40. Understanding Hypothyroidism and Its Connection to ADHD, Gut Health, Toxin Exposure and Chronic Stress

Did you know that over 27 million Americans are suffering from thyroid disease? According to the American Thyroid Association, over half of those who are, don’t even realize they have a thyroid condition! 

Your thyroid doesn’t just ‘magically’ decide to stop working - there’s a much bigger reason as to WHY it’s not functioning properly. Simply throwing a medication at your hypothyroid symptoms and expecting that to take care of your issues, will never truly fix (or heal) your thyroid.

 
If you’re currently struggling with frustrating thyroid issues, this episode will empower you with the knowledge and tools to take control of your health. If you’re needing more support, our team would love to help you with a personalized treatment plan that will focus on a root-cause approach, and allow you to find the energy, balance, and joy that you’re looking for in your life!

Episode Recap: 

• What the thyroid actually does + the 2 main hormones it secretes {3:46}
• The variety of symptoms that can present when your thyroid is working sub-optimally {4:40}
• Six interesting symptoms that typically correlate with hypothyroidism {8:42}
• The fascinating connection between ADHD and hypothyroidism {12:39}
• The most common triggers for hypothyroidism {16:01}
• 3 halogen chemicals that greatly impact thyroid health + ways you can detox from halogen chemicals {18:21}
• The chronic dieting/undereating cycle paired with overexercising that many women get stuck in for so long + how this affects thyroid health {23:25}
• The symbiotic relationship between your gut health and thyroid health {29:38}
• How trauma and chronic stress really affect your thyroid {31:53} 
• Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) + its connection to autoimmune and hypothyroid symptoms {34:02}
• Common medications prescribed to treat hypothyroidism + how this impacts your thyroid {35:17}
• Bloodwork recommended to do in order to evaluate your thyroid + minerals that can support your thyroid {41:14}

**Disclaimer: The information shared in this podcast is NOT meant to be taken as individual or medical advice. Please seek the advice of your physician or healthcare provider regarding any medical condition or treatment.

Complete show notes (including all links and resources I mentioned in this episode):
https://margaretpowell.com/podcast/episode40

Connect with me on Instagram @margaretannpowell and @fueledandfreenutrition

Learn more about working together by visiting https://fueledandfree.com/

For questions or suggestions about the podcast, send us an email at fueledandfreepodcast@gmail.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

You're listening to the Fueled and Free podcast. I'm your host, margaret, a holistic nutritionist, bringing you real talk and thought-provoking conversations on food, the wellness world, women's health topics and life. Remember the information shared in this podcast is not to be taken as individual or medical advice. Welcome back to the podcast. It's been a hot minute, since I've done a solo episode, a non-interviewed episode, and today we're going to dive in on the topic of thyroid health, specifically hypothyroidism. I may do a couple of more episodes on this topic, because I feel like you could do a whole masterclass. I could do a whole course. There's so much to cover in the topic of thyroid health, especially hypothyroid. It is something that affects over 27 million Americans that are suffering from a thyroid disease and that's according to the American Thyroid Association and more than half of those are walking around with no idea they even have a thyroid condition. So on this episode we are going to dive in on what the thyroid actually does, the common symptoms of hypothyroid and I'm going to dial in on six specific symptoms that you didn't know were linked to hypothyroid, because most of us think about hypothyroidism as waking, cold hands and feet, hair loss, dry skin, low libido those are kind of like the top common symptoms, but there's actually some odd unrelated symptoms that you wouldn't think are tied to your thyroid and if you went to your doctor with these symptoms they probably would not think let's check your thyroid. We're also going to talk about the most common triggers for hypothyroidism, because if you have an underactive thyroid or a sluggish thyroid, yes, it's going to contribute to a lot of health symptoms, but it's not a root cause of your health symptoms. Not to say that we should be obsessed with figuring out the root cause. It's not about the root cause, but your thyroid doesn't just magically decide one day to stop working. There's a reason why it stops working and specifically we'll talk more about why medication isn't enough to fix your symptoms, because the common mainstream treatment for hypothyroidism is medication thyroid medication and for quite a large population of people that are on thyroid medication, they feel okay or better and then they feel hypothyroid again and those hypothyroid symptoms come back. And it's just this back and forth of managing labs and follow-up with blood work and tweaking medication. You might find certain times of year you need more medication than other times of year and part of that you know issue of chasing the symptoms and tweaking the medication is because it's not actually fixing the reasons why your thyroid stopped working in the first place and some of those different triggers you'll find we can't fix right. Some of it's linked to illnesses or, you know, an inflammatory situation that you had happen to you that you can't go back and reverse. But we're going to dive in a little bit about what are some things that you can potentially do. Again, there will probably be a follow-up episode to this. I just haven't mapped out what that will be quite yet. So let's dive in.

