Latest / Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease / 133 // How Ignoring Hashimoto’s Antibodies Puts Hypothyroid Patients at Risk for More Disease

Transcript

133 // How Ignoring Hashimoto’s Antibodies Puts Hypothyroid Patients at Risk for More Disease · Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease

• 0:00
  Hey, welcome back to the Health with Hashimoto's podcast. My name is Esther,
• 0:03
  and I'm going to tell you a little pet peeve of mine, and it's not directed
• 0:06
  at a person as much as an industry.
• 0:10
  So this is my pet peeve. When people tell me, oh yeah, I take levothyroxid or
• 0:15
  Synthroid, but it's just what I do.
• 0:19
  My doctor told me that I'll always be on it. My thyroid doesn't work well,
• 0:23
  and then that's like the end. Well, no.
• 0:27
  So I usually ask them, do you know why? do you know why your thyroid doesn't work?
• 0:31
  Or I'll ask, do you have Hashimoto's? And they're like, well,
• 0:34
  I don't know. My doctor just said I should take some Synthroid. Like, case closed.
• 0:39
  And that is my pet peeve. My pet peeve is that doctors are not equipping patients
• 0:45
  to know what's going on in their body.
• 0:48
  They're saying, here is a problem.
• 0:50
  Here is a drug that's just going to supplement what the problem is causing.
• 0:57
  It's kind of confusing. The problem is causing problems.
• 1:01
  Your thyroid is not producing enough hormone. So we're going to give you a medication
• 1:05
  to give you more hormone.
• 1:06
  But they never address why the problem is there in the first place.
• 1:11
  How many people are on Synthroid? I told you the other day,
• 1:15
  what was it, two weeks ago when we were talking about Synthroid and Levothyroxine,
• 1:19
  that there are over 82 million prescriptions every year in the United States.
• 1:26
  That's not even, you know, worldwide.
• 1:28
  That is just in the United States. That's Levothyroxine. So it could be Synthroid.
• 1:32
  It could be any of the generic Levothyroxines.
• 1:36
  82 million. That does not mean that 82 million people are on it.
• 1:40
  That means the number of prescriptions.
• 1:42
  There are an estimated 18.1 million patients on it in the U.S.
• 1:50
  So over 18 million people just in the United States have their thyroid not working well.
• 1:58
  That is a lot of people.
• 2:01
  And just based on my personal interactions with people, there are a lot of them
• 2:07
  who don't know why they're on it, and they don't know that there are things to do.
• 2:12
  And this is most concerning for me because if the hypothyroid,
• 2:17
  which they're treating with levothyroxine or synthroid, if that is caused by
• 2:23
  Hashimoto's, which is an autoimmune condition.
• 2:26
  The chances that they will develop other autoimmune conditions is very, very high.
• 2:32
  So by telling somebody, here's your medication, come back in two months,
• 2:37
  three months, whatever, we'll recheck your labs, we'll update your prescription
• 2:40
  and repeat that cycle for life.
• 2:43
  By telling them that that is the answer, instead of saying, hey,
• 2:46
  let's check your blood work. Let's see if you have antibodies.
• 2:49
  Let's see if your body, if your immune system is attacking yourself.
• 2:54
  By leaving that out, they are also like putting their patients at a huge disadvantage.
• 3:01
  Instead of running those labs and saying, oh my goodness, you have some antibodies.
• 3:04
  That means your immune system is a little haywire and let's figure out what
• 3:09
  we can do to calm down your immune system so that it can function properly.
• 3:13
  Instead of doing that, they're ignoring it completely, just not even acknowledging
• 3:18
  that it might be an issue.
• 3:20
  And then the immune system continues to go haywire.
• 3:24
  And an out-of-whack immune system that is attacking parts of your own body will
• 3:29
  eventually progress to other parts of your body.
• 3:33
  As you've heard me say on this podcast before, autoimmune conditions are named
• 3:38
  for usually what part of the body your immune system is attacking.
• 3:43
  So Hashimoto's, your immune system is attacking your thyroid.
