula, which has a 1:5 extract ratio. Herb Pharm has good quality herbs, but they’re not high potency. So, that’s also something to consider. When I dealt with Graves’ disease, the bugleweed I took was a 1:2 extract. And therefore, I commonly recommended it to my patients, but I’ll have people who start working with me and they’re already taking Herb Pharm and they might be doing okay on it. So if someone’s taking Herb Pharm bugleweed and it’s doing a good job of managing their symptoms then that’s great. If not, then we might need to switch them to a different brand of bugleweed.

So, that’s another thing to consider. But if someone’s taking antithyroid medication and experiencing side effects, then it probably would be good idea to check with your prescribing doctor and either switch to a different type of antithyroid medication or take a natural approach. I’ll add that there are a few other options. I have written an article on cholestyramine, which is not specifically used for hyperthyroidism. It’s used for some cases for chronic diarrhea, also for toxic mold to bind to mycotoxins. But it can also bind to thyroid hormone. I’ve had a very small sample size in my practice take cholestyramine, and it does seem to be effective.

Again, it does require a prescription, but another option is to be on the cholestyramine. And then low dose naltrexone or LDN for those with Graves’ disease is another option. So if you have a condition such as toxic multinodular goiter, then LDN wouldn’t be a good option because it’s for the autoimmune component of not just Graves’ but other autoimmune conditions. The problem with LDN is it is hit or miss. So LDN doesn’t work on everybody, but again, it’s just something else to consider.

Scenario #4: Someone is hyperthyroid and they’re not doing anything to manage their symptoms.  So in this scenario they’re not taking antithyroid medication, they’re not taking herbs or other natural agents such as L-carnitine. So in this case, I will recommend for them to consider taking bugleweed. Now there are times when I might bring up the medication.  But if they’re not doing anything, many times the reason for this is because they don’t want to take the medication. This is assuming they are overtly hyperthyroid.  If someone has subclinical hyperthyroidism, where the TSH is depressed, but their  thyroid hormone levels look good, that’s a completely different scenario.

But if someone is overtly hyperthyroid and they’re not doing anything, it’s usually because they don’t want to take the medication. And they either are unfamiliar with natural symptom management methods, such as bugleweed and L-carnitine, or perhaps they’re familiar, but they are just cautious about self-treating themselves, which I think is wise. You want to be cautious about self-treating your condition. So in this case, I’ll bring up the different options, but many times they’ll want to take a natural approach. And in this situation, of course, I don’t have to worry about them stopping the antithyroid medication because they’re not taking antithyroid medication.

And so these are the four main scenarios I wanted to discuss. I will add that there are other scenarios besides these.  A fifth scenario is if someone is already taking bugleweed and let’s say the bugleweed is working, then of course I would say that everything’s great and they should continue taking the bugleweed. With all of these scenarios, we want to address the underlying cause. So these are just ways of keeping safe while you’re addressing the cause of the problem. It’s important for me to mention that.

And another scenario that I didn’t list here is if someone’s taking bugleweed, but it’s not working. I mentioned earlier, it might be because the quality of the herb isn’t great, or it could be the potency isn’t strong enough. But let’s say if they’re taking a good quality herb, the potency is high enough, they’ve been on it for, let’s say, a month or two, and it’s not working. Many times you’ll see changes before then.  I noticed an improvement in my hyperthyroid symptoms within a few weeks of taking the bugleweed. But again, let’s say someone has taken it longer, a month, two months, and they’re not feeling better. And then maybe on top of that they do another thyroid panel and it’s not improving, or it’s getting worse. Then in that situation, you probably would want to consider taking the medication or maybe cholestyramine or low dose naltrexone.

I’ll add that everything comes down to risks vs. benefits. So I realize that there are some people that absolutely do not want to take the medication, but if it will prevent you from receiving radioactive iodine or thyroid surgery, then it is something to consider.  Again, so I took bugleweed when I was dealing with Graves’ disease, but if I absolutely had to, I would have taken the medication. If let’s say a month or two went by and there was no change in my symptoms and the blood tests weren’t improving and especially if they were getting worse, I would’ve considered taking the medication. So I’m definitely not opposed to the medication, as there’s a time and place for it, and I would have resorted to taking the medication if I absolutely had to.

What’s Your Experience With Bugleweed?

If you have taken bugleweed I’d love to hear what your experience has been.  Did it successfully help to manage your hyperthyroid symptoms?  If so please let me know in the comments below! And if you tried taking bugleweed and it didn’t help also feel free to let me know! Thank you for sharing your experience with everyone.

On Friday June 11th I interviewed Dr. Kyrin Dunston on weight gain and thyroid health, and below is the written transcript. If you would prefer to watch the interview you can access it by clicking here:

Here is the transcript:

Dr. Eric:

Happy Friday, everyone! Hope everyone is having an awesome day, and with me I have Dr. Kyrin Dunston and we’re going to be talking about weight gain and thyroid health!

Dr. Kyrin:

Hi.

Dr. Eric:

Hey, Dr. Kyrin, how are you doing?

Dr. Kyrin:

Good, how are you, Eric?

Dr. Eric:

Doing good, doing good. Thanks for joining me here.

Dr. Kyrin:

Thank you for having me.

Dr. Eric:

Yeah. I look forward to talking about weight gain and thyroid health and sharing your experience and so, Dr. Kyrin’s bio here is a very impressive bio. She’s been a board certified OB/GYN for over 20 years and is fellowship trained in anti-aging, metabolic and functional medicine by the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine and then leading by example, she lost a life changing 100 pounds and healed herself from chronic disease by adjusting the root cause of her overweight and dysfunction. That’s a lot of weight and a lot of people are just looking to lose 20 pounds…

Dr. Kyrin:

I lost a person.

Dr. Eric:

Yeah, so we’ll definitely talk about that. Also, you have a book called Cracking the Bikini Code: Six Secrets to Permanent Weight Loss Success and I assume people could find that on Amazon?

Dr. Kyrin:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. Eric:

Okay, great. And then she also is the host of her brilliant Health Revolution podcast where she offers interviews with inspiring and insightful experts in functional medicine for women, desiring to heal and achieve optimal health naturally and she also resides in Georgia with your two dogs, Otis and Carly, so not too far from North Carolina. So, I believe you’re also from up north too and you’re just like me, just escaped the cold and decided to go down south, and all right, well, thanks again for joining us, Dr. Kyrin.

Dr. Kyrin:

Thank you for having me, Eric. Super excited to be here.

Dr. Eric:

Yeah, so why don’t you start with your story, because again, a hundred pounds is, like you said, it’s a whole person. So why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about your journey?

Dr. Kyrin:

Sure. So, yeah, I was born and raised in New York City and I trained in Philadelphia and Delaware and ended up coming down to Savannah, Georgia because of a man and a job and I was a very successful OB/GYN. I delivered thousands of babies. I did pap smears and hysterectomies and worked with some wonderful women but my health suffered. I, at one point, weighed 243 pounds, so I was obese. I had chronic fatigue. I was tired all the time. I basically ended up only having energy to work and sleep. So when I wasn’t working, I was in my pajamas in my bed, even though I was a wife and a mom.

