Latest / Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease / How Serious is Hashimoto's Disease? ⎹ Ep. 216

Transcript

How Serious is Hashimoto's Disease? ⎹ Ep. 216 · Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease

• 0:00
  How serious is Hashimoto's? That is a really good question to know the answer
• 0:05
  to because the answer helps you determine how much energy, how much focus,
• 0:10
  how much attention you give to this diagnosis.
• 0:14
  Like are you going to brush it off and live life normal and say this is no big
• 0:17
  deal or are you going to devote all of your time and attention to it thinking
• 0:22
  that it is life-threatening?
• 0:23
  The answer lies in between those two and I am going to do my very best in this
• 0:28
  episode to give you the facts without fear.
• 0:31
  I want you to be informed you are the CEO of your health. That means you make the ultimate call.
• 0:37
  It is your call. And so answering this question of how serious is Hashimoto's
• 0:42
  is an important spot to start.
• 0:44
  Maybe you got a prescription and a follow-up appointment for six weeks later,
• 0:48
  or maybe you got told that your
• 0:49
  numbers are fine for now and we're just going to keep an eye on things.
• 0:53
  Either way, your provider probably did not tell you that Hashimoto's is two things and not one.
• 0:58
  It's a thyroid that can't keep up because it's also an immune system that's attacking the thyroid.
• 1:04
  Medication can help handle the first, but the second one is all yours to work
• 1:08
  on. You are the CEO of your own health.
• 1:10
  You can start working on that immune system side before your labs say that you have to.
• 1:15
  Hi, I'm Esther Yunkin. I am a registered nurse. I've been a nurse for 25 years,
• 1:19
  and I am the host of the Health with Hashimoto's podcast.
• 1:22
  I am the nurse who helps you sort your Hashimoto's into thyroid or immune.
• 1:27
  Let's sort. The first answer to is Hashimoto's serious is yes, it is.
• 1:33
  Let me read to you. This is from The Underactive Thyroid.
• 1:37
  I guess let me back up a little bit. Hashimoto's is an immune system attack on your thyroid.
• 1:42
  When your thyroid is under attack, it typically does not do its job.
• 1:46
  It can't keep up. You become hypothyroid.
• 1:49
  And it is the hypothyroidism that is serious.
• 1:53
  Because without treatment, your cells can't work.
• 1:57
  Your thyroid provides the little
• 2:00
  hormone, the little key that turns on the cells. It's the ignition key.
• 2:05
  And if your cells don't have that ignition key, then your cells can't work.
• 2:08
  And if your cells can't work, well, then you're going to have serious problems.
• 2:12
  So this comes from the book, The Underactive Thyroid by Dr. Sarah Myhill and Craig Robinson.
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  They say the short answer to this question of if hypothyroidism is missed is
• 2:27
  chronic fatigue syndrome, disease, degeneration, and premature death.
• 2:33
  So yes, if.
• 2:38
  Your Hashimoto's results in hypothyroidism, and your hypothyroidism is not caught
• 2:42
  or treated, or if you decide that you don't want to take any medications for
• 2:47
  your hypothyroid, that you're just going to tough it out, it can be very serious.
• 2:52
  And this is not to give you fear.
• 2:55
  This is to give you an education. This is to help you understand what is going on.
• 3:01
  Because you are the CEO of your health. You make the ultimate decision.
• 3:05
  Your doctor is on your board of directors. Your doctor helps advise you.
• 3:10
  Your doctor or your nurse practitioner or PA, whoever you see,
• 3:14
  they are doing their very best to help you have the best health that you can.
• 3:20
  And sometimes you accept those, their recommendations, and sometimes you don't.
• 3:25
  You make that ultimate choice. And so it is your responsibility to know about
• 3:31
  your health, to know about the immune side. What's going on? What can you do?
• 3:35
  Is there anything that you can do? Side note, yes, there is.
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  It's also your responsibility to know about your thyroid side.
• 3:41
  What's going on? Is your thyroid keeping up? Is it producing enough hormone?
• 3:45
  Is that hormone T4 converting to T3 as it's supposed to? Because your cells need the T3.
• 3:53
  And so there's a lot going on. And it is your job as the CEO to kind of keep an eye on it.
• 4:00
  And that can be hard, it can be difficult, and I don't want it to be overwhelming.
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  So that is why I come behind this microphone every single week to try to make
• 4:08
  things a little more simple for you, easy to understand.
• 4:12
  If you have heard my story back in, I think, episode two or three,
• 4:15
  I explained that all throughout nursing school, anatomy, physiology classes,
• 4:20
  nursing courses, I was always confused about thyroid.
• 4:24
  I would get it down enough to pass the tests, but it confused me.
