#thyroidcondition #thyroidproblems #functionalmedicineapproachtothyroiddisease #hashimotos #gravesdisease #hypothyroid #hyperthyroid #thyropause #hormoneimbalance #guthealth #heavymetaltoxicity #highTSH #mycotoxinillness #mold
Many of my recent clients have come to me with thyroid issues, most of them with hypothyroid. These women presented with TSH of over 5 mliU/L!!! In case you don’t know, this is well over lab range and even in conventional medicine it is considered problematic.
Let’s just quickly explain here the difference between conventional & functional lab ranges:
Conventional lab ranges are the standard reference ranges used by most doctors and labs. They are based on averages from the local population. If your results fall outside these ranges, it's usually considered a sign of a medical issue that needs treatment: they are primarily used to detect and diagnose diseases.
Functional lab ranges are narrower and focus on what's considered "optimal" for health and wellness, rather than just detecting disease. Functional medicine practitioners use these ranges to catch imbalances or potential problems earlier, even if you’re technically "within the normal range" by conventional standards. The goal is to keep you in the healthiest range, rather than waiting until you have a disease.
In short, conventional ranges aim to diagnose disease, while functional ranges focus on optimizing health and preventing future issues.
Just to give you an idea, a normal TSH level would be 1.5 mliU/L or maybe 2, but higher than that can already impact how you feel.
Go back to my former article on thyroid conditions here for more details and symptoms.
No Doctor bothered to order more in-depth thyroid labs though: they didn’t check for how much hormone their thyroid was producing. They also didn’t check how much of that produced hormone was converted into active hormone and despite these abnormal TSH levels they didn’t even look into thyroid antibodies either.
In any case the only solution that’s presented to most of these women is taking thyroxine which is the thyroid hormone that’s produced by your thyroid.
Let me ask you this: if your doctor hasn’t even checked if your thyroid is making enough thyroxine and if there may be a conversion issue to active thyroid hormone which could be responsible for the elevated TSH - how can he or she just supplement you with thyroxine!? And if we don’t even look into WHY the thyroid is not functioning as it should be, how can these women ever get better?
Hormone imbalance, be that sex hormones or thyroid or steroid hormones are always the result of other underlying issues that have caused this imbalance!
You may be surprised to hear that my approach to healing thyroid conditions is not pushing the thyroid function but actually working on gut health, eliminating other toxins (especially heavy metals), supporting the liver and changing the diet to lower inflammation and cortisol: And for all of these women their TSH levels have come down to normal!
I have had this experience first-hand - even several times: I’ve had episodes of elevated TSH myself and all I had to do was tend to my liver and do more detox to bring my thyroid levels back to normal again. It’s true that this has come up both times with mold toxicity. I definitely see a close correlation between high toxin levels and thyroid disease, especially mycotoxins and heavy metals.
Research shows that higher exposure to mercury (Hg) may be linked to lower thyroid hormone levels (hyperthyroid & Grave’s disease), while higher exposure to cadmium (Cd) may be linked to higher thyroid hormone levels (hypothyroid & Hashimoto’s) in adults. Source
I also have a client who is suffering from Graves’ disease, which is the opposite of hypothyroid or Hashimoto's: it is a thyroid autoimmune condition where the thyroid is actually overactive.
We started off working on her diet to reduce inflammation & incorporating relaxation techniques.
Then we introduced gentle detox & went into a gut healing protocol to resolve candida (yeast) and other pathogenic overgrowth in her microbiome.
We also had her avoid foods she was reacting to for the duration of the protocol, to further help lowering inflammation
We’ve done some mental work on stress & setting boundaries.
The first success: No more bloating. Her antibodies have gone way down. Her thyroid nodules have decreased.
Another interesting thing about thyroid conditions that I wanted to share with you is the throat chakra: many of these women are not speaking their truth! They are trying to please everyone by swallowing everything and not talking back.
Just think a minute about where your thyroid is located: it is really right at your throat. And as whoo whoo that may sound: emotions are a big part of our health. I truly believe that these kinds of things do have an effect.
We can definitely see an increase of Autoimmune disease and women are usually much more impacted by them, however there is also an increase amongst men. Part of it is definitely our environment, the exposure to toxins and hormone disruptors. The level of stress we are experiencing, but for women it’s definitely also the fluctuations and lower levels of hormones in perimenopause that can affect our thyroid function. I’ve written an article about thyropause in the past, you can read more here.
Do you have a thyroid condition? I would love to help you - please schedule a call so we can discuss a plan to help you feel better.
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