Latest / Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease / 167 // When 'Fine' Is a Lie: High functioning fatigue in Hashimoto’s. [Interview: Michelle McCoy]

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167 // When 'Fine' Is a Lie: High functioning fatigue in Hashimoto’s. [Interview: Michelle McCoy] · Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease

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Are you juggling a million different responsibilities while battling exhaustion that just won't quit?
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I recently sat down with my friend Michelle McCoy to talk about high-functioning
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fatigue in women with Hashimoto's.
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If you feel like you're pushing through life despite feeling so drained.
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This episode is absolutely for you.
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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.
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I spent about 17 years in the emergency department and then I got sick and tired
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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 like yourself again.
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This is episode 167 of the Health with Hashimoto's podcast, and I have a guest for you today.
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Let me introduce you to my friend, Michelle McCoy. She is a wife,
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mom, and board-certified holistic functional health coach.
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She is the host of another podcast you should go check out. It is a treasured wellness podcast.
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It is for Christian women looking for answers to break free from daily fatigue
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and brain fog so they can finally feel energized and sharp again for those 4
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p.m. conference calls and date nights with the hubby.
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So Michelle's story starts with her own debilitating fatigue and health challenges,
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and then she had to navigate her daughter's health crisis.
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Michelle, let's start there. Tell us about how things failed for you and then
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how you pivoted and what you're doing now.
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So great to be here pouring into your audience, Esther, and helping them to
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find fatigue freedom. Yes.
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So thank you for having me. I do love talking about that, even though we have
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to go back 21 years ago. So I'll try to make this very brief.
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But our daughter was sick for three years before we finally got a diagnosis,
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and it was not from conventional medicine.
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We actually wasted a lot of years' time, medications, poking, prodding, exams,
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And they could not find the root cause of why she was having severe migraines,
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skin conditions like eczema, psoriasis, and her gut was a mess.
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And every time I said, food has got to have something to do with this, right?
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Because I'm tracking. I was doing an elimination diet before I knew what that was.
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And every time they would say, feed this girl whatever she wants.
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She doesn't feel good. Food has nothing to do with it.
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Well, Esther, food had everything to do with it. Everything.
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And so the last straw, right, the last straw that broke this mama's back,
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right, was when I took her to another neurology appointment at the top,
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top neurology for children that our insurance would cover. We were seeing the best of the best.
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And they had no answers. And they said, perhaps something's going on at home
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she doesn't feel safe talking about.
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That was the last straw. I was like, I am done with conventional medicine.
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And I literally left the state, literally left the state and found a holistic provider.
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She was an herbalist. And she took one look at my daughter and knew that she
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had a serious food allergy.
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So 21 years ago, right? We know so much more now, but that really fueled my
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fire for holistic nutrition.
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Functional medicine and incorporating and integrating
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how food is medicine food is powerful and
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oh yes we need to be our own best advocate for our health because we don't need
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to be wasting three years we wasted three years she was sick for three years
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and no child nobody should go through that so that's what really got me started
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and fueled my fire yeah well and not
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only did they not find the answers, but they started blaming you,
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which I feel is just way too common.
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Like, oh, you know, everything's fine. I don't see what the problem is.
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So clearly you're the problem.
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Like how horrible and demeaning and just full of lies that is.
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And I'm so sorry that happened to you and your daughter.
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So you saw the holistic nutritionist or you said it was nutritionist, right?
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She was an herbalist. Okay. So what happened next? Did she like,
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how soon did your daughter have pain-free days?
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So this was the amazing ability, just a visual and real life experience of how
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the body has the ability to heal and recover when we give it the proper tools and support.
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Absolutely. God designed our bodies to heal.
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And so it was within a month of the protocol that we did with her gut and removing
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foods and gluten was a huge,
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huge, that was like She had a gluten allergy and all of those things and cleaned her up.
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Detoxing, all of that. Within a month, she was already like skin was clearing.
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She was acting more like herself.
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She also had failure to thrive, which is very common in gluten intolerant children.
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And so she's very tiny. I mean, she's still very tiny. She's only five feet tall.
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I just curiously, I wonder, I mean, I'm not very tall and five three,
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but I curiously, I wonder if that stunted her a little bit because it was three years.
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Within six months, she was our little girl again.
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She looked healthy, whereas before she did not look healthy.
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And she had the dark circles in her eyes. She was very pale and had no energy.
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Straight A student, but she would come home and fall apart.
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Yes. So I love that you recognize that the body is designed to heal.
