Latest / Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease / Vitamin D as a Root Cause of Hashimoto's ⎸ Root Cause Series Ep 203

Transcript

Vitamin D as a Root Cause of Hashimoto's ⎸ Root Cause Series Ep 203 · Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease

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  Hashimoto's thyroiditis is an autoimmune condition first and foremost.
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  That means your immune system has gone haywire and it is attacking your own body.
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  In this case, in the case of Hashimoto's, your immune system is attacking your thyroid.
• 0:13
  Your job as somebody with Hashimoto's is to identify why your immune system
• 0:18
  is going haywire, identify the root causes and triggers,
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  and then work on how you can mitigate those so that your body,
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  your immune system, stops attacking your thyroid, your symptoms stop increasing.
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  Maybe they even go back to normal and you feel like yourself again.
• 0:35
  Welcome to the Health with Hashimoto's podcast.
• 0:37
  In this summer series, that is exactly what we are talking about.
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  We are going to go over all of the most common triggers.
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  If you want to go deeper or faster, head down to the show notes,
• 0:48
  click the link to the Hashimoto's decoded root causes revealed.
• 0:52
  In less than an hour, I'm going to walk you through all of the root causes and
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  what you can do about them. You have a workbook.
• 0:59
  At the end of it, you'll have this map of exactly what you need to do next that
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  will shortcut your time so that you can feel like yourself again.
• 1:07
  I am Esther Yunkin. I am the host of the Health with Hashimoto's podcast.
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  I am also a registered nurse, and I've been trained in holistic health education.
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  That means when I am talking about your health, I am referring to everything,
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  body, mind, spirit, diet, environment, because that is the whole you.
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  And all of the root causes come through that whole person lens and affect each of those five areas.
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  Let's talk about today's root cause through that lens, body,
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  mind, spirit, diet environment.
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  We're talking today about vitamin D. Most of these are going to go in random order.
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  I do not have like a significance or a priority list in my root causes.
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  In the triggers of, you know, when we're doing them in the summer.
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  But vitamin D, I figured we should do first thing in the summer because it is
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  in the summer that you can make your own vitamin D with access to the sun.
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  You're not going to touch the sun. You know what I mean. So when you go outside
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  during the summer and you are exposed to UVB sun rays, that is when your body can make vitamin D.
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  Now, how much you make and how much sun exposure you need, it depends on where
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  you live, like your latitude. It depends on the cloud cover.
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  It depends on your age. It depends on how much skin is exposed.
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  It depends on your skin tone, how much melanin you have.
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  There's a lot of different factors in your vitamin D production in relation to sunlight.
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  I cannot give you a simple formula.
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  I cannot say if you live at this latitude, go outside for X number of minutes
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  every day and you should be fine.
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  I can't say that because there's so many variables. I can tell you,
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  that if you live above the latitude
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  line that goes through Chicago of the U.S., if you live above that,
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  this is what I was taught in my holistic health education classes,
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  they said you could be outside but naked all day long after the fall solstice
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  and before the spring solstice, so all winter long,
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  and you would not be able to make enough vitamin D from sun exposure because
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  we just live too far north.
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  Now, whatever latitude we're at, it would be the same thing if you live south
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  of the southern latitude. It's distance from the equator.
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  You need to have the right amount of UVB sun exposure.
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  Also, if you burn, you're going to increase other risks.
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  So when you are trying to get vitamin D exposure, or when you're trying to build
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  your vitamin D levels through exposure to the sun, you have to be smart.
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  And I trust that every single person listening to this podcast is smart.
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  You're not going to seek out a podcast teaching you how to be an advocate for
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  yourself, and how to take control of your health, how to be the CEO of your
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  own health, how to identify root causes and fix them.
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  You're not going to seek out a podcast that talks about all of these if you
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  do not have some common sense. So I trust that you have some common sense.
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  You have your brain going and you can listen to what I'm teaching you and you
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  can apply it to your life in a safe manner.
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  That is always the goal. You are smart. I trust you.
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  So vitamin D is important for a lot of things. Now, people who take calcium
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  might be interested in vitamin D because they're like, oh, I know vitamin D
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  has something to do with my bones. And that is correct.
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  Vitamin D and calcium and vitamin K2 kind of work in a triangle fashion to make
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  sure that the calcium goes where it needs to go, not into the blood vessels,
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  but rather into the bones.
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  But vitamin D does a whole lot of other things too. Okay.
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  We're talking about Hashimoto's and root causes. Every autoimmune disease has
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  three things, a genetic component, a gut component, and one or more triggers.
