Latest / FitMitTuro Fitness Podcast / Thyroid Truths for Women 40+: Hashimoto’s, “Normal” Labs & Feeling Human Again with Dr. Heather Stone

Transcript

Thyroid Truths for Women 40+: Hashimoto’s, “Normal” Labs & Feeling Human Again with Dr. Heather Stone · FitMitTuro Fitness Podcast

• 1:07
  Turo Virta: Hi and welcome to fit me Turo fitness podcast today, I'm joined by Dr Heather stone, leading Functional Medicine Practitioner with 20 plus years of clinical experience helping 1000s of women overcome people turota And Hashimoto, she's created Turo Transformation Blueprint used by clinicians worldwide, and her work focuses on root cause solutions, bringing energy, mood, metabolism and quality of life back for women who have felt dismissed or stuck. Dr stone, welcome to
• 1:45
  Unknown: the show. Yeah. Thank you for having me.
• 1:48
  Turo Virta: I'm I'm so excited, and before we get into this conversation, I just want to remind all listeners that this conversation is educational, so it's not a medical advice. So so we both encourage you to work with your own clinician and own doctor. So even Dr Heather is one of the best in the world, what she is doing, talk with your own doctor first, right?
• 2:19
  Unknown: Yep, that's exactly right, perfect.
• 2:23
  Turo Virta: So before, like, tell a little bit first, first.
• 2:27
  Turo Virta: I told something about introduction, but just tell who you are, where you are living, little bit, some background about your your family, anything you want to share,
• 2:39
  Unknown: sure. So I have been in this functional medicine space for, you know, a couple of decades. But like many healthcare practitioners, I have been on my own health journey, which is what led me to really becoming passionate and focusing on thyroid because I was dealing with my own thyroid issues and Hashimotos, and, you know, I was hitting a lot of dead ends in the traditional Western medicine model. And so for me, I was like, you know, this is not going to be my life. I have got to figure out how I can overcome these symptoms. And once I was able to overcome the symptoms, I just knew that there were millions of other women who are really struggling with low thyroid and all the symptoms that accompany low thyroid, and they just really needed, really needed help and hope so that they didn't have to live with that, you know. And for me, it's become, you know, my life, and this is all I do all day, every day. And for me, I'm living in Texas, and this whole thyroid thing and functional medicine thing for me is more of a lifestyle. So I also live on a regenerative farm, and we really try to grow our own food, and really, you know, make this a well rounded lifestyle to really support health and help others doing so as well.
• 4:02
  Turo Virta: Oh, nice. So what is like a first of all, like, who someone who is like, obviously, I'm not any specialist of any of this, and maybe listeners, they have maybe heard, or know some kind of thyroid issues or or that you know that you can get tested Hashimoto. So what is, what is, in simple terms, what is the difference between hypothyroidism and Hashimotos?
• 4:31
  Turo Virta: Yeah.
• 4:32
  Unknown: So general, primary hypothyroid, essentially, it means that you have low thyroid hormones, right? So hypo means low thyroid. So whenever someone gets diagnosed with hypothyroid, all that they're looking at is, is the TSH in your blood work, is that high? And that would indicate that you have low thyroid hormones. And typically the solution for that is to add in thyroid hormones. And so it's a very simplistic diagnosis, low thyroid hormones. Let's add thyroid hormones in, and you're on your way now, Hashimotos is an autoimmune condition where the immune system makes antibodies that tag your thyroid tissue for destruction. So essentially, the immune system is destroying the thyroid. But the most important thing to understand is that Hashimotos causes hypothyroid. So the diagnosis of hypothyroid is very generic. In the fact that they're just diagnosing or saying you have low thyroid hormone, it's not indicating why you have that. So when you're looking at Hashimotos, that would be an indication of why someone would have hypothyroid.
• 5:45
  Unknown: And it's estimated about 90 to up to 98% of women who have low thyroid actually have Hashimotos. And Hashimotos is what's causing the low thyroid.
• 6:01
  Unknown: Now this is really important distinction, because in the functional world. When you have Hashimotos, it's a big deal because when you have one autoimmune disease, you're at risk for developing multiple autoimmune diseases, and when you have Hashimotos, you're at risk for developing thyroid cancer. And so the goal is to stabilize the immune system so that it stops attacking the thyroid, and it prevents you from developing other autoimmune diseases, from happening and it prevents thyroid cancer. But in the Western world, Western medicine, they don't care if you have Hashimotos, because it's not really. There is no treatment for that. Really, the treatment for low thyroid is to simply put in thyroid hormones.
• 6:47
  Unknown: I had a message from a patient just two days ago, and she asked her doctor to check for thyroid antibodies to see if she had Hashimotos. And his response was, we don't need to do that, because your thyroid hormones are normal. So they they don't really have a direction or a treatment for Hashimotos, per se, but they just want to make sure that your thyroid hormones are balanced. And then that's the end of the story. Their job is done. And if you still have symptoms, well, you got to medicate the symptoms or live with the symptoms, because that's kind of how it is.
• 7:25
  Turo Virta: Yeah, no, because this is, this is I have heard, also over 10 years, and of course, like in the beginning, like I wasn't even aware of this, like I heard, of course, some Tyrod, but hasimoto was something new. And it was one of my first clients. Actually, it took for her ears to figure out that what was actually going on.
• 7:44
  Turo Virta: And it was actually Hashimoto, and then she got some kind of treatment, relief, all kind of things. But it took like she was running from doctor to a doctor, and that nobody could figure out. What is that, what was actually going on. So what is what is like that? What could be like some, some if you could get only, like, of course, there are 1000s of leftists, probably what you could be doing. But if you could get only five labs, what?
• 8:13
  Turo Virta: Which would you prioritize and why?
