Latest / Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease / 145 // Is There Gluten Hiding in Your Thyroid Medication?
Transcript
- 0:00Is your thyroid medication making you feel worse? Nobody wants that.
- 0:04When you start on a medication or a supplement or anything, you're doing it
- 0:07in an attempt to feel better.
- 0:10You're doing it in an attempt to make symptoms go away, to address the root cause of your problems.
- 0:16Nobody goes on a supplement or a medication trying to feel worse.
- 0:21But some thyroid medications can sabotage your health.
- 0:25And that's what we're going to talk about today on the Health with Hashimoto's podcast.
- 0:30Welcome to this week's podcast. I am Esther. I am the host of Health with Hashimoto's.
- 0:36Every single week, I want to help you improve your health.
- 0:39I want to help you know that you are in charge of your health.
- 0:43You are the CEO of your own health.
- 0:45And that means you are the ultimate decision maker.
- 0:48You might have people on your, like, quote, board of directors.
- 0:51People who are advising you, people who are telling you their best suggestions
- 0:56for your overall health.
- 0:58And they are speaking to their specialty.
- 1:01So your doctor is looking at your health with the doctor's lens.
- 1:05Your chiropractor is looking with the chiropractor lens.
- 1:08Your therapist is looking with mental health lens. Your pastor is looking with
- 1:13the spiritual health lens.
- 1:14Everybody is advising you with their specialty in mind because that's what they're good at, right?
- 1:21Your job as the CEO of your health is to put all of the pieces together and
- 1:27to make an informed decision about what is going to be best for your overall health.
- 1:32That is your body, your mind, your spirit, your diet, your environment.
- 1:36Putting it all together, putting all of the pieces together, factoring in
- 1:40What does this season of life look like? You know, are you really busy with
- 1:45the kids or with your parents or with your job?
- 1:47Like what kind of stressors and what kind of load are you carrying right now?
- 1:52What can you incorporate into your life? What can you change?
- 1:56How can you improve your health? Only you know the actual answers to that.
- 2:01Everybody else makes their best guess and their best suggestion based on what they know.
- 2:08And now you get to put the pieces together. And every single week,
- 2:11I am here to talk to you about that, to help you make the best decisions possible
- 2:17for you and for your health.
- 2:19And recently, I was reading in one of the Facebook groups I'm on,
- 2:23and somebody asked a question about, I think she was actually asking about energy
- 2:28levels, and somebody mentioned levothyroxine.
- 2:31And the conversation went from there. I am going to read to you one of the comments
- 2:37that immediately caught my attention because I had no idea.
- 2:41This is what the comment was. It says, did you know that levothyroxine contains
- 2:47gluten and a ton of other awful fillers and dyes?
- 2:51I literally just discovered that a few months ago, and I am currently working
- 2:54on getting off of it. I was shocked.
- 2:56Apparently, it is not common knowledge. I've been gluten-free for 10 years.
- 3:00It's on all of my charts, and not one doctor had connected the dots until I brought it up.
- 3:05Okay, end of comment, end of quote.
- 3:07I didn't know that. I have been a nurse for over 20 years, coming up 25 years
- 3:15that I have been a nurse. I've been in healthcare longer than that.
- 3:19I have written levothyroxine and Synthroid on so many charts,
- 3:22but there's nothing in the literature.
- 3:25Like when you open a drug book, they make drug books for nurses and it tells you what the drug is for.
- 3:32It tells you the timeline, like how soon it's going to take effect,
- 3:36how long it's going to be there.
- 3:38It tells you the drug interactions. Can you take this drug with another drug?
- 3:42It tells you sometimes the food interactions. It tells you the side effects.
- 3:46It tells you what to tell your patient if they missed a dose,
- 3:49like should they take it right now or should they wait until their next dose?
- 3:53It tells you so much information, but never have I read that levothyroxine contains
- 4:00gluten because in the drug book.
- 4:03And in the databases, when you're entering drugs and medications,
- 4:08it does not contain the fillers.
- 4:10There's no way for your nurse or your doctor to know what fillers are in your specific medication.
- 4:17And now I'm wondering if that is one reason that a lot of people throughout
- 4:22the years have told me I can only do brand name Synthroid.
- 4:27Out of all of the medications that I've ever typed in into somebody's chart.
- 4:31That is the most common one that people will say, I can't do the generic.
- 4:36I have to do the brand name. And one of the biggest differences is the fillers.
- 4:41In Synthroid, the brand name Synthroid, there is no gluten.
- 4:46It is gluten-free. It is also sucrose-free.
- 4:49It has lactose and corn, possibly corn starch is the corn, and some dyes.
- 4:57That is what is in the fillers of Synthroid.
- 5:01But levothyroxine, just the generic, that could have gluten depending on which
- 5:07company is making it and what they put in for their fillers.