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  Vitamin D is a very common trigger. So vitamin D in your immune system,
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  it acts kind of like the brake system for your immune system.
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  It says, oh, I'm going to put the brakes on you right now because you are starting
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  to go haywire and you're starting to attack too many things.
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  So your vitamin D level actually tells your T cells, those are specific parts
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  of your blood, specific parts of your immune system.
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  The vitamin D says, hang on, don't go overreacting.
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  Let's put the brakes on. And so of course,
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  if you have an autoimmune condition where your immune system is going haywire,
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  we want to make sure that the breaks are in place, that your immune system has
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  something saying, slow down, you're getting a little overexcited here.
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  Let's do what we're designed to do. So you're probably asking two questions.
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  Number one, how much vitamin D do I need? And number two, if I can't get it
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  year round from the sun, how do I get it?
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  Now you can listen to episode nine, where I go into a lot more information about
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  vitamin D, I also have episode 62, which teaches you how to pick a vitamin D supplement.
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  Because on the whole, the vitamin and supplement industry is kind of shady.
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  I do not trust most supplements. For example, fish oil.
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  One study I read, I think it was 7 out of 10 that they pulled from the shelves were already oxidized.
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  They were already rancid, which means are doing more harm than good.
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  They're not doing any good.
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  They're only doing harm in the body. So I just...
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  I'm very, very picky and selective about what I choose to put in my body as
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  far as supplements and activators.
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  I'm not going to just go to Target or Walmart and grab something off of the shelf.
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  I want to know that it is third-party tested. I want to know about the conditions
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  of the company that makes it and the factories, all of that.
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  So episode 62 goes into that.
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  But the basics, how much vitamin D do you need? It is not going to surprise
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  you when I say nobody can agree.
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  We've been around the block before. We know how the various health organizations
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  disagree on everything, right?
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  So there's two kind of categories of thinking.
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  One is we need to prevent deficiencies. And the other school of thought is we
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  need to give your body what it needs for optimal health.
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  I'm assuming that you are in the latter category since you're listening to this podcast.
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  But to prevent deficiency of vitamin D, when you get your lab tested,
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  it comes back in NG per ml.
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  So that's nanograms per milliliter. And it,
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  Typically, less than 20 is considered a deficiency.
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  Even up to about 30 is low or borderline.
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  And then when you get to between 30 and 50, a lot of Western medicine doctors
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  will say, that's fine. Whatever.
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  At least you're not deficient. But if you're going for optimal,
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  if you're going for giving your body what it needs to do, what it's designed
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  to do, then you're probably looking at above 50.
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  Now, I have heard even higher. I have heard between 80 and 100.
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  It seems like most people have pulled back on that, and it is no longer the
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  current recommendation, even for the optimal health people.
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  They say at least 50.
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  To get that, it's going to depend on a lot of variables like I already talked about.
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  So you really do need to do some lab testing for vitamin D.
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  I typically test once or twice a year.
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  It's super easy and fairly cheap. You just get a little card in the mail,
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  you do the finger poke, and then you send it back in.
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  I always pull back on my supplementation over the summer because I can get my
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  vitamin D outside. So I make sure that I go outside and that I have skin exposed.
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  I don't have sunscreen all over. I want to make sure that I am getting some
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  vitamin D from the sun exposure.
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  At the end of the summer, I want to make sure that my levels are fine.
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  And I want to know what I am going to start out with for supplementation.
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  How much am I going to need? So that's really your call.
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  And again, go to number 62, episode 62. And I talk more about that.
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  But vitamin D, you can't feel if you're high, you can't feel if you're low.
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  I do want to release this root cause episode early in the summer so that you
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  can get your vitamin D through sun exposure.
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  I hope you have a wonderful summer. Come back next week and every single week
• 9:47
  so that we can talk about different root cause triggers, or just drop down to
• 9:51
  the show notes, click the link,
• 9:52
  and take the Hashimoto's Decoded right now so you can get a full understanding
• 9:57
  and start addressing your own unique root causes today.
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  This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only.
• 10:04
  Please discuss any changes with your trusted healthcare provider.
• 10:07
  To take your next step, join our school community and explore the courses available there.
• 10:12
  You do not have to figure your health out alone. So that is school,
• 10:16
  S-K-O-O-L.com, and it is the Health with Hashimoto's community.
• 10:21
  I'll see you next time on the Health Podcast.