Latest / Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease / 132 // Spoon Theory & Hashimoto's Fatigue

Transcript

132 // Spoon Theory & Hashimoto's Fatigue · Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease

• 0:00
  Have you tried explaining to somebody why you just can't like push through your fatigue?
• 0:05
  Why some days you can like conquer the world, you can do anything,
• 0:09
  but other days just getting dressed, just getting out of bed feels so daunting.
• 0:15
  It feels like it's sucking every little bit of your energy for the entire day.
• 0:20
  Like explaining these things to a normal person, quote normal,
• 0:25
  it can be difficult and it can make you feel other.
• 0:29
  And sometimes we want to have a simple way to explain it.
• 0:32
  And that is what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about
• 0:34
  the spoon theory, which was developed expressly for this reason,
• 0:40
  to explain the fatigue of a chronic illness like Hashimoto's to a friend.
• 0:46
  So if you're new to the podcast, hi, I'm Esther. I'm a registered nurse.
• 0:50
  I have been diagnosed with Hashimoto's. I have four boys. I homeschool two of
• 0:54
  them. Two of them go to a public charter school.
• 0:57
  My husband and I and our four boys live in Minnesota. We got a whole bunch of
• 1:01
  chickens and we just ordered chickens.
• 1:03
  Was it last week or two weeks ago? I was talking to you about the seed catalogs
• 1:07
  and the chicken catalogs and we put in our order and I'm so excited.
• 1:11
  Well, let's talk about the spoon theory.
• 1:14
  So this theory was developed out of frustration.
• 1:18
  So the person who came up with it, her name is Christine Miserandino.
• 1:22
  I think that's how you say her last name. I probably got it wrong.
• 1:25
  She was sitting at a restaurant with one of her very best friends.
• 1:30
  Her best friend had been with her through so much.
• 1:33
  Christine has lupus and her friend had been to doctor's appointments with her.
• 1:37
  Had been through like highs and lows.
• 1:39
  And she asked Christine, what does it feel like to have lupus.
• 1:44
  And she didn't want to know the nuts and bolts of a diagnosis.
• 1:48
  She wanted to know what it actually felt like.
• 1:51
  And Christine thought about how she could explain it. She was trying to figure
• 1:55
  it out and she noticed a spoon on the table.
• 1:58
  So she gathered a bunch of spoons
• 2:00
  from around the diner and she handed her friend a bouquet of spoons.
• 2:05
  And that was the start of the spoon theory.
• 2:08
  Essentially, one spoon is one unit of energy.
• 2:12
  And when you're talking about your day in terms of spoons, every single thing
• 2:18
  you do costs a set amount of units of energy. So spoons.
• 2:23
  So getting up out of bed, like waking up, sitting up, depending on how much
• 2:28
  energy you're starting with, how many spoons, you might even count like sitting
• 2:33
  up on the side of your bed as a spoon.
• 2:35
  Now for a lot of people with Hashimoto's we
• 2:38
  don't experience the physical hardships
• 2:42
  that somebody with lupus does but you're still going
• 2:45
  to spend energy or spoons on getting up getting out of bed taking a shower so
• 2:52
  Christine and her friend went through an imaginary day in the life of somebody
• 2:57
  with lupus her friend started out with this bouquet of spoons and then she had
• 3:01
  to think through everything that you do.
• 3:03
  You get up, you take a shower, you get dressed, you eat breakfast, you travel to work.
• 3:10
  Each of these things take spoons.
• 3:14
  I'm going to post a link to Christine's Spoon Theory PDF. It's only two pages.
• 3:19
  It's super quick to read. You can read it, the whole thing. I highly encourage you to.
• 3:24
  The link is down in the show notes. I'm going to read two quotes from it.
• 3:28
  As she's explaining what she was doing with her friend, she said,
• 3:31
  I asked her to count her spoons.
• 3:33
  She asked why. And I explained that when you're healthy, you expect to have
• 3:36
  a never ending supply of spoons.
• 3:38
  But when you now have to plan your day, you need to know exactly how many spoons you're starting with.