• 8:20
  Unknown: Okay, so it depends on if you're really wanting to focus on the thyroid and to figure out what's going on with the thyroid? Okay, so if we were going to really focus on maybe five markers that are really important to figure out what's going on with the thyroid, I would do thyroid. I would do the TPO antibodies, that stands for thyroid peroxidase antibodies. I would do anti thyroglobulin antibodies. Okay, so those are the two antibodies that would indicate if you are dealing with hoxhimotos now both it just one of them has to be outside of the lab range. It doesn't matter which one, either one can be outside of the lab range, indicating your immune system is tagging the thyroid tissue for destruction. Okay, that that means you'd know you had an autoimmune condition, and then I would get a TSH, and then I would get a t4 and you could get free t4 because that's the actual active thyroid hormone that's not bound to a protein that can actually bind at a receptor site. And then you need to get free t3 so that you can see if your body's converting t4 hormone to t3 so t4 is what the thyroid makes, mostly. And if you're taking medication like levothyroxine and or Synthroid, then your that's t4 now your body that's not really active to the body, your body can't really use t4 instead, the body takes that t4 and it converts it into t3 and there can be an issue or a problem there with the conversion. So that would kind of tell us All right, what's going on with the thyroid? Is there an autoimmune component?
• 10:09
  Unknown: Is there an under conversion component? And do you have adequate levels of thyroid hormone? Now, I'm just going to say for my thyroid panel, I have 12 different markers that make up a thyroid panel, but those five are probably the most important. Now that tells you, do? You have a problem now, and it also kind of tells you what is the problem. But now you really want to get into if you want to learn how to fix the problem, you have to figure out what are the underlying causes of why is the immune system attacking the thyroid? Why do you maybe have an under conversion pattern. You know why we have to ask the question, why not just what? And so then, if you want to expand, you've really gotta look at blood sugar. You want to look at underlying infections. You want to look at your toxic load. You will want to look at your inflammatory markers. You. And also adrenal health. So you you always want to be asking the question, not just what. So first you find the what. So do you have hypothyroid? Do you have Hashimotos? And now you have to ask a deeper question, well, what's causing it like, why is it there? And that's what's going to allow you to understand, what do you need to do to create balance back in the body so that you can start to resolve those underlying symptoms?
• 11:33
  Turo Virta: Mm, hmm. And what is then, like, how much or how often you should do those test results? Like, if you you get, like, an you go to do all these, let's say those top five tests, what you said, and everything seems maybe there is something like, what is not okay. You get some medication or something, and then you go back doing all those tests, and everything comes back normal. Everything doesn't or you get, like, kind of normal thyroid labs. What?
• 12:04
  Turo Virta: What does it actually mean, like, or how often you should be doing them?
• 12:10
  Unknown: Yeah, so it depends, right? So some doctors, you know, interestingly enough, when they give you a new prescription, they don't test you again for a whole year, which I'm so you're kind of wondering, Am I on the right dose? Am I not on the right dose? Like, what's happening?
• 12:26
  Unknown: And I think even six months is way too long to determine if you have a right dose. So typically you would go back within probably, I would say, 60 days, just to give the body some time to adjust to a new dosage of a medication, just to make sure you're on track. Now, the thing that my philosophy is that if you have no symptoms, and you're feeling really great, and your energy is awesome, and you're sleeping well, and your moods are stable, and you don't have a weight issue, you know, for me, I get my labs done every six months just to make sure that I'm in the optimal functioning range, and I'm doing great. But if I have a patient that is starting care we do. We do their labs every 45 to 60 days, because we want to make sure that we are addressing the underlying root cause. We want to make sure that the body is healing and moving in the right direction. And we also want to make sure that we're always addressing the top priorities.
• 13:23
  Unknown: Because when you address the top priority of what the body is dealing with, the less you have to mess with all the other underlying stuff, right? So, because the body is amazing, the body is born to heal. And so when you're handling the top priority underlying imbalances, the body starts to heal, and then the priorities start to change. So keeping tabs on how the body is functioning and feeling in a shorter amount of time is going to get you through that healing process much faster.
• 13:56
  Turo Virta: And it's a Hashimoto like when you have those, you do those tests, and everything comes out negative, negative that you don't, you are not. You don't have Hashimoto can it come like when it can appear again?
• 14:09
  Turo Virta: Or how often you should do that kind of testing?
• 14:16
  Unknown: Yeah, so I would say so there is some lab error in Hashimotos testing. So those antibodies can actually come back false negative about 20% of the time, so they're not the end all, be all. So there is an error rate that happens in those tests. The other thing that can happen is people can have Hashimotos for a long time, and they actually have Hashimotos, but the antibodies never show on their lab work because their immune system is shifted and it's out of balance, or it might be more immunocompromised. So this is what I would say for me when I'm as a clinician looking at someone who's been diagnosed with low thyroid, I'm assuming that they possibly are probably have Hashimotos, despite what those those antibodies say. And so if someone has normal labs, but they still have symptoms, I start thinking, Okay, well, where is the underlying imbalance that's causing the symptoms? If I assume that maybe they have Hashimotos, I'm going to be looking for all the underlying triggers. So like, what is their blood sugar look like? Do they have any kind of disc glycemia, which means just, is there blood sugar out of balance? Do they have any kind of insulin resistance? And from my practice, in my experience, anyone who has a weight issue is going to have a blood sugar issue. And anytime you have a blood sugar issue, it impacts your thyroid and it impacts your immune system. So really looking at blood sugar, looking at and if they do have a blood sugar problem, saying, Why do they have a blood sugar problem? Do they have an underlying infection? Do they have adrenal dysfunction? Do they have hormonal imbalances? Do they have a high toxic load where maybe they're dealing with mold?
• 16:06
  Unknown: Metal toxins, or heavy metal toxins or environmental toxins.
