In today’s interview, we’re discussing Thyroid Disease. It can be one of the major causes of skin problems such as dry skin but also impacts the body in a number of ways including your weight, energy level, sleep, mood and more!
My guest today is Dr. Amy Myers. She is a renowned leader in Functional Medicine and New York Times Bestselling author of The Autoimmune Solution and The Thyroid Connection. She received her Doctorate in Medicine from LSU Health Sciences Center and spent 5 years working in emergency medicine before training with the Institute for Functional Medicine. She has helped thousands around the world recover from chronic illness through her dietary-based program, The Myers Way®. Her blog and website serve as a beacon of hope to the many sufferers of thyroid disease and autoimmune conditions.
On today’s podcast, we discuss how to know if you have thyroid disease, labs and specific lab numbers that your doctor may not have told you about, and her approach to addressing the root cause of thyroid disease. I ask her if it’s possible to cure thyroid disease and I think you’ll be surprised to hear her answer (hint: it’s not a one word answer).
I also present a question from one of you, and I think you’ll find her answer interesting.
So please enjoy this interview with Dr. Amy Myers…
I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Dr. Myers
To learn more about Dr. Amy Myers and her book, go here.
Also, I invite you to join the The Spa Dr. community on my website or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes so you don’t miss our upcoming shows.
If you have not done so already, I highly recommend that you get your customized skin profile here. It’s free – Based upon your answers, it will give you great tips for glowing skin and vibrant health.
Thank you and we’ll see you next time
TRANSCRIPTION
| Trevor: | Hi there. I’m Dr. Trevor Cates. Welcome to the Spa Doctor podcast. In today’s interview we’re discussing thyroid disease. It can be one of the major causes of skin problems such as dry skin, but also impact the body in a number of ways including your weight, energy level, sleep, mood, and more. My guest today is Dr. Amy Myers. She is a renowned leader in functional medicine and New York Times best-selling author of The Autoimmune Solution and The Thyroid Connection. |
| She received her doctorate in medicine from LSU Health Sciences Center and five years working in emergency medicine before training with the Institute for Functional Medicine. She has helped thousands around the world recover from chronic illness through her dietary-based program, The Myers Way. Her blog and website serve as a beacon of hope to the many sufferers of thyroid disease and autoimmune conditions. On today’s podcast, we discuss how to know if you have thyroid disease, labs and specific lab numbers that your doctor may not have told you about, and her approach to addressing the root cause of thyroid disease. | |
| Thyroid disease is actually more common than you may realize, so I asked her if it’s possible to cure thyroid disease and I think you’ll be surprised to hear her answer. Hint, this is not a one-word answer. I also present a question to her from one of you and I think that you’ll find her answer very interesting so please enjoy this interview with Dr. Amy Myers. Amy, it’s so great to have you on my podcast. | |
| Amy: | Thanks so much for having me. I’m really looking forward to this. |
| Trevor: | Yeah, so I know you specialize in thyroid, and so you probably have a story that took you there, I imagine. Can you tell us about your journey and what led you to where you are now? |
| Amy: | Yeah, so like many of us that get into this type of medicine, really getting to the root cause in functional medicine, have a story of how conventional medicine failed them and that’s really what led me where I am and that’s exactly what happened. My second year of medical school, I started having panic attacks and tremors and unexplained weight loss and I know everybody’s like, “Oh, well that sounds great, eating anything you want and losing weight,” but it really was not, particularly when I had insomnia and again, this anxiety that turned into full-blown panic attacks. |
| Eventually went to the doctor and she really just brushed it off as stress and told me that I was thinking I had everything I was learning in medical school. I had been in the Peace Corps. My mother had passed away very unexpectedly, and this was just no way that I had handled stress. I insisted on a full workup and she called me back about a week later and said, “Oh, I have some news. You have Graves’ Disease,” which more people are more familiar with Hashimoto’s, which is the autoimmune condition that causes your thyroid to go under active. My thyroid, on the other hand, was going over active and that’s what Graves’ Disease is, is an autoimmune condition, | |
| In one sense, it was a relief that I had an explanation for all these crazy symptoms but on the other hand, being given the options of taking really harsh medications or having my thyroid blown up like Hiroshima or having it removed surgically suddenly were not great options at all. I’d actually gone into medical school knowing that I would do exactly what I’m doing. I just didn’t know how to get here so I had a more holistic mindset and had done my electives in integrative medicine, and I was president of the [inaudible 00:03:39] alternative medicine group, so none of these really sat well with me. | |
| I had been a vegetarian. My family, we had a garden growing up and made our homemade food so I didn’t do anything or I did Chinese medicine first and that didn’t work for me and then about a month later went back and opted for the medicine because it seemed to be the lesser of the three evils. Then started getting really bad symptoms of fatigue and hair falling out and dry skin and dry nose and it was just, couldn’t barely get out of bed. | |
