On today's episode we speak with Priscilla. When diagnosed with Graves' Disease and initially hustled through the Western healthcare system, she decided to take control of her own healing. She was able to successfully reach and sustain remission on her own, even through pregnancy and the birth of her son. Hear her empowering story and wisdom through experience and revel in the affirmation that we have every right to take control of healing our own bodies!
Connect more with Priscilla HERE
Let's talk naturopathic health. Reach me to begin your journey to wellness HERE
On today's episode we speak with Priscilla. When diagnosed with Graves' Disease and initially hustled through the Western healthcare system, she decided to take control of her own healing. She was able to successfully reach and sustain remission on her own, even through pregnancy and the birth of her son. Hear her empowering story and wisdom through experience and revel in the affirmation that we have every right to take control of healing our own bodies!
Connect more with Priscilla HERE
Let's talk naturopathic health. Reach me to begin your journey to wellness HERE
Welcome to Women of the Wild Podcast. Here, our community of wise women comes together to explore and discuss naturopathic medicine, fertility free birth, and cultivating inner peace and joy through embracing alternative lifestyles. These are powerful women and pioneers in the modern age who choose to live and heal free of Westernized limit. Many we will speak to have bravely and successfully cured themselves through chronic and even terminal illness prior to setting forth on their mission to offer healing to others. Together we return to our roots, to our inner wisdom and our birth rights to the wild in all of us, and together we grow to change the world. I'm your host, Jenny Dice. Hello everyone Today we have on Priscilla. Well, thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here. And my journey first started back in 2017 when I was diagnosed with brain disease. Graves disease is an autoimmune disease, and basically you develop hyperthyroidism, which is an overproduction of thyroid hormone, and your body starts to attack your thyroid. So I started to experience severe. Symptoms like heart palpitation, eye painting, it can affect your heart and your vision, but you also are expecting hair loss, fatigueness sensitivity to heat. I couldn't tolerate any heat, and I live in Texas and it was never fault. I was always uncomfortable. Um, There were so many symptoms. I had a lot of muscle pain. I couldn't build upper body strain. I was noticing myself deteriorating little by little and, but I would say that by mid 2018, that was when I went to the doctor because that's when the pain was manifesting like in my eye. Do you know what brought this on? Is this something that you've always been dealing with? Now that I can understand more about thyroid disease, I was definitely dealing with a lot of, with nearly a decade of undiagnosed thyroid issues. But it's so sneaky because it's symptoms like re up upon you and then maybe in a couple years it's feeling worse. I always thought that it was aging. I was like 33 when I got diagnosed. I just thought, this is me getting older, which was absolutely such a lie, and my parents had more energy than me and they were in their sixties, so there was something completely off balance, but I didn't know that I was dealing with thyroid issues until I was diagnosed. But yeah, I can see going back it kind of plagued all my twenties with this little chronic symptom. That's really interesting because a lot of that days where we're tired, and especially after having my little girl, you get used to all of these things that are symptomatic. So when you went to the doctor, what was your experience with that and why you chose to heal naturally on your own as opposed to going through the system, going through the doctor? Well, my experience was pretty straightforward. I went in complaining about eye pain. So I was thinking maybe I was just gonna get prescribed an eye ointment, but he took all of my clinical symptoms and he ran a thyroid panel test, which is your TS H levels. Those aren't functional testing, but that's definitely a conventional method to figure out if you have thyroid. But a lot of times it's already too late when your ts H is off. And then that's when he discovered that I've had hyperthyroid. He then referred me to an endocrinologist and then she went ahead and did further testing, and that's when I was diagnosed with Grace so that it was an autoimmune disease. So far at this point, I didn't really have an idea of what holistic meant. I was very unhealthy. I ate fast food all the time. I did exercise, but I think it was almost like a placebo effect. I kind of felt like, okay, at least I'm getting a workout. And you know, but it didn't take away all the wrong that I was doing with living a very out of balance life. So I was always inside cuz it was just too hot. Yeah. Or it was exhausting to, to socialize. Yeah. I was overweight, I was eating really bad. I had no sense of health. You know, it was just, life was just happening to me and I was living in an autopilot. So when I was diagnosed my, which was the doctor's just gonna give me whatever I need and I was gonna get better. But then it started to feel really heavy because they were telling me that I had to remove my thyroid. They, they were recommending me to get the radioactive iodine, which basically you swallow a pill and it destroys your thyroid, your throid tissue, and you can't have any