Latest / Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease / October Slide: Why Fall Hits Your Hashimoto’s Harder ⎸ Ep. 220

Transcript

October Slide: Why Fall Hits Your Hashimoto’s Harder ⎸ Ep. 220 · Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease

• 0:00
  On October 1st every single year, I see so many social media quotes and pictures
• 0:06
  of beautiful fall colors with Anne of Green Gables saying, I am so glad I live
• 0:12
  in a world where there are Octobers.
• 0:14
  I also love October. I love the fall. It's so beautiful.
• 0:18
  And I really love it when all of the mosquitoes die so you can go outside on
• 0:22
  a walk and not get bitten.
• 0:24
  I really like that part too.
• 0:26
  But in the autoimmune world, there are a lot of people who also start talking
• 0:31
  about the October slide.
• 0:33
  I do have an old podcast episode about this, and I have not turned that one
• 0:39
  into a blog post. So we're going to recap it today.
• 0:43
  It's episode 120. But I went through all of the research again to see if there's
• 0:48
  any new information. And so that's what we're talking.
• 0:52
  Slide. Is it a real thing? What contributes to it? And how can you protect yourself
• 0:58
  and give yourself the best health in the fall and winter?
• 1:03
  Maybe you got a prescription and a follow-up appointment for six weeks later,
• 1:07
  or maybe you got told that your
• 1:08
  numbers are fine for now and we're just going to keep an eye on things.
• 1:12
  Either way, your provider probably did not tell you that Hashimoto's is two things and not one.
• 1:17
  It's a thyroid that can't keep up because it's also an immune system that's attacking the thyroid.
• 1:22
  Medication can help handle the first, but the second one is all yours to work
• 1:26
  on. You are the CEO of your own health.
• 1:29
  You can start working on that immune system side before your labs say that you have to.
• 1:34
  Hi, I'm Esther Yunkin. I am a registered nurse. I've been a nurse for 25 years
• 1:38
  and I am the host of the Health with Hashimoto's podcast.
• 1:41
  I am the nurse who helps you sort your Hashimoto's into thyroid or immune. Let's sort.
• 1:46
  When I hear of something happening cyclically from a client,
• 1:52
  like they tell me every single fall, I feel worse.
• 1:55
  When I hear it from one client, it's interesting and we talk about patterns
• 1:59
  and what she can do and what might lead into that pattern.
• 2:04
  When I start hearing it from multiple people, I go to the literature.
• 2:08
  Like, is this a common thing?
• 2:11
  Do I need to talk about it on the podcast? Are a lot of people dealing with this?
• 2:16
  That is one way that I develop episode ideas for you.
• 2:20
  And today's episode is inspired by some of those conversations.
• 2:25
  I kept hearing people talk about feeling worse in the fall. And I also experienced it.
• 2:31
  A couple years ago, I first noticed that I was just kind of flat.
• 2:36
  I was not depressed, but I was just feeling like I was existing instead of like my normal self.
• 2:42
  And it wasn't related to my menstrual cycle. I mean, that's the first thing you look at, right?
• 2:47
  If you're feeling off, the first thing that I usually wonder is where am I in my cycle?
• 2:52
  Because often that explains it but that that year that flat emotion was not
• 3:00
  explained by my menstrual cycle and it was also reflected by a couple people
• 3:04
  saying that they felt worse.
• 3:06
  So I started investigating what is going on and is this common for a lot of people?
• 3:11
  And it turns out that it is common enough that it has a name.
• 3:17
  And the name is the October slide.
• 3:21
  Now you will see this on social media primarily.
• 3:25
  I have not found it in any research that I looked at.
• 3:30
  It's just, it's like something that people talk about on social media and it's
• 3:35
  widely understood in some autoimmune groups.
• 3:38
  But yet, you know, it's not a diagnosis. It's not something that your doctor
• 3:42
  is going to say, oh, you're going into the October slide.
• 3:46
  So what is the October slide? Number one, it is personal.
• 3:50
  Like I said, it's not a diagnosis. It's not something that happens across the
• 3:54
  board, but it's common enough that it has a name.
• 3:57
  And the slide part is actually an acronym that stands for several things that
• 4:03
  happen or that change as we move into fall and winter.
• 4:08
  And the S starts back in September. Or if you live in the south,
• 4:13
  it starts even in August, which is school.
• 4:16
  School or work stress seems to increase in the fall.
• 4:21
  Another thing that happens is L, low barometric pressure.
• 4:24
  The I is illnesses increase. And of course they do. Everybody is inside in the winter.
• 4:30
  The D, days darken, and vitamin D drops.
• 4:34
  And E is related to a couple of those things, exercise ebbs.