| Went back to the doctor. Turns out the medication was causing my liver to be damaged, something called toxic hepatitis, and a very long story short because of course I write about this in my book, The Thyroid Connection and my other book, The Autoimmune Solution, but I ended up having my thyroid ablated because I knew of no other way and that was literally having my thyroid blown up, like Hiroshima, and then I ended up hypothyroid and I’m destined to a life of supplemental thyroid hormone. | |
| Though I knew that conventional medicine had solved my problem, I knew it didn’t ever really get to the root of the cause. Those of us with autoimmune conditions are three times more likely to have another one and the next time, it could’ve been even worse. I really went in search of finding answers about how did I get here? There was no family history, what had happened to me? I eventually found functional medicine and then I just dove in and took all the electives through the Institute for Functional Medicine and opened my own clinic in Austin, Texas. | |
| Then literally, now have people flying in from all over the world to see me with thyroid dysfunction, autoimmunity. It’s so amazing now. I literally have goosebumps, but it’s bittersweet. I’ve literally helped people reverse their Graves’ Disease and not have to go through what I went through that are not on supplemental thyroid hormone. They have normal functioning thyroids, no antibodies and of course all kinds of other autoimmune conditions. It did take, unfortunately, my story for me to realize that there was another way. | |
| Trevor: | Yeah. Thinking back to where you were and what you know now, what would you have done differently knowing what you know now? |
| Amy: | Well, let me say that, I can answer that question in two ways. I mean, I wouldn’t have done anything differently in the moment because I didn’t know about this and functional medicine. It’s only now that it’s really become a buzzword or more commonplace but still as you likely know in your followers, it’s still difficult to find somebody. There’s not even a functional medicine doctor in every city. Many of us don’t take insurance so it can be cost prohibitive because of the way, how much time we spend with patients, so I don’t … I did everything that I could in the moment and that’s what I tell people when they come to see me like, “Oh, I wish I’d known about you 10 years ago.” |
| Well, I wish I’d known about me 10 years ago too or 15 years ago, but I didn’t. We’re here now, but what I do differently? Well, I absolutely would do what I now do in my practice and the program that I wrote about in the book The Thyroid Connection because it is the closest thing to coming to see me and it is the program that I have used to help other people with Graves’ Disease, Hashimoto’s, people making sure that they’re optimized on their medication or their supplemental thyroid hormone. I would do what I now do in my own life, even though I don’t have a thyroid anymore. It doesn’t mean I can’t still do these things to recover from what got me there and prevent me from being somewhere else. It’s exactly what I use with my patients. | |
| Trevor: | Okay. Great. Let’s back up a minute and talk about hyper and hypothyroidism. What are these conditions? What are the symptoms of them? How would someone kind of know by their symptoms? What are some of the key symptoms? |
| Amy: | Classically, our thyroid is our metabolism. It really regulates everything in our body. There are thyroid receptors on every single cell in our bodies so the good thing is that it affects everything. The bad thing is that’s one of the reasons that conventional medicine fails to pick it up because it can often be dismissed as other conditions. Typically, when you have hypothyroidism, your thyroid has slowed down so everything in your body slows down. You might have brain fog, [core 00:07:54] mentation, depression, heart rate might slow down, your waistline might expand. You might have difficulty losing weight or be actually gaining weight, you can have dry skin, brittle hair, brittle nails, depression, constipation, feeling cold, low body temperature. |
| Then hyperthyroidism is the exact opposite, which is what I experienced, everything revved up so I was losing weight. I was having insomnia. My heart rate had gone up. I was anxious all the time. I eventually had a tremor. My metabolism was so high, I was burning through my fat and actually using my muscles. I was having muscle weakness. | |
| Now the other thing about this is that there is a lot of overlap between the two and this is another reason that people either think they don’t think they have it or they go to their doctor and it gets missed because somebody might have brain fog and difficulty losing weight, but they might have anxiety or insomnia and so they are thinking, “I don’t classically fit in one box or the other, so that’s not me.,” and the doctor’s thinking the same thing. In my experience, and of course I write about it in the book, but there’s tons of overlap with people and that these symptoms, you can have things from both categories and it be your thyroid. | |
| Trevor: | Thank you for pointing that out because I know that there, I have patients that have hypothyroidism and they’re thin and people sometimes think, “Oh. Well I can’t have hypothyroidism because I’m thin,” so yeah, it doesn’t necessarily … People don’t always necessarily fit that typical picture, right? |
| Amy: | No, no. You know in medicine, we have kind of these, “It was this, this, and this,” and they check all these boxes. “Then it’s this,” and give them that drug and as we all know, we’re individuals and it’s far more complex than that. |