- 5:10It could have gluten, it could have lactose, corn, sucrose, it could have dyes.
- 5:15You have to do a bit of research on your own.
- 5:19Your doctor, your nurse, they are not going to know. Your chiropractor is not going to know.
- 5:23The only person who is going to know this is the pharmacist.
- 5:27When you get your medications filled, whatever medications you get filled at
- 5:31your pharmacy, ask them to look it up.
- 5:34So after reading this comment, I called my pharmacy. You can do the same thing.
- 5:37Call your pharmacy. Now, I live in a very small town and I actually went to
- 5:42high school with one of the pharmacy.
- 5:44I don't No, she's the pharmacist or pharmacy tech. She answered the phone.
- 5:48I only told her my first name because that's the size of town I live in.
- 5:52And she was able to look it up.
- 5:54My entire phone call from getting to the menu, to being able to connect to the
- 6:00pharmacy, to having her answer my question, it was a total of three minutes.
- 6:04You have time for this. I called.
- 6:06I said, this is the medication.
- 6:09Can you look it up and find out if there's any gluten in it? And she did.
- 6:13And she's like, okay, hey, I know there's some place I can check.
- 6:15And she read all of the fillers off to me, just right over the phone.
- 6:18And then I just love her. She said, I'm going to make a note on this one that says gluten-free.
- 6:24And she's also like flagging my charts to let me know that if the brand changes,
- 6:30if the pharmacist or the pharmacy changes which levothyroxine they get in the
- 6:35future, that they'll let me know.
- 6:37It was so simple. And now instead of
- 6:40worrying about it and you know stressing out
- 6:43like I'm doing all these things to avoid gluten in my
- 6:46diet to avoid gluten and wheat in my shampoo
- 6:49and conditioner because they put wheat germ in there
- 6:52and they put other gluten things in so many different products I do have an
- 6:57episode on that it's the hidden sources of gluten episode episode 135 it's different
- 7:03places that you can look for your gluten but at that time when I recorded episode
- 7:06135 I did not know that it could be in your medication and not just any medication,
- 7:12but medication specifically for thyroid.
- 7:14When so many people with Hashimoto's are trying to avoid gluten and it has it
- 7:19right in the medication, it does not make any sense. I cannot make it make sense.
- 7:23All I can do is tell you, hey, if you're avoiding gluten, this is something
- 7:28you might want to look into.
- 7:29Like I said, it did not take me very long to check it out.
- 7:32I quick did a Google to make sure that the person who was just commenting on
- 7:37Facebook actually knew their stuff.
- 7:39And I did find a chart that said levothyroxine can have gluten in it.
- 7:45Now, Synthroid does not have gluten.
- 7:48Unithroid does not have gluten. Lavoxyl does not have gluten.
- 7:53In fact, that one is free of gluten, lactose, corn, and sucrose,
- 7:58according to the Paloma Health chart.
- 8:00And then Tyrosin doesn't have anything. And Euthyrox has corn, but that's it.
- 8:06So I did a Google search to find out, you know, what's the truth of this comment.
- 8:13Now let me let you know about fillers in T3. Okay, so you remember levothyroxine
- 8:19or synthroid, all of those that I just read off, those are all T4.
- 8:22That is the hormone that your thyroid makes. It produces T4.
- 8:27Your body, primarily your liver, converts that T4 to T3. It happens at the cellular
- 8:33level all throughout your body, but the majority of it happens in your liver.
- 8:37And when it's converted to T3.
- 8:39Then that's the active form of thyroid that your body can actually use.
- 8:43That's the ignition switch for your cells.
- 8:46Turning your cells on, allowing your mitochondria to work, allowing your cells
- 8:51to have the energy that they need.
- 8:53And of course, you need energy. You need energy at the cellular level.
- 8:56You need every single cell to be doing its job. If we're not all doing our jobs,
- 9:01then we don't work, right?
- 9:02So you need every single cell to be doing its job. When your cells are doing
- 9:05their job, then your organs and your tissues can do their job and then you can do your job.
- 9:10So let's get our T4 to convert to T3. But sometimes it's not working.
- 9:15And if it's not working, first of all, enroll in the Holistic Hashimoto's course.
- 9:20It is my program so that you can figure out the shortcuts to getting your root causes resolved.
- 9:25I walk you through what are your root causes. Now that is a mini course.
- 9:30It's also included in the Holistic Hashimoto's program.
- 9:32And in less than an hour, you're going to be able to figure out what your root
- 9:36causes are without any labs, without any expensive stuff.
- 9:39It's just like you watch this video, I've got a workbook, and you get to figure
- 9:44out most of your root causes right there.
- 9:47But if your T4 is not converting to T3, you'd have energy problems because your
- 9:53cells don't have that ignition switch.