• 4:40
  So the S-L-I-D-E stands for school or work stress increases.
• 4:44
  The L, low barometric pressure.
• 4:46
  I, illnesses increase. D, days darken, and vitamin in D drops, and E, exercise ebbs.
• 4:53
  Now look at your own life. Do you have any of those five things going on? Probably do.
• 5:00
  I mean, if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, your days are getting darker.
• 5:04
  They just are. Unless you live right around the equator where you have pretty
• 5:08
  consistent day and night throughout the year.
• 5:12
  But most of us live somewhere away from the equator and our daylight changes
• 5:18
  as we get into fall. If you are in the southern hemisphere, and I know some
• 5:21
  of my listeners are, then you are moving into spring.
• 5:25
  And so your days are getting longer. But here's the thing.
• 5:29
  When I looked at the research, I actually had one of the AIs scroll through
• 5:35
  a ton of research for me. And then yes, I did go investigate it and make sure
• 5:39
  that it was not hallucinating, that it was pulling the real stuff.
• 5:42
  I use several different AIs depending on what I'm doing. And I use perplexity
• 5:46
  if I want a lot of the like PubMed and the research, the actual scholarly articles
• 5:54
  scrolled, I used perplexity.
• 5:56
  So I asked perplexity about this, and yes, I, of course, double-checked it.
• 6:00
  But what it said is actually that the October slide, while it is talked about
• 6:06
  a lot in autoimmune circles, the research says that actually spring is worse.
• 6:13
  So there was a study done on multiple sclerosis, on people with multiple sclerosis,
• 6:17
  and fall was the best time for people who have multiple sclerosis.
• 6:24
  Generally, of course, in any single study and in any single disease,
• 6:29
  you are always an individual. There will always be bio-individual experiences and results.
• 6:36
  So in general, multiple sclerosis feels better in the fall, worse in the spring.
• 6:42
  Rheumatoid arthritis, again, people are feeling better in the fall.
• 6:47
  And these were some pretty big studies, one of the ones that they looked at
• 6:51
  was over 12,000 patients, and they felt better in the fall, worse in the spring.
• 6:58
  Lupus was also studied. And while some of the people had some changes in the
• 7:05
  fall, October itself was not like a peak.
• 7:10
  Inflammatory bowel disease has also been looked at for seasonal changes.
• 7:16
  And there is not a consistent pattern with the seasons.
• 7:21
  Okay, but you're like, Esther, I don't have those autoimmune diseases.
• 7:25
  I have Hashimoto's. Hashimoto's is an autoimmune disease.
• 7:29
  It is my immune system attacking my thyroid.
• 7:31
  Why are you talking about all of the other ones?
• 7:33
  Well, because I wanted to look for patterns in autoimmune diseases in general.
• 7:38
  But what about Hashimoto's? What about your thyroid specifically?
• 7:43
  And it is a good question for people who have hypothyroidism.
• 7:49
  Your TSH generally goes up in the winter.
• 7:53
  So is there an October slide, or maybe it's, you know, November,
• 7:57
  December, January, I don't know, for people with Hashimoto's?
• 8:01
  I can't tell you that from the article that I have, but the research article,
• 8:06
  it was published in 2021 in the Journal of Chronobiology International.
• 8:13
  So these four researchers, their goal was to figure out if there is a seasonal
• 8:18
  change with TSH and all thyroid hormone levels.
• 8:22
  So they wanted to know T3, T4, free T3, free T4. They looked at all five of
• 8:29
  those labs and they found that TSH goes up in the winter.
• 8:36
  They also found that free T4 is higher in the autumn than in the winter.
• 8:42
  So let's review these five labs quick.
• 8:46
  TSH is your brain asking for more thyroid hormone.
• 8:50
  The higher it is, the more your brain is asking for more. It doesn't mean it has more.
• 8:56
  The higher your TSH is, the more requests are going out for please give me more.
• 9:02
  Free T4 is the amount of thyroid hormone, specifically the T4 hormone that is
• 9:09
  circulating in your blood available to be used.
• 9:13
  Free T3 is the available T3 hormone circulating in your blood available to be used.
• 9:21
  And to review, your thyroid creates mostly T4.
• 9:25
  Your mostly liver converts that to T3. T3 is like the ignition key for your cell.
• 9:32
  So TSH, your brain asking for more.
• 9:36
  T4, what your thyroid produces. Free T4, how much is available floating around in your blood.
• 9:43
  T3 is the active form. And free T3 is the stuff floating around in your blood available to be used.
• 9:50
  So I do have episodes about all of those, and I explain them in much more detail.
• 9:56
  But essentially, this research found that TSH, so the amount of requests going
• 10:03
  out for more, is higher in the winter than the other seasons.