• 16:10
  Unknown: So we have to listen to the body and say, All right, we don't need to necessarily, just wait until those antibodies show up when we have all the symptoms, we can say, hey, you know what, if I've been diagnosed with low thyroid, I probably have that, but I've got to do additional testing to really get down to the root cause of why I have these symptoms, because that's the way your body communicates with you that something is not right. So is to give you symptoms. It has no other way, really, of communicating with you that it needs some help. So your body is a self healing organism. It's always trying to heal. It's always moving towards survival. That is the that is the whole purpose of our species is to survive right and to continue the species. And so we can't survive if there is no communication when something is wrong. And so the way your body communicates is it's always trying to get back to base. It's always trying to get back to balance and homeostasis, or normal, and when it's been knocked out of balance so many times, sometimes it has a hard time getting back into balance.
• 17:13
  Unknown: And so that's when you're going to get a symptom. That's when you're going to feel tired, or maybe you start gaining weight, or maybe you're not sleeping well. Or any symptom is just your body trying to communicate that something's not right. So in trying, so instead of trying just to suppress the symptom, like by ignoring it or pushing through it or maybe taking a medication to suppress it, we we should start asking, where is this symptom coming from? We don't have to wait until we have a disease. We can look at these labs from more of an optimal function perspective versus like waiting to diagnose a disease and then take a medication. So if you have the perspective of, how can I get my body to function optimally, and where is the underlying imbalance that might be preventing that, then we are going to be in a much better place, and we are really going to be thriving in our life instead of just surviving one day to the next.
• 18:11
  Turo Virta: Yeah, and then, like, it's like, those are very, very important points. Like, to like, you said it so well, like, how your body, like, it's kind of trying to talk with you all the time and sending you like that. Here is, you get the headache, you get something that you know just and if you cut up, find the reason, and not only only with the medication, try to suppress it. Of course, it's at some point maybe medication is also needed, but it should not be long term solution. Or at least I'm I'm thinking like, of course, some diseases, you need it for long term, but if there is an other way, I would always choose another way.
• 18:54
  Unknown: Personally, yeah, I think it's important to say here that when you have Hashimotos, the immune system attacks and kills the thyroid, right? So most people with Hashimotos need to be, or eventually will be, on thyroid medication. And that is important, because when those thyroid hormones go down, it causes the immune system to attack the thyroid more, so you get stuck in those loops. So there are, for many, many women, thyroid medication is absolutely necessary, and they're not likely going to be able to get off of that medication, although I have seen that happen before, but the goal should be to optimize function after that, right, optimize how your body functions and feels, and prevent other disease processes. And then I agree with you, when we're dealing with chronic degenerative diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure and all of those things, those are preventable and reversible disease processes, and so the medications are only meant to slow down progression. They are not meant to reverse those disease processes. And you do, and you may need medication when your body is in an emergency state. And if you're someone who's like, I don't want to take these medications. I want to reverse these disease processes, you actually have to do something to get the body back into function, like I have seen people that I see like daily, and their blood sugar is crazy out of balance. I don't know if you have such a diabetic epidemic in Italy as we have in the United States, but
• 20:37
  Turo Virta: it's coming. It's probably not as big as in the in the US, but it's, of course,
• 20:43
  Unknown: it's on the rise. Yeah, first, for sure, the more westernized the more URL goes downhill. But what I was saying is, like, they're like, I don't want to take medication, but their blood sugar is so high.
• 20:53
  Unknown: I'm like, you you have to do so you can't just, like, not want to take medication and keep doing what you're doing. Like, you got to do something to get your body back into
• 21:03
  Turo Virta: balance. Yeah. No, that's that's so well. Then other thing, what I want, I what I wanted like, what is then like was I also see that, you know, there is, of course, this thyroid is, it's a big and there are many people who have issues.
• 21:17
  Turo Virta: But what are then like, kind of most common non thyroid, causes of kind of thyroid, like symptoms like fatigue, hair loss, weight gain, or gold, all, all these kind of things. What are the most common issues?
• 21:33
  Turo Virta: Because I, at least I hear, like, from many of my clients who are saying, like, you know, they are kind of blaming that there have to be something wrong with me and and then, you know, you take it this, everything comes back normal. And then like for so many people, is that, then was that you have to look like? If you look your you are accurately tracking, you know what you are doing. You are aware. You are tracking your calories in, calories out, kind of that balance. And if you you should be if there is nothing happening, then, of course, you might have to find the the course. But for so many people, it's just the kind of, or I have a feeling that it's, it's, it's easy to put that thought on someone else than for themselves and and then what is like, what are those kind of thyroid causes of thyroid, glycine, yeah.
• 22:32
  Unknown: So what I would say is that I'm glad you kind of brought up the calories in, calories out, and track, tracking the calories, because I think if you look at dysglycemia, like I said earlier, dis, D, y, s means dysfunctional. Glycemia means sugar. So dysglycemia means your blood sugar is out of balance.
• 22:51
  Unknown: And if you would write down all of the symptoms of dysglycemia, you can lay it exactly on top of hypothyroid. They're identical.
• 23:00
  Unknown: It's the you can't lose weight.