• 3:44
  It doesn't guarantee that you might not lose some along the way,
• 3:47
  but at least it helps to know where you're starting.
• 3:50
  My friend counted out 12 spoons. She laughed and she said she wanted more. I said no.
• 3:54
  And I knew right away that this little game would work when she looked disappointed
• 3:58
  and we hadn't even started yet.
• 4:00
  I have wanted more spoons for years and I haven't found a way to get more. Why should she?
• 4:06
  That's so interesting. Some of my highest downloaded podcast episodes are how to get more energy.
• 4:13
  And I do have ideas of how you can do that, how you can do it with prescriptions.
• 4:19
  You know, we talked about LDN a couple weeks ago. We talked about Synthroid last week.
• 4:24
  We've talked about natural ways.
• 4:27
  Like I said, my highest downloaded episodes are about getting more energy and
• 4:33
  I have natural ways and pharmaceutical ways that you can do that.
• 4:37
  Obviously, my favorite ways are the natural ones. So check those out.
• 4:41
  Again, they'll be down in the show notes, links to everything.
• 4:44
  I want you to be able to create more energy.
• 4:47
  And that's one of the biggest things we do in the Holistic Hashimoto's course.
• 4:52
  You want to get your life back.
• 4:54
  You can't have your life back unless you have your energy back, right?
• 4:58
  So obviously that is a huge thing that we focus on as figuring out your root causes.
• 5:03
  That's in the Hashimoto's Decoded Mini Course. That's the root causes revealed.
• 5:08
  And if you know you're going to do the holistic Hashimoto's course,
• 5:11
  you don't have to do the root causes because the root causes course is included in the full course.
• 5:17
  So you could just jump right in there, figure out your root causes and get going
• 5:21
  on figuring out how to get more energy, how to address those root causes so
• 5:28
  you can feel like yourself again.
• 5:29
  Okay, so I'm going to continue with Christine's account of developing the Spoonie theory in real time.
• 5:38
  So I'm skipping down to the second page where they've gone through the day and her friend was upset.
• 5:46
  Her friend was really sad about all of these spoons that Christine has to think
• 5:52
  about, all of the energy expenditures.
• 5:54
  And so jumping in here, she says, I rarely see her, her friend,
• 5:59
  emotional. So when I saw her upset, I knew maybe I was getting through to her.
• 6:02
  I didn't want my friend to be upset, but at the same time, I was happy to think
• 6:06
  finally, maybe somebody understood me a little bit.
• 6:09
  She had tears in her eyes and asked quietly, Christine, how do you do it?
• 6:13
  Do you really do this every day?
• 6:15
  I explained that some days were worse than others. Some days I have more spoons
• 6:19
  than most, but I can never make it go away.
• 6:21
  And I can't forget about it. I always have to think about it.
• 6:24
  I handed her one more spoon I'd been holding in reserve. I said simply,
• 6:28
  I have learned to live life with an extra spoon in my pocket in reserve. You have to be prepared.
• 6:34
  It's hard. The hardest thing I've ever had to learn is to slow down, to not do everything.
• 6:39
  I fight this to this day. I hate feeling left out. I hate feeling having to
• 6:44
  choose to stay home or to not get things done that I want to.
• 6:47
  I wanted my friend to feel that frustration.
• 6:49
  I wanted her to understand that everything everyone else does comes so easy.
• 6:54
  But for me, it's a hundred little jobs in one.
• 6:57
  When other people can just simply do things, I have to attack it and make a
• 7:01
  plan like I'm strategizing for a war.
• 7:03
  It's in that lifestyle, the difference between being sick and healthy.
• 7:07
  It's the beautiful ability to not just think and do. I miss that freedom.
• 7:11
  I miss never having to count spoons.
• 7:15
  She concludes that ever since that
• 7:18
  night, she's used that spoon theory to explain her life to many people.
• 7:22
  And the spoon theory is kind of like a code word.
• 7:26
  So I'm asking you, have you heard of The Spoon Theory?
• 7:30
  I first heard about it on Instagram, and I don't remember when.
• 7:34
  I know it was several years ago.
