Latest / Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease / 184 // How to Improve Gut Health with Hashimoto’s Without Overwhelm

Transcript

184 // How to Improve Gut Health with Hashimoto’s Without Overwhelm · Health with Hashimoto’s - Thyroid or Immune Education for Autoimmune Thyroid Disease

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  It is said that people with an autoimmune condition always have gut health problems
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  as one of their biggest root causes.
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  So our job as people struggling with autoimmune problems is figuring out what
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  we can do for our gut health. And there are a lot of things we can do.
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  But of course, we need to figure out what's going to work for us in this season,
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  in the available time that we have with our current taste buds.
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  There's a lot of factors.
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  So today's episode is all about good, better, best. How can you help your own
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  gut health? How can you help your gut heal?
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  Because yes, gut health and healing is one of our goals in the pursuit of our
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  ultimate goal, which is to feel more like ourself again, to feel healthy,
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  to have abundant normal levels of energy,
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  to have mood stability,
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  to have mental clarity, to have our skin and our hair back like they used to
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  me before autoimmune problems took over. Welcome to the health with Hashimoto's podcast.
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  This is where you will find 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 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.
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  Support your body, calm your immune system so that you can regain your energy
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  and feel like yourself again.
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  In every single part of your health, it is your privilege and your responsibility
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  to figure out what works for you.
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  I am a huge advocate of autonomy, personal autonomy, especially in medicine.
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  I want you to be able to have the understanding of what's going on and what
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  is being told to you so that you can make your best decisions because you are
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  ultimately the CEO of your own health.
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  You make the ultimate decisions.
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  You have advisors on your team, your doctor, your nurse practitioner,
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  your chiropractor, your therapist, your pastor.
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  All of these people are advising you on your health, whether that's physical
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  health, emotional health, spiritual health, what to eat, it's all related to the whole picture.
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  And they give you their best advice, what they believe will help you the most.
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  And it's always filtered through what they've been taught.
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  So your physician, if they have been practicing.
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  Traditional, conventional Western medicine for 20 years, they are going to look
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  at the world, they're going to look at you through a black and white lens.
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  Either you're sick or you're not sick. There's no gradient. There's no,
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  your antibodies are up, but you don't have a lot of symptoms yet.
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  So you're not sick yet. That's what they see.
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  They see sick or not sick. So if you have elevated antibodies,
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  but your TSH is still fine, they're like, oh yeah, you're fine.
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  Instead of somebody saying, oh, your antibodies are up, that means something is going on.
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  Your body is attacking, your immune system is attacking your thyroid.
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  Let's figure out why and let's stop that before you get to that sick part.
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  Also, a conventional doctor or somebody who's been steeped in that for a long
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  time is going to look at things through a what medicine does this applies to this.
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  That's their worldview. That's what they've been taught. So everybody is advising
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  you to the best of their ability based on what they've been taught and what
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  they know and what they see in you.
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  And you get to put all of those pieces together to figure out what is going to work for you.
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  And you are also looking at what's going on in your life.
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  How much time do you have in a day? If today we're talking about gut health,
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  and I'm telling you, you know, fermented foods are a great thing for your gut
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  health, you have to figure out, do you have time to ferment foods?
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  Do you have time to make your own yogurt, to make some kombucha,
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  some kefir, some pickles, some sauerkraut?
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  Does that fit into your schedule?
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  Or do you want to buy it? Or do you hate the taste of all of those things and
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  you just want to supplement?
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  Like only you know your taste buds. Only you know your budget,
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  your time budget and your financial budget.
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  You make the ultimate decisions.
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  I was talking to a friend today about her teenage daughter and we both have teenagers.
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  I have three teenagers right now and one tween.
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  And so we were talking about, you know, we can know the best things for our
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  kids, especially dealing with health challenges.
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  We know what will most likely work. But if our teens don't want to do it, we can't make them.
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  She was specifically saying my daughter got her driver's license and now she
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  stops at the gas station and she gets energy drinks and she gets,
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  you know, available online.
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  What we have at home and give her the information. She has to choose to use that to implement that.
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  And that's really all of our position.
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  We get the information and we have to figure out what works for our season of
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  life with our time, our finances, everything.
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  So gut health. You get to apply all of this to your gut health.
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  We know that all autoimmune conditions have some common root causes.
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  There is a genetic common root cause.