• 10:08
  And also, free T4 is highest in the fall.
• 10:12
  Why is that? They didn't go into that. You know, research articles,
• 10:17
  if you read, if you start reading research, they almost always end in,
• 10:21
  this is what we found, and this is where we think that other people should study.
• 10:25
  Most research articles are very, very narrow in their scope.
• 10:29
  This research article did not talk about October. They didn't mention the word slide.
• 10:35
  They were just looking at seasonal changes and TSH is higher.
• 10:40
  So where does that leave you? Well, it leaves you, as always,
• 10:45
  as the CEO of your own health.
• 10:48
  Your job as somebody who has been diagnosed with Hashimoto's,
• 10:53
  or really as somebody who is alive, your job is to look at the overview of your
• 10:59
  own health, to look for patterns, and to
• 11:03
  develop goals and a plan for how you're going to have the best health.
• 11:08
  So my goal for the winter is to feel normal.
• 11:13
  If you've heard my story, if you've heard my stories about my flare-ups of Hashimoto's,
• 11:17
  you know that the cold is a trigger for me.
• 11:20
  So every winter, I feel worse. I have some like flat mood.
• 11:26
  I have some skin issues. I'm just more tired.
• 11:29
  I know that the winter itself, and pretty sure it's the cold, not the daylight.
• 11:36
  That is my biggest thing. But what is it for you? Like what are your seasonal patterns?
• 11:42
  Do you have this seasonal cyclical pattern of feeling worse in the fall or in the winter?
• 11:50
  If you do, if you can reflect back on the last couple falls or the last couple
• 11:56
  winters and say, oh yeah, I often do feel worse in the winter,
• 12:00
  then you get to look at, okay, what else is going on?
• 12:04
  Maybe one of these slide things. School, barometric pressure,
• 12:08
  illnesses, the days to darken, vitamin D, and exercise.
• 12:12
  Are any of those in your control?
• 12:15
  It's probably not in your control whether you go to school or go to work,
• 12:18
  whether you homeschool or whether you have kids in the public school,
• 12:22
  whatever your situation is.
• 12:23
  If you have minors, school is just part of life.
• 12:28
  You can't change that. Same with work. You might be able to change jobs,
• 12:32
  but earning an income going to work, that's probably not going to change.
• 12:37
  So while parts of it are in your control, the school and work stress are,
• 12:42
  they're just part of life and not in just October or November or December.
• 12:48
  The low barometric pressure, you cannot change the weather.
• 12:53
  That it just is what it is. Illnesses increasing. Okay, that one,
• 12:58
  you cannot change what anybody else is doing, but you can protect yourself.
• 13:04
  When illnesses increase, what can you do?
• 13:08
  For myself, when I worked in the ER or anywhere in the hospital,
• 13:12
  every single fall, somebody would come around asking if everybody wanted a flu shot.
• 13:17
  So I did a lot of research and I found that in general, probiotics were more
• 13:25
  effective to protect people from respiratory illnesses than a vaccine.
• 13:31
  I also found out that adequate levels of vitamin D, and so when I say adequate,
• 13:36
  I'm thinking 80-ish, but I don't remember the study. This has been,
• 13:40
  oh goodness, I started looking at probiotics and vitamin D and flu.
• 13:45
  Probably 20 years ago. I haven't been a nurse for 25 years. I started looking
• 13:50
  at supplements and micronutrients and diet and things back just a year after
• 13:57
  graduating from nursing school.
• 13:59
  So I don't remember when I first came across these studies, but it was probably 20 years ago.
• 14:05
  And I saw a couple different studies. I remember writing down at least three
• 14:10
  different journal articles when the nurse would come around through the hospital
• 14:14
  asking if I wanted or if I was going to refuse a flu shot. I was like,
• 14:18
  here are the research articles.
• 14:20
  And from what I read, probiotics are more effective and adequate amounts of
• 14:27
  vitamin D are more effective.
• 14:28
  So both of them together, I am doing that.
• 14:31
  And I feel like I am protecting myself from respiratory problems more than this.
• 14:39
  Shot that you want to give me.
• 14:41
  And so I refused it every year. Every year except for one.
• 14:45
  I still remember where I was standing and I remember which ER I was in.
• 14:49
  And I was at the end of like a long stretch of night shift, 12 hour night shift.
• 14:55
  Or maybe at that ER I was working 16s. I don't remember. I was a traveler at that time.
• 15:01
  And so they work you hard, which is fine. But I was tired.
• 15:05
  And it was first thing in the morning, the nurse came around.
• 15:09
  So, you know, I'm at the very end of my shift, at the end of a stretch of days,
• 15:14
  and I was just tired and I didn't argue with them.