Speaker 1: 3:45

What the thyroid actually does is. It's a butterfly-shaped gland that's located at the base of your neck, best known for determining your basal metabolic rate, your BMR, and your basal metabolic rate is responsible for not only how many calories your body burns when it's at rest, but it also sets your heart rate, your blood pressure, your breathing rate, your body temperature, the speed at which your cells even consume oxygen. So this gland secretes thyroid hormones. The main ones are thyroxine, t4 and T3, also known as triadothyronine. T4 is the inactive hormone and it depends on other tissues like your gut, your kidneys and your liver to activate it to its active form known as T3.

Speaker 1: 4:39

When your thyroid is not working well or suboptimal. You will notice changes, for example, in your blood sugar regulation. So one of the things that the thyroid does is it helps regulate your blood sugar. You'll notice shifts in your nerve function. So people with hypothyroidism are more prone to slower reflexes, slower response time. Those that have hyperthyroid reflexes, slower response time, those that have hyperthyroid, which is an overactive thyroid, have faster reflexes. They're more apt to be responsive, be activated, maybe into a stress response. You'll notice changes in your leptin, which is your hunger hormone. So people with hypothyroid have imbalances in their hunger hormone, which can affect your ability to maintain a healthy body weight. You'll notice changes in your body temperature so those with hypothyroid are often very cold. Changes in heart rate. Heart rate really can slow down if your thyroid is slowed, your body's ability to maintain a healthy body fat. So fat burning is really affected by how the thyroid is functioning because again, it influences how many calories your body burns at rest, and so those with hypothyroid tend to have a lower basal metabolic rate.

Speaker 1: 5:54

It's very common for people with a struggling thyroid to have blood labs look like a walking heart attack high cholesterol, high triglyceride levels, high fasting blood sugar levels, high fasting insulin levels, and that is largely because of how involved the thyroid is in literally every aspect of your metabolism. And the thing that can be really frustrating from my standpoint as a functional nutritionist, that we get clients that come to us that are like hey, I'm 42 years old and I eat healthy, I exercise, I don't drink a lot of alcohol, I don't eat fast food, we don't drink soda, kind of just like overall, trying to maintain a pretty healthy lifestyle, and their cholesterol is off, or they're in the beginnings of what is known as insulin resistance, dealing with high blood sugar and gaining some weight. And I'm like, okay, we'll get on discovery call or the client will hire us, and one of the first questions I ask is have you had your thyroid checked? No, no, no one checked my thyroid, or it's checked, but they're just checking TSH, which I'll talk more about why that's not enough to assess thyroid health. This is extremely frustrating because the thyroid is very involved in all of those blood markers being off and you're missing such a big piece to the puzzle that is addressing high cholesterol and just putting someone on statin for high cholesterol is. It's just so short sighted. I could do a whole episode just on the statin cholesterol conversation, but anyways, I digress, we're going to move on.

Speaker 1: 7:37

Some of the other signs and symptoms of underactive thyroid. So I talked about the dry skin, thinning hair, thinning eyebrows. That actually is something that I had years ago when I was on hormonal birth control and over-exercising, under-eating, skipping breakfast, breaking my fast with a muffin and a cup of coffee my outer part of my eyebrows like disappeared. I had like no hair on the outer part of my eyebrows. You'll also notice a large swollen tongue. Some people have a thicker neck or when you go to swallow it might feel strained, and that's because the thyroid can become enlarged. Cold body temperature, huffiness, swollen. You may notice some constipation, some IBS type symptoms. Low energy, brain fog, low libido, rising blood pressure, anxiety and depression are definitely linked to hypothyroidism as well. I want to dive in more specifically on some six thyroid symptoms that most people do not correlate to being hypothyroidism as well. I want to dive in more specifically on some six thyroid symptoms that most people do not correlate to being hypothyroid.