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  Somewhere, if you have Hashimoto's, somewhere in your family tree,
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  there are some genes that make you more susceptible to having Hashimoto's.
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  We also know that everybody with an autoimmune condition has some gut health issues.
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  Typically, this is leaky gut combined with other things like your microbiome being disrupted.
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  That means like not enough of the good beneficial bacteria, or maybe too much,
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  or maybe some of the bacteria that's supposed to be lower has migrated up.
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  There's a lot of things that can be going on.
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  There's always a gut health component. And then there's always one or more triggers.
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  And for a lot of people, that's a virus, stress, another huge one,
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  vitamin D levels is a huge one.
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  There's a lot of different things. Oh, environmental toxins,
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  it's another really big one, especially for thyroid, because your thyroid kind of acts like a magnet.
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  It seems to attract and hold on to some toxins.
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  And as I said in the last episode, there is one theory that's a pretty credible
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  theory that says one of the reasons our immune system is attacking our thyroid
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  is because it recognizes that there are toxins there and is trying to get it
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  out. So back to gut health.
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  You know it's an issue because you have Hashimoto's, so we can assume that.
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  We don't have to do fancy testing.
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  We can just say, I have Hashimoto's, so therefore I know that I need to work on my gut.
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  I have been on this journey right along with you.
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  I've kind of been taking you on the journey, well, for 180-something episodes.
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  I started the podcast, I want to say maybe six months after I got my diagnosis.
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  As an RN and as somebody who went back to school for holistic health education,
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  it is my passion to figure out root causes and what's going on and to help people
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  understand that and to help them take control.
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  And have that autonomy. So I started the podcast with that goal to help you figure things out.
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  So I've been on this journey of gut health.
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  And back when I started, well, let's go back to, you know, childhood.
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  I hated anything fermented.
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  Now I can say that it was fermented. At that time, I didn't know what it was.
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  I just knew that I hated yogurt. I didn't like pickles.
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  I like shuddered at the thought of sauerkraut. Like anything fermented was an
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  absolute no for me. As I got older, I still didn't really like it.
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  Occasionally, I might try some yogurt, still hated it. And I was like, nope, not that again.
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  Until, you know, a couple years later, and then I would try it again and repeat that cycle.
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  It wasn't until maybe my 30s or 40s that I learned that fermented foods were
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  really beneficial for my health.
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  Up until that point, I just thought they were optional.
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  They were something that some people liked, but they didn't really have a purpose.
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  It was just, you know, another option in the dairy aisle. But I didn't understand
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  that yogurt was really healthy for my gut.
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  I remember the first time I ever learned about probiotics.
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  Right now, we feel like everybody knows about probiotics. They're so ubiquitous. They're everywhere.
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  Marketing, like our Facebook feed, I don't know if you get targeted with those
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  ads, but I feel like I see probiotics everywhere.
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  But I vividly remember the health conference that I was at.
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  And this was probably, I don't know, 15 or 20 years ago.
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  And they were talking about probiotics and they were selling some.
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  And so I bought some. And it.
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  I knew that I hated yogurt. So I was like, okay, I'm probably going to hate
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  this probiotic, but they say it's good.
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  And I was so weirded out the first time I tried them because I'm putting bacteria in my mouth.
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  What is up with this? I was kind of a germ freak at that time,
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  but nothing bad happened. It was actually kind of tasty.
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  I described the taste to somebody as the taste that you get if you drink the
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  milk when you're done eating cereal.
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  It's like the cereal-sweetened milk. That's how I described the probiotics.
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  And now probiotics and fermented foods are a part of my every single day life.
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  How about you? Are you to that point? Do you know the benefits of probiotics and also prebiotics?
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  So let's go over the garden really quick.
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  In this analogy, the garden is your gut and you need healthy seeds.
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  Because of course, if you want an abundant harvest, you need to plant the right seeds.
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  Well, the seeds in your garden, especially in your gut garden,
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  those are the probiotics. Those are the seeds.
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  And you can grow seeds in water. It will work.
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  You can put a seed in a glass with a wet paper towel next to it and you can grow a bean.
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  I don't know how high, but you know, every elementary school kid has done that as an experiment.
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  You put some bean seeds in between a glass and a wet paper towel and you watch them sprout and grow.
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  You don't need soil, but to have the best abundant harvest, you need good soil.