| Trevor: | Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that complicates that is when it’s autoimmune, so let’s talk a little about the autoimmune connection there and what … Because it’s now, if somebody has hypothyroidism or hyperthyroidism, that doesn’t mean that necessarily they have autoimmune issues, but it’s more common than people realize, right? |
| Amy: | Absolutely, so most thyroid dysfunction in the terms of hypo or hyper is autoimmune in nature, certainly, particularly with hyperthyroidism, it’s a little less that it’s autoimmune because there can be postpartum and viruses that can cause temporarily your thyroid to get over activated but most underactive thyroid is Hashimoto’s. Now, why many of your listeners might not know that they have Hashimoto’s is that conventional medicine also fails us in that way in that they don’t check antibodies because in their mind, the treatment is to give you supplemental thyroid hormone, whether you have Hashimoto’s or hypothyroidism, non-autoimmune. |
| I would beg to differ and tell you, you really need to get those antibodies checked because it puts you in a different category. I already told you that you’re three times more likely to get another one and the next one might be MS or scleroderma or something really, really terrible that you don’t want. Although I do have solutions for that as well, but still nobody wants to have that diagnosis and so my approach though is that you need to know this information because it puts you in one category or the other. It also lets you know that you can do something about this. | |
| We know that these antibodies come out 5 to 10 years before the disease does and so there are plenty of people that when we catch them in that stage, we can get those antibodies to go negative before it even affects their thyroid. I see it all the time. Now in my first book, The Autoimmune Solution, that was for any type of autoimmune condition and that book was very much like, “Don’t do those immunosuppressive drugs, come do this,” or “If you’re doing those, let’s work at doing this.” When you have rheumatoid arthritis, you’re not Humira-deficient so we can often get off of those medications and reverse the disease and get the antibodies to go away. | |
| When we’re dealing with the thyroid, because these antibodies come so far in advance, it often takes people because of the confusion about, “Is it this? Is it that?” We can get into all that, about how conventional medicine tests for it, why they’re really missing the boat. Many people have had this condition for years and years before somebody uncovers it or they’re now hearing about functional medicine after the fact. If you have a vital organ like your thyroid or your pancreas that requires a hormone in order to survive and there’s been enough damage to that, we of course can reduce the antibodies and stop that damage, but I can’t suddenly make my thyroid grow back that is gone but what we can do is support that and still work to get to the underlying causes but you may still need to be on supplemental thyroid hormone. | |
| This book is slightly different in that way and it’s really about, in addition to finding the root cause and reversing it, how to actually work with your doctor because if I didn’t take my supplemental thyroid hormone, I would die and if it’s not optimized and I’m not on the right dose and the right type, I might still have a lot of symptoms which is happening to so many people out there. You probably see it all the time. “Oh, my doctor checked my thyroid. My labs are normal but I still have all these symptoms,” so the book is really about that and how to, and telling you exactly what to ask your doctor for and what the lab results mean. | |
| Trevor: | Right. Well, that reminds me of a question that I have from one of my followers. |
| Amy: | Sure. |
| Trevor: | This is a question from Robert and his question is, “How well are doctors that are unfamiliar with functional medicine taking the thyroid connection approach, at taking your approach? Are some curious enough that they are considering switching away from their conventional practice?” I guess it’s sort of like, the first question is, how open are they, do you find most doctors in working with you? The second question is, how often do you see them go, “Hey, I’ve got to switch. I’ve got to change the way that I practice.”? |
| Amy: | Well, I have had no trouble with other doctors. I’m not saying that there might not be some, but particularly with my first book, The Autoimmune Solution, I was working with so many people on just such a chronic end of the spectrum. You wouldn’t even think that there could be people with four or five autoimmune conditions and frankly in chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia that I write about in the book as well. Most doctors are actually thankful. They’re really thankful that, because they don’t have a solution. All they have is meds and when the meds stop working, all they have is a frustrated patient. |
| Most physicians are overworked and tired and if they can’t just give a pill that gets the patient to feel better, they’d love to just send them somewhere else. For the most part, I get really good feedback at least from my patients telling me they’ve gone to the doctor, whatever, and brought the book or people being happy that they’ve come and found a solution. With the thyroid, the book’s only been out a couple of weeks so I don’t have as much feedback other than my followers and patients, not my patients but my followers, telling me, “I brought the book. I took it with my doctor. He wasn’t going to order the test, but when I showed him the book, he was willing to do it.” | |