I didn’t have energy to show up as the wife and mom that I wanted to be. I had fibromyalgia, which is pain in the body on a consistent basis for over six months. I had anxiety and depression and was on multiple medications for those. I had gastric dysfunction, reflux. I had gastritis. I had irritable bowels, so I didn’t know if I was going to poo once every two weeks or if I was going to poo 15 times in one day.

And my health was really out of control, I was miserable and I used all the tools I learned in my medical training to figure out what was wrong and fix it. So, I would run tests. I’d say I’ve got to have a thyroid problem, right? I have cold hands, cold feet. I’m cold. I have weight gain. I am tired. I am constipated sometimes. So these are classic symptoms of low thyroid and I thought I’ve got to have a thyroid problem.

So I would do the test I was taught to use to diagnose a thyroid problem and they would come back normal or within normal limits or reference range. So, oh, I don’t have a thyroid problem and I think I checked it at least 10 times and it was normal and then I went to my doctor, my internal medicine doctor. I’d say, “Something’s got to be wrong, look at me. I’m miserable. I look and feel 20 years older than I am.” I was in my 40s at the time. And maybe some of you watching can relate to this.

And she’d say, “Okay, well, we’ll run tests. We’ll see what we find.” And she would run tests and she’d say, “All your tests are fine. They’re normal. You’re fine. You just need to eat less and exercise more. That’s your problem.” Basically, she told me it was my fault, which is what I told my patients because that’s what I was taught. So, she said, “It’s a math problem, too many calories in, not enough calories out.” I had no energy to exercise but sometimes I would muster the effort and energy to exercise and I tried diet programs, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem. I tried them all, diet pills. And I might have a little bit of success but eventually, I’d gain it back and more. It wasn’t sustainable and I was just getting worse and worse and I call it circling the drain. My health was just spiraling.

They told me I needed a spinal fusion, which no good ever comes from a spinal fusion. It just destabilizes the rest of the spine and you end up having the entire spine surgerized and fixated and very little mobility, so I knew I didn’t want that and I was so depressed and I felt so hopeless. I’m thinking I’m supposed to know more about women’s health than anyone else. I’m a board certified OB/GYN, right? Women’s health specialist. I clearly am unhealthy and yet, all the tests I run are normal. My doctor runs them and they are normal and I remember the last time I left her office, it was a Thursday and it was raining outside and she yelled at me. She literally said, “Kyrin, there’s nothing wrong with you! You just need to stop eating so much and exercise more! Stop with this! There’s nothing wrong!”

And I went out into my car in the parking lot and I just closed the door, I didn’t even turn the motor on and I just started crying because I felt so hopeless and alone, like there are no answers and maybe other women or people, anyone watching will relate to this. You go, you trust your medical doctor to have the answers and I was a medical doctor and didn’t have the answers and she was a medical doctor and didn’t have the answers. So I felt like there is no hope, there is no answer.

This is my lot in life and I’m just going to have to deal with it. I knew that I was facing surgery or disability, probably because I couldn’t stand and do the surgeries and I didn’t have a choice because I was the breadwinner in my family, so I had to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Has anybody ever felt that hopeless with your health? You’re like, “I don’t even know which way to turn. There are no answers.” Well, that’s where I was.

And then not long after that, one of my patients who was a woman at midlife who was having all the same type of problems I had, I forgot to mention the period craziness and I had given her the usual prescriptions that we doctors give, birth control pill. She couldn’t sleep. I was too tired. I gave her a sleeping pill. Doctors give anti-depressants because that helps to mask some of the symptoms of these midlife problems, medication for her gut problems.

So she left with this fistful of prescriptions, maybe you can relate. Well, none of it helped her. So she went away and she came back about a year later and I saw her at the end of the hall. I’ll never forget it. And I said, “Oh my gosh, something’s different.” She was slender. She had lost that 30 pounds. Her eyes were bright. Her hair was full. She had this pep in her step and a smile on her face. Skin was bright and I knew something was different. So, I couldn’t wait to get her into the exam room and ask her what she did.

So, I did that. I got her in. I’m like, “Girl, what have you done because you look amazing?” And she said, “Well, I learned about this thing called functional medicine and they talked about resolving the cause of these symptoms that I’m having. So, I found this doctor in another town and I went and saw her and she did these tests that we never talked about, salivary hormone testing and she did this comprehensive thyroid profile and she did all these tests that we’ve never discussed, so I assume you don’t know about them and she found all these imbalances and she balanced my hormones and the weight just started coming off and my energy started coming back and my hair regrew and my mood improved and my periods are straight now and all the things,” and I was like, “Well, you are a walking billboard for this.”

So, I went home that night and I thought, how is this possible? Like I’ve paid a half a million dollars for my medical education, I have the best education in the world for women’s health and I don’t know any of what she’s talking about. Clearly, she’s been successful. So I set out to disprove what she was telling me because I’m like, this just can’t be true. It’s not possible that I didn’t learn the things that she’s talking about in med school. So, I set about doing the research and looking and scouring all the information I could find and instead of disproving what she was telling me, I ended up proving what she was telling me.

So, even though she was the N of one in my experience, the only person I knew, there was this whole world that I hadn’t ever been introduced to of root cause resolution, of testing that I had never been trained in, even though I’m supposed to know about women’s hormones, we were told, we don’t check women’s hormones. We don’t do that. We just treat by symptoms reflexively but there’s this whole world of you can test women’s hormones and you can adjust them to be at the right levels and in fact, when you do, guess what? Sleep problems, energy problems, weight problems, all the problems, health problems that I was having resolved and so I learned about this and when I read about it, I knew it was true because they talked about the way the body worked, which I learned all about in med school.

So, I said, ooh, I’m going to use this to address my own health concerns and if it works, I’m going to teach as many women as possible about this. Fast forward two years, I had lost a hundred pounds, hair regrown, sex drive back, gut healed, no anxiety and depression, off all prescription medications and my patients now are pulling me into the exam room, “Girl, what are you doing because we need that?” And so I started doing it with them and I actually, after about a year of doing it with them in my regular practice, walked away from mainstream medicine, a very lucrative successful practice because I knew that that was not the way to help people do anything but survive and I was all about helping people thrive and so this is my journey about why I do what I do now.

Dr. Eric:

All right, now that is awesome. So you had a lot going on. So you had low thyroid but not Hashimoto’s, correct?

Dr. Kyrin:

Correct.

Dr. Eric:

Okay. So you had low thyroid and IBS-like symptoms and just yeah, it sounded like you were a mess but a year later, just everything resolved, libido back, sleeping well, energy, just yeah, that’s great. So let’s talk a little bit about testing. So you said that, of course, most medical doctors, they just do the bare basics when it comes to testing. So, you mentioned more comprehensive thyroid panels. So, can you talk a little bit about that because I’m sure there’s a lot of people watching this who, again, their doctor, all they want to do is just a TSH. So, what do you consider to be more comprehensive testing when it comes to thyroid?