• 3:46
  Graves' disease, again, your immune system is attacking your thyroid,
• 3:50
  but it has an opposite effect.
• 3:52
  Instead of hypothyroid, you have hyperthyroid.
• 3:55
  Two different autoimmune conditions.
• 3:56
  There are a lot of different autoimmune conditions. Let me give you a couple.
• 4:00
  Rheumatoid arthritis is fairly common, and that is your body attacking your joints.
• 4:06
  You get inflammation in your joints, you get a lot of pain.
• 4:09
  Type 1 diabetes typically is in kids, and that is diabetes because of your body
• 4:16
  attacking your pancreatic beta cells.
• 4:19
  Graves' disease, I already talked about. Lupus is an autoimmune condition,
• 4:23
  and in that one, you can have attacks on so many different things.
• 4:28
  Skin, joints, kidneys, heart, lungs, brain, so much can be under attack in lupus.
• 4:34
  Multiple sclerosis has been labeled an autoimmune disease, and that is when
• 4:40
  the myelin sheath, it's the protective covering of the nerves in the brain that's attacked.
• 4:47
  Psoriasis is a skin condition, and that is an autoimmune thing.
• 4:52
  And then there's also psoriatic arthritis, which is related,
• 4:56
  and that's when your joints are under attack.
• 4:59
  Inflammatory bowel disease, or IBD, when your gastric intestinal tract is under attack.
• 5:05
  And that can include a lot of different subsets like Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis.
• 5:10
  Those are types of inflammatory bowel disease.
• 5:14
  There are a lot of different autoimmune conditions.
• 5:19
  We don't want more. When you have one, that's enough. We do not want more.
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  And research tells us that when you have one, you are more likely to get more.
• 5:30
  And that's because your immune system is the culprit. it. It's not your thyroid.
• 5:36
  That's not the problem when you have Hashimoto's. Yes, your thyroid is not working
• 5:41
  well, but the problem is that it's under attack.
• 5:44
  So we need to solve it at the root.
• 5:48
  And that is why I get so annoyed when people tell me, oh yeah, I'm on Synthroid.
• 5:54
  I've been on it for like 30 years and it's okay. I just go in and fill my prescription.
• 5:59
  But what else is there? What are they not seeing?
• 6:04
  And what other health conditions are they experiencing that's going to take,
• 6:09
  you know, four years to diagnose?
• 6:12
  In Hashimoto's, it takes about four years and four specialists before people
• 6:18
  get a diagnosis. And that's after starting looking for the answers.
• 6:23
  They're having symptoms before that. Four years on average. and most of those
• 6:28
  people experience at least one misdiagnosis in that time.
• 6:33
  Other autoimmune conditions are similar. It's several years on average before they're diagnosed.
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  Lots of lab testing, lots of doctor's visits, lots of, I don't know,
• 6:44
  or lots of, your labs look okay, you're fine.
• 6:46
  Meanwhile, the person is saying, I'm not fine. That's why I'm here.
• 6:49
  I'm here because I don't feel well. I'm here because I know there's something going on in my body.
• 6:54
  And the doctor is like, well, your labs are fine. Come back in a little while.
• 6:58
  No, that's not the right answer. and giving somebody a lifetime prescription
• 7:04
  for Synthroid without digging deeper is doing such a disservice to that person.
• 7:10
  So if that is your story, I am sorry that that has happened to you.
• 7:14
  I'm sorry that the medical community has dropped the ball so much on this.
• 7:18
  And maybe it's not just dropping the ball, maybe it's just they haven't picked the ball up.
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  The levothyroxine itself was synthesized, so they figured out how to make it
• 7:26
  in a lab back in the 1920s.
• 7:28
  It became commercially available in the 1950s. So we have been prescribing it for a very long time.
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  And in that time, medical research has figured out, oh, this is usually an autoimmune
• 7:45
  condition, and then figured out what autoimmune conditions are and some root causes.