| I do think, as I’m sure you find as well, being a physician and helps add that credibility. I’m not just someone in the alternative medicine space that didn’t have that same … I was an emergency physician and in trauma ER for five years before I came into this so there is that more willingness. Then, yes of course, I get physicians all the time reaching out saying, “Hey,” not necessarily from the book or something, but just have found me online or something and like, “Wow, this is super cool.” | |
| The Institute for Functional Medicine, back in the day when I started, it was a few hundred people going to the meetings and now it’s a few thousand every year, so it’s definitely catching on. I don’t, I’m not going to say there aren’t those people. I’m just not getting as much feedback about that, if there are. | |
| Trevor: | Okay. Great. I think, so interviewing people in podcast, I oftentimes hear doctors tell a story of how they were going down the conventional medical route and then something happened with their own health or somebody in their family and they switched gears so I think it does happen, to see that shift that all of a sudden they want to practice a different way. It sounds like you were already kind of on that path, but it probably really propelled you into learning more about what you learned. |
| Amy: | Oh, I would say that I’m the exception. I think that there are people who know that they want to go into some sort of integrative medicine and they take that track. They become a naturopath or a DO or an acupuncturist or some other form of healing. I think most people who get into what we do, more functional medicine approach, did have a life altering event. I’m kind of the abnormal one that chose to go to medical school, insanely, but knew that I wanted to do this but didn’t know how to get there. |
| I looked at Naturopathic schools and it just wasn’t the right fit for me. It was a struggle. You know medical school is not good for your health. It’s exhausting but I do feel like it has allowed me to help more people because I do have that MD behind my name. It’s unfortunate that that matters because I’ve seen a Naturopathic physician. There’s so many … It takes a village to keep you well and I use chiropractors, I use acupuncturist’s, I use naturopaths, massage therapists, [lympho 00:17:16], you name it, I have them on my team. I’m not saying that these people, they’re on my team as well. I utilize them myself but when you’re dealing with the regular medical establishment, it does really help to have that. | |
| Trevor: | Yeah. Absolutely. Let’s shift gears a little bit and talk about labs because a lot of times people go to see their doctor and they say, “I think I might have a thyroid problem,” and their doctor runs one thing. They’ll run TSH and then say, “Oh, you’re fine,” so let’s talk about why this, what’s missing here and what you recommend for labs. |
| Amy: | Yeah. I’ll kind of just quickly say the five things that I think, the symptoms can be very vague. They come in women more than men so if you’re a man, they might not check your thyroid. In women, it usually comes at hormonal changes so they often brush it off as, “Oh, that’s postpartum. Oh that’s menopause.” The second is that they’re not checking the right labs and that is, they typically only check a TSH which is really looking at what you’re pituitary is telling your thyroid to do, not what your thyroid is actually doing. |
| I want you to get a free T3, a free T4, a reverse T3 and then thyroid antibodies because that really gives me the whole picture. It’s that free T3 that we really care about because that’s what can go into the cell and into the receptors. The third way is that once they get the labs, they’re using outdated reference ranges so they’re looking at normal rather than optimal, and when they set those reference ranges, they actually included people with thyroid dysfunction and then they later found out. | |
| Then of course, the last two are not looking at nutritional deficiencies and the root causes so it’s those first three that are really hitting people in conventional medicine that they’re getting brushed off like I did, told it’s stress, told it’s something else and they won’t even check. When they do check, they’re only checking that one lab. Maybe if you’re lucky, they check a free T4. Most are not checking a free T3, which to me is the most crucial. Then even when you get somebody checking all of them, there’s still, I see it even people in the functional medicine space. They’re looking at the reference range as a whole, not looking at the optimal reference range. | |
| That’s huge, and the book is also written for all those people who’ve been told, “You don’t have thyroid dysfunction,” and this is telling them, “It is likely that you could because of all the factors that doctors are not taking into account.” | |
| Trevor: | Yeah. I completely agree. Let’s talk about those optimal numbers. You probably talk about that in your book, right? You go through those optimal numbers. |
| Amy: | Yep. |
| Trevor: | Perfect, so people can refer to those. Give us some examples, like with TSH, what do you feel like is the optimal number for TSH? |
| Amy: | It’s between one and two or lower actually, if you’re on supplemental thyroid hormone and even super-suppressed if you’re on one of the supplemental thyroid hormones that has T3 in it because it can artificially suppress your TSH. A lot of people don’t really recognize that. Free T4, I like about 1.1 and of course every lab is different, but these are … I see labs from literally all over the world because people come in, but certainly all over the country and they’re within close enough that this works for you. |