Dr. Kyrin:

Right. So yeah, the TSH is the standard screening test that we doctors do to screen you for thyroid hormone problems but the issue is that that’s actually a secondary factor and so in order to really know if you have a thyroid problem, you want to know is the thyroid making enough active hormone and is that active hormone being convert … That’s T4, is it being converted into T3, the inactive thyroid hormone, in your body and you want the free fraction. That’s the part that’s not bound to protein that actually has activity in your body. So the gold standards that you really want to know are your free T3 and your free T4.

The TSH is only a marker of the hormone the brain makes to tell the thyroid to function and so it’s a lagging indicator of thyroid function. You do want that but the truth is that in mainstream medicine the standard of care is they are concerned with what is the diagnosis and what drug do I need to give or what surgery do I need to do? Those are the questions that your mainstream doctor is asking because that’s what we’re taught to ask. What’s the diagnosis, what drug, what surgery? That’s their concern.

And in functional medicine and root cause resolution medicine, we’re concerned with a little bit of what but more why. So, to get to the why, you’ve got to look at all those thyroid parameters. So you need a TSH but you also need a free and total T4, free and total T3. You need something called a reverse T3, which looks at this abnormal form of T3, active thyroid hormone, that your body will make particularly when your cortisol is out of balance and you’re having stress. So, you need to look at the reverse T3 because everything may look great with the rest of your thyroid indexes but if you have high reverse T3, guess what? It’s sitting on your T3 receptors and healthy T3 then can’t get on it. So you’re going to essentially act like a low thyroid person.

So, if you don’t have that, you’re going to be confused and then the other indicators that you want are thyroid peroxidase antibody or TPO and antithyroglobulin antibody or what I call ATA because I catch so many people when I do my programs with women who, everything else looks pretty cool with their thyroid but they’ve got some symptoms but if you didn’t do the antibodies, you wouldn’t know that they had an autoimmune thyroiditis, the most common one being Hashimoto’s. So I pick up usually at least one in 10 women who have no thyroid diagnosis. They have symptoms. Their doctor told them they don’t have a thyroid problem. When they do that comprehensive profile, they come back positive for those antibodies and that is golden because the course of Hashimoto’s, for instance, is many years.

So, these women typically wouldn’t be diagnosed for another, I don’t know, three, five, 10 years till they’re really sick and their thyroid is very inflamed. They might even had a goiter or nodules and then it becomes a big issue but if you know you have antibodies, if you knew you had them five or 10 years ago, you can address the cause of those antibodies and get rid of them and then, guess what? You don’t have to have a horrible thyroid problem. So, that comprehensive test at least includes those parameters.

Dr. Eric:

All right, sounds good. And also, I’m sure there’s some people watching with Grave’s even though weight gain is more commonly associated with Hashimoto’s, some people with Grave’s actually do gain weight. So someone asked about TSI, thyroid stimulating immunoglobulin, so yes, that’s something with Grave’s that’s commonly tested as well but I want to talk more about reverse T3. So reverse T3, like you said, it’s an inactive form of T3 and we especially see it with increased stress levels, also see it a lot with hyperthyroidism too, with hyperthyroidism just very high levels but can you talk about more stress and weight gain, cortisol weight gain just because a lot of people are focusing on diet, just improving diet and exercising and of course, thyroid hormone balance is important too but how about other hormones such as cortisol?

Dr. Kyrin:

Right, so this is the thing, thyroid is important but I do see a lot of people get fixated on the thyroid and if you don’t address all the hormones, you’re never going to get your thyroid right and one of the main hormones you need to get right is your cortisol stress hormone made by your adrenal glands that sit back behind on top of your kidneys and they’re little walnut sized things that you can’t live without and your cortisol is … I call her queen cortisol, all hail the queen. If you don’t hail her, she will wreck everything for you, including your thyroid. So that reverse T3 that we’re talking about will go up when your cortisol is unbalanced and I have to be honest with you, there isn’t a person today alive on this planet that doesn’t have a jacked up cortisol, I’m just going to be honest with you.

If you’re not doing something to address your cortisol, it is jacked up and you can know this when you do a salivary cortisol profile and you collect saliva morning, noon, afternoon, midnight, so it’s not if your cortisol is messed up, it’s how much and in what direction so that you can address it but if that’s out of balance, it’s going to cause your reverse T3 to go up and then it blocks that healthy T3. So, your cortisol regulates your sleep/wake cycle along with your melatonin hormone that’s made in your brain. It regulates your weight. It regulates your immune system function. So whether you get autoimmune disease or not, whether you get cancer or not. So, I always say autoimmune disease, you have to have two things, you have to have your foot on the accelerator of inflammation and that’s from the gut and elsewhere toxicity in the body and you have to have no foot on the brake on inflammation. Your brake on inflammation is your cortisol stress hormone.

So, this is why you’ve got to deal with the queen and get her balanced out. If you have cortisol imbalance, which we’ve already established everyone has one, you will have typically weight gain in your midsection. This is the tire around the middle weight gain that you’re like, oh, I just have this roll in the middle. That was a big part of it for me whereas more often, sex hormone weight gain is going to be in your hips and thighs, cortisol is going to be in your stomach and in my experience, thyroid is more diffuse all over.

So, if you want to lose weight, it’s not a math problem, particularly for all of us starting at midlife, men and women, but particularly women, why is that difference between men and women, because men have 10 times the testosterone that we ladies have and guess what, testosterone is a secret weapon when it comes to weight. So men and also the testosterone decline in men or andropause as it’s called is way more gradual but we women, we start with this descent into perimenopause usually by 35, 40 or 45 and that’s when estrogen starts going up, progesterone starts going down and progesterone really is the weight loss hormone and then by 51, our ovaries cease production of these hormones, so the factories shut down and we need those to lose weight as well.  So, yes, thyroid issues are important and you’ve got to address all of these hormone imbalances.

Dr. Eric:

So, what recommendations do you give to your patients when it comes to trying to balance cortisol?  Probably the first thing is maybe testing, because I know you said you had saliva testing. I also had saliva testing done when I dealt with Grave’s disease, even though now I do saliva testing but sometimes I’ll do … You’re probably familiar with DUTCH testing, dried urine testing, so sometimes I’ll use that as well.  Both saliva and dried urine testing to look at circadian rhythm of cortisol.  So what steps would you recommend for someone who has done everything with diet, has done everything with exercise…or not everything but they exercise regularly, they eat well, maybe even follow like a ketogenic diet and again, thyroid seems to be in balance yet they’re gaining weight. So, at least from a stress perspective, what would you recommend?

Dr. Kyrin:

Right, I think that testing is invaluable versus guessing because when you see your cortisol numbers in black and white, ink on paper, it has a whole different meaning. When you’re just guessing at how stress is affecting your body and how your body’s handling stress, we often are very much in denial about what’s causing stress in our body and what’s happening. Our culture is very much what creates our cortisol problems. We are a go do culture and most of us overwork, we overdo, we over-participate and so it’s one thing, there’s stuff all over the internet on oh, do meditation, do relaxation exercises, change your mindset but the thing is, do we do it? No, we’re like I just want to know the strategies and things that I have to change so I can keep living my life exactly as I want to live it, which is how I’m doing it now.