• 4:27
  As a nurse, in all of the various places that I worked, whether it was med-surg
• 4:33
  or in the ER or clinic, wherever I worked, I would just log people's Synthroid
• 4:38
  because everybody felt like everybody was taking the Synthroid.
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  It is a very, very common medication.
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  So I knew about Synthroid. I knew that it had to be given first thing in the
• 4:47
  morning on an empty stomach, no food or any caffeine for 30 to 60 minutes after that.
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  Like I knew all of those basics, but I could not tell you what was going on
• 4:58
  with the thyroid because it confused me.
• 5:01
  All of those numbers, all of those letters, it just, it didn't make sense in my head.
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  So when I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's, first of all, I was scared and completely
• 5:12
  worried because I didn't know what was going on.
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  And I really like to know what's going on. You probably do too.
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  That's why you're listening to this podcast. And then I asked for help.
• 5:20
  And I started understanding. And I understood it to the point where actually,
• 5:25
  I felt like I heard from God.
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  And God said, Esther, if you, with all of your education and experience,
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  if you still get confused about thyroid stuff, what do you think the average person is feeling?
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  You need to teach this. And that's really the reason why I started this podcast.
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  I also started it because one of my business coaches.
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  Wanted me to charge clients a lot, a lot of money, $5,000.
• 5:51
  And I was like, but everybody needs this information.
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  So that was the other reason I started a podcast, because everybody can get
• 5:58
  this information if I'm sharing it to you via podcast.
• 6:01
  All right, back to where I was going with this, with the thyroid.
• 6:05
  It is your job to understand what's going on. And I have tools for you.
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  I have Hashimoto's Decoded.
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  It is just $27 so that you can understand what's going on. You immune side,
• 6:15
  you can understand the thyroid side, what to do about them.
• 6:18
  I do my best to give you tools so you can understand what's going on because
• 6:24
  you do get to make the decisions.
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  You are the CEO and yes, Hashimoto's and hypothyroidism can be serious.
• 6:32
  It doesn't start out serious.
• 6:34
  So let's go through a little bit about what Hashimoto's is.
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  First of all, it's your immune system attacking your thyroid.
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  Your immune antibodies, so the lab that they can check to see if your immune
• 6:46
  system is attacking your thyroid, those can start to be elevated 12 to 15 years
• 6:52
  before you have symptoms or before your TSH reflects it.
• 6:56
  So it is important to know what's going on.
• 7:00
  It is important that people check their antibody levels and most doctors don't.
• 7:05
  That is, I have other episodes on that because that is a pet peeve of mine.
• 7:09
  I want everybody to know what's going on.
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  Think of it. If you could have known what was going on 15 years before you started symptoms.
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  Would you have been able to stop the progression? Who knows?
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  We can't go back in time and see, but we can help the next people.
• 7:24
  Okay, so for years before you, well, it's not always years.
• 7:29
  For many people, years before you start getting symptoms, your antibodies were
• 7:34
  elevated because your immune system was attacking your thyroid.
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  At that point in time, was it serious? Well, I mean, your immune system isn't
• 7:41
  going haywire, it's attacking your body.
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  So it needed to be addressed.
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  Maybe you wish you could go back in time and address it, but that's not life-threatening.
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  What can be life-threatening then is when your thyroid can't keep up and it
• 7:57
  can't produce the hormone that it's supposed to.
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  That is its job is to make thyroid hormone. And then when that thyroid hormone
• 8:04
  can't help cells do what they're supposed to, then that's what turns serious.
• 8:10
  So it's actually hypothyroidism that is serious, but Hashimoto's typically ends in hypothyroidism.
• 8:19
  So again, quoting from this book, The Underactive Thyroid.
• 8:23
  They're talking about hypothyroidism being slow energy delivery.
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  And if you get slow energy delivery to the muscles of the body,
• 8:32
  then the short-term results are weakness and inability to get fit.
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  Long-term results are chronic fatigue syndrome.
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  And then you can even get, this one's a scary thing.
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  And again, I don't want to scare you. This episode is not about fear,
• 8:48
  but I just want to give the facts.
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  It can cause myxoedema coma and of course you hear coma and you're like yep
• 8:55
  that's that's serious I don't have to know anything else I just hear coma.
• 8:59
  That is serious that is due to the slow energy delivery to the muscles.
• 9:03
  If you get slow energy delivery to the brain then you can experience brain fog
• 9:07
  or poor short-term memory.
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  It can even result in dementia for long-term results.
• 9:14
  Slow energy to the sense organs in short-term can cause deteriorating vision
• 9:20
  and hearing and smell and taste and touch, all of those.
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  And long-term it can result in blindness, deafness, the inability to smell,
• 9:30
  and your touch senses not working, numbness.
• 9:35
  This hypothyroidism can be very serious. I think you're probably understanding that.