• 23:04
  Unknown: It's the low energy you're not sleeping well, whether you can't fall asleep or stay asleep, it's the hair loss, it's the anxiety and depression. So a lot of times when we get diagnosed with low thyroid, we get that label, and that's kind of where we stop looking and it's like, oh, well, I have low thyroid. And women also identify with, okay, I have low thyroid. That must be where all these issues are coming from, but once they get the thyroid stable, or they're on thyroid hormones, and the symptoms don't go away, you're like, Well, do I just have to live with this? Or what else could this be? And I will say blood sugar is probably one of the most overlooked things that we are really dealing with. And when I say blood sugar, I mean, you can have low blood sugar, and it causes those things, right, where your blood sugar might drop, you can have high blood sugar causes those same symptoms. But what also gets overlooked is blood sugar variability, where your blood sugar is fluctuating up and down all day long, and you're going in and out of hypoglycemia, which is low blood sugar, and hyperglycemia, which is high blood sugar, and so it causes the exact same symptoms. And you're going to miss it if you don't know what to look for, and you don't know the specialty labs, because you're going to miss it if you are just running a hemoglobin, a 1c that's a 90 day average. And if you have a lot of variability where your blood sugar is going up and down, you're not going to see it there. You might see a little bit on the high side, and that would be more insulin resistance. But you can have a normal a, 1c and you can have a lot of blood sugar variability, and you're never going to they're never going to tell you that you have a blood sugar problem. So one of the things that's important is calories in, calories out is can be very frustrating. Yes, we can overeat. We can consume too many calories, and calories is just like energy, right? Like, that's how the body we measure energy coming into the body. If the body's not also making energy, the body's going to turn that energy into fat, because it fat is just stored energy, right? So when you eat food, it all gets turned into glucose. So whether you're eating protein, whether you're eating vegetables or you're eating like dessert, now, how fast it gets turned into glucose is really the key. So it's the quality of the calories that we're eating that depends on what the body is doing with it. So for example, if you eat a lot of foods that are high on the glycemic index, if you're eating bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, cookies, cakes, candy, soda, you have a really high glucose surge, and then the pancreas makes insulin. And insulin is a fat storing hormone, and with insulin, that's really one of the only ways we can gain weight. So your pancreas secretes insulin.
• 25:59
  Unknown: Insulin binds at the cell and opens the gate, and then all the sugar goes into the cell. Now the body uses that sugar to.
• 26:06
  Unknown: Make energy. But once the cell is full, it can only accept so much sugar. When there's extra sugar sitting in the bloodstream that insulin turns that into a triglyceride, and that triglyceride gets stored as fat.
• 26:18
  Unknown: So essentially all fat is and all a triglyceride is is stored energy. So the body's going to store that for energy later. And so the only way that you are going to gain fat is to have an insulin surge, and that's if you're eating the bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, cookies, cakes, candy. And I know as an Italian, y'all eat a lot, but I will tell you, I went to Italy last summer, and the quality of the food over there is so much better than it is here in the States. However, it still raises blood sugar, maybe not as much, but I was wearing a continuous glucose monitor so that I could see I was going to do a test, and I was like, Alright, I want to see if my blood sugar goes up like it would go up in the states if I eat the if I eat all of the pasta. So I'm gluten free here in America, but in Italy, I eat gluten because it's very different, and I don't have that immune response. But when I was over there and I ate pasta, guess what my blood sugar did?
• 27:24
  Unknown: It spiked and so, so we have to really also look at your blood sugar and how the body is functioning, and really focus on eating green veggies and lots of animal protein is going to help stabilize your blood sugar. It's going to help lower leptin levels as well. And you'll notice and it helps the immune system also. So making sure that you're stabilizing your blood sugar is you can't really get anywhere if you don't stabilize your blood sugar.
• 27:57
  Turo Virta: Is there? Is there anything else, like, what it would could cause, like, what I heard, like vitamin D, iron, yeah, stress and those kind of things.
• 28:08
  Unknown: Yeah, let's talk about that. So the other things that could be a trigger for immune system and thyroid issues is, you're right, vitamin D, vitamin low. Vitamin D really creates a lot of issues with the immune system. So you want to try to do everything you can to stabilize the immune system. So we want vitamin D levels quite high for what we would look at, not high outside the lab range, but we want adequate levels of vitamin D. We want to make sure that you, of course, have adequate levels of iron, because when you have an iron deficiency anemia, you can't deliver oxygen to the tissues to heal, but we also want to when we have biotoxin issues or mold toxins. So for many of us who have autoimmunity, our immune systems don't recognize and clear mold toxins efficiently, mold toxins, I'm talking about mold that comes from water damage in buildings. So anytime dry wall gets wet, it starts growing mold within 24 hours, and it spews off these spores. And for people with autoimmune issues, a lot of times, we don't clear that stuff from a genetic perspective, so those things will build up over time, impact your immune system, also, heavy metals, environmental toxins will all do the same thing. Inflammation does the same thing. And then you mentioned stress. So cortisol is a stress hormone that also helps regulate your blood sugar. It helps you with your energy and your sleep and wake cycles. It it helps with so many things. It helps with your adrenal glands produce your hormones as women are going through menopause, and if you're in a state of fight or flight or sympathetic overdrive, or your body is under a lot of stress, the body is not in a space to heal. It's not in a space to rest, digest and repair. It's in a space of survival. You're in a space of I have a tiger chasing me, but my I have, it's almost like your foot is on the gas, but your foot's also on the brake, because most of the time in our world we don't have a tiger chasing us, but we might be under a lot of stress, and it can trigger autoimmunity. You know, the interesting thing is, I mostly see women with Hashimotos, but most men that I have seen that have low thyroid, I can, I don't even, I can't even think of one that didn't have Hashimotos, and that actually turned on for men after a time of extreme stress, loss of a job, loss of a home, a divorce, something, a loss of a parent, or Something like that, a major stressful incident will trigger autoimmunity. So we really have to make a conscious effort to get the body back into a parasympathetic state. We have to end the trauma, and we have to let the body know that it's no longer being chased by a tiger and that we can get into those healing states again.
• 31:06
  Turo Virta: In and those are, those are all kind of, these are all reasons that you might have kind of thyroid, like symptoms without actually having something
• 31:17
  Unknown: that's right, that's exactly right. So the only the biggest thing, yeah, I encourage women or anybody, if you have a symptom, we don't have to wait for a disease or a diagnosis.
