Dr. Julia St. Clair is a Naturopathic Doctor running a private practice, Simply Refined Health in sunny Gilbert, AZ. Her goal is to simplify the process and help you refine your treatment options to what works for you along your healing journey. Dr. St. Clair enjoys cooking, yoga, spending time with her husband, and participating in church activities. She always wants to provide relevant information that you are interested in, so if you want to hear about a certain topic feel free to reach out with your topic or questions!
Thyroid Health - Hypothyroid & Hashimoto's
Dr. Julia St. Clair, ND • November 14, 2019
All that you need to know about the thyroid and its malfunction...
What is the thyroid and why is it important?
The thyroid is a small butterfly shaped gland at the bottom of of the neck. This gland is in charge of the "metabolism" or in other words, the energy of the body. Thyroid hormone plays a role on each cell of the body. The hormone enters the cell and activates the DNA to perform the job that the cell is made to do. If the cell is not getting the hormone it needs, then it won't function properly. This can be any cell in the body, which is why the symptoms of low thyroid can be so widespread throughout the body.
Symptoms of thyroid issues.
Most typically notice fatigue and weight gain to begin with, but then it can start manifesting itself in many other ways.
- Fatigue
- Cold intolerance
- Dry skin
- Constipation
- Weight gain
- Pale and puffy face
- Hoarseness of the voice
- Muscle weakness, aches, tenderness, stiff, pain
- Cholesterol abnormalities
- Joint pain, stiffness and swelling
- Heavy or irregular periods
- Hair loss
- Slow heart rate
- Low body temperature
- Depression
- Memory difficulties
- Thyroid gland enlargement (goiter)
Typical Treatment.
Often labs run to evaluate the thyroid are TSH, and if you are lucky... T3 or T4, depending on your doctor.
Typical treatment, often consists of Levothyroxine, or another brand of T4, to replace the missing hormone that is demonstrated most clearly by your TSH level. TSH is what your brain releases to tell your thyroid to make thyroid hormone (T4 and T3). So the more TSH your body is making, the more your body is crying out for thyroid hormone, and the less hormone your thyroid is making.
So, if you go to the doctor and "everything," (meaning TSH, T3 or T4) are within normal range(even with the thyroid hormone prescription), then it is assumed that everything is normal with your thyroid and that your symptoms could not possibly causing your symptoms.
The problem with typical treatment.
It assumes that the thyroid is the problem.
What we need to do is look at the thyroid as part of a system... a whole pathway. It does
start with the brain communicating to the thyroid and the thyroid in response making hormone. However, it doesn't stop there. T4 and T3 are then carried in the blood stream and this has to be done in the right balance. Your gut and your liver need to be healthy to convert the T4 to the more active T3. Your cells have to be producing healthy thyroid hormone receptors to be able to bring T3 into the cell and activate it and produce energy. If the immune system is involved, such as in Hashimoto's thyroiditis, then this adds another layer of why the thyroid pathway is malfunctioning.
You have to be able to evaluate correctly and understand where in the pathway things are going wrong to correctly treat and get rid of thyroid symptoms and this is exactly why your thyroid hormone may not be taking care of your symptoms. It's not just a replacement problem... it can also be a healing problem.
I made a video to tell you exactly how I approach thyroid conditions including the testing I run. In the video, I also talk about, not only how thorough testing can help address symptoms, but also how it is potentially saving one patient years of suffering through symptoms. My purpose for this video is not to instill fear about "everything that can go wrong," but instead empower you to understand more of the process of a thorough investigation and how knowing what is exactly going on with thorough testing can help you specifically target and overcome your symptoms that you may have been struggling with, or can potentially save a LOT of people from struggling with those symptoms in the future.
Leave a comment below if you have any questions!
Click here to watch the video!
The thought that if you are a "healthy person" you will never get sick is a myth. In fact, i t’s perfectly normal to get sick every once in a while. This shows that our immune system is functioning the way that it was created to and defending us from unwanted invaders. With the onset of the pandemic, boosting the immune system to fight off the coronavirus has been a massive topic. But I feel like sometimes this topic gets thrown out and sets unspoken expectations that if your immune system is “boosted” that it will keep you from getting sick. And honestly, it’s all a matter of semantics, but I feel the need to clarify in clear words what the goal is for a healthy immune response. My true goal as a licensed physician and Naturopathic Doctor when I say “boosting the immune system” is to help your body correctly and effectively take care of bacteria and viruses (any unwanted microbe) that may enter your system. This does not mean that you will not get sick with the flu, cold, or whatever is going around. This means that your body is able to quickly identify and eliminate the intruder given the body’s natural elimination pathways. This often looks like producing mucus, coughing, healthy fever levels, etc. All the symptoms that people associate with being sick, is your body’s immune system functioning the way it is supposed to. The length of appropriate symptoms varies based on what the body may be fighting off. For example, colds and flus can last from 3 to 7 days. The key is that the body is able to react, recover and heal with support of the immune system and the person returns to normal quite quickly within a matter of days. The goal of optimizing immune system function is avoiding the UNWANTED results of a dysfunctioning immune system. This can be one of two things. The dysfunctional immune system can be underfunctioning or overfunctioning. Underfunctioning - This is where the body has a harder time identifying and overcoming the invader. The infection can then get a stronger hold and create worse symptoms, or take longer to eliminate and drag the symptoms out for a long time. This is often seen as being sick for weeks and having lingering symptoms that just don’t seem to go away, or getting sick frequently as if they keep getting “reinfected.” Many lifestyle, nutrition, medication factors can go into this. Suppression of symptoms and therefore suppression of the immune system reaction can also contribute to this. (That’s a whole other topic for discussion though.) Overfunctioning - Where the immune system finds the intruder and then overreacts, creating worse symptoms than necessary to eliminate it. The most common manifestations of an overactive immune system are things like asthma, autoimmune diseases, and asthma. More short term manifestation can can sometimes be the picture that we see in regards to the acute respiratory distress caused by a cytokine storm in Covid-19 patients. The immune system is overreacting and actually causing unwanted effects in the person. And it must be noted that the imbalance of the immune system can be a combination of both the under reaction and the overreaction. For example, the body can under react to an infection which can then later create an overreaction if the infection gets bad enough. So there is a huge spectrum and so many different ways dysfunction of the immune system can occur. The important thing to be able to recognize when there is dysfunction and how to manage that. When creating a healthy and optimized immune system, the goal is NOT to never get sick. The goal is to have an immune system that responds correctly and effectively toward pathogens, because sometimes... getting sick actually means that the immune system is functioning the way it should. If you are looking for help optimizing your immune system. I am doing telehealth consults for those in the state of Arizona! Feel free to schedule your appointment by clicking the button at the top of your screen. Sources: Reyes-Silveyra J, Mikler AR. Modeling immune response and its effect on infectious disease outbreak dynamics. Theor Biol Med Model. 2016;13:10. Published 2016 Mar 5. doi:10.1186/s12976-016-0033-6 Zhao M. Cytokine storm and immunomodulatory therapy in COVID-19: role of chloroquine and anti-IL-6 monoclonal antibodies [published online ahead of print, 2020 Apr 16]. Int J Antimicrob Agents. 2020;105982. doi:10.1016/j.ijantimicag.2020.105982 D'Elia RV, Harrison K, Oyston PC, Lukaszewski RA, Clark GC. Targeting the "cytokine storm" for therapeutic benefit. Clin Vaccine Immunol. 2013;20(3):319–327. doi:10.1128/CVI.00636-12
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