Latest / Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease / 168 // The Tylenol debate shows why doctors don’t always know best in your Hashimoto’s care

Transcript

168 // The Tylenol debate shows why doctors don’t always know best in your Hashimoto’s care · Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease

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  I 100% believe that you should have informed consent and medical autonomy.
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  And if you don't believe in those two things, this podcast episode is probably
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  not for you. In fact, the Health with Hashimoto's entire platform is probably not for you.
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  I want you to be the CEO of your own health.
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  I want you to make the ultimate decisions.
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  Your medical team is on your team, but they don't call the shots. You do.
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  And that's what we're talking about today. If you are on my email list,
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  you already got a little preview because I sent out a very spicy email on Saturday.
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  If you're not on the list, head over to my website, healthwithhashimodos.com,
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  and I do now have a little teeny tiny pop-up that's easy to X out of that will
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  help you sign up for my list. Welcome to the Health with Hashimoto's podcast.
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  This is where you will find clarity and simple, sustainable strategies to feel better.
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  I want to help you figure out your root causes.
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  My name is Esther Yunkin. I am a registered nurse.
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  I spent about 17 years in the emergency department and then got sick and tired
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  of putting band-aids on chronic things.
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  I went back to school and now I have been in holistic health education for about 10 years.
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  I know how exhausting it is to live with fatigue, brain fog,
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  and the ups and downs of Hashimoto's and that is why I'm here.
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  I'm here to cut through the confusion and to give you practical steps that support
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  your body, calm your immune system, so that you can regain your energy,
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  feel like yourself again.
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  Informed consent and medical autonomy is not something that we used to talk about, even as a nurse.
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  I did not really talk about it because it was assumed that that is the job of
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  your healthcare providers.
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  Your doctors, your nurses, your nurse practitioners, everybody on your team,
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  they are supposed to give you informed consent for everything you do.
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  It was taught to us in school.
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  It was practiced in clinicals. It was applied on the job.
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  That's just part of being on
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  the medical team is providing patients and clients with informed consent.
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  And that means enough information to decide yes or no, the pros outweigh the
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  cons and I am going to move forward or the cons outweigh the pros and I am going
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  to not move forward. I'm going to go in a different direction.
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  That is the job of your medical team. It is to give you enough information that
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  you can make informed consent. And it didn't used to be controversial.
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  Why is it now? I have no idea. If you can tell me beyond like politics,
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  if you can tell me why informed consent is controversial, I would love to know
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  because I have not heard a single reason that I accept as valid.
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  I'm sure people have, I mean, people have told me why.
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  And we're going to talk about that. And I want to preface this by saying I have
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  so many friends in the medical world. I don't dislike any of them.
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  I have worked with good doctors, bad doctors, good nurse practitioners,
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  bad nurse practitioners, good nurses, bad nurses.
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  And when I say bad, some of them, like, actually, I've worked with at least
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  one doctor where I wouldn't send anybody to see that doctor.
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  Like, she was truly bad. Like, I worried for my patients, All of the nurses
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  had to be on our best game to make sure that everything was okay.
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  So I have worked with bad doctors.
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  I have also worked with people who had differences of opinions.
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  I have also worked with people on the medical team who I felt like they didn't
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  know what they were talking about or they just didn't know much at all.
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  Like enough to get the job done, but I wouldn't ask them any questions.
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  On the other side, I have worked with so many, way, way, way more people that
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  are absolutely incredible.
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  They have a heart and a passion to help the person in front of them,
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  whether that is a paying patient or client or just a friend or a neighbor or just acquaintance.
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  I have worked with so many people. The vast majority of people I have worked
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  with in medicine are good people. They want the best for people.
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  And when I say this next thing, it applies to some of those people.
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  And here is my controversial statement. And I came to this realization,
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  actually, after the acetaminophen, Health and Human Services,
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  RFK, Jay, and Trump press conference.
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  I'm going to get to my controversial statement in a second. So I know a lot
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  about the antioxidants that your body makes.
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  I know that your body can make antioxidants.
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  Things that your body can make naturally, that's called endogenous.
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  You make it from the inside. It's E-N-D-O, endogenous.
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  So your body creates antioxidants. We've talked about that actually quite a
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  bit on the Health with Hashimoto's podcast.
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  I recommend two specific products. It's called the LifeVantage Protandim Dual
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  Synergizer because one of them helps your body make more antioxidants,
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  including glutathione.
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  It helps your body make 300% more. And that's native endogenous glutathione,
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  which of course, if your body isn't making it, your body can use it better.