contact with people, I believe sub like to two weeks cuz you're radioactive. Bad things can happen to you, right? And you just kind of think you're invisible in life and I felt like this was a bad thing happening to me, and it wasn't a quick fix. They did give me medication, but that was what pushed me into finding an alternative or natural method. But yeah, right off the bat they're telling me, okay, we have antithyroid medication. Then there's the radioactive iodine treatment, which is we, my endocrinologist, specialized. So she was really pushing for that. And then, then there's like the hysterectomy, I believe, which is, but when they re surgically remove your thyroid, so she was, she was more comfortable with doing the radioactive iodine. I was just really surprised that those were the only three options I was given. And I was almost expecting like, okay, and nothing else. Right. And then the other thing, it was like a life condition. So it was like, once we do the radioactive iodine, you're going to now, Be a hypo patient, which is hypothyroid patient. And so I was very confused and I think a lot of times when you're sitting there in the medical office with your doctor, they're talking to you all this medical language and you're kind of lost in it and you're being emotionally impact is the news, right? It's like still haven't settled in. You just get hit with all of this settled at once and then they're talking at you as opposed really with you. I hope you understand what's going on. It's, yeah. You said your doctor that you were talking to was specializing in the radioactive Google, mostly a sales pitch of like, okay, let's do that. My specialty, you know Yes. Like, she's like, this is what I'm comfortable with, and she was talking about the radioactive iodine. I did find myself naturally tugging my thyroid and she was really weird. Maybe I was tugging myself, but I felt like I was hugging my thyroid. but I never experienced up to that point a broken bone. Any medical emergencies. I never had anything in my life where I had to be poked, you know, opened or Right. Had something traumatic in my life. So I was very scared of, um, having to go through something like that. Right. And extreme, you know? Wow. It seemed very extreme and so she kind of just explained all of the auction. you know, she's kind of looking at me like, obviously you need time to process this, and, but at that point they were already scheduling me to do further exams. So you're tr I kind of feel like they're just pushed along. Like you just have to say yes and no. I think the biggest lesson I learned, and it's, you can say no, but I, I don't think I realized that. And I think a lot of people don't, like you don't have to consent to everything. You're very right on that. And that's a very in point that you make because, I mean, it's. It's a very emotional experience. When you go into something like that and you're told it's something serious, all of those emotions are heightened. Yeah. And a lot of people are just like, okay, what do I need to do? And they're trusting of the people that are supposed to be taken care of. Exactly. How did you go from that to. Finding that peace within yourself. I'm gonna do this on my own. That's a very, very grave lose, in my opinion. It was one of those things that I didn't know I was going to do. I felt like when I processed all the information, I realized, let me just try the medication and I'll start there before I do anything very radical and permanent. So I took the medication and I had a severe reaction to it. About a week into it, I was. Feeling really. I don't know if the word depressed is right, but I was lethargic, generally lethargic. I couldn't move out of my bed. It was hard to talk to people, be around to people. I started to feel really dizzy and nauseous and even to the point when I was sleep, I was dizzy, like and spinning and feeling like I was gonna throw up. So at that point, my doctor was away. She was on vacation. So I just made that decision, I'm not gonna take this medication anymore. And I. Continued to get sick for the next month and a half. So it really, my immune system, and this is when I understood that when you have an autoimmune condition, your immune system is already very delicate. And this medication dropped my immune system even more down. And I was just very vulnerable and I thought really, really sick to the point that by the end of that year I was having the ear, nose, throat. Infection going on. I was put on antibiotics, so at this point I'm still using Western medicine. That's when I realized this is really, really harsh. This is just one medication, and this is just from one week. And this is how I'm reacting. Do you think that whole month and a half was your body trying to process that medication out? Yes. I've heard that that medication, antithyroid medication doctors don't want you on it longer than 18 months. It's very hard on your, your body and on your liver. It's not a permanent fix, it's just a temporary fix. Maybe help your body regulate. Hopefully there are a lot of women who do achieve remission. Antithyroid medication, but a lot of times the relapse. So at that point, I started to go online and I wanted to hear from other people like me who were diagnosed. I wanted to hear what their experience was like on medication or with radioactive iodine or the ectomy, because I realized the doctor's only gonna tell you what they preferred and that's it. So I, I went on YouTube. YouTube, I was like googling, trying to find other people who were sharing their