Latest / Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease / 170 // Where to Start When You Feel Overwhelmed by Hashimoto’s

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170 // Where to Start When You Feel Overwhelmed by Hashimoto’s · Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease

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  One of the very best and worst things about living in this information age is all of the information.
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  I mean, if you just take this Health with Hashimoto's podcast and you just take
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  this past summer, that's 12 different tools that you can use for your health.
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  So when it comes to health and when it comes to all of the information online
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  and everywhere, how do you know where to start?
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  That's what we're going to be talking about today on the Health with Hashimoto's
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  podcast. As always, I want to make it super simple and sustainable for you so
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  that you know exactly what to do for your health because you are the CEO of your own health.
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  You call the shots, you make the decisions, and you need to know where to start.
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  Welcome to the Health with Hashimoto's podcast. This is where you will find
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  clarity and simple, sustainable strategies to feel better.
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  I want to help you figure out your root causes.
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  My name is Esther Yunkin. I am a registered nurse. I spent about 17 years in
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  the emergency department and then got sick and tired of putting band-aids on chronic things.
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  I went back to school and now I have been in holistic health education for about 10 years.
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  I know how exhausting it is to live with fatigue, brain fog,
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  and the ups and downs of Hashimoto's and that is why I'm here.
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  I'm here to cut through the confusion and to give you practical steps that support
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  your body, calm your immune system, so that you can regain your energy and feel
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  like yourself again. Do you love to learn?
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  I feel like you do because you are listening to the Health with Hashimoto's
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  podcast and there's a lot of education on this podcast.
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  Side note, I would love to know what you want to learn about more so that I
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  can include more of that in future episodes.
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  You can always come over to Instagram. I am at healthwithhashimoto's,
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  a dot in between each word on Instagram, or the best place to find me is the
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  website, which is also healthwithhashimoto's.
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  It's healthwithhashimoto's.com.
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  Let me know what you want to hear about. But anyway, we all love to learn, right? Well, not all.
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  You and I probably love to learn. And that's where we can get bogged down because
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  there's so much learning available.
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  I was listening to one podcast yesterday and it was a podcast recorded live
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  from an event. It was a health event where they were learning a ton of things.
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  And I had to take some screenshots of the transcript because I wanted to discuss
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  them with you because I think it relates.
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  We can relate so much to this. And he specifically said, if you leave here and
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  go home with a list of 14 different things to do and 12 new products,
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  you've messed up the whole thing.
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  That's never going to get you recovery.
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  I was like, that's fascinating because we want to learn. We want to get tools.
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  We want to know how to like supercharge our healing, right?
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  So a lot of us feel bigger is better and go big, you know, add more things in.
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  And this speaker was saying, no, actually, that's not how we want to do things.
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  We want to focus on things one at a time. And we want to focus on the foundations.
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  Now today on my personal Facebook feed, I wrote this, I saw a quote about the gut.
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  And it is I mean, I'm reading the book Super Gut right now, which is a fascinating book.
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  Highly recommend it. I will give it five stars once I finish reading it. It is super gut.
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  The book is really good. So when I saw this post about gut today on Facebook,
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  I was immediately intrigued.
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  I don't know who this person is. His name is Chris Kresser.
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  And of course, I took a screenshot and now my news feed is just filled with ads from him.
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  He is a functional medicine like pioneer or leader.
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  He started an institute. Anyway, this is what he says. He says,
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  after 15 years in functional medicine, I've learned something important.
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  You cannot probiotic your way out of a damaged gut barrier.
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  When your intestinal lining has microscopic damage, even the best bacteria cannot colonize properly.
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  But when you repair the foundation first, everything changes.
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  And this is so important for us with Hashimoto's and autoimmune problems,
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  because there's always a gut component. Always.
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  And yes, the gut is made up. It's kind of like a garden.
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  You've got the soil and the seeds and the fertilizer.
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  And your gut has those things. the soil is like the prebiotics,
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  the seeds are like the probiotics, and then the fertilizer is the postbiotics.
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  You need all three for your guts to be healthy.