So, I find that it’s a rare person who, without the black and white staring them in the face, is really willing to make the lifestyle changes they need to make to calm it down and this is even true for us healthcare practitioners. Eric, in one of the groups we belong to, someone posted recently that she knows she has adrenal fatigue and she’s about to crash and what expert can help her and I’m like, girl, I know you and I know you know as much as I do about this stuff and we all want what’s the pill we need to take, what’s the supplement, what’s the diet?

None of us wants to stop living our lives in overdrive because that’s our culture and we all are socialized to living this way and I basically said, you just got to stop doing what you’re doing and take a break before … Because if you don’t do it, your body will say no for you and the body says no by cancer diagnosis or a huge accident, that happened to me because I wouldn’t stop going and doing, you get a huge accident that your body then has … I had a foot fracture where I had to be with my foot up in the air for six months and they said we don’t know if you’re ever going to walk again. So there are some things you just have to dial it back but what I say is if you can get a cortisol test, get a cortisol test. Definitely tweak your diet.

But I find some people tweak their diet so far to the opposite extreme of popcorn and Twinkies, then Ho-Hos every day, they go to the opposite extreme and they have no carbohydrates and they’re intermittent fasting and they’re basically starving themselves and they work out like crazy, right? So I see these two extremes and neither extreme is better. You really have to come back to the center and start listening to your beloved body because she’s always talking to you about what she wants and what she needs but we’re so data driven, mind based and we are not in our bodies that we’re like I got my aura ring, I got my HRV checker, I got my continuous glucose monitor. I’m going to manage my body like I manage my bank account and I’m sorry, but your body is not a material thing, it’s a living, vital organism just like a plant.

So, we really need to step back and look at how we’re living our lives when it comes to stress. Are we overdoing it? Learning how to say no. Learning how to prioritize and do the things that really matter so we can manage our cortisol. So yes, it’s the diet but dialing that into what’s right for you and what’s right for someone else might not be right for you, dialing in our supplementation. Everyone needs to be on an adrenal supplement in this day and age, you just can’t avoid it but what are the right ones and how much and how frequently and when is what you’ve got to dial in and then dialing in your lifestyle and your blood sugar because that’s another big stressor for your cortisol and your gut health, which I know you teach about, Dr. Eric, and your toxicity. So, you’ve got to really do a comprehensive program.

Dr. Eric:

And of course, sleep. If you don’t sleep, you’re not going to heal … Also, you’re going to be inflamed and again, it’s a little bit of a catch-22 because sometimes, a lot of times, blood sugar imbalances and/or adrenal issues, they definitely have a lot in common, can affect sleep and then you’re not getting enough sleep and that also could be a factor with losing weight and yeah, you mentioned a healthy gut, problems with the gut microbiome could also make it a struggle to lose weight and liver increased toxic loads, so essentially what you’re saying, it’s a whole body picture…

Again, it’s not obviously, just diet, exercise, thyroid and then not even just adding stress management to the piece of the puzzle too. If you’re blocking out time doing mind/body medicine every day, which I do recommend,  I think it’s great to do that and it’s important, but if you have an increased toxic load, if you have problems with the gut microbiome, if you’re not getting enough sleep, all of these can be factors as well when it comes to gaining weight, correct?

Dr. Kyrin:

Absolutely. Everything above. Check, check, check, check, yes. You’ve got to consider all of that.

Dr. Eric:

Yeah. So, you said you had IBS-like symptoms and can you talk a little bit about that… Because, again, a lot of people have issues with digestion and again, you need a healthy gut to have a healthy immune system, healthy gut, to again, lose weight as well, so please talk about the gut microbiome and the gut. What are some of the things that you would recommend to optimize the health of the gut?

Dr. Kyrin:

Right, so the gut is really a complex organism. I think about it like it’s its own organism. It has a head and it has a tail and it’s got everything in between and if there’s a dysfunction in any part of it, it’s going to affect other parts and one of the main things that you can do to improve gut dysfunction, whether you know you have a gut problem or not because most all of us, like cortisol dysfunction, have some degree of gut dysfunction in this day and age, if you’ve taken even one course of antibiotics, the studies show that that can knock out the majority of your healthy gut microbiome for up to two years and most of us have had an antibiotic within the past few years, so most of us have that dysfunction.

But just even talking about the stress that’s so connected to your gut health because the frame of mind and the autonomic nervous system balance that you are in or not in when you start eating can speak volumes to improve your digestion. So are you eating standing at your desk shoveling like this while you’re on the phone in a Zoom meeting, right? You’re in a sympathetic, autonomic nervous system state which blood is not flowing to your digestive system and your digestive enzymes are going to be lower, your stomach acid is going to be lower and you need these to break your food down. So making sure even before you eat that you’re in a calm frame of mind, that you’re not multitasking, that you take time to appreciate the food and all the millions of people who participated in bringing this nourishing meal to you and that you take some deep breaths to invoke that parasympathetic nervous system before you start eating and you let the saliva start flowing by smelling it and just getting your body ready.

It’s not only sex we have to get ready for and have foreplay. We have to have food foreplay also. So having that with your food and then chewing it 30 times until it’s a liquid, how many of us do that? Nobody. And then swallowing it and if you need digestive enzymes or additional HCL to help with your digestion, which a lot of us need after 30 because our production goes down, taking that and then really not drinking liquids for about 30-45 minutes before you eat and for a couple hours after so you don’t dilute those gastric juices and then really managing your stress throughout the day so that your digestion can work in a coordinated manner because a lot of us don’t realize it if we jump up from a meal and then we’re on the Zoom meeting and doing 10 million things and running around and driving and stress and traffic, we’re taking blood from our digestive tract and taking it to our arms and legs so we can take action in the world and our digestion is faltering.

So, really looking at how we live our lives and our microbiome so we’ve got trillions of bacteria in our gut, more healthy bacteria in our gut than we have cells in our body. Scientists have wondered for decades how do humans have a fraction of the genetic material of an earthworm, a little earthworm is this big and it has almost twice as much genetic material as we have and the way we’re able to do that is that we upload a lot of our genetic information into the cloud. Well, where’s our cloud? We actually carry it around with us in our gut, right? It’s our microbiome. That is our cloud sourced genetic information.

So they’re vitally important, we can’t live without them and yet we do things every day that kill them, eating food that’s not organic, that has pesticides, consuming water that’s not filtered so that has toxins and contaminants in it too that kill our microbiome, taking antibiotics, living a stressful life because when we live a stressful life, blood flow to our gut decreases and can’t nourish these little bugs that keep us healthy.