stories and they were bringing so much their experience. I felt like was so valuable because they were telling you things that doctors weren't sharing, which was, you're gonna be a hypo patient. Your symptoms don't go away. The medication will make your weight fluctuate, so you're gonna be going from like losing weight to gaining weight, and it's, it just seemed like a rollercoaster. And I didn't want a roller rollercoaster. I wanted stability. I wanted a quality of life. I wanted to be able to live and not have to worry about constantly managing my symptoms or my illness. and that's when I decided I have to find an alternative, kind of have like a really one-on-one hard talk with myself. I was kinda like, listen, you're, you're overweight. There's a lot that you can do to change your diet. There's a lot of things I can do lifestyle related that can just improve my health. At this point, I wasn't really thinking this is gonna heal my thyroid. I just thought I can do better for myself. I can make a lot of improvements. As I started to do that, I took a whole body approach as opposed to just trying to, to, uh, focus on my thyroid and with a lot of lifestyle changes. That's when I was able to get into remission and, and I, that's why I was sharing my story because I couldn't believe it actually worked because I was just, I was just trying to get better, but it actually healed my thyroid. So it was an accident, but it worked, you know? So, yeah. And the whole time you weren't on your medication anymore, you decided to, nevermind that I'm just gonna live a healthier lifestyle. What did your lifestyle look like at that point? What were some of the changes that you made in your own life that might be able to punish that somebody else that's going through? Diet was definitely a big part because I had all the classic symptoms of weaky gut, so everything from bowel issues to gut pain. So I knew that if I was having those issues, I was also having issues absorbing nutrients. So right away I was changing my diet. I removed, I did a PEO diet, so you removed all your grains, your leg. I felt like that to me was the most sustainable. I'm a protein girl. I felt very good on protein. I never felt like I was starving or deprived. I felt like it helped me be able to make the changes that I needed without feeling helpless, you know? Cause a lot of people come to me and they're, they're telling me all the diets that they're doing and it's making them feel very depleted. I never stuck to a diet that made me feel depleted. So for me, paleo diet worked. I healed my leaky gut, which I think helped me be able to absorb nutrients, kind, work balance to my body. My body was very desperate for nutrients and for stability cuz it was so outta whack. I also had a lot of sinus issues after I started to work or my lymphatic system, I was doing a gentle re. Exercise early in the morning. I started to make sure that I was drinking water cuz that was a big Diet Coke fanatic. I was always drinking Diet Coke. No, no more of that. I know no more of that. Let me, let me give my body actual hydration. So I started to focus on my water intake and then, and then my trace minerals, you know, incorporating the right salt switch I did the simple changes. I switched from like table salt to. Cha million or you like Celtic salt? Uh, I cut out a lot of refined sugar. Obviously with the paleo diet you have to cut out refined sugar, so I went through a sugar withdrawal, a detox from that. It was horrible, but I made it through. What does that like? I'm curious. Oh, it was, well, what happened was because I took antibiotics from being sick on methyl, I created candida overrid, which is thresh on my. And so this is something that I learned that when you have an autoimmune condition, doctors are gonna be very cautious of whether or not to give you antibiotics because we can't develop candida overgrowth. And I did. So my doctor was prescribing me another medication to help me with that. So there was a slide being piled on. So in the middle of making all these changes, I had thrush now like on my tongue. So I was like, well, now I have to deal with that. And Candida thrives. On sugar. So I just decided, and at this point I was in remission. My thyroid had gone into remission, and that's when I started to do a little more, uh, detox. So I started to cut out the sugar. Everything was through lab. I had to get my lab chapped, but I was feeling better every, so I was diagnosed and I was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism in mid of 2018. Diagnosed with Graves by October of 2018. And then in May of 2018 was when I went in. Permission. I started to make changes literally on Christmas. Like I, that's when I said I'm done. I'm making diet changes. So it took about five months of just changing my diet. I was feeling better. I was losing weight. My vitals were a lot better. My blood pressure, which were showing up a lot better. I had energy. So when I was going in to see my endocrinologist, I think I was meeting with her like every two months. She was really wanting me to go back on medication. And I told her no. And this is when I realized like, oh, I can say no, I have the power. She was really shocked. She looked at me like, you're not, like she told me, did not like any of my other patients, you know? And so she, she told me, why do you not wanna go back on medication? And I said, I'm feeling better. And she said, well, that's not an indication that things aren't better. And I said, well, I think at that point, um, my ts h. And my T3 and T4 had