| Then a free T3 around 3.2 or potentially higher depending on how you feel at that level. If it’s higher and you’re feeling anxious or jittery then it’s kind of too high. Yeah, reverse T3, the T3 ratio is less than ten to one. People out there, there’s also totals, T4 total and T3 total and I know this gets super-confusing, but a lot of doctors check that. A total is looking at the amount of total hormone, but it can be bound to a protein and it’s these free hormones. | |
| That’s just all you need to remember. When we’re talking about hormones in general, we always want to try to get the free hormones because those are the ones that are free to go into the receptors and activate. You can get totals as well. I just, trying not to be overwhelming to people, it’s these free ones that you want to know about. | |
| Trevor: | Yeah. Thank you for clarifying that. That’s really true. I am also glad that you pointed out that you look at the symptoms in addition to the labs, so it’s not like you look at one thing or the other. It’s looking at both, right? |
| Amy: | Absolutely. If a patient comes in and tells me their labs look gorgeous and they tell me that they’re still having a lot of hypothyroid symptoms, then we are going to potentially increase that or likewise, their labs look great but they’re telling me they’re having insomnia and feel jittery. Well again, these are optimal ranges, meaning that still, higher or lower, and so listening to the patient is so important, as you know as well. |
| Trevor: | Right, and people oftentimes say, “Well, I have this condition. I have hypothyroidism so I’m just going to feel a little bit more tired than the average person,” or “My hair is going to be thinner than the average person,” or “My skin is just going to be dry,” so how do you feel about that? Do you feel like people can just sort of be a little bit better or do you feel like with the right treatment, they can be their 100%? |
| Amy: | I think that they can be 100%. Now I think there’s special cases, like someone like myself where you don’t have a thyroid, a woman who’s had a hysterectomy. There’s no way that having … A diabetic with insulin, until we can really get to someplace where somehow these supplemental hormones, exogenous hormones, are responding to our body, first of all, let me just say, our hormones are not, our thyroid hormone, our female hormones or male hormones, our blood sugar hormones, our sleep time hormones, these are our adrenal hormones. All of these, it’s like the Internet, like you and I are on the Internet. It’s not one signal from me to you. They’re all these signals going out in order for you and I to talk. |
| That’s what’s happening in our body and so it is constantly getting a message and responding. When I have to take supplemental thyroid hormone because I have no thyroid, I get this one message. I still, I feel really good and I can do all kinds of crazy things in life, trying to help a lot of people. Somebody who has part of a thyroid and taking supplemental thyroid hormone, they’re going to get that one dose like I did, but they still have their own gland to be able to be responding real time to all these other things, so yes I would tell all of those people that it is unacceptable that you don’t feel great. | |
| Trevor: | Right. Absolutely. Okay, thank you. Let’s talk about treatment. How does the conventional medicine approach differ from your approach? |
| Amy: | Sure. It’s different for hypothyroidism versus hyper. Hyper, which is what I had, your choices are toxic medication, toxic hepatitis, having your thyroid surgically removed, or part of it, or having your thyroid blown up with iodine. Those are your choices for overactive thyroid in conventional medicine and then going on supplemental thyroid hormone after one of those interventions has happened. |
| With hypothyroidism, it’s just to give you the supplemental thyroid hormone so for me, what I’m trying to do is find out why you’ve got in this boat and if we catch it early enough before there’s been enough damage to the gland, we can keep you off that’s supplemental thyroid hormone. We can reverse those antibodies, so we’re really looking at the root causes and taking a dietary approach to that. I talk about it in my book. It’s a 28 day plan that really looks at 5 root causes, which is diet, leaky gut, toxins, infections and stress. I walk you through all of those and then I literally have day-by-day for 28 days exactly what to do. | |
| You want to be addressing all of those and then, that’s the first part, and that approach is the same whether it’s underactive or overactive because for most people, the problem’s not in their thyroid. It’s in their immune system. We already mentioned that most thyroid dysfunction is autoimmune in nature, so I’m not working with a thyroid so to speak. I’m working with the immune system and the root causes. With hyperthyroidism, I have certain supplements that need to be replaced because your metabolism is burning through them and then some herbs instead of the medications to calm down your thyroid. | |
| Then with hypothyroidism I tell you, if you need supplemental thyroid hormone, exactly how to go to your doctor. There’s a letter, exactly what to ask for, what tests, what are the reference ranges. I explain all the different types of supplemental thyroid hormone and what may work better in what situations. | |
| Trevor: | Okay. Great. I know that a lot of people switch over to Armour or Nature-throid. How do you feel about those? Are those ones that you typically will recommend as far as thyroid support for hypo? |