So the care and feeding of your microbiome is something that we need to think about every day that almost nobody thinks about and I’m sorry, but I know a lot of people are like well, I eat yogurt every day. They get all up in arms. I eat yogurt, Dr. Kyrin. I’m doing my thing. Mmm, not so much, right? Because a couple things about the yogurt, one, it’s a cow’s milk dairy product, if you’re not eating nondairy and that’s very inflammatory for a lot of people. Also, if it’s a flavored yogurt, it tends to be sweetened with sugar or some sugar euphemism like my favorite one is concentrated fruit juice, that ain’t nothing but sugar, y’all. So, step away from that. Or evaporated cane juice is another one of my favorites because everyone bypasses that on the ingredient list. It ain’t nothing but sugar.

So, if it’s got some strawberry something in it, right, it’s sweetened with sugar and there really aren’t enough healthy bugs in there to bypass everything it needs to bypass and remain viable to get into your gut. So almost everyone needs to be taking some type of probiotic. Now, you need to watch your probiotic because if you take one that has very little numbers or we’re overburdened with the lactobacillus species, you can find that everywhere at Sam’s Club probiotic but you can actually cause more damage by that. So you want a high quality, what I call pharmaceutical grade, nutraceutical, so they’ve proven the purity and potency, they’re really researched very well by some of the better companies that you often need to get through a practitioner like Dr. Eric. You want that and you want to change up … I tell my people, change your brand and your formulation every month.

It’s like your social circle, right? How boring would it be if you only interacted with the same hundred people all the time, right? You’d get bored with that. Well, your body needs variety just like it needs variety of food. If you could only eat one meal every single day because I know we humans like habit and we’re like I take this probiotic, I’ve taken it every month for two years and we’re so proud of ourselves and your body’s like, no, stop. Give me some different people. Give me something different to eat. You need variety with your diet. You need variety with your microbiome and the probiotics that you take. So, start looking at your species. Make sure you’re getting various species in your probiotic and changing it up every month.

Dr. Eric:

All right, great advice. Thank you.  A lot of people, when they think about gut, they’re thinking about food and, we shouldn’t take antibiotics but you tied it back into stress and you mentioned autonomic nervous system. I mean some of it was very basic as you mentioned, as we don’t chew our food 30 times, making sure it’s liquified. I can’t say I do that all the time also, as I’m guilty as well and it’s something I’m aware of and sometimes I’m better than other times, and not eating on the run… Yeah, just great information.  Do you recommend things such as vagus nerve exercises to your patients…

Dr. Kyrin:

Oh, all the time.

Dr. Eric:

You mentioned HRV also, heart rate variability but regarding vagus nerve exercises, you said all the time you do recommend these?

Dr. Kyrin:

Oh absolutely. You’ve got to be priming that vagal tone, whether it’s toning or singing, so anything with laryngeal stimulation. You could do vagal massage, back here behind your ear, acupuncture points will stimulate the vagus nerve. Breathing and resonance breathing practices. Oh yeah, all my ladies in like my Hormone Balance Mastermind, I’m like twice a day, resonance breathing, twice a day checking your HRV because I do the one where you actually get your numbers that tell you the power in your parasympathetic nervous system, which is amazing because then you have it in hard … I think that data is very important to inform your choices. I don’t think it should become the holy grail of what you do.

You’ve got to learn to listen to your body but if you haven’t really been in your body and listening to your body for 20 years like most of us at midlife, you do need something to reacquaint you and data is very informative but now it’s to the point I know when my HRV is high, I know when it’s low and I always play a game with myself. I guess what it is before I check it so that I’m fine tuning my knowledge of how my body works, what it needs, what it wants, what it likes, what it doesn’t like and this is … We knew this when we were infants. When we were hungry, scream our freaking heads off.

Who hasn’t heard … I flew home the other day and there were a couple babies on the plane. When those babies aren’t happy, they let you know, right? They scream, mouth wide open. We’re so in tune when we were born with what was wrong and we needed it fixed but it’s socialized out of us, right? When we’re in kindergarten, we raise our hand, “Teacher, can I go to the bathroom?” Teachers says, “No, you have to wait until we are done with class,” right? So this starts the whole socialization away from being intimately familiar with our body and our biology and being in our bodies and being internally directed by what our health needs.

Kids who are allowed to go with their biologic urges like eat when they’re hungry, introduced to vegetables, really like them, we get this concept like that kids will only like a McNugget chicken that’s ground up and have all these additives added and breaded with a disgusting sauce with 50 ingredients that I wouldn’t even feed to my dog. Where did we get this idea? So, we train them to like to eat unhealthy foods, to not listen to their bodies when they have to go to the bathroom, when they want to go to sleep or not, right? If we just let kids decide when they’re tired and go to bed, they will learn pretty quickly that if I don’t want to be tired in the morning, I’m going to go to bed on time, right?

So, I know I get on my soapbox about this but part of my job to reacquaint women at midlife with their health, is to reacquaint them with their internal biologic urges. So you’ve got to start becoming cognizant of when is stress too much? What is stress? Most of the people I talk to, they have no idea and then they do the cortisol test and it’s a mess and they’re like wow but they’re teetering on this edge, this American edge of over-productivity and like we fuel it with caffeine and we dial it down with alcohol in the afternoon and evening, right? Up with caffeine and the alcohol in the evening. This is the American way and part of it is getting off that rollercoaster that’s just causing you to survive in overdrive and going I choose something different, I choose to thrive in peace. I choose to be in my body. I choose to really be present for this life and that gets back to HRV and stress management.

Dr. Eric:

All right, that was awesome. Thank you for sharing. So I want to also let everyone know that Dr. Kyrin will be answering some questions in a few minutes, so if you have questions, if there are questions, definitely type them into the comments but I wanted to ask you, Dr. Kyrin, as far as action steps then to … I know that it’s complex when it comes to weight gain but what would you recommend? What are some starting points you would recommend for those who have been struggling to lose weight?

Dr. Kyrin:

Well, let’s just get out of the way that the things that most everyone knows. So, you’ve got to eat … You literally are what you eat. So if you want to be healthy, you’ve got to eat healthy foods. So that means organic, non-processed and you’ve also got to cut the sugars out, not because of calories, that’s not the issue with sugar, but weight loss is all about hormone balance. Seven main metabolic hormones. So insulin is number one, thyroid, cortisol, DHEA, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone and it all starts with insulin.

So your food is important, not only that it’s clean but also that it doesn’t have a high sugar content because that leads into that first hormone, which is insulin. So it all starts with insulin balance. Why? Because insulin helps to balance your blood sugar and is unbalanced by unhealthy intake of sugars and it, in turn, affects your cortisol and your cortisol will be unbalanced if your insulin is unbalanced and it will unbalance your DHEA, your thyroid, your estrogen, progesterone, testosterone.

So, it just goes down the line. Your hormones are like a symphony playing music and if one violin is off and that’s insulin, then it makes all the other instruments go off or it’s like a mobile. I used to have this mobile over my office at my desk and it had all these different moving parts. You push one part, and that’s insulin, so the biggest input into our biology is what we eat and if you’re eating an insulin unbalancing diet, all the other hormones move just like on a mobile. So you have to start with that first input, which is insulin, so you’ve got to cut the sugars out.