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  The soil in this gut garden that we're talking about is the prebiotics.
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  So prebiotics are found in foods and it's a lot of fiber.
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  It's the things that the probiotics need to grow healthy, to have an abundant harvest.
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  It's the things that the probiotics.
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  So we need prebiotics. That's our garden soil. We need probiotics.
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  That's the seeds. And then there's also postbiotics. And postbiotics are kind of like the fertilizer.
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  So not every garden and not every plant needs fertilizer all the time.
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  If you've got really good soil and you've got really good seeds, you're probably good.
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  But sometimes you need the fertilizer and it's beneficial.
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  So there's also postbiotics, and those are beneficial.
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  I'm not going to talk about those much because if you're eating a healthy diet,
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  you're probably getting some postbiotics as well.
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  But let's talk about good, better, best. And in this case, the good is the baseline.
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  It is what we all should be striving to do every day.
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  And that is get pre and probiotics into our diet or into our gut.
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  How you get them is up to you. Like I said, for probably 30 years,
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  I didn't know even that I should be eating probiotics. I didn't even know the word probiotic.
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  And in my teens and 20s, if somebody would have explained it to me,
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  I probably would have said, yeah, no, not going to do that.
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  That's disgusting. I hate yogurt. I'm not going to eat pickles.
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  I don't like sauerkraut. I'm not going to try your kimchi.
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  And what is this kombucha? Probably wasn't even a thing in the supermarkets back then.
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  But there were all of these things that I didn't like the taste of. So I would have said no.
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  I would have said, please give me a supplement. And that is what a supplement is for.
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  If you're not getting enough in your diet every day, if you're not getting enough
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  naturally, then you supplement.
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  That is why we take multivitamins because the majority of people in the United
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  States and in most developed countries, I believe it's like over 95% of people
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  are not getting the required nutrients.
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  And when I say required, I mean required for cellular health,
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  for your cells to function as they are designed.
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  If you are not getting enough selenium, which I've talked about a couple times
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  in the recent episodes, if you're not getting at least 200 micrograms a day,
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  then your T4, the stuff that your thyroid produces,
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  cannot convert to T3, the active form of thyroid that you need.
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  If you're not getting enough selenium, that's just not going to happen.
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  So if you're not getting it from your diet, then you need to supplement.
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  Most of us need a multivitamin supplement because we are not getting what our cells need for health.
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  Same thing with our gut, with our gut garden.
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  Most of us are not getting the pre and probiotics that we need.
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  And some people also need digestive enzymes and they need postbiotics.
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  Most people would feel better, like overall, if they supplemented.
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  But let's go to the good.
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  The good is the baseline and that is getting probiotics and prebiotics into
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  your diet every single day.
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  I've already mentioned several different forms of pre and probiotics. So for me.
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  My every single day, I try to get some sort of things. I have been making yogurt.
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  My husband gave me a yogurt maker for Christmas back in, I think,
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  maybe October or November.
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  I read the book Super Gut and I told him at that time, I'm going to put this
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  on my Christmas list, but please let me know if you're not going to get me this
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  yogurt maker because it's on sale right now. And if you're not going to get
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  it for me, I'm just going to buy it right now.
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  And he's like, okay, don't buy it for yourself. So I knew I was going to get
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  it. So I got a yogurt maker.
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  I can make yogurt and have made yogurt in my instant pot before.
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  However, the super gut recipe wants you to ferment the yogurt for 36 hours because
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  the probiotics double, I think he said every eight hours or every 12, I don't remember.
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  But in his calculations, William Davis is a doctor, he wrote the book,
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  In his calculations, you get the most bacteria if you ferment that yogurt for 36 hours.
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  And I just didn't want to tie up my Instant Pot for 36 hours because with a
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  family of six, we use that a lot.
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  So I got a yogurt maker and I've been making this super gut yogurt.
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  It has a specific blend of different bacteria.
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  I also now, I've really worked hard on expanding my taste buds, expanding my palate.
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  And so now I do like yogurt. I like sauerkraut in small amounts with other things.
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  I don't think I'm going to eat it plain right now. I am not to that point,
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  but I actually do enjoy eating it. I like it.
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  I don't really like pickles yet, but a lot of people really like pickles.
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  How about kombucha? I like kombucha. Didn't used to.