Speaker 1: 8:49

Number one you may not taste or smell things the same if you're hypothyroid. So too little thyroid hormone can cause alterations in how we taste and smell, which obviously will really affect how you enjoy food. This is also linked to zinc deficiency, which is a mineral that you can test through hair testing. We do hair testing with every single client and zinc is a really important mineral for your thyroid, among many other minerals that are really crucial for thyroid health. But yes, if you're noticing that your taste or your smell is off, that could be kind of a subliminal underlying red flag of hypothyroid.

Speaker 1: 9:31

Number two Hashimoto's and Graves disease specifically, which are both types of autoimmune thyroid diseases. Hashimoto's is an autoimmune thyroid disease that is actually the number one trigger to hypothyroid. Both Hashimoto's and Graves can cause eye disorders. With those that have Graves, they will notice their eyes are more protruding or will stick out. Some people have things like dry eyes or itchy eyes when they have an underactive or hypothyroid situation.

Speaker 1: 10:14

Number three SIBO. Sibo stands for small intestinal bacteria overgrowth, which contributes to major gut symptoms like bloating and gas and constipation. Those are the top three symptoms of SIBO and occasionally we will get someone that comes to us that already knows they have SIBO. They got a breath test through a doctor or through another practitioner and they come to us hoping that we can heal their SIBO. And one of the first questions I ask is how's your thyroid? Are you hypothyroid? We see SIBO and hypothyroid go hand in hand.

Speaker 1: 10:51

Another symptom of hypothyroid that you might not correlate is acid reflux. We see low stomach acid go hand in hand with low thyroid hormone output. So we need thyroid hormone to make hydrochloric acid, or your stomach acid, and this is why heartburn can be a symptom of hypothyroidism. When our thyroid is not outputting adequate amounts of hydrochloric acid. Number one you're not going to be able to break down all of your food and get the nutrients you need, which is important for having a healthy thyroid and having optimal energy and optimal hormones and an overall healthy metabolism, if you will. Number two low stomach acid obviously will cause symptoms like reflux and burping and things like that, but it creates an environment within the gut that allows pathogens and bacteria and parasites to hang out in the gut. So the low stomach acid is one of the other things that goes hand in hand with the SIBO that I just told you about. So if you're experiencing a lot of reflux, it's time to check your thyroid hormones, not just taking a PPI or taking an anti-acid.

Speaker 1: 12:12

Number five period problems are massively linked to thyroid issues. We see hypothyroid go hand in hand with those that have irregular cycles, those that have irregular cycles spotting between their periods, heavy bleeding, cramps, mood swings, pmdd, pcos. If you are navigating these types of symptoms, checking the thyroid has to be a big part of your treatment, of alleviating these different things. And then next one, the last symptom I want to dial in on is ADHD. The last symptom I want to dial in on is ADHD.

Speaker 1: 12:50

This is a topic I am so fascinated and intrigued by because a part of it's the algorithm on social media. I get a lot of ADHD accounts pushed to my Explore feed. I follow quite a few different accounts. I'm very fascinated by this concept of neurodivergence and people with you know ADHD, people that are on the autism spectrum, especially adult autism. I'm fascinated by it. We have personally within our family. We are real deal a family that has ADHD going on in our family. My sister is diagnosed ADHD. She's had it since she was a kid, so I have been exposed to this concept of ADD ADHD for my whole life. My mom was diagnosed ADD, slash ADHD, and so I've always been fascinated by it and I've seen both sides of people pursuing medications. You know the different stimulants that are available. I'm very familiar with that that world of navigating ADHD. But I also know a lot more now about the functional side how different minerals, mineral imbalances, are linked to ADHD, how our gut affects our brain health and how our thyroid affects our brain health.

Speaker 1: 14:07

And so if you are experiencing a lot of forgetfulness, you're distracted, words are hard to form brain fog, your brain just feels like it's not firing on. You're just not as sharp as you used to be, as you used to be. Very commonly, people self-diagnose as suddenly, oh I just must have ADHD. And if you go through the, you know there's an assessment that you can take for ADHD. I actually just pulled it up, I Googled it just to refresh my memory. We've had this done for one of our children at school and they have an adult self-assessment form. I'm going to actually link it in the show notes if any of you are fascinated by this. But you know a lot of the questions centered around like forgetfulness, distractedness, being overstimulated, having a hard time unwinding and relaxing, you know some of them are definitely not correlated to a struggling thyroid okay, but a lot of them are correlated to having a struggling thyroid and, believe it or not, I've had quite a few clients that have come to us for other you know, other health symptoms that they're looking to alleviate, but they also have an ADHD diagnosis, they're taking an ADHD medication and they also, upon doing blood work, are in a complete hypothyroid situation. And I always ask myself and this is something I dialogue with clients where I'm like and I always ask myself and this is something I dialogue with clients where I'm like at any point in time, when you were put in this ADHD medication, whether it was from a therapist or, you know, your regular GP did thing. I'm not saying that all ADHD is linked to hypothyroid, but there is definitely a correlation there.