And again, I’m a fan of testing, not guessing. Where are you starting with your insulin? How much support do you need? How radical do you need to be in terms of cutting out the sugars? We’re all on the internet looking for the one thing, what’s the one diet we all have to follow to have balanced hormones? It doesn’t work like that. We’re all so unique. You have to figure out what’s right for you. And so a certain degree of keto diet might not be healthy for you but it might be healthy for someone else. So I’m a big fan of testing, not guessing. So it starts with insulin.

And then you’ve got to look at all these other hormones but what can you do in your day-to-day life? Say you can’t get testing, you don’t have access to someone, you mentioned sleep earlier. I’m going to say, sleep. You have got to sleep by any means necessary. Now, I say that and a lot of women and men too, at midlife, use alcohol to sleep but that’s not a great option for many reasons. Alcohol often has a lot of sugar in it, so it unbalances your insulin. It also is toxic to the gastrointestinal lining and it taxes your liver, which hormone balances about liver function, and so you don’t want to do anything to your precious liver, which is your sanitation department.

But you want to take, whether it’s melatonin or I like a supplement that has phosphatidylserine and theanine in it with a little melatonin. You got to take something to get yourself to sleep because that gets directly to your cortisol that you want to balance and if you’ve got a thyroid problem, because I know, Dr. Eric, that’s your main thing but I see a lot of people that get such tunnel vision on it’s my thyroid, what supplement do I need? What do I need for my thyroid? Well, a lot of times what you need to do is fix your cortisol, fix your insulin, fix your sex hormones and when you do that, the thyroid goes, “Oh, thank you,” because it needs the support of these other hormones. They all support each other and they’re rising up or they’re all circling the drain.

It’s kind of like in our communities and just in humanity, either we’re helping each other to live better lives and do better or we’re pulling each other down and we’re all going to go down with the ship. So your hormones are no different. So with the weight loss, you’ve got to realize, after midlife, weight loss is not a math problem, it’s a communication problem. It is no longer about calories in minus calories out, it’s about hormone balance. So you need to do whatever you can to balance your hormones and for a lot of … Most women, by the time you’re 51 and you actually go through menopause, that means you actually would need natural hormone replacement to replace your sex hormones, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, which is safe and if your doctor thinks it’s not, it’s because they’re confused about apples and orange type hormones.

This is something I teach people about. The natural hormones are safe. They’re the ones that 20-year-old women have and that’s why they look and feel so great and are so healthy. So you’ve got to get yours like a 20-year-old woman but it’s all about hormone balance, weight loss after 40 is not a math problem, it’s a communication problem. Hormones are communicators in your body that tell your cells what to do and you’ve got to get the communication right to get the weight to come off.

Dr. Eric:

All right. Would you agree though that … I know you’re familiar with the pregnenolone steal, so you need to optimize adrenal health … Would you say adrenals are still a priority or …

Dr. Kyrin:

Oh my gosh, that’s why I call it queen cortisol, which is made in the adrenal glands. You have got to hail the queen and address the queen in order to lose weight. If you don’t address her, you’re not going to lose weight and there’s so many factors that go into what she considers stress. So what you think is stress might be totally different from what she thinks is stress and if you don’t figure out what she considers stressful and is unhappy about and unbalanced about and address it, guess what? No weight loss for you. So you have to figure that out and for each person, the secret sauce balance is a little bit different.

Dr. Eric:

Yeah. All right, so where can people learn more about you, Dr. Kyrin? Where can they find out more about you?

Dr. Kyrin:

Sure, they can find my website, which is kyrindunstonmd.com, and I’m also @kyrindunstonmd on Facebook and Instagram.

Dr. Eric:

Okay and then also make sure you check out Dr. Kyrin’s podcast as well-

Dr. Kyrin:

Oh, the podcast. Yes, Dr. Eric was just … We did his interview which will air in July, you definitely want to check that out. It’s Her Brilliant Health Revolution podcast and it’s available on iTunes and Google Play and where most podcasts are made available and each week, we cover a topic important to women’s health, particularly at midlife.

Dr. Eric:

All right, great. Well, thank you. Thank you, again, for sharing how to lose weight for those who have problems losing weight and yeah, let’s go ahead and jump into some questions if that’s okay with you, because we have a few here now.

Dr. Kyrin:

Sure.

Dr. Eric:

Now, this one I kind of answered earlier because just TSI, so as I mentioned, with Grave’s, typically you’re going to test thyroid stimulating immunoglobulins and so I will also say that if someone with Grave’s is having problems with weight gain, one common issue is taking antithyroid medication like methimazole or PTU. That, many times, will cause weight gain but any of the other factors Dr. Kyrin mentioned also, so again, if someone’s having problems with cortisol, cortisol imbalances, insulin resistance, disrupted gut microbiome, increased toxic load, so all of these could also be factors. So when I dealt with hyperthyroidism as we discussed during the podcast interview, I lost 42 pounds, but again, there are some people with Grave’s who want that problem. They’re like oh, I would love to lose weight but they’re gaining weight so If it’s not due to the antithyroid medication, there’s usually another factor.

Dr. Eric:

And then so this person asks, “How can we measure HRV at home?” So, I’ll let you answer that.

Dr. Kyrin:

Sure, there are lots of free apps that you can download. My favorite is Elite HRV but there are many others. There’s also the oura ring that tracks HRV. It doesn’t get the detail that I like though. The Elite HRV is really like medical grade. It actually can almost completely replace my $6000 machine I used to have in my office. So that’s something that you can use at home.

Dr. Eric:

Well, that’s great. Okay. Yeah, because I use HeartMath, which you might be familiar with but you said Elite HRV, that’s an app that people could download on their smartphone? Okay, cool.

Dr. Kyrin:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. Eric:

Thank you for sharing and then, let’s see, so Bonnie, I don’t know if you would mind mentioning, you mentioned a supplement with the phosphatidylserine and I think the theanine-

Dr. Kyrin:

Theanine and the melatonin. I think it’s Prothrivers Sleep Formula by Integrative Therapeutics. Hopefully, I’m remembering that correctly. I think that’s the one, mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. Eric:

Okay, very cool. Thank you. So Stephanie asks, “This has been great. Do you see pediatric patients with a family history of Hashimoto’s and obesity?”

Dr. Kyrin:

Oh, I used to but now I work exclusively with women at midlife in my Hormone Balance Mastermind, which we do virtually to help women at midlife because that’s really my sweet spot but there are lots of great practitioners out there who do exactly what you’re mentioning.

Dr. Eric:

All right and then Gabrielle, and again, if there’s any other questions, definitely type it in the comments. So, Gabrielle, “Can I lose weight while on methimazole? I’ve gained 20 pounds since being on it for my Grave’s disease and it won’t come off.”

Dr. Kyrin:

Yeah. Go ahead.

Dr. Eric:

No, no, that’s okay.