| Amy: | Yeah. I also wanted to just add that this book was really intended for people to be able to work with their conventional doctor, that you don’t have to like get this and then go find a you or a me or a somebody else. If you don’t have somebody, this book is not … You can, this was written for you to work with your conventional doctor. There are 27 million Americans that we know of that have this and so I want everybody to be able to get help. |
| I even have a lab company that, I don’t get anything out of, if you go there on my resources section, if your doctor won’t order your labs that you can go. To answer your question, yes I am not … I am agnostic when it comes to supplement thyroid hormone and it’s another thing that you need to look for in your doctor. There are … If your doctor, whether they’re conventional or functional, and they are like, “It’s this or it’s that,” and the other one is bad, I don’t think that’s a good fit for you. | |
| Everybody is different. I have plenty of people that do just fine on Synthroid. I have other people like myself who don’t have a thyroid and we really do need Armour or Nature-throid because we don’t have a thyroid. Again, I look at the [lab 00:27:03], I look at the person, I you, but more people than not do do better on the natural desiccated thyroid hormone. Now, whether that’s because it’s natural and coming from the pig, or whether that’s just because it has a T3 component in it, the research, they haven’t done that study. | |
| They’ve done the study from Synthroid to natural and they say more people tend to do better on the natural but is that because one’s synthetic and one’s natural or is that because one only has T4 and the other one has T4 and T3? My thought is that it’s probably more about the T3 than it is about the natural component of it. | |
| Trevor: | Okay, and I know that there were some concerns about Armour a while back and so some doctors still say Armour is not good because it’s not well-regulated and things. What would you say about those to kind of get people up to speed on that? |
| Amy: | Yeah. That’s really not the case. We’ve been … Armour has been around longer than Synthroid has and just to know that Synthroid is the number one prescribed drug in the United States, I don’t like to refer to it as a drug, but it is a prescription medication. It’s the number one prescribed medication. A) That tells you what huge problem this is and B) Probably what power they have. Again, I’m not against Synthroid. I actually take a little bit of Synthroid and I take Nature-throid so it’s what I need. I need more T4 than what the Nature-throid provides me. I’m by no means against anybody, just saying that that’s a really big Pharma, Armour and Nature-throid, that is a much smaller pool in this arena of prescription hormone. |
| Trevor: | Okay. I know I jumped to medication but of course lifestyle, diet, stress management, those kinds of things are super important. That’s what we want to, that’s a lot of how we address a root cause. What are some of the key things that you recommend with lifestyle, diet, stress management? |
| Amy: | As I mentioned, the 5 root factors that I see to be the cause of thyroid dysfunction and you and I had briefly talked, I’m hosting a thyroid summit that will be available for listeners if they want to and that, I really broke this [inaudible 00:29:20] interviewed 35 different experts from around the world about thyroid and I broke the talks into these 5 root causes, into having speakers all day talking about diet and its influence on the thyroid, gut health and leaky gut, to toxins, stress and infections. |
| My first book, the stress component was part of another chapter and I actually in the midst of writing this book got my second toxic mold exposure and it was a roller coaster and extremely stressful so I really had to hone in on that and ways to relieve stress and tricks and trades and things to do, so I have a whole chapter and that is actually part of the 28 day program, but just briefly back to what you were saying. We are living in a world where we are, with the diet, gluten and dairy, through a process called molecular mimicry, looks very similar to your thyroid tissue. | |
| Again, and we don’t have time for me to get into all the details, but I do have people remove some certain foods from their diet, some temporarily, some permanently. Looking at their gut is the biggest … 80% of our immune system’s in our gut. Most thyroid dysfunction is autoimmune in nature so we really want to know what’s going on in the gut and heal that gut. Toxins, there are toxic mold related. You can look at lime as an infection or a toxin. Heavy metals, plastics things coming through our skin and beauty products that disrupt our endocrine system, these are toxins. | |
| Looking at infections, there are certain infections that have been known to go hand-in-hand, again, through this process of molecular mimicry with autoimmune conditions and thyroid and then stress is a huge component. Our adrenals, all the hormones are interconnected. The blood sugar, the estrogens, all of it is interconnected and affects the thyroid, so I’m addressing all of … I know it sounds overwhelming, but really, I think the feedback that I’ve … Honestly if somebody wrote a review on Amazon that they literally couldn’t put the book down. | |
| I was like, “That…” I still get goosebumps. It was the biggest compliment to me, to write a kind of medical block, a health book and it was like a page turner for somebody. I’ve literally had people tell me that so I do feel like, both of my books, that I give enough information so you know that A) I know what I’m talking about and that it’s something that you should perk up to but I don’t inundate you with it. What I more provide you with is a solution because that’s the important part. | |