- 9:55So some people need a combination medication. They don't need just the levothyroxine
- 10:00or synthroid, they need a T4 and T3. And so that is armor thyroid.
- 10:06Armor thyroid does not have any gluten.
- 10:10Liothyronine, that one is just corn, again, no gluten, and some of them don't even have corn.
- 10:19NP thyroid, no gluten. It has lactose in it. So if you're staying away from
- 10:23lactose or dairy, you need to know that.
- 10:25And then Cytomel does have gluten.
- 10:29Cytomel is a combo T4, T3. So these things you do need to know,
- 10:34but the only way you can know again is by calling your pharmacist.
- 10:39That's the only way because there's so many different companies that make these
- 10:43medications and they each have their different blend of fillers.
- 10:49And so as long as we're talking about this, we have to talk about counterfeits.
- 10:52We have to talk about Amazon. I'm sorry.
- 10:55I know we all love Amazon. At least I love Amazon. I don't know about you.
- 10:58I love Amazon. I love the convenience.
- 11:00I love to be able to know, oh, I need this. Like the other day I needed command hooks.
- 11:06So instead of putting it on my shopping list and then waiting until I went into
- 11:10the nearest city, which for me, I don't go very often, I just put it in my Amazon cart.
- 11:16And then once a week or so, I just check out. Or if I need it quicker than that,
- 11:20I just check out right away.
- 11:21I know I would love to shop local, but I guess, you know, my convenience outweighs
- 11:29my going into town and shopping local.
- 11:31So anyway, let's talk about Amazon. Amazon has a lot of counterfeits.
- 11:35And there's no way for you to know when you order, if it's a counterfeit or if it's real.
- 11:41There have been some companies who buy, quote, their products off of Amazon,
- 11:46knowing that it's not actually theirs, and they get the product,
- 11:50and of course it's not theirs, it's a counterfeit, and they have done analyses,
- 11:54and they have found that what looks like their product is filled with nasty stuff.
- 12:01Chalk, sawdust, wheat.
- 12:05Stuff that we wouldn't want to consume. Counterfeits are rampant, unfortunately.
- 12:10So my policy, my personal policy is I do not buy any supplement off of Amazon.
- 12:16None. I do not buy supplements off of Amazon. I use Fullscript,
- 12:22which is kind of like the Amazon of good quality supplements.
- 12:25You do need a provider link in order to create an account with Fullscript.
- 12:30And I have that down in the show notes or on my link page.
- 12:33Every single email I send out, pretty much every single email has in the PS,
- 12:39I have a section of helpful links and my Fullscript is in all of those because
- 12:44I want good quality supplements.
- 12:47Now Fullscript does have thousands of different supplements.
- 12:50It has so many different things that you can look up and they have made a commitment
- 12:55to good quality supplements.
- 12:57They have hundreds of brands.
- 13:00Every kind of supplement that you could think of, it's on there.
- 13:04And so when I need some supplements, I go to Fullscript.
- 13:07That is where I get most of my stuff. It's also where I get,
- 13:11you know, protein powder and things like that, because I can trust them.
- 13:16I don't trust Amazon for supplements.
- 13:20Now, that was just something that I thought of because we were talking about
- 13:23fillers and medications. And I just want you to know that.
- 13:27I want you to know, please don't buy supplements off of Amazon.
- 13:30Another thing that can happen on Amazon is, you know, people can sell their
- 13:34own things on Amazon, especially if they have a lot of it.
- 13:38There have been some people who, this happens especially with network marketing
- 13:42companies, they buy it for themselves and they get a backlog.
- 13:46Some network marketing companies require you to order a minimum every month. Some don't, some do.
- 13:52And so some people will build up this stockpile of stuff that they're never
- 13:56going to use. And then they're like, oh, what am I going to do with all this?
- 13:59I'm going to sell it on Amazon.
- 14:00So they do, and it's a real deal, but it's expired because it sat in their closet
- 14:06for a long time until they're like, oh my goodness, what am I going to do with all this stuff?
- 14:09If you buy a product off of Amazon, always check the expiration date because this has happened.
- 14:16Again, it's from companies buying quote their own thing off of Amazon.
- 14:22And doing an analysis on it, but they actually just get the bottle and they're
- 14:25like, oh yeah, this is expired.
- 14:28So another reason, don't get your stuff off Amazon.
- 14:32There are things that you can get off of Amazon, but supplements are not one of them.
- 14:36If you're going to get the activators that I talk about on this podcast a lot.
- 14:40Get them directly from the company.
- 14:42Now I use Protandim Nrf2, Nrf1, and NAD.
- 14:48I use those every single day I take them because they activate my own body to
- 14:53do what my own body is designed to do.
- 14:55That protandem Nrf2, it tells my body to activate the Nrf2 pathway,
- 15:00which is in charge of creating antioxidants, in charge of lowering oxidative stress.