• 7:36
  Maybe it was Instagram. I don't even actually completely remember.
• 7:40
  It might have been Facebook. It might have been a group. It might have been
• 7:42
  a podcast, but I have heard it referenced a lot because it is something that
• 7:48
  a lot of people with chronic fatigue,
• 7:51
  chronic illnesses, Hashimoto's, we relate to it.
• 7:55
  Because when you have something that is limiting your energy,
• 8:00
  then you have to have a way to communicate that to other people.
• 8:05
  And the spoon theory is just beautiful in its simplicity and other people can understand it.
• 8:13
  It's just a way that you can communicate with your family and your friends.
• 8:19
  Now, Hashimoto's will obviously affect energy levels because your thyroid produces
• 8:26
  the little ignition switch for your cells.
• 8:29
  And if your cells can't turn on, they can't do what they're supposed to do.
• 8:33
  If your cells aren't doing what they're supposed to do, then your organs,
• 8:36
  your tissues, or your body systems are not doing what they're supposed to do.
• 8:39
  You don't have energy to get through the day. You have to have enough energy at a cellular level.
• 8:45
  And part of that is a working, healthy thyroid.
• 8:49
  So Hashimoto's drains our energies. And we've talked a lot on this podcast about,
• 8:55
  you know, the different ways that affects us, the different ways it shows up
• 8:59
  because it's not just physical energy.
• 9:02
  It can be mental energy. It can be your metabolism.
• 9:05
  It can be your mental health, depression. There's a lot of different things
• 9:10
  that this energy impacts.
• 9:13
  Hashimoto's affects your energy levels.
• 9:16
  And because it affects your energy levels, you might really be resonating with this spoon theory.
• 9:21
  And I love this common language of using the spoon theory for one big reason.
• 9:27
  It's because understanding your energy limits, it's not a weakness.
• 9:32
  Understanding what you have to work with and then working within that, that is wisdom.
• 9:36
  That is being in control of your day. That is being the CEO of your own health.
• 9:41
  I talk about that a lot because you are in control.
• 9:45
  And part of that is knowing your resources, knowing how many spoons you have to work with for the day.
• 9:50
  For myself, when I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's, I was trying to figure out
• 9:54
  what my root causes were. And there wasn't a course like mine yet.
• 9:57
  There wasn't somebody saying, you probably have these root causes.
• 10:02
  These are the most common. Here's how to look for them.
• 10:04
  I had to figure all of this out on my own. And as I was looking at all of the
• 10:08
  root causes, I realized that some of my root causes were probably my sleep because
• 10:14
  I felt obviously if I am super, super tired,
• 10:18
  then sleep is an issue.
• 10:20
  And then I also figured that stress was an issue.
• 10:24
  So I set to make a plan about how I can work on both of those things, sleep and stress.
• 10:29
  Number one, I invested in an aura ring because aura excels in tracking both of those things.
• 10:35
  And when I was looking at my statistics with my Oura Ring, I realized that my
• 10:40
  sleep, even though I was getting six, seven, eight, even nine hours of sleep,
• 10:46
  even, you know, 10 or 12 some days, including the naps.
• 10:50
  My deep sleep was really, really small.
• 10:52
  I had less than 20 minutes usually of deep sleep. So that was one of the first
• 10:57
  things that I could physically or tangibly work on.
• 11:00
  I could work on it and then the next morning I could see my data and see how I was doing.
• 11:05
  So I knew that my sleep was related to my energy. I knew that my sleep was impacting my immune system.
• 11:12
  I knew that my sleep quality was impacting everything.
• 11:16
  So that's one thing I worked on. I don't know about you.
• 11:20
  Because of all of the work I did on sleep, it was the first mini course that I did.
• 11:25
  I started it out as a seven, seven or five day email course that I would send to people.
• 11:32
  And every day there was something to learn about or something to work on.
• 11:35
  That is now in the Holistic Hashimoto's classroom.
• 11:39
  So if you go to school.com, S-K-O-O-L.com, and you join the Holistic Hashimoto's
• 11:45
  class or the Holistic Hashimoto's group.