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  Some of my family members still don't. That's okay.
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  And kefir is another one, both water kefir and dairy kefir.
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  And with all of these different things, like the difference between water kefir
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  and dairy kefir is probably, obviously the taste, but is probably also a difference
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  in the strains of bacteria. So,
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  You can drink the dairy kefir and that's going to give you some bacteria.
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  You can drink the water kefir and that's going to give you different stuff.
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  As with a garden out in your yard, you want a variety of seeds.
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  You want a variety of plants because it takes a lot of different plants to make a salad.
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  Same thing with your gut. You want a wide variety.
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  There's also probiotics, I believe, in different cheeses. And you can Google
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  it or you can, you know, chat GPT or grok it.
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  Just ask grok, you know, list 25 different fermented foods that have probiotic.
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  An AI will give you a list.
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  Double check it because all of the AIs do hallucinate and they all will make stuff up occasionally.
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  But you can verify fermented foods pretty easily.
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  All right, so that is the baseline. That is good. What about better?
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  Better would be introducing something
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  that has research behind it that has been proven to help your gut.
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  To help your gut lining, we need to heal that leaky gut and also to restore the microbiome.
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  We want a really healthy garden.
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  So in that book, Super Gut, he gave a recipe for the yogurt,
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  which is why I started making that because his specific recipe has things that
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  help repair the gut lining.
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  It's going to help with any leaky gut issues. It also helps restore the microbiome.
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  I have been using Seed for several years.
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  You can find Seed on Fullscript. Fullscript is like the good quality Amazon of supplements.
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  And in every single podcast episode and in my emails, I always have a link to
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  where you can find products that I talk about.
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  So Fullscript is a good place to get seed. One of the reasons I like seed is
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  because it's a dual capsule.
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  It has the prebiotics and the probiotics and they release at different points
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  in your intestines, in your gut, so that each thing gets to where it needs to
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  go. And that is really important.
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  Not all probiotics, get to where they need to go. So that is the good and it is the better.
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  The better would be putting a pre and probiotic together, getting ones that
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  are scientifically sound, that have been researched, that say,
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  you know, this is actually going to help your gut. It's going to help your gut lining.
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  It's going to help restore your microbiome.
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  So I should say Seed also has a pediatric formulation.
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  So their adult formulation is capsules and the recommended doses to a day.
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  And the pediatric one is a powder that you can mix into stuff.
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  They also have a third probiotic. And this is not for your gut,
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  but it's actually for your vaginal microbiome.
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  Your skin has a microbiome and your vagina has a microbiome.
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  So if you find yourself struggling with a lot of weirdness down there,
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  including bacterial vaginosis, things like that, look into that option.
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  And so I made it through good and I made it through better. We talked about
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  some medical autonomy and now we're almost up to 20 minutes.
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  So I'm not going to get to talk about the best. I'm going to mention it quick
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  and then we'll talk about it.
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  We'll do a whole episode on the best. And the best is the healthy edge.
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  You can get a sneak peek. I will have a link down in the show notes and it'll
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  tell you all about the healthy edge and why it's better.
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  I'll tell you about the probiotics, the prebiotics, the digestive enzymes,
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  the different gut peptides.
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  You know some gut peptides. You've heard of GLP-1.
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  I talked about GLP-2 the other day.
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  You know there are gut peptides. The healthy edge I'm so excited about because,
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  wow, it gives you such a good, healthy garden, gut garden.
• 19:49
  And it also helps with those peptides.
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  It helps with so many things. It tells your body to produce what it's supposed to.
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  I am in love with it. And of course, if you followed the podcast and me for
• 20:01
  a long time, you know that I don't fall in love with hype and with media.
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  I don't fall in love with testimonials.
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  They help. I fall in love with the science and the results, and the healthy
• 20:12
  edge is amazing. So check the link down in the show notes if you want a sneak peek.
• 20:16
  Otherwise, tune back in next week for the Health with Hashimoto's podcast.
• 20:26
  This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only.
• 20:29
  Please discuss any changes with your trusted healthcare provider.
• 20:32
  To take your next step, join our school community and explore the courses available there.
• 20:37
  You do not have to figure your health out alone.
• 20:40
  So that is school, S-K-O-O-L dot com, and it is the Health with Hashimoto's community.
• 20:46
  I'll see you next time on the Health with Hashimoto's podcast.