| You want to know there’s a problem and that it’s a valid problem but who wants to get bogged down in the scary stuff? Nobody does. They all want to know, “Okay, what do I do about it,” and that’s the focus of both books is, like the program, is what to do about it. I try to make that as easy as possible and not as overwhelming. | |
| Trevor: | Yeah. It’s a big thick book. It’s not like it’s a little book. |
| Amy: | Yeah [inaudible 00:32:12]. It’s so funny because my staff, when the book arrived, when you get a book, you get like a galley copy and it’s smaller. It was all shiny and then when I got the actual book, I was like, “Oh my God, the book is so pretty,” because it was like a matte finish. My staff was kind of looking at me like, “What?” They’re like, “Look at how thick it is!” I was like, “Oh, yeah. I should probably talk about how thick it is and how much money they’re getting. They’re getting their money’s worth.” Yeah, in both my books, my editors wanted to cut them down and I just, they then realized I had important things that needed to be said and things to help people so we didn’t. You definitely get your money’s worth. |
| Trevor: | Absolutely. Just to give people an idea of the things that they can start with, what are some of the best foods to be eating? You talked about gluten and dairy being some of the bad foods that we might want to avoid and of course they could find out more about that in your 28 day program, but what are some of the really great foods that people should be eating? |
| Amy: | Yeah. I think that it’s probably a lot of the things that you recommend for people for good skin. It’s funny, people are always like, “What is your skin regimen,” to me, “Your skin always looks so good.” I’m like, “Oh, my God. If you ask me that, you’ll be horrified,” because I’m like, “It’s Dr. Bronner’s.” Then of course, just completely all-natural makeup, but it’s because of the food. It’s my diet and lifestyle. It’s not, I’m not doing anything crazy so good, healthy, lean, organic proteins so you’re getting the amino acids that you need to make your thyroid hormone and to heal your immune system, vegetables, lots of leafy green vegetables, good healthy starches from a vegetable source, fruits, and good healthy fats. |
| Trevor: | Yeah, absolutely. |
| Amy: | Lots of water and then lots of detoxification, like [inaudible 00:34:09] if you can. Yeah, supplements to support those … We live in a toxic world so things to support getting that stuff out of your system, not bringing it in and then trying to get it out. |
| Trevor: | Great. Oh, and Amy, I need to get you my skincare line because, if you’re just using Dr. Bronner’s then you’re missing out. |
| Amy: | I know. People have tried. I’d love to try it. I’m just so low maintenance. It’s like I had something on the counter, it was like four different things, and I’m like, “Okay. Well, I can just do this,” but I know. It horrifies other people. It horrifies people who actually know something about skincare that I do that. I’m totally open, love to try it. |
| Trevor: | That’s great. Yeah, you’ll find it super simple. Okay, great. As far as stress management, is there one thing that you feel like you could recommend for people to get started with managing their stress? I know that’s so important with thyroid. |
| Amy: | Yeah, so if you can do nothing else, slow deep breaths. It’s impossible to be stressed when you’re doing that. I, myself, have an app. We have a lot of resources on my website that I talk about in the book, but I have a couple of apps just on my phone because who doesn’t have their phone? In fact, I have, this is not … I’m sitting here on my bed because I told you we’re in a temporary apartment so anyway. This is not planned. I’m literally, this is on the bed because I was using this this morning. |
| I have this little earpiece that goes with that and it’s an app called Heart Math and it’s paced breathing, so I try to do that every morning and every evening. Then I have a little strap over here, a heart rate variability strap that also has an app. The first thing in the morning, I wake up, I put that on. Seated, I recover from my stress from the day before. Can I give more? Do I need to rest more today? Can I exert myself more, whether it’s physically an exercise or just physically or mentally in my work life or do I need to kind of take a break and then do some paced breathing with my Heart Math? Those are two literally super easy, you caught me, real time. I had just done those not that long ago. | |
| Trevor: | Okay, great. Awesome, love it. |
| Amy: | You’re probably like, “I’ve never had a podcast where somebody just [inaudible 00:36:18].” |
| Trevor: | No, I think it’s great. I asked you for something practical and you’re sharing it and you live what you tell other people to do, which is so important. I think there are a lot of doctors, practitioners out there that don’t live what they talk about. |
| Amy: | Yeah. I’m kind of no-nonsense and yeah, just totally open to sharing my personal life with people and that is real-time, I did both of those this morning. |
| Trevor: | That’s great. Also, lastly, I want to ask you about supplements. What are some of your favorite supplements to help with thyroid? |
| Amy: | Well, I actually recently created my own multivitamin to go as a companion to the book, the key nutrients for the thyroid specifically, like Selenium and Zinc, and Iodine in B vitamins. I ended up having, like I’m sure you were finding a great skincare line so you created your own. That is, I think in general, people can’t go wrong with having a good multi-onboard even if they’re eating a really good diet. People are not digesting, absorbing properly. Our nutrients are more depleted so I think it’s really helpful. |