• 11:48
  There's a tab, the classroom, and the jumpstart to refreshing sleep and rest,
• 11:53
  now it's a mini course, is in there. It is free.
• 11:56
  You can go through it and figure out how to improve your sleep.
• 12:01
  Because when you improve your sleep, you're going to improve the time when your
• 12:05
  immune system can heal things. It can reset.
• 12:08
  It can heal itself. You need good sleep, and that's going to impact your spoons.
• 12:14
  So we can work on sleep because if you're not sleeping well,
• 12:18
  it does impact your immune system, but it also impacts your energy.
• 12:22
  And this is this like a circle thing.
• 12:26
  Everything impacts everything. do you
• 12:29
  want to make sure that we're working on what is in our
• 12:32
  control we want to be able to get more spoons and
• 12:35
  like i said in the energy episodes i do
• 12:38
  have more ideas of how you can increase your energy or your spoons and practical
• 12:44
  ways one of my favorite ones is taking the protandem dual synergizer every single
• 12:49
  day i've talked about it before the dual synergizer is two different herbal activators.
• 12:56
  They're activating your body to do what your body is supposed to do.
• 12:59
  The most, the like foundational one is protandum NRF2.
• 13:03
  Your NRF2 pathway in your body produces antioxidants.
• 13:07
  It controls your detox pathways. It controls your glutathione production.
• 13:11
  It cleans things up and you need that for better health.
• 13:15
  You also need that for when your cells are working because they're putting off,
• 13:19
  you know, a little exhaust, like a car.
• 13:21
  When you're driving a car, it's doing what it's supposed to,
• 13:23
  but the byproduct is some exhaust.
• 13:26
  Your cells have a little byproduct and it's free radicals, it's oxidative stress.
• 13:31
  So the second part of the dual synergizer is,
• 13:34
  is the protandum NRF1 pathway or activator.
• 13:39
  And your NRF1 pathway increases the mitochondria, the energy of your cell.
• 13:44
  And so the reason you have to do the NRF2 is because of course,
• 13:48
  as the cells are working more, they're going to be producing more quote exhaust.
• 13:52
  And so you need that exhaust to be able to clean up. So you have to have them together.
• 13:56
  You can do the protandum NRF2 without the NRF1, but you can't do the NRF1 without the NRF2.
• 14:02
  Otherwise you're increasing the oxidative stress part of that pollution from
• 14:07
  your mitochondria working. So that's one thing I do every single morning.
• 14:10
  And it is, I mean, it takes what, 30 seconds to put your little supplements
• 14:14
  in your hand and take them.
• 14:16
  Now, FYI, if you are taking the Protandim products, because they are developed
• 14:22
  with an exact synergy between products, you can't take other supplements with them.
• 14:27
  I just want you to know that because it's patented.
• 14:30
  Like the five different herbs in the protanum nrf2 they
• 14:34
  are very small amounts and you look
• 14:37
  at them you're like well i already take turmeric so shouldn't
• 14:40
  i be getting this effect no these work because
• 14:44
  they're combined in a specific recipe it's like your grandma's favorite soup
• 14:48
  recipe like she's not going to add a full cup of salt like if she would do that
• 14:53
  you would not want her soup recipe her soup recipe is specific as to how she
• 14:58
  makes it. And it is a perfect blend.
• 15:01
  And that is what the rotandum is. So don't have other supplements with it.
• 15:05
  If you have questions, let me know.
• 15:07
  But that is one simple thing I do every day to increase my energy.
• 15:10
  Like I said, I also worked on my sleep. Those are some things that you can do
• 15:15
  to increase how many spoons you're starting out with for the day.
• 15:19
  You also have to know your warning signs for when you're running out of spoons.
• 15:24
  And then what are you going to do? So like have maybe some freezer meals or
• 15:29
  maybe you live in a city or town where you can have delivery.
• 15:32
  I do not. So I have to plan meals where I can just go to the fridge or freezer
• 15:37
  or pantry and have a quick easy meal because delivery is not an option where I live.