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Like, yes, we have problems. Yes. When Adam and Eve sinned, one of the consequences
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was that there will be disease, there will be illness, there will be accidents, there will be death.
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But we don't have to accept that as the original design.
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Our bodies are designed to heal. So the people who are listening,
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most of them have autoimmune conditions like Hashimoto's, or they're listening
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to a friend or family member who does.
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So tell me your perspective when things go wrong and autoimmune strikes.
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What's your perspective on that? And then we're going to talk about high-functioning
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fatigue, which is so huge in the Hashimoto's world. But first,
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let's talk about autoimmunity and healing.
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Yeah, absolutely. Well, autoimmunity is very close to my heart,
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too, because that was my, I guess, first.
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Fatigue crisis where I realized how my Hashimoto's was greatly affecting me.
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I was not, again, 21 years ago with my daughter's story, things haven't changed much.
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Women are still getting dismissed, gas lit. And I hate to use that word, but it's very true.
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And, you know, women's health is being very much overlooked and women are being
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underserved, under heard, and just dismissed.
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And so, again, I had her journey.
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I had my own personal journey. And so I got to see firsthand when we are able
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to give the body what it needs, though, when we truly have that support,
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that support network like you or myself helping,
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then the body will be able to recover and heal and repair on a cellular level,
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which then helps to reduce all of those symptoms, all those autoimmune symptoms that you have.
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And a lot of women have fatigue, pain, sleeplessness, all of that sleep disorders
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or disordered sleep is what I call it.
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And so the body does have the ability to do that.
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The problem is, is our current medical model of healthcare is so broken.
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We don't have a healthcare system. We have a disease management system.
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And for our communities, right, Esther, our women are not, they're not taking that anymore.
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They're not taking that anymore. They want healing.
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They want remission.
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They want their Hashimoto's or autoimmune to be in remission,
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to go into remission and to be able to live their life pain-free,
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you know, with energy and restorative sleep and all of those things.
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Lower your stress response, all of that. And it can be done because the body wants to do that for you.
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It wants to heal. It wants to recover.
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We just need to know what it is for you because we're not one size fits all. We can't.
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We are so brilliantly designed and we're very individual.
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And God is a very personal God. And so I'm always bringing my clients back to
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talk to him. And what is he saying?
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And what does he say in his word? and how can we help your nervous system from
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a biblical perspective?
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And that's just one of the things that just automatically is coming up in conversation.
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Yeah, yeah. So if somebody doesn't believe as you do, like somebody doesn't
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believe the Bible or love Jesus, what do you say to those clients?
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Because I know you have clients like that too.
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For how they can heal? Yeah.
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Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, I'll just say flat out, Like the body was
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designed to heal and recover, plain and simple.
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It was, you know, everything's attached.
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We cannot compartmentalize, which is what they were doing with my daughter.
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They were just focusing on her head, her migraines, but we cannot compartmentalize
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because it's all connected.
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You know, the analogy of the body that Paul, I believe, uses in the Bible is
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applicable for believers and non-believers because it just is. It just is.
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As we are all part of the body as believers, the body itself is all connected.
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You can't ignore other body systems and just focus on one.
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It doesn't work that way. You might get some improvement, but you're not going
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to get all over improvement.
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And this is why diets don't work, Esther, as you and I have talked about.
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Diets don't work because they are focusing on one thing and they're not focusing
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on the body as a whole. And so taking the body, mind, spirit approach,
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whether somebody is a believer or not, is really very important.
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Absolutely. I totally agree. Because, yeah, you can't divide it. You are one.
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Whether or not you believe what the Bible says, or you just look at science,
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because science is now showing that body, mind, and spirit, it's all connected. Absolutely.
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So let's talk about the high functioning fatigue that you have mentioned on your podcast.
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I have commented before on my podcast, it was one of the first things I noticed
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when I started talking to women with Hashimoto's, is everybody is wearing like
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75 different hats. Everybody is doing so many things.
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And yes, I know everybody is busy in general in our culture,
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but I felt like most of the women that I was talking to were even more so.
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They were in positions of leadership. They were in multiple different volunteer positions.
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It wasn't just like they were going and working and then doing the standard busy.
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It was above and beyond. So I really think that high-functioning part applies
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to so many women with Hashimoto's.
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So tell me more about that. Yeah, I agree.
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And because I was dealing with Hashimoto's while I was going through my fatigue
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crisis, one and two, you know, and burnout, like I totally lived this firsthand.
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And so what I helped myself through, I now help my clients walk through in the
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midlife health makeover.
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And that's what we do, right? Because then we've lived it.
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We know we experienced it. So, yeah, high functioning fatigue. It is exactly that.