| I think people need vitamin D for their immune system, for their skin, for overall health, a good probiotic for gut health and omega-3 fish oils. That also helps with the cell integrity so the thyroid hormone can get in, helps with hair, and skin and nails, and inflammation and everything. Those are go-to’s in the book and then of course there are specifics depending on what somebody’s issue is. Additional B vitamins if you have mutations in [MTHFR 00:37:56]. Another one of my favorites is a glutathione that we have just because we live in such a … Those of us who’ve gotten into a chronic condition with autoimmunity or thyroid probably have detox issues. | |
| Trevor: | Yeah. Yeah, that’s so true. How do you feel about iodine supplements? Yeah. |
| Amy: | I have iodine … That’s a broad question but [some 00:38:19] people, there are practitioners who use very large dosages of iodine in the 50 mg range. I think that that’s still fairly controversial. I don’t do that. I do think because we are not eating iodine-rich diets and more importantly, we have all the other halides in our environment now, the bromides, chlorides and fluorides in our water, in our food, in our mattresses and furniture, that we are in a complete deficit of iodine so I do have 300 µg of iodine in the multi that I formulated so I do think most people with thyroid dysfunction, in fact most people just for overall health, could use some iodine. |
| A lot of the diet or the food-focused in my book focuses on iodine and getting these, obviously getting them naturally from your food is the ideal place to get them, but many of us need to supplement on top of it. If you think about that 50 mg versus 300 µg, we’re talking a thousand-fold different so I think everybody needs some but maybe not in the milligram dosages. | |
| Trevor: | That’s going to vary whether someone has hypo versus hyper and autoimmune. |
| Amy: | Well, yeah. Doctors say that. I haven’t seen that in my experience in my clinic so all I can tell people is I feel that the amount that I have in the multi is safe. Everybody’s individual so you just need to be careful, but I think at the low levels that I’m referring to, this is the amounts that we used to be getting naturally in our diet. |
| Trevor: | One thing people ask me is, “Can a thyroid dysfunction be cured?” Can you can be cured of it and it can be gone forever and not have to take any medication? |
| Amy: | The long answer to that is, I never use the word “cure” even in The Autoimmune Solution. The first book I use the word “reverse” so I kind of feel like it’s like cancer. Once you’re on this spectrum, you can build up to autoimmune and can you get back down that spectrum? Yes, but it’s your weak link. It’s probably always something you need to be cognizant of and maintain a certain lifestyle to keep it at bay. When it comes to the thyroid, like I spoke about before, there are plenty of autoimmune conditions, I do believe. I see it every day in my clinic, get letters from around the world of people completely reversing their condition. That meaning, they are symptom-free, their antibodies have lowered or are completely gone away, and they’re no longer on their medication. |
| When I say “medication” I mean things that were suppressing their immune system. Now, when it comes to the thyroid, because it’s a vital organ and we’re talking about hormones, supplement hormones, not medication, can people … Graves’ disease? Absolutely. Can that get reversed and not have to be on anything? Absolutely. When we’re talking about Hashimoto’s, depends on where we catch them in that spectrum. If it’s in the beginning where it’s just inflammatory and damage hasn’t been done, yes that can happen. | |
| If you’re coming to me and you’ve been on supplemental thyroid hormone for 20 years, the damage has already been done. I no longer have a thyroid. In those cases, can we get the antibodies to go away or lower? Can we get your symptoms to improve, but maybe you still need some supplemental thyroid hormone? Again, we have to remember, this is a vital organ and it’s supplemental thyroid hormone. It’s not an immunosuppressive medication or something harsh to halt your system. | |
| Trevor: | Okay, great. That’s a great answer. Thank you so much for that. Thank you so much for the interview today, Amy. Tell us where, tell people where they can find you, how they can find out more about you. |
| Amy: | Absolutely. My website is the best place. That’s A-M-Y M-Y-E-R-S .com. Then all of my social media and everything is just \Amy MyersMD. |
| Trevor: | Great. We’ll have the links up for those for your website as well. Amy. thank you so much. I so appreciate what you’re doing in the world, helping people around the world and sharing your journey and being so open to talk about all of this. |
| Amy: | Absolutely. I’m so glad to be introduced to your followers. Thank you. |
| Trevor: | I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Dr. Amy Myers. To learn more about Dr. Myers, you can visit my website, TheSpaDoctor.com. Go to the podcast page with our interview and you’ll find all the information about her book and her summit and the links there. Also, I invite you to join the Spa Doctor community on my website or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes so you don’t miss any of our upcoming shows. |
| If you haven’t done so already, I highly recommend you get your own customized skin profile at theskinquiz.com. It’s free. Based upon the answers to just a few questions, you’ll get your own customized skin report. Just go to theskinquiz.com. Also, don’t miss out on the latest tips for getting glowing skin on the inside and out. Join me on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and join the conversation. Thank you and I’ll see you next time. |
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