• 7:49
  So maybe it's not that they dropped the ball, that they didn't say,
• 7:53
  oh, this is an autoimmune condition, but we're not going to look any deeper.
• 7:57
  It's maybe instead that the doctor doesn't know.
• 8:00
  Or if they know or if they've been taught, then that habit of saying,
• 8:06
  oh, your TSH is high, so obviously you get some Synthroid.
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  That habit of seeing TSH and prescribing Synthroid and not going deeper,
• 8:14
  maybe that is what's going on. And it's a bad habit.
• 8:19
  And I really get frustrated for people who are harmed by this bad habit.
• 8:24
  And this is not just general practitioners.
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  This is endocrinologists.
• 8:29
  Endocrinologists who should be on top of the latest research. And I get it.
• 8:33
  Doctors are busy. The insurance companies require them to see so many patients.
• 8:38
  They just treat people, their doctors, their specialists, as factories.
• 8:43
  Insurance companies, there's so much wrong with them.
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  But treating a doctor or a specialist, I mean a specialist, it's a doctor,
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  treating a doctor like a factory and treating the people who go in and out of
• 8:55
  that office like widgets is so bad, so bad.
• 9:00
  It harms the physicians. It harms the staff. It harms the patients.
• 9:06
  And by harm, I don't mean like physical damage, although in the patients,
• 9:11
  yes, if you develop more and more autoimmune conditions, that is physical damage.
• 9:14
  But for the practitioners, it's so depressing.
• 9:18
  Going into a field to help people,
• 9:22
  having this desire to make a difference in the world and to change people's
• 9:26
  lives, and then to be treated as a cog in a factory by the insurance companies,
• 9:32
  that is so demoralizing.
• 9:34
  And people get burned out and they get depressed. And then that has led to an
• 9:39
  epidemic of suicide in physicians.
• 9:43
  Physicians and farmers they the incidence of suicide is going up and it breaks
• 9:49
  my heart because everybody should know that they are valuable everybody should
• 9:53
  know they are loved everybody should know that there is hope but if you're in
• 9:57
  this system the insurance company and your clinic are treating you like just a cog in the factory.
• 10:03
  They're taking away your hope. They're taking away your agency.
• 10:06
  They're taking away your mission in life to help people.
• 10:10
  And then the people who are coming through, they're being treated like widgets
• 10:14
  in a factory, and then it's hurting them because they're not getting the answers.
• 10:18
  They're not seeing, oh my goodness, it's actually my immune system that's going
• 10:23
  haywire. And that's why I have Synthroid.
• 10:26
  That's why my thyroid isn't working well.
• 10:28
  So what can I do to address that? and maybe the endocrinologist doesn't have the answers.
• 10:34
  I have heard that a lot of them don't. They're just like, I don't know.
• 10:39
  You have Hashimoto's, okay, I don't know what to do for that. Take some Synthroid.
• 10:43
  But even if they don't know, if they give their patients that name.
• 10:48
  Hashimoto's, then the patient can go out and they can, you know,
• 10:52
  open up their favorite podcast app and they can search Hashimoto's and this podcast will pop up.
• 10:57
  Maybe that person is already in some communities on school.com.
• 11:02
  So they type in Hashimoto's and the Health with Hashimoto's community is going to pop up.
• 11:07
  Maybe they're on Facebook and they type in Hashimoto's. I don't have a Facebook
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  group, but I know that there are other Hashimoto's groups on Facebook.
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  So maybe the endocrinologist doesn't have the answers.
• 11:17
  Maybe the family physician doesn't have the answers, but they can give their patients the names.
• 11:23
  Instead of saying your thyroid is not producing enough thyroid hormone,
• 11:28
  so you're going to be on Synthroid for the rest of your life, period.
• 11:32
  Instead of saying that, they could say, your thyroid isn't working well. Let's do some labs.
• 11:38
  Labs come back. Your thyroid isn't working well, and that's because you have
• 11:44
  some antibodies that are elevated.
• 11:46
  This means you have Hashimoto's. I don't know what you want to do for the Hashimoto's,
• 11:51
  But I know that I can give you Synthroid to address the fact that your thyroid
• 11:57
  is not producing enough hormone.