• 31:29
  Unknown: You have to look for what is the body trying to tell you because there is an underlying imbalance somewhere. It doesn't mean that those symptoms are only related to the thyroid, because the thyroid doesn't work in systems, even though our medical system is kind of set up like an endocrinologist, a neurologist, a nephrologist, that everybody is working on their system, but all the systems work together, and you never have one a disease that only affects one system, especially when we're talking about the symptoms of low thyroid. So don't get locked into a label really looking to figure out where the underlying imbalance is, is because the symptoms are trying to tell you that there's something wrong, and there's always an imbalance, always somewhere, if you have a symptom,
• 32:17
  Turo Virta: and those are, those are like, I think it's it's still relatively easy. If you know what to look like, you start to do some lab results, blood work. You can get those deficiencies, thyroid related issues. You can, like, tell them if you have them or if you don't. So you can look but then, what is the like? Kind of the hardest thing is to understand, for someone like that there might be actually some stress, cause what I have a feeling like nowadays that there's all the time you know you need to do more. You have to perform. You are, especially people who are, who are, like, really driving in their life like that. You know you gotta show up in a work, you have to have a family or whatever, and you are everywhere. And then all of a sudden, like, when body test can take it anymore, it comes and then you know you are running, you get even more stressed because you are scared that we have something and from the test to test, and it only increases that stress. And so it's those are like, really, and it's, it's, it's, it's very hard to actually commit that okay, now I'm it might be actually too much and and not like, like, of course you have to do make sure that you don't have anything like, something that it could be only stress related or, or coming to, if it's a perimenopause, menopause related things like, things that you actually, you Can't see in the labs or in a blood work.
• 33:50
  Unknown: Yeah, I think it's an I think you bring up a really good point. And I think the the important thing to understand is that you can actually create stress hormones by thought alone. So when we worry, when we think negatively, when we watch the news, when we do things like that, we're literally creating stress hormones in the body. And I find myself always working and trying to create this balance.
• 34:17
  Unknown: And I don't know if there ever is a balance when you're an entrepreneur and you have a lot of goals and a big mission. Um, you know, for a lot of us entrepreneurs, I feel like I'm always behind, like I'm never doing enough, because you look at the people that are successful, and we have social media, so now we can see what everybody else is doing, and you see these other people that are, you know, helping so many more people, and you're like, Okay, I am so behind the eight ball. My husband and I were talking about this the other day. It's like we always feel like we're behind.
• 34:51
  Unknown: So what can we do to not constantly put the body under that stress and still thrive and feel like we are accomplishing and doing what we need to be doing? And it's it's about making your health part of your lifestyle, right? So I don't really believe in work life balance when you're trying to create this big mission, but how can you make work in your life and also have a high priority of health? So for me, I said, Okay, how can I design my life so that I'm still paying attention to my health and it's my number one priority, and I'm practicing what I'm preaching? So that's why I moved to a ranch where I could create a regenerative farm, and I've got a huge garden. So for me, I said, Okay, what is the ideal life where I can do all of it? And, you know, I set my schedule where I don't start working until 10am and working, I mean, like seeing patients and being in meetings and things like that, so my team knows not to schedule anything before 10am now, I wake up at 530 and I'm meditating. I'm going out my garden. I'm being with the animals. This is my time when I work out. And I kind of hold that pretty strongly. So but I might be thinking, or I might shoot a quick video to connect with my audience, or whatever, but I don't feel like that is necessarily stress or work, and that's when I get creative, and that's when I can kind of reconnect to nature and get my body into parasympathetic so that when I do go into work, I'm 100% and I'm there and I'm focused and present, and that has seemed to work well for me.
• 36:30
  Unknown: And then at the end of the day, I also go for a walk. I get back into nature. I might meditate again. Do get in the sauna, do things like that. So I built my life so that I can still be a high performer, but also still make health a lifestyle.
• 36:46
  Turo Virta: Oh, that's such a great example. I totally agree.
• 36:50
  Turo Virta: Like I was, I only think back 10 years ago when I started like, you know, of course, in the beginning you have to build your business, you have to drive in a verb life. And of course, at that time, you know, it's always away from something else. And then, you know, often it's either your relationship or your own health and or your family, and that is like it was you can't prioritize everything at the same time. You have to or you have to find a balance that works for you and and very unpopular truth is that if you don't prioritize yourself, even it feels like like, I think we are both same. Our big mission is to help as many people as possible and create better life.
• 37:37
  Turo Virta: But at some point be to be able to do that. You have to understand that you have to prioritize yourself too, if it means that you know you have your your me time or family time or or workout time. When you have, you don't take any other meetings or anything else. It's a time what you have scheduled for yourself and and if you don't have if you just think work, of course, maybe you might be able to have more success in your work life. But then if you lose your health, what is the point?
• 38:11
  Unknown: Yeah, that's exactly right. And I can't stress that enough, and I think it's important. And something that I have realized as well, a lot of women think it's selfish to prioritize their health. They think it is. How could I put my needs ahead of my kids or my family or my work or whatever?
• 38:34
  Unknown: But I think it's the most selfless thing that you could actually do, because if you don't put your health as your number one priority, everything else is going to suffer. You cannot show up 100% at work, at business, as mom, as wife, if your health is suffering, right?
• 38:49
  Unknown: If you're in a state of survival where you're just trying to get from one day to the next day, one day to the next day, and you're pushing through all of the warning signs, your bot, your your body, is going to make your health your number one priority, but it's not going to be on your terms. You're going to end up in the hospital, you're going to have a disease, you're going to do something where your body makes you stop and makes you try to recuperate.
• 39:16
  Unknown: And you know, it's easy for me right now to create that schedule, because my children are grown and they're out of the house, and that schedule is much easier for me now, if you think about because I can imagine some women or listeners thinking, Well, that's easy for her. She doesn't have kids, because obviously I would have said something about my kids there. I do have kids. And whenever the children were growing up, I made a health our lifestyle, right?