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  And you know, about 70% of your immune system is in and around your gut.
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  And then your gut impacts your mental health, it impacts everything.
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  Everything, which is why I have been learning more about it lately.
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  So I took a screenshot of this quote, and then I made my own post about it.
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  And I said, there are a few things that are foundational for health and healing.
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  In no particular order, it is stress, sleep,
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  fix the cell, and heal the gut. And I don't know that I would put any one of
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  those higher than the others because all four are vital.
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  Now here is the thing when you have, well, when you're trying to work on your
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  health, you have to start somewhere. And let's start at the foundation.
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  So let's start with those four things. If you go to my website right now,
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  healthwithhashimoto's.com, and you click the start here button,
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  their very first thing is the Hashimoto's 101.
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  And a lot of people can skip that. It's step zero in my path to health with
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  Hashimoto's because it's just the very basics.
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  But people who download that freebie, they are going to see what to do on day
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  one. And the first thing I talk about is breathing.
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  We have to calm the nervous system. We have to lower that stress response.
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  Number one thing to do is breathe. Just lower your fight and flight.
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  We want to get out of fight and flight. We want to go into rest and digest.
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  So if you have not heard me say this yet.
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  Put one hand on your chest and one hand on your belly and take a deep breath.
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  And then do it again. Which hand goes up and down?
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  It's probably the hand on your chest. But we want to be breathing from our diaphragm.
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  We want to be doing belly breaths.
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  And when you are taking deep breaths from your diaphragm, when you're taking
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  belly breaths, it helps to actually massage your vagus nerves.
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  It helps to switch you over into rest and digest, gets you out of fight and flight.
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  And that is the first thing I tell people to do because it's easy to do.
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  It's in your control. It's free.
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  It's easily accessible. You could do it right now. You could do it anytime, anywhere.
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  So we focus on stress. We also have to focus on quality sleep.
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  Quantity and quality, they both matter. Because when we are asleep,
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  that is when our body is healing.
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  It's when it is restoring, repairing, growing. We need to focus on quality sleep.
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  We also have to fix the cell. We have to, you know, you can't have a functioning
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  car if all of the parts are rusty.
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  I used to work with my dad out in his bike shop, and we would have to clean
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  every little thing, every little teeny tiny part. We had to get the rust off.
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  We would take the bike completely apart and scrub it down, making sure that
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  every single part was nice and shiny, got all of the rust off.
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  Well, same thing at your cellular level. We need to get the rust off.
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  And rusty cells, that is oxidative stress.
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  And we can lower that oxidative stress in your cell.
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  There are a lot of different ways. You've probably heard me say that my very
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  favorite thing is the protandum dual synergizer.
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  The protandum dual synergizer takes the oxidative stress off.
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  It reduces the oxidative stress in your body by an average of 40% in just 30 days.
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  We also use the protandum NRF1 that's part of the protandum dual synergizer
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  because that helps your cell to have enough energy.
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  And of course, you need healthy cells in order to have healthy tissues,
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  in order to have healthy organs, in order to have a healthy you.
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  So we need to look at stress. We need to look at sleep. We need to work on fixing
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  the cell. And we also need to work on healing the gut.
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  And yes, part of healing the gut is looking at, does it have the soil?
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  Does it have the prebiotics?
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  Are you eating enough fiber? Are you eating enough of the right things?
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  Are you eating enough probiotics, fermented foods, things with healthy bacteria in them.
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  And if you're not, are you supplementing? Now, if you are eating the prebiotics
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  and the probiotics, you're probably also eating postbiotics,
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  but some people aren't. And so then they can supplement with that.
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  Personally, I feel like the prebiotics and probiotics, you know,
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  the soil and the seeds are the most important thing.
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  And then the fertilizer comes later. It's like the optimizer.
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  That is how I approach it. And I don't know, maybe as I'm finishing up the book,
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  Super Gut, I will change my perspective. But so far, I have not.
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  I have been validated in my perspective of the soil and the seeds matter.
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  And then he's also talking a lot about SIBO, which is small intestinal growth.