• 9:43
  I have had many people tell me that they want to get off their thyroid medication,
• 9:46
  whether it's Synthroid or anything.
• 9:49
  And they have various reasons and rationales that they want to get off of it.
• 9:53
  But these are the things that I worry about. And I can go through the next page.
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  What does slow energy delivery to your cell membranes, your ion pumps,
• 10:03
  result in? What about the immune system?
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  What about your bone marrow, your heart, the liver, kidneys,
• 10:09
  lungs, reproductive organs? Like there's, you know, your body is made up of cells.
• 10:14
  And if your cells are not getting the ignition keys, then they're not going to work well.
• 10:18
  And so I think about all of these things when somebody is telling me they want
• 10:21
  to get off, or they just want to stop their medication.
• 10:25
  And I don't want you to do that. Because I know what can result from that.
• 10:29
  Every single cell in your body needs thyroid.
• 10:33
  It needs that thyroid hormone. And if you are not getting it from medications
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  and your thyroid is not producing it on its own, then that combination can be deadly.
• 10:45
  Again, this is not to give you fear. This is not to make you anxious because
• 10:51
  we have so many different ways to handle this.
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  You live in the modern age and we have so many different opportunities to get
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  labs. You can order your own labs.
• 11:01
  Somebody can come to your house and draw labs.
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  You can order your own labs and you can go into phlebotomy place and they can draw your labs there.
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  You can have your doctor order your labs. There's so many different availabilities just to get labs.
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  And then you get your labs back and you figure out what's going on.
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  And then you can do so many different things.
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  You can do Synthroid. You can do generic T4. You can do desiccated thyroid.
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  You can do, oh my goodness, there's so many things and I do have episodes on that.
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  You have choices, you have options.
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  So these serious things that I'm talking about, they don't have to happen to anybody.
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  And I am so thankful and grateful for that.
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  So, so far in this episode, you have heard the question, is Hashimoto's serious?
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  And I have given you the answer, yes, it is serious. It is serious because Hashimoto's
• 11:55
  is two different things. It's the immune system and it's the thyroid.
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  And if the thyroid is under attack and not able to produce hormones and you
• 12:05
  are not supplementing those hormones with medications or desiccated thyroid,
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  then it can impact every single cell in your body.
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  And then that has consequences down the road, including death.
• 12:17
  I don't remember which book I read it from. I have read so many different thyroid
• 12:22
  books, but one of them said that the typical prognosis was death within 10 years.
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  And this was way back in the day. And that's significant. And thankfully,
• 12:36
  we do not have that anymore.
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  We have labs, we have medications, you have choices.
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  So let's breathe a sigh of relief.
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  We live in the 2020s. It's 2026 right now and I'm recording this.
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  Podcasts live forever, so I don't know when you're listening to this,
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  but we have medications. We have things that are available.
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  And then the other part is the immune system.
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  So I said, your immune system can start attacking your thyroid like 10,
• 13:04
  15 years before you start symptoms.
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  Now, some people, they have a trigger and they develop Hashimoto's very,
• 13:11
  very quickly after that trigger.
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  Most of the time we have time to address the immune side but specifically we're
• 13:19
  talking about is Hashimoto's serious which again goes to the thyroid side hypothyroidism is serious
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  but it is most serious for I would say pregnant women
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  or women trying to get pregnant and,
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  Pregnancy is dependent on good thyroid levels.
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  Hypothyroidism is one of the leading causes of miscarriage.
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  I, after interviewing a couple different doctors here on the podcast,
• 13:51
  I firmly now believe that my Hashimoto's started during my third pregnancy.
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  After my third pregnancy, I had really weird postpartum anxiety, like very weird.
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  It hadn't happened with any of my others. And I found out that that's one common
• 14:10
  thing that the doctor sees with women who are developing Hashimoto's and hypothyroidism.
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  Another thing after that third pregnancy, I experienced my first miscarriage.
• 14:20
  And I really wonder, was that because my thyroid levels were off.
• 14:25
  I had no idea. I hadn't had them tested probably since I was pregnant with my third son.
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  And so in that postpartum period, I had no reason to know or to get them tested
• 14:37
  and see that they were getting off.
• 14:40
  You know what, if I could go back in time, would I have been able to prevent
• 14:44
  that miscarriage? We will never know. I'm very grateful I have a fourth son.
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  Obviously, he would not be here if I was, if I had carried my,
• 14:53
  you know, fourth pregnancy to term.
• 14:55
  So good does come and I am grateful for that. But, you know,
• 15:00
  would that have happened?
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  Because hypothyroidism is responsible for a lot of miscarriages.
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  Your body cannot carry a baby if the thyroid is not up to par.
• 15:11
  Also it can't get pregnant so you need a healthy thyroid and healthy thyroid
• 15:16
  levels to get pregnant and to stay pregnant and to have a healthy baby.