• 39:41
  Unknown: We I taught them about meditation. We went for walks out in nature. Our diet was really good, and we talked about nutrition, and we were the weird family. When everybody else was eating McDonald's, we would go somewhere else. So you just work your lifestyle into you work your health into your lifestyle.
• 40:00
  Unknown: So, you know, maybe where other people were making choices that weren't healthy. We weren't scared to say we and I wasn't scared to say we aren't eating there. We aren't going to do that. We are going to do something else. And so, you know, at different times in my life, that's looked different, but my health was always my number one priority, or I wasn't a good example, I wasn't a good mom or a good doctor, if I couldn't do if I couldn't do that first, and it's not all ever perfect, and what our failures are just learning experiences. And so you just keep moving forward, and you gotta really work on the mom guilt for for all of that stuff.
• 40:45
  Turo Virta: Absolutely, absolutely, and it's it's always like more experiences, lessons you have then you know that, okay, I did. I could do something better, but obviously past, you can change future. We don't know what we can do is do it today, the best possible choices. That gives our give us higher chances of quality life later on. So I wanted to talk a little bit about perimenopause and stress. So how do perimenopause or menopause symptoms overlap with thyroid symptoms, and what testing or history helps you to separate them?
• 41:30
  Unknown: Yeah, so, so for me, I don't really try to separate them. I look at extensive testing and we work on where are the underlying imbalances.
• 41:39
  Unknown: Because you're right, those symptoms just overlap, the thyroid symptoms and perimenopausal symptoms and blood sugar problem symptoms, they all look very much the same. And so for me, when you do extensive testing, we can delineate, well, where is the underlying root cause of the symptom? And it may be all three things, but this is what I would say, is that when we start to go through perimenopause, the ovaries start to senesce, and they're slowly going on vacation. So first, they may be working full time over time. And then, you know, after your peak fertility, years around your mid 30s, they start maybe going from 50 to 60 hours a week down to, let's say, 30 hours a week, and then as you get closer to 40 and 50, they go part time. But what happens is they're giving your adrenal glands a chance to take over production of those hormones. So one of the biggest fallacies is that as you go through menopause, and once you're post menopausal, you don't have hormones, and that's not the case. So your hormones actually come from your adrenal glands. Now we start to experience hot flashes as we are transitioning from a perimenopausal state, because estrogen starts to fluctuate more right where the ovaries are, like, Okay, I'm not truly cycling right this second, or I'm cycling less, and then adrenal glands, can you take over? So the body does go through that transition, and you may have some symptoms, but they should be for a very short period of time. But really, if you have healthy adrenal glands, you really should not have symptoms of perimenopause or menopause. You should just go from your maybe your menstrual cycles will be a little bit unregular, where you might go 60 days and then 90 days and then, so it slowly starts to taper off your menstrual cycle. But you should not have a lot of symptoms. When people, when women, have a lot of symptoms, I always look at adrenal function.
• 43:46
  Unknown: So your adrenal glands are two small glands that sit on top of the kidneys, and they help you manage stress. And this is how stress plays a plays a huge role. Because if we've been super stressed out our whole life, and we've been, you know, making whipping our adrenal glands to get us through the day and keep pushing out cortisol and adrenaline and helping us balance our blood sugar, and then our sleeping becomes irregular, and we just keep moving. Well, we're taking from our reserve account. Think about it like your savings account. So you keep you keep spending money out of your savings account, but you don't ever replenish it. And so then when you get to perimenopause, you have no more reserves, and your adrenal glands are really busy trying to get you through the day and produce cortisol, and your sex hormones become a secondary priority. They're not. You don't need those sex hormones to live.
• 44:36
  Unknown: You need them to thrive and to feel amazing and to prevent chronic disease. But you don't need them to run away from a tiger, necessarily. So what I would say is that when someone is is dealing with, you know, symptoms of perimenopause and menopause, the first thing I look at is their adrenal glands, and then we say, Okay, how are your adrenal glands functioning?
• 44:59
  Unknown: And if they're not functioning well, we say, Okay, what does the rest of the puzzle look like? What is your blood sugar look like? What are the other stressors on the body that we can work on blood sugar, underlying toxins, or do we need to decrease your toxic load? Do you have underlying infections that are really draining the body and adrenal function? Are you dealing with high levels of inflammation? And then, what does your lifestyle look like?
• 45:28
  Unknown: What else can we do to take stress off of the adrenal gland while we're fixing all the underlying imbalances and supporting adrenal function along the way?
• 45:39
  Turo Virta: So this is what is then like. I want to talk like what you already mentioned about those food, blood sugar, everyday habits. So what kind of protein and fiber targets help to stabilize that energy hunger and cravings in women of would say, Yeah, five to 55? Yeah.
• 46:01
  Unknown: I think that we want to really prioritize animal protein. Okay, so prioritize.
• 46:03
  Unknown: Animal protein, first of all, stabilizes blood sugar. So it helps to minimize or eliminate that whole variability issue. It also helps us to have the appropriate amino acids to build muscle, because building muscle also helps stabilize blood sugar. The more muscle mass you have, the more balanced your blood sugar is. But plus, the more balanced your hormones are, the more strength and stamina you have. Muscle mass is the biggest predictor of longevity.
• 46:32
  Unknown: So you want to make sure you have adequate levels of protein.
• 46:35
  Unknown: I usually tell my patients to try to target between point seven, five and one gram of protein per desired body weight.
• 46:46
  Unknown: And I'm talking in pounds, you guys might use kilograms.