• 11:59
  And then that patient can leave that clinic visit, maybe a little frustrated,
• 12:03
  they didn't get answers.
• 12:05
  Also empowered to say, okay, I know that there's a problem with my immune system.
• 12:10
  The doctor said this was an autoimmune problem, and I know the name of it,
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  Hashimoto's. Now I can go do research.
• 12:16
  We have the entire world at the tip of our fingers.
• 12:19
  The internet is amazing. You can find out so much. And now we have AI.
• 12:23
  I have mixed feelings about AI. I don't know how you feel about AI.
• 12:27
  I absolutely love AI for my podcast. I do my own podcast.
• 12:33
  You are hearing this from me. my ideas. Sometimes I will throw in a whole bunch
• 12:37
  of my ideas into a chat GPT and say, put this in an outline format for me because
• 12:43
  my thoughts are all scattered.
• 12:45
  But usually how I use AI is I will pull the transcript from my podcast and I will put that in and say,
• 12:53
  please help me figure out some reels or some Instagram posts or a Pinterest
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  or something from this because I've already done the work of recording the podcast.
• 13:04
  Like taking something that you've already done the mental work for and then
• 13:08
  putting it into AI to help you put it into other formats.
• 13:12
  I think that's a great use of AI.
• 13:14
  Using AI as a Google search or as a Wikipedia, that's a little scary.
• 13:20
  So I do know that it happens. People go to AI and they will say,
• 13:24
  tell me about Hashimoto's.
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  And AI might give you some good information and they might give you some false
• 13:29
  information and you don't know.
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  So I would encourage you, do not use AI for a search engine.
• 13:36
  Use it to help in other ways, like a menu. Have I told you this before?
• 13:42
  One of the people in our school community,
• 13:45
  Health with Hashimoto's, I was having a one-on-one call with her and she was
• 13:50
  telling about the problems they have figuring out meals that everybody in the
• 13:54
  family will eat and can eat.
• 13:57
  So for that, we went over to ChatGPT and we said, give me a menu that is for
• 14:03
  four people. It has these dietary restrictions.
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  Keep it at under X amount of dollars per meal. And boom, there was a menu.
• 14:14
  That's fine. That's a great use of ChatGPT or other AI.
• 14:18
  But asking for information about medical stuff, probably I would turn to experts instead.
• 14:25
  I'm not just saying that because I am an expert. I'm saying it because I have
• 14:29
  asked it some stuff just to test it and it has spit out some false information.
• 14:34
  So I tested it. It's bad. Don't do that.
• 14:38
  Okay. What was I saying? Okay. So you leave the doctor's office empowered because
• 14:42
  now you can do your own research.
• 14:44
  So my challenge today, I don't usually give you challenges. I usually give you
• 14:48
  tips. I usually give you solutions.
• 14:50
  But my challenge today is if you know of anybody else who is on Synthroid or
• 14:56
  Levothyroxine or any thyroid medication, ask them why.
• 15:01
  Ask them if they've had their antibody levels checked. And the reason that you're
• 15:05
  asking is to help them figure out that they might have more that they can do for their health,
• 15:12
  and they might need to protect themselves from developing other autoimmune conditions.
• 15:17
  And helping people prevent another autoimmune condition is being such a caring friend.
• 15:24
  So you can share this episode with them. You can share the podcast with them.
• 15:29
  In fact, if you have not left a rating and review before, I would love it if
• 15:33
  you spend a couple minutes giving a rating or review, because that really does
• 15:38
  tell the podcast apps that this is a podcast worth listening to.
• 15:42
  I have a lot of people who listen every week and not a ton of ratings and reviews,
• 15:47
  so it would just help. It would help get the word out.
• 15:50
  But I challenge you to ask your friends, if you know they're taking Synthroid,
• 15:54
  ask them if they've ever had their antibody levels checked.
• 15:58
  Ask them if they've ever had their reverse T3 checked.