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  Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. It's having too much of the bad bacteria.
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  And there's also SIFO, which is the fungal overgrowth. So that has been very interesting.
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  I am learning. Like I said, go read SuperGut. I'll probably do a podcast about
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  the, I'll probably do a couple of podcasts about the gut coming up because it's
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  so fascinating and we need to know about it if we're dealing with something autoimmune.
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  Okay, so I was talking about those four things, the foundations,
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  but I also referenced that quote from the conference at the beginning of the podcast. It
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  going home with 14 different things to try, 12 different tools,
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  that just kind of sets you back.
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  So the takeaway I want you to learn from this episode is that you have to start
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  somewhere and start at the foundation.
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  And I feel like you can start with all four of those things at the same time.
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  Start healing your cell. Start focusing on your gut health.
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  Focus on good quality sleep and enough of it. And focus on your stress.
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  Now, the guy at the conference was saying, don't do all of the things at once
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  because it's going to get overwhelming and you're not going to know what helped.
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  But here's my perspective. If you're doing those four foundational things,
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  they all need to happen. So you might as well start all of them.
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  And maybe you're like, oh, I don't know which one helped more.
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  Is it that I'm now getting, you know, enough deep sleep and REM sleep and I
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  am lowering my stress, which also probably helped the sleep,
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  and I'm cleaning up my cells and getting more energy, which also helps your
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  stress and helps your sleep.
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  And I'm also working on my gut, which also helps clean up your cells and helps
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  with the stress and help with the sleep and all those foundational things like
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  you have to do all for. But then what?
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  How do you know which tool to focus on?
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  You are the CEO of your health. You get to make the decisions and you decide
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  what is important to you.
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  So I'm going to ask you two questions and you, based on your answer,
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  this is going to impact how you go forward.
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  Number one, do you care what worked or do you want results very quickly?
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  If you have listened to my usually winter episodes, I think in February or maybe
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  at the end of the year, sometimes I talk about my yearly Hashimoto's flare-up.
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  It seems to happen every winter. I've tried a bunch of things.
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  Well, this fall, actually late summer, I had that flare-up.
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  And I actually tied it back to I went running. I started running again.
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  And that was too much of a stressor. So anyway, I had the flair and I had to
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  decide, do I care about what specific thing is going to calm this down or do
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  I want it to calm down quickly?
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  Now for me, I have tried a bunch of things in the past and I know some of the things that work.
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  And so I'm like, I want relief quickly. I'm feeling miserable.
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  I want to feel better right now. So I implemented all of them and I added another thing.
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  And within, I don't know, a couple of weeks, I was feeling so much better.
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  But I can't pinpoint which one of those things it was because I did them all at the same time.
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  And, you know, can I say that that new thing that I added into the conglomeration
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  of other things, was that really impactful?
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  Well, I feel like it was, but I can't say definitively because I started a whole
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  bunch of things all at the same time because I know that those things work.
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  But that is the hazard of starting a whole bunch of things at one time.
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  One of the hazards is that you don't know what worked. So you don't know what
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  to continue and what you can drop out. And then, of course, there's trial and error.
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  Okay, well, I've started, you know, A, B, and C.
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  I'm going to drop C and see how I feel. And that's awesome. You can do that.
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  That is what you get to do as the CEO of your own health.
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  You get to play around with it and see what keeps on working.
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  Remember, we want sustainable health.
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  We want sustainable things that we can do. And with this guy,
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  actually, I should find out his name. Okay, Dr.
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  Andy Galpin. He was on an episode called Ending the Debate on Fasting vs.
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  Fed Training, and it was the Ultimate Human podcast with Dr.
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  Gary Brecka. No, I don't think he's a doctor, with Gary Brecka. So this was Dr.
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  Andy Galpin. And he did go on to say why you shouldn't start all of these things at the same time.
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  Now, he's talking about things that can add stress, like ice plunges.
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  By the way, I do not recommend ice plunges for people with Hashimoto's.
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  I feel like it's too cold, it's too much of a stressor, but you could figure out what works for you.