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You know, women are pushing through, getting things done.
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They are putting themselves on the back burner.
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So they're putting other people first consistently, their job,
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their career, their family, their service, all of that at the expense of their
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own health. And they just think that that's normal because they've done that for so long. Yes.
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The problem is when we are 40 and dare I say even 35, this starts to begin because here's the thing.
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We are two thirds of the way sick before a diagnosis is even made.
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And you can look at your labs and you can see.
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Okay. From a functional perspective, right, you're looking at that and you're
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seeing a trend of where your body's been crying out for help and it's been ignored
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or dismissed because it's in conventional ranges.
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We are pushing through. We're getting things done. We're burning the midnight oil.
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We're doing things that are expected of us. We are saying yes when we should be saying no.
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We should be saying yes when we want to be. We're saying yes when we want to
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be saying no. So it's expectations that other people place on us,
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but then we also place on ourselves.
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We lie to ourselves all the time. Like, I'll rest when?
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I'll rest when? We talk to ourselves with such a negative, just really a not
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nice tone of voice in our mind. We would never talk to our daughters that way.
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We would never talk to our girlfriends or our sisters that way.
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But yet somehow it's okay because we've been doing this for our whole life or
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it's gotten worse or worse.
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It's been poured into us and we just kept up that commentary.
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That's a whole other conversation. But stress, trauma, all of that contributes
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to high-functioning fatigue because it's a buildup and it leads to burnout.
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So, you know, it's, again, wearing that smile on the outside while you're feeling
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like you're dying a little bit on the inside.
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And that was me because I was very much a people pleaser.
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I was a perfectionist. I had pushed through mindset and I had protection.
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So those are the four mindsets that I have found that women have that also are
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fighting high functioning fatigue. We've got this perfectionistic mindset where
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it has to be done a certain way and it has to be done with excellence.
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That's not necessarily a bad thing, but we got to tone it down,
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right? We got to bring that down a little bit.
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We've got the push through mindset where we're just constantly at our own expense
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pushing through. It doesn't matter. We'll rest later.
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We've got the protection where it's all us. It's all on us.
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We can't delegate because nobody can do it the way we do. You know,
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and it's we've got these mindsets that are just keeping us,
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in bondage, really. Really, that's what it is.
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It's keeping us in bondage and not living in the good health that God has designed for us.
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Somebody's listening and they're like, that's me. What's their next step?
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Well, the first step is recognizing it for sure. Yeah, you got to recognize
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it and you have to give yourself grace.
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You really need to give yourself grace. I talk to my clients about grace and
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grit because give yourself grace, but then have the grit as well to come alongside
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and help yourself get through.
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Our body needs to feel safe and secure to heal and recover.
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It absolutely has to. And this is why we can't compartmentalize.
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So just tactically, very tangibly,
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helping your body feel safe and secure is it goes a long way to helping reduce
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the overwhelm and the fatigue and the stress symptoms that you're feeling that
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are impacting your daily life and your sleep,
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your digestion, all of that.
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So these four ways are restorative stretch, and that's just moving your body.
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You know, when we're struggling with chronic fatigue, adrenal fatigue,
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Hashimoto's, whatever we're struggling with and we're in pain and we're exhausted.
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Exercise is not necessarily your best friend.
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And again, this is very individual. So I talk about restorative stretch while
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we are trying to help our body feel safe and secure.
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And then restorative breath, that deep breathing that so many women are neglectful.
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We shallow breathe all day long.
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And, you know, I find myself doing that too when I'm like back to back to back
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to back meetings. It's like, okay, I need to break away and have a five-minute
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reset and I'm just going to breathe.
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And, you know, outside, preferably, I love to be outside. right.
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That is going to help bring your body back into balance, help calm your nervous system a lot.
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And then those restorative thoughts, really reframing.
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It's so much more than reframing, but it's taking that Romans 12 to that biblical
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mindset around your thoughts.
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You know, you are renewing your mind.
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When a negative thought comes in, like, what does God say? Did God really say that?
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Because the enemy will put words into our mind, voices, like, right? Is it our mind?
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Is it our thought? Is it the enemy? Is that the Lord? You know,
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we need to restore our thoughts and getting back into the word or back into
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something that we've heard helps us to calm the noise in our mind too.
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And then of course, there's restorative nutrition, eating well.
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And I know you talk about that a lot because it's very critical in helping the
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body to feel safe and secure as well.
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Right. Yes. Oh, all four of those.
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Absolutely. 100% agree. On the way to school. So two of my kids go to a local charter school.