• 16:02
  Those are the two different things, antibodies and reverse T3,
• 16:06
  that I find people are not checking, people being the specialists.
• 16:10
  And that's after talking with people, not with the providers.
• 16:14
  I'm talking with the actual patients.
• 16:16
  So the reason why you would want to check those two things, antibodies,
• 16:20
  is because those can start to elevate 12 to 15 years before there's enough damage
• 16:26
  done to your thyroid to cause it to not work well enough.
• 16:30
  So you really want to know your antibody levels. And then your reverse T3,
• 16:34
  you want to know that because you want to know if your body is able to convert the T4,
• 16:41
  which is what your thyroid produces, or it's what the Synthroid or Levothyroxine
• 16:45
  is, that's all T4, and your body is supposed to convert that to T3,
• 16:50
  which is the active form that it can use.
• 16:52
  But if your body wants to prioritize rest and healing, then your body will convert some of it to reverse T3.
• 17:00
  So I always want to know how much your body is converting to reverse T3.
• 17:05
  I feel like that is an important part of the big picture.
• 17:08
  The whole picture is not just, is your thyroid producing enough hormone?
• 17:13
  Or is your brain asking for more thyroid hormone, and that's your TSH, your brain asking.
• 17:19
  I want to know your TSH. I also want to know how much T4 thyroid hormone is
• 17:25
  circulated in your body. And I also want to know.
• 17:28
  Are you converting it to the rest, the break system, the reverse D3,
• 17:34
  saying, no, let's prioritize rest and healing. I want to know all those.
• 17:38
  I want to know the antibodies.
• 17:39
  And I feel like it's so important for patients who are on Synthroid,
• 17:43
  the 18 million patients on Synthroid just in the US, I feel like it's so important.
• 17:49
  They know what's going on in their own body. they deserve
• 17:52
  to know they deserve to have the ability
• 17:56
  the autonomy to say i
• 17:59
  want to take more control of my health i want
• 18:02
  to be able to look ahead and say i'm at risk for autoimmune conditions and i
• 18:07
  want to prevent them and you can do that but only if you know about it and that
• 18:12
  is why people who are just on synthroid but don't know their antibodies they
• 18:16
  don't know their T3 or their reverse T3.
• 18:20
  That is why it is a pet peeve of mine, because they don't know that there's
• 18:23
  more that they could be doing to prevent further problems down the road.
• 18:27
  And quite honestly, I feel like it's medical malpractice to not let patients know about that.
• 18:32
  I feel like doctors, providers, they have a responsibility to give their patients
• 18:36
  the information that their patients need and help them figure out what to do
• 18:40
  with it. And our healthcare system is broken.
• 18:43
  The doctors don't have all the information. The doctors don't have enough time
• 18:46
  to do all of that, but they can point you into the right direction.
• 18:49
  Or they can say, you can look at this online and you can figure things out.
• 18:54
  I'm just giving you the data.
• 18:55
  It's hard to say that. As somebody who went back to school, I went to school
• 18:59
  for four years to become a nurse.
• 19:01
  And then I went back to school for another year, was it year or two years?
• 19:05
  I don't even remember, to become a holistic health educator and nurse coach.
• 19:09
  I went back to school. It's hard to say after all of that schooling.
• 19:13
  I don't know. But I don't think anybody expects one person to have all of the answers.
• 19:18
  What we do expect is people to be truthful.
• 19:21
  And we expect our providers to say, here's the information I know.
• 19:25
  Here's what I can do for you. And now it's your turn to go and dig into more
• 19:31
  and to change your health.
• 19:33
  So I encourage you, talk to your friends, refer them to this podcast,
• 19:38
  refer them to our community.
• 19:39
  Help them take their own health into their own hands to make a better future.
• 19:44
  This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only.
• 19:48
  Please discuss any concerns and plans with your trusted healthcare professional.
• 19:52
  If you found this episode helpful, will you please share it with a friend?
• 19:55
  I'll see you next week on the Health with Hashimoto's podcast.
• 19:58
  Music.