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  Glutathione that you get through an IV or oral formulation or anything else
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  is not very bio available.
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  It is hard for your body to take. So the LifeVantage Dual Synergizer,
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  one of them helps your body create more glutathione and other endogenous antioxidants.
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  The other part of it helps your mitochondria create more energy, more ATP.
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  And I recommend those two things
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  for everybody with Hashimoto's because we need both of those things.
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  And also I recommend them to pretty much everybody who asks me for health information
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  because so many things start out at the cellular level and we need to clean
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  up the cells and we need to provide the cells with energy, with what they need.
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  So I have been learning about this stuff for over 15 years, maybe closer to
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  20. I first learned about endogenous antioxidants.
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  My now 14-year-old son was diagnosed with lead poisoning at his one-year well child check.
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  We lived in a really old house, but as a result of that diagnosis,
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  I had to dig into the liver and how to help his body detox.
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  At one years old, you cannot do a lot of the things that you can do for adults
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  because, I mean, he's just too little.
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  I was told we can do a little bit, but you're going to have to wait until he's
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  a teenager, and then you might have to go out of the country to get the best
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  treatment because the U.S.
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  Doesn't provide it. Well, I'm like, no, absolutely not. I do not accept that
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  diagnosis and that plan for my one-year-old.
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  So I dug into the research. I did everything I can to learn about the liver and how we can help it.
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  So I have been learning about detox, liver, glutathione, even more since my
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  14 year old was one year old.
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  Okay. So with all of that background, like I know that acetaminophen.
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  Tylenol impacts the liver and it decreases glutathione.
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  I also know how important glutathione is for your overall detox because glutathione
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  acts as like a sticky fly paper.
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  So, you know, a sticky fly paper, we hang it in our kitchen in the summer because
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  I live out in the country. We have chickens, we're surrounded by farms and we get flies.
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  And so the sticky fly paper has a smell that humans can't smell, but the flies can.
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  So they land on it, stick to it, and then they're not flying around our kitchen.
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  Same thing happens in your body. It's like sticky fly paper for the toxins. That's glutathione.
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  The toxins stick to it. The glutathione helps take them out of the body. We want it. We need it.
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  And in our world, we are more and more and more bombarded with environmental toxins.
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  So it makes 100% sense to me with all that I have learned that when you have
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  acetaminophen, it impacts your glutathione.
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  And then when you're exposed to environmental toxins, your body can't deal with
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  them very well, and so they cause more damage. That just makes sense.
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  And so even before I read all of the studies, I already knew that because I
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  have been reading studies for the last 15 to 20 years about this.
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  And I already knew that Tylenol was controversial because of this and because of other things.
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  So I went on Facebook and Instagram and I recorded a couple stories and a couple
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  videos, just very, very short, saying acetaminophen impacts your glutathione.
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  Here's what you can do. I didn't think it was controversial at all.
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  Well, interestingly enough, I have had two different sets of people reach out to me.
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  One set of people thanking me. These, interestingly enough, mostly nurses. even like a phone call.
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  Thank you for speaking out. Thank you for sharing your research.
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  I trust what you have read and you're speaking the truth.
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  Like this, these are the messages that I'm getting from nurses.
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  And then it blowing my mind.
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  It's every, maybe not every single, the majority of messages that I have received
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  telling me to stop, telling me that I am spreading medical misinformation.
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  Those are all from doctors. Majority.
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  Majority from doctors. And these are doctors on Facebook and on Instagram.
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  I believe every single one I have worked with personally.
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  And like I said at the beginning of the episode, friends, good people,
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  they want the best for their clients and for their patients and for their co-workers.
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  So it got me thinking, like, why are the nurses thanking me?
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  Again, broad generalization. Why are the nurses thanking me and why are the
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  doctors telling me to stop?
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  It was kind of discombobulating, actually, because I am just speaking research.
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  I am just speaking what I know, what I have read about.
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  And I don't go on hype. I don't go on politics.
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  I want the best for you, for my listener.
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  I want the best for every single person who does anything on my platform,
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  on the Health with Hashimoto's podcast. My goal is that you have informed consent,
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  you know the pros and the cons, and you can do the best thing for your situation at that current time.
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  That is my ultimate goal, that you can make those decisions so that you can
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  feel better, so you can feel like yourself again. So when I started getting
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  these messages, I was a little like weirded out, quite honestly,
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  because I haven't said anything that is misinformation.
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  Everything that I said was based in fact. Now, here is another fact.