Speaker 1: 16:01

Let's dive in a little bit on some of the most common triggers for hypothyroid. So number one is going to be autoimmunity, which autoimmunity is technically not a root cause. There's a reason why people have autoimmune, but hajimotos is technically an autoimmune disorder where your body's immune system mistakenly attacks the thyroid gland. This leads to inflammation of the thyroid gland and, overall, a gradual destruction of the thyroid tissue, which then affects your thyroid's ability to produce the hormones that are essential for your metabolism and that results in hypothyroidism. It is actually the most common cause of hypothyroidism. Hajimoto's also primarily affects women more than men, and it is a disease or a disorder that develops gradually over years. For most people it's not usually like a quick all of a sudden the person has Hashimoto's.

Speaker 1: 16:59

It usually starts out as the antibodies being slightly elevated, slightly over what's considered normal, and that's if your doctor even tests your antibodies in your blood work. A lot of doctors don't check for elevated antibodies, which is a really important marker to look at when we are assessing a person's thyroid health or their overall health in general, because that would give us clues that there's something going on with the immune system. When we see elevated thyroid antibodies, that's an automatic red flag. Something is going on with the immune system and there's a lot of things that you can do to reverse that or alleviate that, or investigation of like what's going on. Why is this happening, right? Number two I want to dive in on is toxicity. So this could look like toxicity from mold exposure. We do see mold be a common trigger for Hashimoto's Halogen minerals. So if you swam in a chlorinated pool, I had a client years ago that developed Graves' disease and she was a competitive swimmer all through school, growing up, and even after college she continued to swim in a chlorinated pool multiple days a week and that exposure did a number on her thyroid, and here's why. So chlorine is considered a halogen, which is a type of chemical.

Speaker 1: 18:25

Chlorine, bromine and fluorine or fluoride are three halogens that can really negatively impact thyroid health. So bromine is commonly found in like flame retardants, so in clothing and furniture. It's also in a lot of processed foods. So a lot of your conventionally baked foods and processed foods with flour have bromine in it. Okay, fluoride, which is commonly found in fluoridated water, dental products this is why I'm really against toothpaste with added fluoride or getting fluoride treatments at the dentist and the reason why it interferes with your thyroid is it inhibits iodine uptake, which disrupts your thyroid hormone synthesis.

Speaker 1: 19:15

Iodine is really, really important in the right amounts. We need a balance of iodine to minimize exposure to those halogen chemicals that I just listed, because obviously we're going to be exposed to those things. You're not going to get away with never drinking tap water, and unfortunately fluoride is added to most tap water. You're not going to avoid being exposed to flame retardants in processed foods. You're not going to avoid being exposed to chlorine, as chlorine is also added to a lot of municipal water as well, this is where, like a shower filter and water filtration is really important. And you know you might swim in a pool that has chlorine in it and it's not for me to say all this to like make people fear swimming in a swimming pool. Or you know, eating a baked good from a local bakery, that they probably use a flour that has bromine in it. But it's to help understand how those things can negatively affect thyroid health, and there actually is. There are things that you can do to detox your body of those halogen chemicals. Testing your iodine levels which I could do a whole tangent on iodine, I'm not going to do that right now, but testing your iodine levels via a 24-hour urine test that is a test that we will do with certain clients is really important for optimizing thyroid health for people.

Speaker 1: 20:40

Another source of toxicity is heavy metals, dental fillings, exposure to lead, aluminum, cadmium, chromium this is where really cleaning out, like your personal care products, your makeup Makeup, is a big source of heavy metals. For some people, getting metal fillings removed can be a piece of the puzzle. Radiation, even exposure to plastics like triclosan, pcbs, bpa, phthalates, parabens, pesticides, herbicides these types of you know we have a bucket right. I kind of like to use the bucket analogy from time to time. And when you're born, you're born with a certain volume in your bucket and that's influenced by your mother's health right and as we live our life and we have decades of things we're exposed to environmentally through our diet, stress the bucket starts to fill. And when the bucket becomes overfilled that's when dysfunction and disease and chaos happens within the body.