• 46:49
  Turo Virta: It's pretty much saying what I use, it's 1.5 1.6 to two, up to 2.2 which is already very high, very high, but in a kilogram, so it's same range over
• 47:03
  Unknown: Yeah. So prioritizing protein is super important. And then I always have patients eat green vegetables with animal protein. If you're if you're trying to reverse insulin resistance, you're trying to release weight and stabilize your blood sugar, that's what's going to really move the needle the most. Now it's not to say you can't have a starchy vegetable, but you want to. You do want to eat it in that order?
• 47:28
  Unknown: Like eat green veggies first, so you're getting fiber into the gut. And then prioritize, make sure you're getting enough protein. And then if there's any room left, which there's not usually room left, but if there's room left, then you can have a starchy vegetable, whether it's a sweet potato or squashes or something like that.
• 47:43
  Unknown: And then you always, if you're going to eat a dessert or fruit, you would eat that at the end, because it slows down the absorption of sugar. But honestly, if you start with prioritizing your protein, and you say, Okay, I'm going to eat 100 to 120 grams of protein in a day. That's like 60. If you're dividing that into two or three meals, that is like 60 grams of protein to 40 to 60 grams of protein. That's a lot, you know, that's that, that's a lot of food. And so I find if we prioritize protein and then add our green vegetables on, there's not really a lot of room or desire to eat all that starchy food that messes up your blood sugar.
• 48:25
  Turo Virta: No, absolutely. And this is like one of the biggest eye openers for, for example, my clients, if I tell them that, you know, instead of taking things away, like we talked earlier about carbs or supers or something, if you just try to focus first on adding things you have, your protein call, your fiber coal, or your green, like one big salad per day, or just those things first, and you make sure that you actually try to hit those numbers. Because it's, it's a different thing to add, to eat some protein, or to eat, to actually hit those numbers because, like you said, that it's, it's a lot of protein.
• 49:09
  Turo Virta: Most of the women who have never, never looked like how much protein they are eating.
• 49:14
  Turo Virta: They might think that, you know, I but I eat some protein. I eat some meat, a little, little piece of chicken or whatever.
• 49:20
  Turo Virta: And I eat like a two eggs or one egg in the morning, and that's I eat protein. And then, you know, when you are looking like that, you should aim for at least 100 grams, 120 grams per day. That's bare minimum. And when you are looking you might get 3040, grams. And then you're like, that's right, holy shit. That's that there is missing so much like it's and that is, that is, for many people, it's a game changer. You focus on adding those things, and then all of a sudden, like, you end up eating something else less without that.
• 49:56
  Unknown: Yeah, I think it's interesting, because most of my patients are like, I've never eaten this much in my life, and I don't understand why I'm eating so much and losing weight. And I'm like, Well, it's because you're getting the right of right foods in the body, and your body is satisfied. It's not missing anything. And when we don't eat enough protein, we're we start to fill those needs with starchy foods and sugar and things like that, which really messes up your blood sugar. But you know, instead of counting calories, if we could just focus on our protein and green veggies, like, it makes life so much easier. Patients are always like, how many calories? I'm like, please stop worrying about the calories. If I had to count calories, I would never stick with it, because it's too complicated.
• 50:41
  Turo Virta: No, it helps, but it's not. I'm not like, I'm someone who said that. It's if you have never done it, do it for a week to if after that, I give you permission to quit.
• 50:52
  Turo Virta: Don't ever do it again. If you don't want, just to have to become a little bit more aware what you are actually doing, but more mostly focus on your protein intake. Yeah, when you have those habits that you.
• 51:04
  Turo Virta: Build your day. You get those habits in. Most likely, you don't have to worry about your calories, because they will be automatic.
• 51:12
  Unknown: I'll tell you a quick story. I say I don't like Cal and calories, and so then I got stuck in the trap that a lot of people get stuck in. I was eating mostly protein and veggies. I was doing the thing I was supposed to be doing, but what I was also doing is snacking on nuts, and I literally would eat an entire bag of macadamia nuts in two days. And I'm like, why I feel like I'm gaining weight like I don't I don't even know how this is possible. So I said, What am I doing that I'm not aware of?
• 51:41
  Unknown: And so I looked at the back of that bag, and I was eating like, 2000 calories of nuts in a day.
• 51:51
  Unknown: I'm like, Oh, I'm doing what my patients do. And so I'm like, get I don't even buy them anymore because I love them. But I'm like, that is just unnecessary calories that I'm getting in. And I, you know, I'll just go back to what I teach.
• 52:06
  Turo Virta: Yeah, no, it's but it's like I said that, you know, you heard like that. Nuts are healthy, you know, they are healthy fats or whatever. And then when you know that, okay, but there is a number of calories, so maybe doesn't need same thing, like everything.
• 52:20
  Turo Virta: There are so many other good examples of this, exactly, just knowing little bit of calories, because they matters too.
• 52:31
  Unknown: So, yeah, they do,
• 52:32
  Turo Virta: what is? What is then I something, what really, really, like you said that muscle mass is very important.
• 52:39
  Turo Virta: But what if, then, like, when you have all these symptoms, you know, energy is low and you don't feel like working out what, how you would structure like for strength training or resistance training. It's so important to at least to maintain that muscle mass. But how you would structure like two to three Strength Systems per week for someone who with a low energy so you know, you are building muscle without crashing.
• 53:11
  Unknown: Yeah. So this is what I usually do. So there is a thing of overtraining. And you know, when we talk about stress on the body, many women who are have a lot of underlying imbalances.
• 53:24
  Unknown: Any exercise sometimes is enough to throw them into distress or negative stress, where, when they exercise, then they have to recover for two or three days and they can't it really sets them back. So it depends on where the patient is starting.