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  There are multiple studies, many, many studies about acetaminophen,
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  and some of them show that babies born to women who have had Tylenol,
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  who have taken Tylenol, they have an increased risk of neurodevelopmental problems like autism. them.
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  But the thing is, you might have heard about the study that was led by one of
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  the top people at Harvard Public Health.
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  They did that study because of all of those studies.
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  There are some of those studies that show that no big deal.
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  Other studies show it's a big deal. So the Harvard study, I'm just going to
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  call it the Harvard study, and I will have the link down in the show notes if
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  you want to read the study for yourself.
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  They looked at 46 different studies and they rated them. They took just data, right?
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  They took the emotions out and they said, here is our criteria.
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  We're going to figure out which ones were good studies and what the good studies found.
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  We're going to rate each one and we're going to figure out, you know,
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  what do all the studies say? Because most of the.
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  It's totally fine, will point back to those studies and they'll say,
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  there was a lot of studies and some of the studies show that it's no big deal.
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  And other people who are saying, actually, Tylenol acetaminophen can be a big deal.
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  Let's let women know so they can make an informed decision.
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  Maybe they're not worried about it. Maybe they are. But the woman themselves
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  needs to make that decision.
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  And the people who are saying that, they're looking at the studies and saying
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  there were studies that showed that there is a risk.
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  And of course, you can hear my perspective on this.
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  I feel like you need to have the information and you need to make that decision
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  by yourself, not maybe by yourself, informed by your trusted medical team.
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  And so as I'm thinking about this, and as I'm thinking about the doctors who
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  have told me, Esther, stop talking about medical misinformation,
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  I also started thinking back, was
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  it two months ago, when somebody in the government, I don't remember who,
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  probably the FDA or the, I don't know, the drug people, they have decided to
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  stop natural thyroid medication.
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  So natural desiccated thyroid, which is actually a thyroid gland that is,
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  you know, dried powdered.
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  If you're on armor thyroid, or if you're on a compounded one,
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  those are the most common ones, then that is the natural one.
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  And those are going to go off the market. There's, you know, controversy.
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  But I started thinking about that. And I started thinking about this Tylenol
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  thing. And what do the two have in common?
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  I believe, and this is where I made some people mad, I believe that this is
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  a hangover from the days when doctors were treated like gods.
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  Back in the day, and I'm talking, I don't know, maybe 50s, 60s, 70s,
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  I don't think the 80s, but I'm not sure. I have worked with nurses who experienced
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  this. When a doctor walked into the room, everybody else had to stand up.
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  The nurses had to stand up in respect for the doctor who just walked into the room.
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  When I say the doctors were treated like gods, I mean that people stood up when they entered the room.
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  I mean that when they spoke, the patients, they assumed that the patients would
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  just do what they said no matter what, and they would not ask questions. They would not argue.
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  They would not read research and figure out their own opinions.
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  What the doctor said was like gold. It was treated like God said it.
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  And most doctors, I have worked with a couple who still have that complex,
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  but most doctors do not believe that anymore.
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  However, I believe that they are still trained a little bit that way.
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  And they believe that their word, their research, their learning.
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  Their institutes of medicine, their associations and stuff carry more weight than yours.
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  And there's nuance to this. I 100% believe that education is to be valued and it does carry weight.
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  And then you can get into the weeds of, you know, what is their education like?
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  And so I do believe that doctors have been trained and they do know some stuff.
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  But I also know that in today's age, the average person can learn to learn.
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  You can learn to read the research. You can learn to put things together.
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  You can learn to read, you know, 10 different studies and figure out where the
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  commonalities, you can learn to look for the pros and cons. You can learn to learn.
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  And that is not restricted to, you can only learn about medical stuff if you went to medical school.
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  And of course, you know that because you are listening to the Health with Hashimoto's podcast.
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  You know that you can learn to learn. You have learned to learn,
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  or maybe you are learning, and you can listen to people like me
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  who have already learned to learn. Okay, personally, my story,
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  I went to nursing school for four years.
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  I was a nurse for a lot of years, went back to school for holistic health education.
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  It was a program for nurses.
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  When I went back to that program, each little course or module that we had,
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  they gave us a packet of information. This was 100% research.
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  They pulled a whole bunch of research studies, and I had to read through that entire packet.
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  It was, oh goodness, I want to say 200 pages long in some of them. It was ridiculous.
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  Kind of frustrating at the time. And after I read through all of those research
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  things, then I had to write a patient education plan.
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  What would I say to a patient or a client?