Speaker 1: 21:42

Illness is another thing that can trigger thyroid issues. So those with Lyme disease, herpes or other chronic infections are more likely to have a thyroid issue. Research is also showing that COVID-19 can trigger the activation of either a pre-existing thyroid disease or autoimmune, and that is something that we are personally seeing within our practice. We have quite a few clients coming to us with long-haul COVID or post-COVID, autoimmune types of things. But we're also seeing that in those that took the vaccine as well, certain medications. So you will have an increased likelihood of a thyroid disorder if you've been on birth control, certain antibiotics, even certain anti-cancer medications.

Speaker 1: 22:26

The birth control we know, birth control pill depletes vital nutrients needed for your thyroid to synthesize those thyroid hormones, and that includes things like selenium, zinc, b vitamins. It depletes iodine. The pill's also super inflammatory. It is known to contribute to leaky gut. It can affect your gut microbiome, which your gut is really important for the conversion and optimization of thyroid hormone synthesis. It's very inflammatory, which anything that you do or take or allow into your body that contributes to inflammation makes your cells less responsive to all hormones, including thyroid, including insulin, including progesterone. So managing your inflammation in general really important if you want to have optimal thyroid hormone levels.

Speaker 1: 23:25

Your diet plays a role here. So we see that people that chronically diet and under eat and are in a chronic calorie deficit have suboptimal thyroid levels and that's just because your body is starved for nutrients and what happens is if you're not eating a normal amount of volume of food, your metabolism starts to compensate. Everything just gets downregulated and dialed down. That's why a lot of women start to experience the hair loss. Their menstrual cycle might disappear or become more irregular or more symptomatic. You'll see digestive issues pop up when people are chronically dieting because your body's just not concerned with digestion or hormone output when it's starved period.

Speaker 1: 24:13

If you're the person that's sub-1800 calories consistently, especially if you're of an average height, I will say if you're a shorter or smaller person, your needed number of calories is going to look different than someone that's maybe 5'5 or taller or you know, I'm 5'7. What my caloric intake needs are is going to vary from a person that maybe is five foot one. So I don't want to say 1800 calories is necessarily the threshold, but typically if you're eating 1800, 1700 less calories a day, a calorie deficit. For me, a calorie deficit is I should be eating around like 2,000 to 2,200 calories a day just with the level of activity that I do. I lift weights about four days a week. I walk every single day. We've been biking most days. I play pickleball a couple of days a week. I'm very, very active. We swim, we're at the beach, we live a very outdoor lifestyle now, and so even from a year ago, I went from doing nine to maybe 11,000 steps a day on a good day and now I'm, on average, 12 to 15,000 steps a day. Just because of the nature of where we live and the weather here it allows me to be more active. So I need 2,100, 2,200 calories a day as maintenance and so for me, 1,800 calories is a deficit. 1,600 calories is a huge deficit. I cannot do a 1,600 calorie a day diet. I will not feel good and I'll be tired. I'm going to be having cravings. It's going to affect my sleep, you know.

Speaker 1: 25:55

But we do food journaling with our clients and you would be largely surprised at how many women are actually under eating. And these are women that are struggling with fat loss, struggling to lose weight. They would be, by a doctor's standards, labeled as overeating. Most doctors tell women like that, like, oh, you can't lose 20 pounds, you want to lose 40 pounds, you just need to go on a diet. And when you audit their food journal, they're actually under eating for what their height and their age and their activity level should be. They're eating 1400 calories a day and their activity level should be. They're eating 1400 calories a day. They're not eating enough protein. They're, you know, maybe overeating on fat and not eating enough carbs. Like it is a suboptimal situation and I'm not saying that from a being critical judging standpoint.

Speaker 1: 26:47

A lot of this is just your appetite starts to dial back when you don't eat enough, so your body stops sending you hunger cues. It becomes normal to not have an appetite in the morning when you wake up. A lot of us, as women especially I'm talking to you, moms we're stressed out. You wake up, you got to pack lunches, get the kids up, drop them off to school daycare, whatever you got to get into the office. It's chaotic, especially if you have kids in school and you're getting kids out the door to school in the morning and you work. It is a lot. It is a lot what I do from 5.45 to 7 am. That hour 15-minute sprint. It's intense.

