Latest / Common Sense Health / Thyroid Antibodies Explained
Transcript
- Stephen Thomas BSc. Hons: Hello, today I'm going to cover Hashimoto's Thyroditis. I'm going to talk about what it is and then I'm going to talk about the silver tray and why we don't hand our iodine willy-nilly. imagine your thyroid as a baker whipping up batches of hormones like T4 and T3 and those hormones keep your metabolism humming along. Well, in Hashimoto's Thyroditis and in an autoimmune condition, that baker gets put under siege. your immune system mistakes normal thyroid machinery for the enemy and it sends in auto antibodies to sabotage that hormone production. Now, people with Hashimoto's, they often tell me that they feel like they're trudging through treacle and they say many things to me like they feel fatigued and they have this cold intolerance. Why is everyone else in t-shirts when I'm wrapped in a duvet? Or they worry about the fact that they can't lose any weight or they get weight gain despite their eating being very sensible or their hair is thinning or their skin is dry, have brittle nails, brain fog or even low mood. I mean these are all pretty horrible things to present with and blood tests can confirm the picture. Raise TSH, low T4, T3 and of course the antibodies being flagged. Now don't forget to always interpret the blood in the context of a ketogenic or carnivore way of eating. That is crucial as your baseline metabolic needs shift when you're running on fat. You need less T3 basically. So to really understand what Hashimoto's happens, we need to look at how the immune system communicates. So we're going to break down some jargon and use an analogy or two. Yes, I do use those a bit. But anyway, first, what is an antigen? So think of an antigen as an ID badge or a barcode found on the surface of a biological molecule. So a virus has an antigen, a bacterium has an antigen, even your own healthy organs, they have antigens. your immune system employs these little scout cells that constantly patrol the body and they're picking up bits of debris. So when a scout cell finds a protein, it chops it up and it presents a piece of that protein's ID badge, the antigen, on its surface for the rest of the immune system to inspect. Now it does this using a special molecular tray called the MHC, which is the major histo... compatibility complex because we are humans by the way our special brand of these trays is actually called the HLA the human leukocyte antigen so picture this scout cell as a waiter maybe you know carrying a silver tray and the waiter walks up to the immune systems generals which are the T cells and presents the antigen on the tray excuse me sir look what I found in the bloodstream is this friend or foe Baldrick voice there. So if the antigen on the tray belongs to a winter cold virus, the general sounds the alarm and orders the production of antibodies. Now, antibodies are like heat seeking missiles designed to lock onto that exact antigen and destroy it. So in Hashimoto's, the waiter has made a mistake because he's picked up TPO, thyroid peroxidase, which is a totally normal essential enzyme. that our thyroid baker uses to mix his dosage and the waiter puts the TPO antigen on the silver platter and shows it to the general. Now, because of a genetic glitch or some environmental trigger, the general looks at the normal TPO on the tray and wrongly declares, ⁓ Bob, that for an invader. Let's attack it. So the immune system starts manufacturing anti-TPO antibodies. So these heat-seeking missiles travel to the thyroid and start attacking the baker's mixing bowls. Hope that made sense. this needs to be understood so we can explain why iodine sometimes makes things worse. Now that we understand the battlefield, we can look at the iodine problem. Now, iodine is the raw material, let's say the flour, that our baker uses to bake T4 and T3. So it seems logical, therefore, that more flour, iodine, equals more hormones. But remember, our baker is under siege. TPO is the exact enzyme that processes iodine. So if you heat extra sacks of iodine into a kitchen already besieged by saboteurs, you force the TPO enzyme to work harder. As biological activity ramps up, our waiters pick up even more pieces of TPO, put them on their trays and show them to the immune system. So the angry generals see all this extra TPO activity and assume, infection, it's spreading. So they ramp up the antibody production, worsening the inflammation, and eventually this could obviously damage the thyroid. So in real terms, giving extra iodine could do a few things. Firstly, it's feeding the immune system target. You know, the TPO uses iodine to produce hormones. It alerts the immune army to more enemy activity, which leads to an antibody arms race. basically breaking up the bakery. So hence, despite its essential role, supplemented iodine in Hashimoto's can backfire, fueling the fire rather than putting it out. Now you may now ask, well, what is the best common sense approach? Well, the first thing is to actually look at your immune system and support that with some sort of gentle targeted nutrients like selenium to calm the immune generals. And if needed, you could look at thyroid hormone supplements to give the baker a rest. But I would definitely keep monitoring