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  And not only did I have to read all of the research and put it together,
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  but I had to look at it through a lens of a whole person, body,
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  mind, spirit, diet, environment.
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  And I had to make it simple for my client or, you know, my instructor to read
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  and learn. And so that was my training.
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  And I know that the average person can learn to learn.
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  You do not have to go to medical school to learn about medical information.
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  We have, well, we have PubMed. We have Google Scholar. Both of those have published medical research.
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  We have Substack. we have blogs, we have YouTube, we have podcasts.
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  We have so many things where you can learn and you can get information.
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  And it's not gatekept anymore. I believe that this acetaminophen thing and the
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  thyroid thing both stem from the doctors and the doctors associations thinking
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  that they know better than you.
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  And they want to say, well, I have read the information and I have made my decision.
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  Therefore, I am going to tell this to all of my patients and they don't need
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  to know anything else. That's not the world we live in anymore.
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  You have medical autonomy. You make the final call.
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  Your doctor, your other medical people, they are on your board of directors.
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  They are there to advise you and to give you the best direction that they can.
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  That's where I am. I hopefully am on your team through the podcast.
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  Through the resources in the Health with Hashimoto's community over on school.com,
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  S-K-O-O-L, not S-C-H-O-O-L.
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  You know, maybe you have gone through the program, the Holistic Hashimoto's
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  program. Oh, by the way, that will be changing. I am redoing it.
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  So if you have considered doing any of my things that I sell or have,
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  do it before Black Friday because everything's going to be changing then.
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  So if you thought about jumping in, do it ASAP.
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  I'm just going to tell you the week of Black Friday, you'll want to be on my
• 17:51
  email list so that you get all of the info.
• 17:56
  I have got some exciting things for you. But if you've thought about doing the
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  Holistic Hashimoto's program or anything, do it now or wait until Black Friday
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  and see what I've got in store for you.
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  Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh, I hope that I am on your medical team.
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  I hope that I am helping you make the very best decisions.
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  I hope that I am helping you have informed consent. Know the pros and the cons.
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  Be able to make the best decision for yourself. So I would love to hear your opinions on this?
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  Like, do you think I'm like way off base? Do you think I'm right?
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  Do you think that there's something to this? Like I said, I love my doctor friends.
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  I have a lot of friends who are doctors and they have the best heart.
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  But were they trained to believe that their research and what they have read
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  and what they have decided carries more weight than what you have read?
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  How are they trained? Are they indoctrinated to believe that their beliefs and
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  their opinions supersede yours? And I hope that's not the case.
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  Maybe there's another explanation, but like I said, I haven't heard one yet, but maybe there is.
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  But mostly, I want you to have informed consent. I want you to be able to make
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  the best decisions for you. I want you to have medical autonomy.
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  And I want you to figure out exactly what you need to do to feel like yourself
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  again. I'll see you next week on the Health with Hashimoto's podcast.
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  And oh, by the way, I forgot to mention my stance on all of this.
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  Put it all together, and where do I fall?
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  Acetaminophen. I will take Tylenol if I have a migraine and nothing else is working.
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  However, I will always take an extra protandum NRF2 so that I increase my glutathione to compensate.
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  I don't know if it 100% compensates, but in summary, I take acetaminophen as
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  little as possible and I increase my glutathione in response.
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  When I was pregnant five times, one miscarriage, I did not know about the risks
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  of acetaminophen and I'm sure I took it just like most people.
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  I took it when I had aches and pains because I was told that it was safe in pregnancy.
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  As far as thyroid medication, natural thyroid medication,
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  there's about 10 to 20 percent of people with hypothyroid problems,
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  not necessarily Hashimoto's, but including Hashimoto's, and they do not respond
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  well to traditional pharmaceutical medication for thyroid.
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  They respond best their symptoms respond
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  best to natural thyroid medication and
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  so I believe that they should have medical autonomy they should
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  be able to access what they know works for them they've already tried the synthetics
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  the pharmaceuticals and it doesn't work for them it's about 10 to 20 percent
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  of people with thyroid issues and so I hope that the government gets all of
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  that worked out so that people can still access their meds and that is where
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  I stand on those two issues,
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  but I always come down to informed consent and medical autonomy.
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  This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only.
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  Please discuss any changes with your trusted healthcare provider.
• 20:53
  To take your next step, join our school community and explore the courses available there.
• 20:58
  You do not have to figure your health out alone.
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  So that is school, S-K-O-O-L.com, and it is the Health with Hashimoto's community.
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  I'll see you next time on the Health with Hashimoto's podcast.