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  He was talking about like cold plunges and saunas and a whole bunch of things
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  that can be stressful on the body, but in a small amount, it can help.
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  It can help your stress load. But he was saying that doing all of these things
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  at the same time, it's going to add to your stress level.
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  It's going to add to that burden of stress.
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  And he even had a name for it. He said, you don't want to add to your allostatic load too much.
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  The allostatic load is the cumulative amount of stress that your body is feeling at any given time.
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  And so that's one of the biggest reasons why he recommended don't start all
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  of these things at the same time.
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  So where do you start? Well, you start with the foundations.
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  And like I said, those four foundations is work on your stress,
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  your sleep, fixing the cell, and healing the gut.
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  And I have tools for you for all four of those.
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  Now the stress one, I have an entire week dedicated to stress when you are going
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  through the Holistic Hashimoto's program.
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  I think it's the first week is all about stress because it's the easiest thing.
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  It's the fastest thing that we can make a difference in.
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  You know, taking a deep breath, taking 10 deep breaths, that is going to lower
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  your stress immediately.
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  Is it going to remove the stressors from your life? No, it's not.
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  But we talk about that during that week as well.
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  I have a resource for you on sleep. Yes, we talk about it in the Holistic Hashimoto's program.
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  I also have a five-day jump start. It's called the Jumpstart into Refreshing
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  Sleep and Rest, and that is within
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  the Classroom tab of the Health with Hashimoto's community on school.
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  So go to the school platform, skool.com, find the Health with Hashimoto's community,
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  go to the Classroom tab, and it is free in there.
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  I think you might have to have a certain number of posts to be able to access it, but it is free.
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  And when it comes to fixing the cell, I already told you, my favorite two things,
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  or my favorite one thing, is the ProTandem Dual Synergizer, which is two different products.
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  I take them every single morning.
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  And then the fourth thing is healing the gut. And there are things that you can do to heal your gut.
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  Reducing your stress and taking some deep breaths before you eat is so simple.
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  Chewing your food well is also so impactful. You can do that today.
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  Now, chewing your food well and remembering to chew your food well every single
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  bite of your meal, that is hard because we are in a habit of how we chew and swallow our food.
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  That is just so habitual. And it can be hard to remember to slow down,
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  chew your food, and have it like smoothie or applesauce consistency before you swallow it.
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  But when you're doing that, when you actually chew your food,
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  because you don't have teeth in your stomach, right?
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  Like once you've swallowed, then your digestive system has to break it down.
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  And that is very hard on it. When you chew your food and chew it well,
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  you can prevent some stuff.
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  Because when you swallow large food particles, it can lead to indigestion,
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  bloating, gas, cramping, impaired nutrient absorption, and even SIBO,
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  which I was talking about before, is the overgrowth of harmful bacteria.
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  So chew your food. There are simple things we can do at that foundational level.
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  Stress, sleep, fixing the cell, and healing the gut. So I agree with that doctor.
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  Don't start 500 things at the same time.
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  Number one, you're going to get overwhelmed and more stressed out.
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  Number two, you're not going to know what worked.
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  But we can start like three or four things. I feel like that healing the cell
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  thing, I just take some products in the morning.
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  That's not hard. Like just remember to take my supplements. Actually,
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  they're activators. That's beside the point.
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  Working on stress. I can work on my stress and I can work on my sleep.
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  Like these things we can do together. But to make it even simpler for you in
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  the Holistic Hashimoto's program, I have you do things week by week.
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  Like week one, we focus on stress.
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  There's a week about diet and that has a lot about the gut health in it.
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  We have, like, I have it piecemealed out for you so that it's not overwhelming.
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  The goal is that it is simple, it is sustainable, so you can feel like yourself
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  again, then you can know what decisions to make.
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  This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only.
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  Please discuss any changes with your trusted healthcare provider.
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  To take your next step, join our school community and explore the courses available there.
• 17:58
  You do not have to figure your health out alone.
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  So that is school, S-K-O-O-L.com, and it is the Health with Hashimoto's community.
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  I'll see you next time on the Health with Hashimoto's podcast.