Speaker 1: 27:30

If you're in that season of life, solidarity to you. I see you and you know that high cortisol situation is not doing us any favors for our thyroid, for appetite, and so we can become just so accustomed to like not eating much for breakfast and then lunches a salad, and pretty soon, you know, the weeks string together into months and then months string together into years and suddenly you've had a long stretch of just not eating enough and you didn't even really realize it. Your artificial sweeteners, your seed oils like canola oil and vegetable oil, those are not good for your thyroid, for your overall metabolic health either. That goes without saying. I think most people know that fried food and processed foods and lots of sugar and drinking alcohol not ideal for thyroid. It's pretty common knowledge at this point. But I like to really dial in on the under eating side of things, because I think people with thyroid issues typically are struggling with their weight and they're often just dismissed by doctors and told like here, take your thyroid medication and go on a diet. You need to lose weight and it's just so. It's very frustrating. So if you've been in that situation, I see you, we would love to help you. We can help you fix this. But moving on exercise, while obviously exercise has lots of health benefits, both mental and physical, for me it's like such a big part of my mental well being by exercising. If you're overdoing it on exercising, that has a negative effect on your thyroid health as well. And so I do see that those who do a lot of the HIIT, the Orange Theory exercise is like a five plus day a week thing and it's super intense or the runners. It contributes to a lot of high cortisol and cortisol negatively affects thyroid hormone output. There's a whole correlation there.

Speaker 1: 29:38

Next thing I want to talk about is poor gut health. Okay, I could do a whole episode on this and I probably will. I think I'm going to manifest a gut health you know linking gut health to thyroid hormone, and I'm just going to quick like scratch the surface here, and I already did kind of scratch the surface earlier. So the low stomach acid situation that I talked about. We see a lot of low stomach acid, which it's kind of one of those things it's like which came first, the chicken or the egg, right? Was it the negative gut health? Was that affecting the thyroid or was the thyroid affecting the gut health? Hard to know. It really is hard to know, kind of which came first, but they have a symbiotic relationship.

Speaker 1: 30:20

Your gut is where part of your thyroid hormone gets converted, so the inactive T4 gets converted in its active form of T3. That conversion largely happens in your liver, your gut, your kidneys, so all of those like detoxification organs that I just listed, really important that you have a healthy liver, that your kidneys are functioning well and that your gut, your gut health, is functioning well. Part of the reason why your gut health is so crucial is because your gut's where we absorb nutrients and those nutrients are essential for thyroid. So your iodine, selenium, tyrosine, which is a type of amino acid, all of the foods that you eat, your B vitamins, your vitamin A, retinol really crucial for thyroid hormone. And so if digestion is suboptimal and the person's not digesting or absorbing their nutrients properly, which this can happen again due to the low stomach acid. It also happens when we have an imbalance in gut bacteria, so dysbiosis, where if you have too much of the bad bacteria, not enough of the good bacteria, that can impair nutrient absorption. We also see parasites go hand in hand with thyroid issues, specifically autoimmune, because parasites eat up the good stuff in your gut that you're not getting a chance to absorb and that leads to suboptimal thyroid levels, which leads to lots of different health symptoms.

Speaker 1: 31:52

I want to dial in a little bit on the effects of trauma and chronic stress, in particular with how it affects your thyroid. So your hypothalamus and your pituitary specifically become hyperreactive and or under-responsive when you've had a lot of trauma and a lot of chronic stress. Those who have experienced adverse childhood events, also known as ACEs or trauma, if you will, are more likely to develop chronic health issues, as it can really affect brain signaling as an adult. And why this affects your thyroid is because your brain is part of the communication signaling with your thyroid. So what your brain signals to the thyroid, it's this beautiful. I'm going to put it in total layman's terms, I'm not going to go into like the pituitary secretes CRH to. I'm like we're not doing that today. We are going to, you know, speak in normal, regular person's terms. Basically, what you need to know is hypothalamus communicates the pituitary, which communicates to the thyroid, and that communication symbiosis, if you will, can become super disrupted when someone has dealt with a lot of stress and a lot of trauma because they've just had this overactive stress response. If you will, every time your brain gets signaled that there's a stressor whether it's mom and dad are fighting again, or my husband's being passive, aggressive or whatever right, maybe you had a mentor at school or you played sports and you had a coach that was really, really rough on you and it triggered you into fight or flight Over time. When you're chronically triggered into fight or flight and you have that, you know, constant signaling from the brain to release stress hormones, it affects signaling with other parts of your body, so it'll affect your ovaries and it for sure affects the thyroid.