• 15:17
  I like put up a little argument and told them the probiotics and the vitamin D.
• 15:23
  And for some reason, I gave in that year and it is the sickest winter I've ever had.
• 15:29
  I got, yeah, not going to go there. You can do your own research on that.
• 15:34
  But know that there are things that you can do to protect yourself from other
• 15:38
  people's germs and viruses in the winter.
• 15:41
  I do have an episode about that.
• 15:44
  It is episode 14. I've also done a webinar on it, just going through the different
• 15:48
  layers of protection that you can do on your own. Because again,
• 15:53
  we're not trying to control somebody else's health.
• 15:56
  You are looking at what is in your own control.
• 16:00
  Do you have control of S-L-I-D-E? Do you have control over school,
• 16:08
  over the barometric pressure, over illnesses, over the days getting darker, over exercise?
• 16:15
  You don't have control over all of those, but there are things that you can
• 16:18
  do. So episode 14, now that I have mentioned it on the podcast,
• 16:22
  I'll probably go back and do that blog post next.
• 16:26
  I'm trying to go in order that people find the blogs, like an order of popularity
• 16:31
  as I put each one of them out there. So I'll probably try to do 14 this week
• 16:37
  so that you can just hit that and see.
• 16:39
  But of course, the podcasts are always out.
• 16:44
  So do you have control over illnesses?
• 16:48
  Well, you have control over some of your own protection, but not necessarily
• 16:53
  over, you know, if other people are getting sick.
• 16:56
  You do not have control over the days getting darker. That is dependent on where
• 16:59
  you live. But you do have control over your vitamin D levels.
• 17:03
  I have a bunch of episodes, I mean a bunch, probably like three,
• 17:07
  talking about vitamin D because it is so crucial for your overall health and wellness.
• 17:14
  It is crucial for your immune system and.
• 17:17
  It does go down in the winter. It also doesn't go up in the summer if you are
• 17:22
  not outside a lot, or if you use a lot of sunscreen, if you protect yourself from the sun.
• 17:26
  Vitamin D is super important, and that is in your control.
• 17:32
  I recommend that everybody gets their vitamin D level checked in the fall,
• 17:36
  and then you supplement appropriately.
• 17:39
  Back again, 15, 20 years ago, I heard people, this was back when the vitamin
• 17:45
  D council was a thing, you know, a group of experts all coming together.
• 17:50
  And they specifically said you cannot get enough vitamin D from food unless
• 17:55
  you're eating a bunch of, I think they said anchovies or sardines.
• 17:59
  But I don't eat those tiny fish. I don't eat tin fish really.
• 18:03
  So I supplement. And again, go to those episodes about vitamin D so that you
• 18:09
  can learn about what you can do for your own health for the D of October slide.
• 18:14
  Episode 9 is probably your best bet to start. In that one, I talk about low
• 18:19
  vitamin D and Hashimoto's.
• 18:21
  I do have another one. I think it's episode 62.
• 18:25
  Yep, 62. And that talks about how to pick a vitamin D supplement.
• 18:30
  So we're on to the E of slide.
• 18:34
  Do you have control over your exercise ebbing. Yes, you do.
• 18:39
  You don't have control over the weather. So if you go outside,
• 18:43
  you know, every day in the summer for exercise, and then it gets cold and rainy
• 18:47
  and snowy and sleety, you don't want to go outside. I understand.
• 18:50
  But you still have control over how active you are.
• 18:54
  And how active you are impacts your immune system.
• 18:58
  So let's work on the things that we do have control over.
• 19:03
  And just know that you're not imagining things.
• 19:07
  If you feel like your health, if your Hashimoto's changes in the fall,
• 19:13
  it's probably true for you.
• 19:15
  And then you get to look at, well, why? What kind of patterns are here?
• 19:19
  And maybe S-L-I-D-E impacts your health.
• 19:23
  School, low barometric pressure, illnesses around you, the days getting darker
• 19:28
  and vitamin D and exercise changes.
• 19:31
  Some of these are obvious, some of them you have to look into,
• 19:34
  but control the controllables.
• 19:36
  You are the CEO of your own health.
• 19:39
  And I want you to look outside on October 1st and all throughout October,
• 19:44
  and I want you to be saying what Anne of Green Gables says, which is,
• 19:49
  I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.
• 19:53
  That's it for today. If you are ready to sort your Hashimoto's into thyroid
• 19:57
  or immune, start with Hashimoto's Decoded, and then come talk about it in the free community.
• 20:02
  Both links are in the show notes. I'll see you next week.
• 20:05
  This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only.
• 20:09
  Please discuss any questions or concerns with your trusted healthcare professional.