• 15:43
  But have those things in your back pocket for how are you going to get through
• 15:49
  the rest of your day if all of a sudden you're out of energy because you can't
• 15:53
  always just push through.
• 15:54
  You can't just make it work. Sometimes you don't have the spoons left.
• 16:01
  And that is why I love the spoon theory for talking to family and friends.
• 16:05
  Because you are not lazy. You are not lazy. You are managing an autoimmune condition.
• 16:12
  Your autoimmune condition is called Hashimoto's. It impacts your thyroid. It impacts your energy.
• 16:18
  It impacts how you get through the day. And yes, you are working on becoming healthier.
• 16:23
  You're supporting your body as it does what it's supposed to do.
• 16:27
  You are trying to find resources. You're listening to this podcast to get more
• 16:33
  educated, to figure out what you can do.
• 16:35
  You're doing so many different things. You're not lazy.
• 16:39
  Just because you don't have enough energy to get through the day does not mean you're lazy.
• 16:44
  It means that your body is under attack. You have an autoimmune condition.
• 16:49
  You're doing the best you can. And also, I want you to know that your worth
• 16:54
  is not measured by your productivity.
• 16:57
  I'm going to say that again. Your worth is not measured by your productivity.
• 17:01
  Your worth is because you are. You are valuable because you are you. Period.
• 17:10
  Period. You are valuable because you are you. I hope you know that.
• 17:15
  You are valuable. You are not lazy. And now with the spoon theory,
• 17:21
  you have language to talk to
• 17:23
  your family and friends about what's going on with you and with your health
• 17:27
  and maybe together if you have you know husband or kids friends whatever you
• 17:34
  can figure out specific things that you can say like for me or my husband like I can't,
• 17:42
  do this? I can't make supper. Can you make supper tonight?
• 17:46
  And my husband is amazing and he will always say yes and jump in and figure it out.
• 17:51
  And like I said, we do try to keep some like easy meals in the freezer or fridge
• 17:56
  or pantry to help out with those days and also with a busy family, right?
• 18:02
  So maybe you want to teach the spoon theory to your family and friends so that
• 18:06
  you have this common language and say, hey, you know what?
• 18:09
  I'm really low on spoons. I would love to do blank.
• 18:12
  I just can't. I don't have enough spoons to do that today.
• 18:16
  Can we postpone? Can we do that a different day? If it's something like getting
• 18:20
  together, if it's a meal or something that has to happen, then asking for help
• 18:25
  and saying, hey, I don't have enough spoons to go to the kids athletic event.
• 18:31
  I don't have enough spoons to go grocery shopping.
• 18:34
  Can you do this? There's always ways to ask for help and using this spoon language
• 18:41
  can help with asking for help because you're saying this is what's going on.
• 18:48
  This is the data. I don't have enough energy.
• 18:51
  Can you help me out? So I hope this is helpful. Come over to our school community and share your stories.
• 18:57
  I do have a thread started about the spoon theory.
• 19:01
  I'd love to hear your stories. Do you use this language with your family already,
• 19:06
  or are you going to start?
• 19:07
  And how has it helped you as you figure out how to navigate your days?
• 19:12
  Come over to the school community and share your stories.
• 19:15
  You are valuable. I want to listen to your stories. I want to give you a space
• 19:19
  to share, a safe space where you can say, this is how I'm feeling.
• 19:24
  This is what's going on. This is my situation.
• 19:27
  Here's how I use spoons. And we want to hear your story. Come on over and share.
• 19:32
  Let's have a conversation and encourage each other.
• 19:34
  I look forward to seeing you in our Health with Hashimoto's community over at school.com.
• 19:39
  And of course, while you're there, that's where you can also sign up for the
• 19:43
  Holistic Hashimoto's course.
• 19:45
  Check it out in the classroom tab. This podcast is for informational and educational
• 19:49
  purposes only, please discuss any concerns and plans with your trusted healthcare professional.
• 19:54
  If you found this episode helpful, will you please share it with a friend?
• 19:58
  I'll see you next week on the Health with Hashimoto's podcast.
• 20:01
  Music.