retesting TSH in free T4, T3, reverse T3 and antibodies. The biggest lever to pull though is food, diet, remove those inflammatory triggers. A carnivore strict keto diet works the best. You're removing plant toxins, stabilizing blood sugar and providing highly bioavailable nutrients to heal the gut. And that's where the immune weight is hanging out. people will... often say after all this well my antibodies have still not gone down to zero why well that's a brilliant question because patients often panic when they see any number next to their antibodies so of course they start thinking I'd really like to see zero antibodies but asking for a zero antibody reading is is a bit strange in biology it's a bit like asking for a zero crumb a zero crumb policy in the bakery it sounds wonderful to the health and safety inspectors but it actually means no baking is getting done. So why is it that having low antibodies is actually okay? Well, when people get their blood test results back, they do see a number next to their TPO or TG antibodies. Let's say it's 12 international units per milliliter. And they still panic. They ask, well, why isn't it zero? Surely zero is the safest number. Well, this nearly impossible dream to have zero readings for these antibodies is not really going to cut it. And to understand why that is, have to look at the positive side of these low level antibodies in the immune system. So we call these natural auto antibodies. So let's go back to our thyroid bakery. Even in a perfectly healthy, peaceful bakery, things will break. Mixing bowls like TPO, they will chip and storage vats, thyroglobulin or TG, they will wear out. In the human body, thyroid cells naturally reach the end of the lifespan. and undergo a programmed orderly death called apoptosis. So when a thyroid cell dies, it pops open, spilling its contents, including TPO and TG into the surrounding tissue. If that cellular debris was just left to rot, it would be a disaster. It would trigger a massive, messy inflammatory response. So this is where your low level natural auto antibodies come to the rescue. Think of them as like a night shift cleaning or even like your body's bin men, our bins are taken out on Tuesday. So the immune system intentionally keeps a small circulating fleet of these low-level antibodies on hand at all times. And their job is not to attack the bakery, but simply to sweep up the spilled flour and the broken bowls. They gently bind to the floating bits of TPO and TG debris, back them up, and carry them away to the liver and to the spleen to be recycled quietly, because the body's brilliant like that. Now because these bin men antibodies clear the debris so efficiently, the waiters with the silver platters, the silver trays, never have to pick up the rubbish and show it to the immune system generals. So the alarm never gets raised and peace is maintained. Now trouble only starts when there is a fundamental shift in the immune system. So in a healthy person, the antibodies are called low affinity. They grab the rubbish quite loosely. and they're low in number. Hashimoto's, due to molecular mimicry and gut permeability, leaky gut, or even severe systemic inflammation, the immune system swaps the peaceful bin men for some sort heavily armed riot police. The antibodies become high affinity. They lock on with a death grip and multiply into hundreds or thousands. I've seen thousands in the numbers. And they stop sweeping up dead debris and start smashing up the living bakery. So... If your TPO is sitting comfortably below 34 IUs per millilitre and your TG is below four international units ⁓ per millilitre, don't panic. This isn't a sign of disease. It's a sign that your night shift cleaners, your bin men, are mopping up the floors and cleaning up. So when you remove processed carbs or seed oils and plant antinutrients from your diet, you drastically reduce the systemic inflammation and the gut permeability. You are essentially putting a massive around your thyroid bakery ensuring the immune general stay calm and the waiters with the silver trays only present the things that they're supposed to present. ⁓ and on a related metabolic note always remember that your T3 requirement is actually lower on this way of eating due to less glycolysis you know the T3 pyruvate connection that we've talked about in other substacks and other videos do check them out if you can find them. So to wrap this up If Hashimoto's had a tagline, it would be friendly fire in the thyroid trenches rather than pouring more ammunition, iodine, into the fray. We focus on calming the generals, retiring the silver platters and letting the night shift bin men do their vital work in peace. So in the meantime, keep your blankets handy, keep your bloods monitored and your sense of humour intact, because after all, nothing keeps the immune vandals away better than a well timed joke? Nah, maybe a well cooked rib eye steak would be the best thing. Anyway, hope you enjoyed that. If you did enjoy it, please consider liking, sharing and subscribing. And if you stayed to the end and you didn't like it, well, thank you very much. You deserve a medal. But maybe I'll do better on the next one. Any comments would be really appreciated. And I look forward to seeing you on the next one.