Speaker 1: 34:02

By the way, I want to go back real quick to the discussion on that adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs. This is a quiz that you can take. I've talked about this on previous episodes. It's a series of 10 questions and it asks questions specifically about common traumatic experiences that you've had in earlier part of your life, so childhood and the higher number of ACEs often correlates to challenges later in life, including higher risk of certain health problems like autoimmune or thyroid issues. You will have a higher risk factor for also dealing with anxiety, depression, addiction, even increased risk of suicide, the higher your ACEs score is. That is another piece of the conversation that I do have with certain clients where I do like to piece together the history and see does the person have a lot of trauma history and is that potentially contributing to why they're dealing with autoimmune or dealing with hypothyroid types of symptoms? And that's where nervous system regulation is a really important piece of the puzzle, beyond doing labs and beyond looking at nutrition and calorie intake and minerals. Nervous system is really important here, especially for people that have had a lot of past trauma. Really important here, especially for people that have had a lot of past trauma.

Speaker 1: 35:22

Next, I want to spend a little bit of time talking about the medication side to alleviating thyroid symptoms. Now I preface this by saying this section is for educational, informational purposes. I am not a doctor but very well researched on this, have worked with many hypothyroid clients, even some that are medical professionals themselves, because they wanted to access functional labs. They wanted to take a more functional approach and did not have access to functional labs, nor do they know how to read those labs, how to do anything with their labs. So I preface that by saying do your own research. Obviously, talk to your doctor. Don't use this podcast as your own personal advice.

Speaker 1: 36:03

But it is very common for doctors to prescribe a T4 only medication when someone is diagnosed as hypothyroid, and that is typically Synthroid or Levothyroxine. Those are the top two medications that I see people on. You know we have to remember that T4 is the inactive form of thyroid hormone and it must be converted to active T3. And that conversion relies on lots of things in the body. So, like I talked about earlier, it's a conversion that largely happens in the liver, in the gut, in your kidneys. You know your tissues hypothyroid state and we'll leave them with all those continued hypothyroid symptoms such as slow digestion. You know hair loss, cold hands and feet, difficulty losing weight or weight gain Another thing that can influence your thyroid medication.

Speaker 1: 37:09

So sometimes it's not the actual medication, but it's the context in which it's being taken. So most thyroid medications need to be taken apart from food, from coffee, from other medications, due to the fact that the substances can prevent medications from being properly absorbed, which will then, in turn, lead to a fluctuation of thyroid hormones and, for some, a reemergence of hypothyroid symptoms. So that's really important to look into as well. You do not want to be taking your thyroid medication alongside drinking a cup of coffee or too close to eating breakfast. Another thing that can affect how your body responds to thyroid medication is the inactive ingredients or the fillers that are within your hormone.

Speaker 1: 37:57

Medication need to be considered. So some people are super, super sensitive and you can see inconsistent absorption of that medication be compounded by some of the other things that are in that medication. So, for example, I'm just going to list off here some of the different things that can actually be in that medication. So, for example, I'm just going to list off here some of the different things that can actually be in that medication Lactose monohydrate. So people that don't digest lactose well or are more dairy sensitive might find that that ingredient can affect how well you're able to absorb your medication. Some medications are formulated with what is known as modified wheat starch, also known as gluten. Certain medications have been found to have dyes, sucrose, talc, cellulose, which certain individuals just don't respond well to some of those synthetic ingredients.

Speaker 1: 38:50

If you have underlying gut issues, that is going to affect the absorption of your medication as well. So, for example, a lot of people with hypothyroid, like I've talked about, have reflux or heartburn. Some of them are even on those types of medications like omeprazole or protonix or prilosec or things like that Even your regular, like Rolaids. This can impede the absorption of those medications. And if you have lower stomach acid, people that have lower stomach acid don't have the proper acidity within their gut to effectively break down and absorb their nutrients and so they're not going to absorb their medication effectively. We also see that with people that have SIBO. So people that have SIBO have nutrient deficiencies because that bacteria it affects your ability to absorb your nutrients. Your small intestine is where a lot of our nutrients are absorbed and so that's where, again, it's just this vicious cycle where, when there's underlying gut issues, it can affect obviously lots of aspects of your health, but even just your ability to see changes with the medication that you're taking.