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One's graduated and the other's homeschooled. But on the way to town every morning
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so I can drop them off at the bus, they do soundtracks.
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And so that's from John Acuff. And he wrote a book where you turn down the noise
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on the negative things that you talk to yourself about.
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And then you turn up the new soundtracks and you replace those because you can
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choose what you're going to focus on.
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And so every morning, I've got a list and a lot of the new soundtracks that
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we have on this list, they're accompanied by a Bible verse because there's so much truth in the Bible.
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And I want the kids to know that, yes, we can have mantras, we can have sayings
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that we tell ourselves, but we want them rooted in truth.
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And I love that concept for women who are struggling with their self-talk.
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Because we all do, especially, like you said, we're perfectionists.
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We want everything to be done right, done well, done quickly.
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You know, that triangle of things that you can do, you can have it fast,
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you can have it well, well done and cheap.
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Like we want the full triangle and in everything we do and can't. Yeah, we're human.
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If we're going to do it really well, it might not be really fast.
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And that doesn't mean we failed.
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That's true. Yes. Yeah. So, so many things I love about those four different
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things that you mentioned.
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Absolutely. So, okay. So somebody heard themselves in your description of the
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high functioning fatigue, and now they've got the four things to do with the
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breathing, the stretching,
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the self-talk, and the nutrition, if they can pick one thing for this week to
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focus on, because you can't implement four things all at once,
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where are they going to start today?
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And then they can obviously come back to the podcast, they can listen to this
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episode, they can read the blog post, and they can come back and implement the next thing.
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But for today, where's the most impactful thing to start with?
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I would say restorative thoughts, because the women that I work with in the
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midlife health makeover are generally between 40 and 65 years of age.
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So that's a lifetime of negative thoughts, self-talk, treating ourselves poorly,
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mentally, and physically, emotionally.
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And so we want to restore our thoughts.
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We want to shift our mindset to that stronger mindset instead of the weaker mindset.
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Because then once we feel strong, it's like we need to be bold.
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We need to put on our boldness, right?
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And like, no, this is not.
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And as a believer, ask, did God really say that?
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Because chances are he didn't. If it's a negative thought, if it causes you
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stress and anxiety, if it makes you feel bad or shameful or doubtful,
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whatever, that is not of the Lord. Plain and simple, it's just not.
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And believe it or not, that is not of the Lord ever. He convicts, he does not condemn.
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And so I would say, let's start with restorative thoughts and let this practice
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of every morning as you get out of bed,
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you know you're you're just giving
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gratitude again whatever is
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coming to your mind at that moment that
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your body needs because a lot of this is intuitive what do i need because you
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know if you're not talking nice to yourself you know this you know this you
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know i said you dummy the other day to myself and i'm like no stop and you are
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not a dummy i don't i was kind of joking like You know,
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it was like, oh, I could have had a V8 moment.
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But it's just even those little, simple, silly things make a difference.
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What is it, Esther, they used to say for every one negative comment you say,
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you need to say five more to negate that one?
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Yeah. Yep. I've even heard 10. Yeah.
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It's so pivotal. It's so powerful. And here's the other thing about the whole
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nutrition and the breathing and the stretching and the hydration and all of
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the what I call seven essentials for optimal health.
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Once our mindset, when we feel calmer, the rest is easier to implement.
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Yes because if our mind is a jumble
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like i call it a squirrel's nest of anxiety and
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stress it's so much harder to follow that
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plan or follow that whatever that
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goal that we've set so i i would say restorative thoughts right and i love how
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you know you're starting with your thoughts but that's directly impacting everything
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so if somebody wants better physical health and they're still they're trying
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to bring it all together and recognize body, mind, spirit.
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But you said it's going to help the physical health too.
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So yes, it's in your head. It's in your mind. You're thinking those thoughts.
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It's absolutely impacting your physical health as well as everything else.
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Absolutely. Yeah. Yes. Awesome. So tell the listeners where they can find you
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and connect and learn more if they want to?
23:36
The best thing to do is follow the podcast, Treasured Wellness Podcast.
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And that would be easiest. It's wherever you listen to podcasts.
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And then you can also check out the website, treasuredwellness.com.
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But yeah, come over and hang out with the Treasured Wellness family community
23:53
and join us on the podcast.
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Awesome. Thank you so much, Michelle. And now the disclaimer.
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This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only.
24:02
Please discuss any changes with your trusted healthcare provider.
24:05
To take your next step, join our school community and explore the courses available there.
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You do not have to figure your health out alone.
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So that is school, S-K-O-O-L dot 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.