Dr. Kyrin:

I was going to say, absolutely, right? So it’s not only about thyroid, that’s what we’ve been talking about, it’s about all the hormones, right? And then if you’re on a medication like methimazole, that’s a lot of toxicity coming into your body. So detoxification is a big part of that and gut rehab but it starts with hormone balance. So yes, you’ve got to get your other hormones checked and get them balanced and yes, you can lose weight, mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. Eric:

Yup, okay. And I will say one thing though, like if you’re on a real high dose of methimazole and if it’s making you hypo, definitely check … Like you need to do regular labs as well, so it depends on if someone’s taking 40 mg of the methimazole and I mean usually they’ll start feeling hypo if they get pushed in that direction. So obviously, you might also need to have the medication modified too, so just keep that in mind and then let’s see, so “Hi, this has been great. I have both Hashimoto’s and Grave’s as well as other autoimmune disorders. Have you had other patients that have both?” And I will say, yeah, I do see a lot of people with the antibodies for Hashimoto’s and Grave’s but what’s your experience with that, Dr. Kyrin?

Dr. Kyrin:

Oh yeah, it’s not … I won’t say it’s common to see it but we see it not infrequently that people have both. The biggest risk for getting an autoimmune disease is having an autoimmune disease. So, where there’s one, there’s likely another and it may not have been diagnosed yet, but it’s very common and when you do a root cause resolution approach, you get back to that all autoimmune disease comes from inflammation, toxicity, gut disorder and cortisol problems, like the triad that when we were doing my podcast interview, Dr. Eric was talking about the triad, right? Genetic predisposition, maybe 5% to 10% in my opinion and then some inciting environmental exposure and gut dysfunction, right? Those are the three things you have to have and so it doesn’t matter if you have one auto-antibody or if you have five auto-antibodies, from a root cause resolution approach, the treatment is the same.

It’s only in mainstream medicine that we’re about what, what’s the diagnosis? What drug do I need to give you? What surgery do I need to do? But that’s just going around hitting every problem with a ginormous hammer instead of looking down at the roots of the tree and fixing the roots. So, to my root cause brain, it doesn’t matter to me if you have one auto-antibody or five, it’s still the same root causes, so you address the root causes and the auto-antibodies get better.

Dr. Eric:

All right, that makes sense and so Jennifer asks, “What should I get tested for a diagnosis?” And you spoke a little bit. You spoke about the thyroid testing. So the TSH, free T3, free T4, reverse T3, the antibodies if you’re looking to get diagnosed for Hashimoto’s, I mean either Hashimoto’s or Grave’s definitely do a full thyroid panel, look at the antibodies. Anything else that you commonly recommend to your patients? I mean I’m sure you recommend like the CBC with differential and comprehensive metabolic panel … But as far as diagnosis wise, what do you do? Just the thyroid panel antibodies?

Dr. Kyrin:

Like in my Hormone Balance Mastermind that I do with groups of women, they get blood chemistries, they get blood counts. Like we were talking about, I think on my podcast interview with you about I like to look for markers of inflammation. So, I have them do also an erythrocyte sedimentation rate. I have them do a high sensitivity C-reactive protein. I have them do a homocysteine and I do the full thyroid panel. I have them do a DUTCH Plus test that includes a salivary cortisol and then I teach them how to read this themselves and I got so frustrated with women not having access because then the next question would be well, where … Who in my state can prescribe natural thyroid or natural hormones for me, so I founded a telemedicine company to do that. But anyway, in terms of diagnosis, those are the things that I usually recommend.

Dr. Eric:

Okay. All right and Bonnie just says, “Great talk. Thank you. Love the talk on raising children to trust their intuition.” And yeah, thank you for sharing that.

Dr. Kyrin:

Yeah, if we did more teaching of our kids about these things when they were young, then we probably wouldn’t have the chronic health conditions that we have and then we wouldn’t have to unlearn all this stuff at midlife.

Dr. Eric:

Yup, very true. All right. Well, thanks, again, Dr. Kyrin. I appreciate you taking the time to share your story and a lot of valuable information about losing weight and I look forward to maybe having you again in the future and hope you have a great rest of your Friday and I hope everyone watching has a great rest of their Friday as well, and a great weekend ahead.

Dr. Kyrin:

Thank you so much for having me, Dr. Eric. Thanks to all of you who showed up and offered great questions. It was my pleasure to be here. Definitely check out Dr. Eric’s episode coming out in July on Her Brilliant Health Revolution podcast, which is on most major podcast outlets. Thanks so much for having me. All right, thank you. You take care. Again, thank you.

Dr. Eric:

Bye-bye.

Dr. Kyrin:

Okay, bye.

Last week I released a blog post entitled “Choosing Your Thyroid Healing Healthcare Team”, and one of the healthcare practitioners I spoke about was an endocrinologist. Many people with thyroid and autoimmune thyroid conditions end up being referred to an endocrinologist. And while I can’t say that I had a horrible experience with my endocrinologist when I was diagnosed with Graves’ disease, over the years I’ve had many patients inform me that they didn’t have a good experience with the one they consulted with.

This is especially true for those people with hyperthyroidism, as many endocrinologists will pressure their hyperthyroid patients to receive radioactive iodine or thyroid surgery. And not surprisingly, most endocrinologists aren’t open to natural treatment methods. Sure, every now and then there will be someone who tells me that their endocrinologist is receptive to them taking a natural treatment approach. But this is rare, as most feel that diet and other lifestyle factors don’t play any role in improving the health of people with these conditions.

I’d love to hear what your experience has been with your endocrinologist. If you had a negative experience please let me know! If you worked with an endocrinologist who was open to you taking a natural treatment approach please let me know! Thank you for sharing your experience with everyone!

It’s not easy dealing with a thyroid or autoimmune thyroid condition, which is why it’s a good idea to work with one or more healthcare practitioners.  Most people with these conditions will at the very least see a medical doctor, but if you’re looking to optimize your health then you also might want to consider working with someone who has an open mind.  Of course you also want to consult with someone who has a good amount of experience dealing with your specific condition.

So let’s go ahead and take a look at some of the different healthcare professionals you might choose to work with:

Primary care physician. Many people will initially get diagnosed with hypothyroidism or hyperthyroidism by their primary care doctor.  In the case of hypothyroidism/Hashimoto’s thyroiditis they might prescribe thyroid hormone replacement, although in some cases they will refer out to an endocrinologist.  In the case of hyperthyroidism the primary care physician will almost always refer the person out to an endocrinologist, although they might write a prescription for antithyroid medication or a beta blocker to manage the symptoms in the meantime.  This is what happened to me when I was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism in 2008, as I saw a primary care doctor, was given a prescription for a beta blocker, and was referred to an endocrinologist.

Endocrinologist. Many people with hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism will be referred to an endocrinologist.  As mentioned above, this is especially true with most people who have hyperthyroidism, but many with hypothyroidism will also be referred to an endocrinologist.  Frequently it’s an endocrinologist who will diagnose someone with hypothyroidism as having Hashimoto’s, and will diagnose someone with hyperthyroidism with Graves’ disease, toxic multinodular goiter, etc.