Speaker 1: 40:08

I am going to link a blog post from Dr Isabella Wentz. She goes by Thyroid Pharmacistist specifically talks a lot about hajimotos. She's written a few books. She has a really solid youtube instagram. There's a really helpful blog post specifically talking about is your t4 medication working for you? It really goes into a deep dive. It's a couple years old of a blog post but I definitely, I definitely would recommend reading through that if you're on thyroid medication and you're kind of questioning if you should switch to something else or maybe you're not taking it properly or what other things you should look into. Some people definitely do better on your T3 containing medications or the combination of T4 and T3, like Nature Thyroid, or the combination of T4 and T3, like nature thyroid, armor thyroid. I know some people have had great success getting your thyroid medication compounded at a pharmacy. Obviously, it will take the work of a qualified practitioner to help you figure that out, but I'm going to link that article. I think you might find it helpful.

Speaker 1: 41:13

Additionally, I get this question all the time of what blood work should I be getting to check my thyroid? What blood markers? You also just might be curious from the mineral side. What minerals should I consider incorporating? What are some things that I can do to start to support my thyroid? We have a freebie, a free email series that you can sign up for, opt in for. It's linked in the show notes and I think it's a four or five day email series, but the first email that comes to you dives in on the lab side, of what labs to order from your doctor, what is considered optimal.

Speaker 1: 41:52

I talk a lot, too, about the difference between the conventional approach to blood looking at blood work versus the functional approach. So we look at blood work from a more functional lens to see all right, maybe the person doesn't have a diagnosis of being hypothyroid, but their labs are trending in that direction. What can we do now to prevent them from getting a hypothyroid diagnosis? What are some lifestyle changes that maybe the personothyroid diagnosis? What are some lifestyle changes that maybe the person needs to make? What are some diet things we can work on?

Speaker 1: 42:21

Let's dive in on their gut health. If you have never done a GI map stool test, if you've never tested your gut, that is a really important piece to the puzzle. On troubleshooting thyroid health. In fact, on troubleshooting thyroid health. In fact, I'm typing it in to get the title right now.

Speaker 1: 42:44

There is a new documentary out on Netflix. My sister called me yesterday. She's like did you watch new gut health documentary on Netflix? It's called Hack your Health the Secrets of your Gut. It was so funny because obviously my sister has done a gut protocol with me, she's done hair testing, like she's been my little lab rat for years and I just love when, like family is like, yeah, they were saying about stool testing and how important it is for your brain and your immune system and it's the wave of the future for unlocking optimal health. And then you know, hopefully down the road, like regular doctors will start doing gut testing with their patients and I'm like uh-huh, uh-huh, yeah, uh-huh.

Speaker 1: 43:29

So I have not watched it yet, but I hear that it's really good and apparently they talk a lot about gut testing and they even talk about like fecal transfer for optimizing gut microbiome, which is like a whole other rabbit hole discussion topic. I find that super, super fascinating as well. This idea of like taking the stool from a person with a healthy microbiome and implanting it into the colon of a person with a not healthy gut and how it can help populate your gut with good bacteria Super, super fascinating. Again, we're like just scratching the surface on the stuff on gut health and it's a topic that I like I'm obsessed. I love the gut side of what I get to do for work. Obviously, you can hear that in how many times I've talked about it.

Speaker 1: 44:16

Anyways, if you have any questions, or you're interested in taking a more root cause approach to your health and you're interested in the functional labs you want more data beyond blood work or you're interested in how can I naturally support myself and reduce my risk factors for developing long-term chronic illness, improve my energy not have brain fog.

Speaker 1: 44:41

Get my body to a place that I can safely, sustainably lose some weight, get my cycle back on track. That is the type of work that we do with our clients. Our website will be linked below fueledandfreecom. We're taking on clients through end of May and then going to be taking a little bit of a break for the summer, so enrollment is open into that program. You can also book a discovery call right from that website as well if you want to hop on and talk face to face. And, of course, you can always message me on Instagram at Margaret Ann Powell and we will see you next week. Thank you for listening to the Fuel and free podcast. Please subscribe to the show on apple podcast, spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Learn more at margaretannpowellcom and follow me on instagram at margaretannpowell. You