• 15:21
  Several of the books that I have on my shelf here talk about the consequences
• 15:25
  to the developing baby if the thyroid is not adequate and this is something
• 15:31
  that I talk to my clients about and I talk to, you know, friends when they tell
• 15:36
  me that they're pregnant.
• 15:37
  I ask them to keep a very close eye on their thyroid levels when they are pregnant,
• 15:43
  because your TSH is directly correlated with your baby's IQ later on.
• 15:51
  Your baby needs you to have good thyroid levels.
• 15:55
  So the most significant risk I would say as a population for hypothyroidism
• 16:02
  and thus Hashimoto's is women who are trying to get pregnant and stay pregnant and their babies.
• 16:09
  Is Hashimoto's serious for those people? It absolutely is.
• 16:13
  Thyroid hormone is very important for pregnancy and for fetal development.
• 16:19
  We do not want to see any miscarriages. Those are heartbreaking preterm birth. Again, heartbreaking.
• 16:25
  Babies born, and they could have been smarter, their IQ could have been better,
• 16:31
  and, you know, mom didn't know.
• 16:33
  Again, heartbreaking. If you could go back in time, you probably would.
• 16:38
  So I feel like this is kind of a bummer of an episode.
• 16:42
  I don't want you to panic. Hashimoto's is not a reason to panic,
• 16:46
  but it is a reason to be proactive. You are the CEO of your health.
• 16:50
  You get to do laboratory testing.
• 16:52
  How is your TSH? How is your free T4? How is your free T3?
• 16:57
  What's your reverse T3 like? is your body converting t4 to t3 like it's supposed to
• 17:03
  or is your body saying no we do not need more ignition keys we don't need more
• 17:07
  gas pedal we need more brake we need more rest in our lives so you need to chill
• 17:12
  out is your body saying that the best way to find that out is to check that reverse t3
• 17:18
  as long as well as your free t4 and your free t3 we want to know everything
• 17:23
  we want to know the antibody levels, TSH,
• 17:26
  all of it, because it all matters.
• 17:29
  Your body and your health, it is made of so many different moving pieces.
• 17:35
  The logo of Health with Hashimoto's, it was created, you've probably heard me
• 17:39
  say this before, it was created with a Venn diagram that I turned into a flower.
• 17:43
  Because it is your health, the whole you, is five different parts.
• 17:48
  Body, mind, spirit, diet, environment. They all impact each one of the others.
• 17:56
  And your thyroid is impacted by everything. And so it is your job,
• 18:01
  it is your privilege to monitor that, to be the CEO of your own health,
• 18:07
  because your thyroid does matter.
• 18:10
  So in summary, is Hashimoto serious? Well, yeah, it can be, because it is a
• 18:16
  real autoimmune condition.
• 18:18
  There is no treatment for autoimmune conditions. Your immune system will just
• 18:22
  keep attacking if you don't address the root causes behind that immune system going haywire.
• 18:28
  And when your thyroid hormone is not up to what your body needs,
• 18:33
  it can affect the heart, your mood, metabolism, fertility, pregnancy,
• 18:37
  quality of life. It can do a lot.
• 18:40
  But thankfully, hypothyroidism is one of the conditions that we can usually
• 18:45
  monitor and treat very, very effectively.
• 18:48
  So the goal here is not panic and it's not dismissal.
• 18:52
  We don't want either side of that. We want to be in the middle.
• 18:56
  We want to know an accurate diagnosis. We want to have a consistent treatment when you need it.
• 19:02
  Regular follow-up. Know what's going on with your labs and look beyond the thyroid.
• 19:08
  When you have persisting symptoms or you're not doing anything at all on the
• 19:12
  immune side, then those are the places that you get to look next.
• 19:16
  Because we don't have to live in fear.
• 19:18
  We get to live with hope. There are things that we can do. And there are simple
• 19:22
  things that we can do that are sustainable.
• 19:24
  And I promise you, if you go back through the last 215 episodes,
• 19:29
  you will find simple and sustainable things that you can do that you can start today.
• 19:34
  If you don't know where to start, go to Hashimoto's Decoded.
• 19:37
  That is the very best place to start.
• 19:40
  I'm going to walk you through thyroid and immune so that you can know what's
• 19:43
  going on in your body and make the best informed choice for your health.
• 19:48
  And that's it for this episode. If you want the whole framework in one place,
• 19:51
  I made Hashimoto's decoded at $27, seven short chapters and a workbook under an hour start to finish.
• 19:58
  You will sort your Hashimoto's into thyroid or immune. So you know what to do
• 20:02
  first. The link is in the show notes.
• 20:04
  And if you want to talk about this episode with other women who actually get
• 20:08
  it, the free community is on the Skool platform.
• 20:11
  The link is in the show notes for that too. I'll see you next week.