improved, but I still had antibodies, which was why my doctor was telling me that I needed to go back on medication. I was really confused and so I told her, no, I'm feeling better. I don't wanna go on medication. And she said, but your lab still show that you have these antibodies. Well, those labs were done from in October of 2017. And I told her, I said, well, we're in, you know, may of 2018, I don't feel comfortable, BAS. My current medical needs on past lab results, right? I wanna get new and it's interesting, you know, for her to say, You know, the way that you're feeling doesn't matter. like, for me, that offers so much, it's easy to rely on what other people are telling you and so much so forget to just trust our own intuition. Trust what our guys telling us and how we're feeling. Yeah. And a lot of times, you know, you know, your body knows what you need and. And if you're listening to that, you can absolutely heal yourself without medication. It's interesting that you took at the route to continue going with her, to be able to see like firsthand the labs and everything like that. Um, you have like physical proofs that what we did actually works. Uh, at that point. I wasn't trying to say, I know more than you, I just know my body. Not person. You can merge the two Western medicine guns have its place in the world. You know, like if I saw arm off an accident, I just feel That's unbelievable to go, you know? And so, but there's exactly, but I, you don't wanna like neglect your own intuition and your own feeling and your own ability to heal just because you have this alternative to lean on, you know, it's, mm-hmm. That you found a good marriage between the two and the strength to be able to stand up for yourself and say, no, this is, you know, I've done my research feel this way. This is how I want to handle things. It is intimidating when your doctor is opposing you. It, it creates a lot of self-doubt. Like you, you're thinking, am I missing something? You know, she has or he or she have more experience, her excuse. to why I was in remission was that she thought I was getting ready to go into hypo. So that's why she was rationalizing why my levels were starting to normalize, but, but she only thought that they were gonna get low, so she was just thinking my body was gonna switch. So that's why she's still wanting me on medication. Oh, was giving her that inkling what was making her worry in that way? Because she doesn't have the experience of seeing people actually go into remission and sustain it. She did bring up like, Hey, remission is possible, cuz she had a lot of doubt that that was happening with me. Even though she intellectually understood that it could happen, she just couldn't believe it was actually happening with the patient she had. And she was just like, no, no, no. I think you might be going into hypo. And she had me tested for those antibodies, which I do have, but just cuz you have antibodies doesn't mean you developed that autoimmune. That's when I wanted to get retest. because I wanted her to test my grades antibodies cuz she was using the October, 2017 lab and we kind of made a deal, like she'd said, Hey, if you're, because she was so sure, cause she was telling me antibodies don't change within that period of time. So she said, listen, if your lab results come back and they're the same or worse, will you go on medication and without any worry? I said, yeah, I'll do that because I was so sure that I. There was a difference. Something changed, but I was scared. I was like, oh my God. And I just, yeah, I popped outta there and I was like, I've just made it a deal. And oh my God, I don't wanna go back on my word. And I hope so. I was just like praying and hoping that my, my result, you know, actually improved. And they did. And she was so shocked. And so what was this timeframe? You said it was within five months of just making these lifestyle changes, but you've been able to sustain this from, you know what, like four years? I've continued to be in remission in 2021. I was clear of antibodies, so I don't have grave antibodies anymore, which is something I've been told that doesn't go away. I got pregnant. So another thing that's very daunting to a lot of women who are diagnosed with grave, they're often told that they're gonna have very difficult pregnancies and that their graves is gonna come back either during pregnancy or. So there's a lot of fear going into pregnancy, and at least for me, I did have that fear because my endocrinologist at the time kept telling it may come back during pregnancy, and she kept referring to me like, what was her term? Person of childbearing age. She's like, well, you're a person that's childbearing age. This is why he be the radioactive I. Like a baby baking machine, like, you know, she just kept using that, which is kind of sad cuz I felt like, you know, pregnancy is a very touchy subject to, to every woman. They, everybody has their idea or when they wanna get pregnant or, you know, everybody has their own expectations with it. And I felt like she was using that to scare me. And it's sad because when I did go into my pregnancy, like I felt like I had that voice. you know, like, ooh, it could come back. And I did everything possible to, to prevent that. And thankfully it was, it prevented it. You have no issues at all. So what did preventing that during pregnancy look like? I, I feel like the best advice, it's to start now. Your thyroid would help. And pregnancy health go hand in hand. Pregnancy is a stress test on your thyroid, regardless if you