- 15:05When your oxidative stress is lower, your inflammation goes down.
- 15:09Super, super important. I take the protandem NRF1 to activate my NRF1 pathway.
- 15:15And what does that one do? It's in charge of your mitochondria,
- 15:17the energy production of the cell.
- 15:20If I want my cells to have enough energy, I need to make sure that my mitochondria are working.
- 15:24So I want to activate that pathway because both of those two that are NRF2 and
- 15:30NRF1, they slow down as you age.
- 15:33And I want to get them back up to the levels like when I was a teenager safely.
- 15:37So I take both of those every day. I also take something that activates my NAD+.
- 15:43Now, your NAD is like the CEO of the cell. It's the thing that makes the decisions.
- 15:49It tells your cells what to do.
- 15:52Clean up, destroy, produce energy, mobilize and utilize fats.
- 15:56Your NAD is so powerful. But I'm going to tell you something that I tell all of my new customers.
- 16:03Start with the dual synergizer, the Protandem NRF2 and NRF1,
- 16:08and do that for six months.
- 16:10Get your body creating more antioxidants and more mitochondria and then add in the NAD.
- 16:16You can do it all together. But what I have found for a lot of women is the
- 16:21NAD is too powerful right at first and they feel really gross.
- 16:25I accidentally took it for a while when I first started. I was filling up little
- 16:30supplement containers for myself and my husband and for some reason I added the NAD to mine.
- 16:36I don't remember if I was just thinking it was going to be an experiment or
- 16:39whatever. And a couple of days in, I felt like nauseous. I felt morning sickness.
- 16:44And yet I knew that wasn't a problem.
- 16:47It was the NAD. I just felt really kind of gross.
- 16:50But after being on the dual synergizer, the protandum NRF2 and NRF1 for six
- 16:56months, then my body was ready to add the NAD.
- 16:58I went off NAD for a while because of budgetary reasons and my thyroid antibodies spiked.
- 17:06So I know personally that mobilizing my NAD, strengthening it,
- 17:12helping the CEO of my cells do his job is very important for me.
- 17:17And as far as those go, the protandum line, it's proven in all mammals, and you're a mammal.
- 17:23So those are what I recommend for everybody.
- 17:26Now, LifeVantage is a direct sales company. You can only get it from the company,
- 17:32or ironically, for this episode, they do sell on Amazon, and they sell direct from the company.
- 17:38So you'd have to order, make sure that it's LifeVantage selling it to you on
- 17:42Amazon, but quite honestly, just get it through me.
- 17:45Use my affiliate link or get it directly from the company.
- 17:49Again, don't use Amazon. I have heard, I've never verified,
- 17:53but I have heard that if Amazon is running low or runs out in one bin and they
- 17:59have a counterfeit, obviously it doesn't say counterfeit, next to it,
- 18:02they'll just pull from that bin and fill your order because you wanted, you know.
- 18:06XYZ and in this other bin is XYZ.
- 18:09I've not verified that, but just another reason that I would not order any supplements
- 18:14from Amazon. So I order from Fullscript.
- 18:17Life Vantage stuff, the activators, I order directly from Life Vantage.
- 18:22And I get Seed. That is my favorite pre and probiotic.
- 18:27You can get those on Fullscript or you can get them direct from the company.
- 18:31If you get them from Seed directly, they will give you a friends and family
- 18:35link that you can share with others so that in the future you can get a discount on your own order.
- 18:41So that is one reason, well, actually I order from Seed because they weren't
- 18:45available on Fullscript when I started using them.
- 18:48But I keep using their website because I get to share that coupon link with my friends.
- 18:53So if you want a coupon link, let me know. I only get one at a time.
- 18:56I do not have an affiliate link for Seed, but I do get one coupon at a time.
- 19:00So if you want a little coupon link, let me know.
- 19:03And again, I have the affiliate link for all the LifeVantage products,
- 19:06and I have the full script down below in the show notes. All of those will be there.
- 19:11So know where you're getting your medications and your supplements from.
- 19:15Make sure you're getting it from a quality source, direct from the company or from Fullscript.
- 19:19If you're getting a medication, talk to your pharmacist and ask what fillers are in it.
- 19:24Is there gluten in my medication? Because if you're avoiding gluten,
- 19:29you don't want your medication to be giving you gluten while you're doing your
- 19:33best to avoid it in all other areas of your life.
- 19:37I hope this episode was helpful. If it was helpful, will you leave a rating and review.
- 19:42Those matter so much. They really tell the podcast algorithms that this is a
- 19:47quality podcast worth showing to other people.
- 19:50Your ratings and reviews just help so much. I appreciate you and I'll see you
- 19:54next week on the Health with Hashimoto's podcast.
- 19:57This podcast is for informational and.
- 20:00Music.