• 53:40
  Unknown: But for me, I just try to encourage movement in the beginning, right? Like your your body has to move, you have to move the body, to move toxins through the lymphatic system, and we live such a sedentary life, at least here in America, because we don't walk like our cities are not built for walking. They're built for driving. And so for me, I'm just trying to get them to walk and move their body. And at least, can we get somewhere between around on an average of 7000 steps a day, but try to really aim for five to 10,000 steps a day. And then I do you know little challenges where we start with body weight first, and we do like air squats or push ups and crunches, things like that, just to get the body moving. And then as you're working on your physiology, as you're starting to handle these underlying imbalances, and the body is starting to heal, then I tell them to try to work into more of a resistance training now on Instagram and all the social media things right now, the big thing with women is heavy lifting. Heavy Lifting increases estrogen, and it really helps build muscle, but I think we forget that, and you're the expert here, but I think it's important that we lift heavy enough to maintain our form, but also not to throw us over, because if we just jump into heavy weights, whatever that might mean, then our form is not great. We increase our risk for injury. But the key is to start with where you're at, at your level, and then consistently work to increase your weight that you are lifting, but always making sure that you're maintaining your form. Now this is not necessarily my area of expertise, so I usually have people follow somebody online that they really like, or create some exercise program with someone that you know is really within their age range and their phase of life, but movement and resistance training, and yes, I would say ideally, three to four days a week you're doing resistance training?
• 55:48
  Turo Virta: No, absolutely. And it's like you said, I like form is everything. But also, on the other hand, once you are familiar with exercise, is your form is okay. Women, even older, women shouldn't be afraid of doing aiming like of course, it doesn't mean that you have to do same amount of. Repetitions, but you do, let's say, five repetitions with heavier weights and not always taking those pink, small dumbbells and doing 15 repetitions and stopping it when it starts to feel heavy, because that is like one of the biggest women issues. What I have seen is that they do, of course, it's better than nothing, but still, like so many, women could use lot heavier weights. And with the men's it's kind of opposite that men's are usually tend to use heavier weights, like kind of echo, echo thing, and with sacrificing their form and but women in general are very to, very to or to afraid of using heavier rates for some reason?
• 56:50
  Unknown: Yeah, well, I'll tell you, the reason is because we think we're going to get big and we think we're going to get I wanted to say that, but I know we're not going to get big and bulky. I don't care how much weight we lift. We don't have the hormones that support that.
• 57:06
  Unknown: The the women that you do see that are really big and bulky, they're literally lifting weights for hours a day, and they are maybe taking some other muscle growth enhancement supplements or drugs. So the all of us, ladies that are just trying to get toned and increase muscle mass, we are not going to get big, no matter, we can't lift heavy enough weights to get big. And so we should just really focus on toning. But toning you have to lift heavy weights. And I'm guilty of being in that camp too. That's why I know. Because I was always like, Oh, I build muscle so easy. I don't want to build lift too heavy of a weight. And so, yeah, it's just not a thing.
• 57:47
  Unknown: I have heard everything, so, yeah, I'm sure. And you know, then we start lifting weights, and we feel like we are doing this, you know, year after year, and we don't see any changes, because we're not, we're not lifting heavy enough weights, and so I'm guilty as charged.
• 58:04
  Turo Virta: Awesome, that time went so quickly away. So last question, so what can you share three myths? What You Wish women over 40 would retire about thyroid and
• 58:22
  Unknown: metabolic I think the three myths, I think that it's not probably just your thyroid.
• 58:27
  Unknown: So if you do have low thyroid and you still have symptoms, to not be stuck in that box and to keep looking outside the thyroid, because it's not just the thyroid, and the thyroid is impacted by so many other things, so it's not usually primary. Secondly, is that I think more is always not better.
• 58:53
  Unknown: So, like, more exercise isn't always what we need, especially when we're dealing with, you know, chronic degenerative diseases or autoimmune diseases.
• 59:03
  Unknown: It's about finding what your balance is and listening to your body and slowly working, you know, with what your body needs.
• 59:11
  Unknown: And I think it's not always about calories in, calories out, although we did discuss that calories are important that you don't over consume calories you you do need to eat the amount of calories that your body actually needs and uses, but it's more about the quality of the calories and what the calories are doing inside the body. What is it doing to your blood sugar and how is your body storing fat? Awesome.
• 59:35
  Turo Virta: No, those are very, very good points and and I gotta say, I I totally agree with you.
• 59:40
  Turo Virta: So, so please tell me where people can reach out. You have any program, or I know you have, so please share everything, and I will add all this, by the way, to show notes.
• 59:58
  Unknown: So, okay, awesome. So pretty much everybody can find me on Facebook. I have a group called happy, healthy and lean.
• 1:00:07
  Unknown: And right now we have about 130,000 ladies in there, and it is just such a great community of all the ladies on this health journey. And as we all know, we have to be surrounded by like minded people on the same journey so that we feel supported. And I do master classes, and I do Thyroid Thursday within that group every single Thursday. So it's a really great community and place to go. And I have a book called thyroid transformation blueprint, and I'm also coming out with a new book at the end of this year called happy, healthy and lean, how women can lose weight when they're dealing with Hashimotos and low thyroid.
• 1:00:47
  Unknown: So there's lots of places that ladies can find me, but mostly it's in my Facebook group, happy, healthy and lean. But of course, I'm on Instagram at Dr Heather stone,
• 1:00:58
  Turo Virta: awesome. I will add all those your Facebook group links to my to show notes, so you can. To find them, find them easily. So thank you so much for listening. And if you found any value from this episode, we would love to hear from you. So let us know in either in Instagram or emailing Turo at Vimy turo.com or and of course, those ratings, five star ratings, they help so many people to find this so more and if you know you have a friend who have this thyroid type of issues or symptoms, please share this episode with your friend.
• 1:01:37
  Turo Virta: So thank you so much for listening and talk to you. Soon.
• 1:01:40
  Turo Virta: Bye.