have thyroid issues or not. Your body, It, your baby depends on it. That's when I realized how much thyroid health and pregnancy health naturally go hand in hand. So for me, I enlisted the help of an integrative practitioner because he was testing all the other thyroid hormones that conventional doesn't like a, your reverse t3, your free t3. So he was really able to do in-depth testing. It was like the biggest lab work I've ever gotten done. I think they took like eight. More blood tubes from me. God, I was just like not looking like intense, but I felt really, really good cuz I never had any doctor do that. I had a hair tissue mineral analysis test for the first time. So where we're looking at my cellular health for the first time, which is so important with pregnancy, every pregnancy, depletes of women, 10% of our trait minerals, a lot of those. Really taught me how important cellular health and deep thyroid testing is for just a healthy pregnancy, whether or not you have autoimmunity. So I was pregnant in early 2021. I had my baby in September of 2021. He wasn't cesarean baby. Yeah, I know I had players to do an unmedicated, but one thing I learned through this process is stress really does impact. You differently when you're pregnant. And I had to move out while I was nine months pregnant. My son was born maybe two weeks after I moved. It was extremely, extremely stressful. Yeah. And he came early and he was just a strict, straight to the emergency and, and this is the part where I tell women, trust her intuition and disturbing me. I feel like trusting my intuition usually is the hardest decision to make. When my water broke and I was at home trying to labor at home and I was. realizing my baby wasn't moving as much. The hardest decision was to get in the car and go straight to the hospital. Not because it was because I had to face the fact like something's happening and I need more insight, and you have to trust that intuition. Nobody wants to think you're gonna need intervention or help, but when you do, Don't be scared to go do it, you know? Right, absolutely. And it doesn't mean that you've somehow failed in some way that if you've done the prep work, the health minds of the diet, exercise, take care of your thyroid, take care of your mindset, your body, then you, you have that benefit, uh, be tapped into your intuition as opposed to you're just running around your day to day. Sometimes it gets drowned out a bit. That's one thing I find myself trying to share. With women is you have to learn to drown the outside voices so you can hear your own, because there's so, there's information overload. We're getting information thrown at us all the time. But if you don't learn to quiet the voice and pay attention to what your voice is telling you, which direction is telling you to go, you're just gonna find yourself ping ponging back and forth. I always share to make decisions that are based on. Make decisions that are based on informed consent and don't make any decisions that are based on fear. I kind of feel like those were the three little mantras I had throughout my healing journey that kind of kept me from, from getting lost. It wasn't so much about chasing one particular thing. It is, it was just about staying true to. and those three little mantras would, would help me kind of to stay true to myself and I was able to get healthy and that's what I shared. Like don't, don't try to copy everything that I'm saying to do. Just pick and choose with what resonates with you. My story's here to serve you. You don't have to take all of it. I feel like there's sometimes a pressure to have to make healing look exactly the same. Bodies are so different. Our experiences, our surroundings, who you are. And so I think about you as an individual. And go with your help and take the good piece of what other people can teach you, because the wisdom that we have to share is there for a reason. We experience the things in life that we experience so that we can offer help to other people and offer a little bit of extra insight. But that doesn't, that it's identical. Exactly. And that's why I started to share my story because I found myself wanting to hear stories of other women. you went through the similar situation that I did. There is a lot of wisdom and experience, and I feel like that's something that's lost in today's world. There's a lot of information, but not so much the wisdom. So I love that you, you're, that's kind of like your message here with your podcast. Make sure that you're making decisions based on peace. Make sure you have all the information in front of you to. Whatever decision is best for you and don't make any decision based on fear. Really ask questions. If you find yourself having very little unanswered questions, make sure you get those answers, you know, before you just commit into something. Cuz I do know conventional, the conventional healthcare system does really push you like they heard you like cattle a little bit. Like, let's go here. Now you have to go over here and now you have to get that test. So don't feel forced to just go with that flow. Go with your own flow, your own. You please said, I'm on Instagram at Healing underscore and apologetically, and I have a link to a blog there that you can find resources. Thank you all for being here with us today. If you would like to further discuss this topic, or if you're ready to begin a healing journey of your own, I am here for you through the link in our show notes or through Instagram at live. Your legend, love and gratitude till Tuesday.