For those with hypothyroidism/Hashimoto’s, the person will probably be given a prescription for Levothyroxine.  In the case of those with hyperthyroidism, the three common options are 1) antithyroid medication, 2) radioactive iodine, and thyroid surgery.  Although it’s a shame that endocrinologists don’t do anything to address the cause of the problem, this of course comes down to their training in medical school.  For those with Graves’ disease and Hashimoto’s (or the antibodies for both), keep in mind that endocrinologists aren’t immune system specialists, which is yet another reason why they treat the thyroid gland, while doing absolutely nothing to improve the health of the person’s immune system.

Sometimes I’ll get asked how someone can find an endocrinologist who has an open mind towards natural treatment methods.  The truth is that while over the years I’ve had a few patients who had an open-minded endocrinologist, most of these specialists don’t want anything to do with natural treatments.  If anyone reading this has worked with an endocrinologist who is open to a natural approach I’d love to hear from you in the comments section below.

Functional medicine practitioner.  If you are serious about getting to the underlying cause of the problem then I would strongly suggest working one-on-one with some type of natural healthcare practitioner/functional medicine doctor.  Obviously I’m a tad biased because I fit into this category, but it is very difficult to restore your health on your own.  Don’t get me wrong, as it’s not easy to restore one’s health even when working with an expert, but it is far less challenging when you have the proper guidance and accountability.  I realize that not everyone can afford working with someone, and ideally you want to work with a practitioner who has experience with thyroid and autoimmune thyroid conditions.

Finding someone who has experiencing working with hypothyroidism/Hashimoto’s shouldn’t be too difficult, as there are many natural healthcare practitioners who have a lot of experience with these patients.  It’s a different story with hyperthyroidism, which explains why approximately 80% of my practice consists of people with hyperthyroidism/Graves’ disease.  Even though I have written a book on Hashimoto’s, I’m perceived as being more of a “hyperthyroid specialist” since I personally dealt with Graves’ disease and restored my health.  Plus I also have written a book on hyperthyroidism, not to mention many articles on the topic, and recently I’ve even conducted a couple of hyperthyroid-related challenges!

So how do you find a functional medicine practitioner who has experience dealing with your specific condition?  Well, a lot of people find me through the search engines (i.e. Google, Bing) when conducting a search for certain keywords related to “natural hyperthyroid treatments”.  You can also visit the website for the Institute for Functional Medicine and conduct a search.  There are a lot of practitioners on the site who work with Hashimoto’s patients, although it might be more difficult finding someone who works with a lot of hyperthyroid patients.  In fact, I find that even some endocrinologists don’t have much experience with hyperthyroidism, and one reason is because it’s not as common as hypothyroidism.

Nutritionist /Nutritional health coach.  A few years ago I hired my first nutritional health coach (she actually was already working with me and I sent her to the Institute for Integrative Nutrition), and then in early 2020 I hired another nutritional health coach.  Prior to that I was the sole person talking with patients about diet and nutrition, and I felt comfortable since I received a masters in nutrition degree, along with a few nutrition certifications.  And so you certainly can work with a single practitioner who does it all, as my patients received great results when I took this approach.

That being said, I think patients appreciate having a dedicated person they can speak with who focuses on diet and nutrition.  And quite frankly, both of my nutritional health coaches do a better job than me when it comes to giving recipes, food substitutions, etc.  In fact, for some people it might be best to start consulting with a nutritionist or a nutritional health coach.  While diet alone might not be enough to restore your health, you won’t receive optimal results if you eat an inflammatory diet consisting of refined foods and sugars, fast, food, etc.  And it really is a good idea to cut out common allergens such as gluten and dairy.  I won’t get into detail about this here, as I’ve discussed diet in other posts, as well as in my books.

Acupuncturist.  I’ve had some patients see an acupuncturist while under my care, and while I can’t say that doing this is absolutely necessary, there are benefits of seeing an experienced acupuncturist.  I actually discussed this in a past blog post “Can Acupuncture Benefit People With Thyroid Conditions?”.  And so if you’re considering seeing an acupuncturist you might want to read this.

Other healthcare practitioners.  In addition to the ones listed above, there are other healthcare practitioners to consider working with.  Many wouldn’t think of a biological dentist when it comes to thyroid healing, but problems with oral health can sometimes play a role in thyroid health.  One blog post I wrote that you might want to check out that relates to this topic is entitled “Are Silver Fillings Harmful To Thyroid Health?“.

Although I’m a licensed doctor of chiropractic, I can’t say that everyone with a thyroid/autoimmune thyroid condition needs to see a chiropractor in order to restore their health.  But if you want to read more about this then check out my blog post entitled “Chiropractic and Thyroid Health“.

I understand that while many people will see a primary care doctor and/or endocrinologist to diagnose and manage their condition, many won’t see a natural-oriented healthcare practitioner because they simply can’t afford it.  If this describes you I would check out a blog post I wrote entitled “Following A Natural Treatment Protocol On A Budget“.

Who Is Part of YOUR Thyroid Healing Team?

I’d love to hear what type of healthcare practitioners you’re working with!  Perhaps you’re working with multiple practitioners. You might even be working with a different healthcare practitioner that I didn’t list above, and if this is the case I definitely want to hear from you!

If you’re feeling stuck with your thyroid or autoimmune thyroid condition, then you might be interested in joining our Free 5-Day Accelerated Thyroid Healing Challenge starting on Monday May 17^th!

During this 5-day challenge you will…

• Learn how to overcome both common and overlooked “roadblocks” that are preventing your thyroid/immune system from healing
• ​Discover how to reduce your “toxic thyroid”
• ​Find out why removing the trigger doesn’t always break the chronic inflammatory cycle associated with Graves’ disease and Hashimoto’s, and what you can do to stop this cycle
• ​Create your thyroid/immune healing action plan

The Free 5-day challenge will include the following…

Component #1: Daily Accelerated Thyroid Healing Video Lesson

During this daily 10-20 minute recorded lesson I will focus on a different topic that is essential to speed up the healing of your thyroid gland/immune system. There will be one pre-recorded lesson every day for 5 consecutive days, which means that you can access it at your convenience.

Component #2: Daily Accelerated Thyroid Healing Assignment

I want people to take action, which is the whole point of any challenge.  And so each day there will be a daily assignment designed to help speed up your thyroid/immune system healing.

Component #3: Daily Live Calls

Monday through Thursday I will be going live on Zoom (and will livestream to Facebook), and each day I will be discussing a different topic related to thyroid healing.

Component #4: Two 90 minute live Q & A sessions

There will be two separate live Q & A sessions.  These will be 90 minutes each, and I’m having two in order to accommodate those in different time zones.

Component #5: Access to a private members-only group

We want you to build relationships with one another and enjoy this challenge together. Although you can still watch the daily video lessons and attend the live calls and two Q & A sessions without joining the Facebook group, if you want to connect with others and be eligible for the prizes (discussed below) then you’ll want to join the Facebook group. I plan on having my nutritional health coaches moderate the groups, although I’ll also pop in every now and then.

Component #6: Prizes for Participation!!!

There will be a daily prize for those who answer the daily question, and then at the end of the 5 days there will be a grand prize!!!

You Get All of This For FREE!!!

For more information on the Free 5-day Accelerated Thyroid Healing challenge check out the link below:

www.RapidThyroidHealing.com