What can we do to help ourselves...?

[TorixBear]

Hi,

I wanted to share my response to a post I read this morning, in the hope that a few more people will see it if I actually post it, rather than just leave as a response, and that my story may provide some food for thought...

I receive regular post updates in my inbox, and have replied to a few about doctors refusal to prescribe T3, or suggestions that a patient's symptoms are psychosomatic because there bloods are 'normal' etc. But I notice most posts are from people wanting advice from the community or just moral support, so I think this reposting is relevant to many people. I apologise that I have just 'copied and pasted' with a few additions, but the message is still there. It's in reply to a poor lady (I presume) whose doctor had said that if she wanted T3 she should source it herself as it was too costly for the NHS, and that her symptoms were quite possibly non-thyroid related. Basically, get on with it on your own :/ She sounded understandably gutted and bewildered.

My reply:

"T4 not converting to T3 is not necessarily a thyroid issue, but usually a gut issue, so your doctor, in part, is right to not just issue T3, although sensitivity and better advice could have been given. The right thing to do is deal with the reason WHY you don't convert, WHAT is your body not getting (nutrients etc), and getting (toxins etc) that are causing the gut not to be able to do it's job. If throwing a new pill (T3) into the mix leaves these issues unaddressed, you can be sure that you will then go on to experience more and more symptoms as your body gets sicker and sicker from you not giving it what it needs. T3 isn't what it needs, it needs to be made healthy enough to turn that T4 into the T3 on it own, as it was designed to. This is, after all, how most of us ended up with thyroid issues (and indeed, just about any illness) - our bodies weren't getting what they needed or were getting too many toxins, and the body then malfunctions. We, the patients, just never knew, because allopathic doctors are not trained sufficiently in nutrition and neither are we.

The biggest favour you can do for yourself is to RESEARCH. Look at the links between Gut Health / T4 Conversion / Thyroid Symptoms. Take on board what you learn and look forward to a hopeful and brighter future. I've had Hashimoto's for 16 years. I felt like complete sh** but my levels were 'normal'. My endo offered me scalp tonic and steroids for my horrendous scalp psoriasis and massive hair loss. And finally, at that point, the light went on for me! I was so, so angry! WHY was he basically saying that my body was producing disgusting thick, yellow scalp plaque that itched and burned like crazy, and was unable to support normal hair growth because it was not getting steroids or a chemical tonic for goodness sake!?! What he should have been telling me (and what your endo has touched on) is that my body was not getting the fundamental things a body needs to function, and therefore it didn't stand a chance, and it was crying out for help with every new symptom I gained. The meagre things I DID give it were being used on the vital things I needed to keep alive, not superfluous things like hair retention and growth, decent skin, mental clarity, feelings of happiness or energy! "Give me what I need to work normally for you!" is all our bodies are screaming as we feel worse and worse.

Most endocrinologists only look at glands, they don't look at how the whole body functions synergistically, and do not therefore deal with the cause of our symptoms, they just recommend another drug (antidepressants, steroids, T3?, etc) to dumb them down. And dumbing down does not heal. It leaves the cause untreated and we carry on unwittingly abusing our bodies, and poisoning them with more and more drugs, food and environmental toxins.

After researching for months, I now see a naturopathic doctor who is helping to heal my whole body, from the route cause of most of my symptoms, the gut. It takes willpower (though not for long, just to detox) but if you are desperate, your willpower will see you through and you will emerge with hope and improving health. I eat gluten-free, whole-plant food vegan, and have eliminated personal and household products with known endocrine disrupters from my regime. It was an enormous change for me, but I will never look back. I consider what I put into my body (and on it), now wholeheartedly (note: I think your level of commitment to providing and eliminating certain things to and from the body directly correlates with the results), and yes, you miss out on some things, but the gains are so, so worth it. I just wish I had done my research years ago when I was pregnant with my son, and saved my self, (and him, he has issues from my misinformed pregnancy dietary decisions), so the disease didn't develop. I now no longer have psoriasis or hairloss and 90% of my symptoms have gone in 7 months. And at 46, I am now back to a size 8-10 from a 14-16, and have remained at that weight (wedding dress size!) and I didn't cut down on calories, my body just knew what to do when given what it needed, and stopped losing weight when it was ready.

Please be aware that autoimmune diseases progress through stages if you don't give your body what it needs. The final stage (which my endo said I was at in February this year, ... bearing in mind I only started out with a plain underactive thyroid when I had my son...), precedes the development a second or third autoimmune disease as the body gets sicker. Psoriasis is autoimmune, which I had. I also had bone density issues which my doctor said may be preceding the onset of osteoporosis, which some studies link to autoimmune disfunction. I am so glad I woke up at this point and decided to help myself because the thought of Crohns Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Diabetes, Lupus etc scares the hell out of me.

Unless you get lucky and find a good, functional medicine doctor, I feel the conventional, allopathic doctors are our worst enemy in getting healthy (with illness, not physical trauma). They won't help with healing your body and finding why you are ill, just medicating it. And my anger at my endocrinologist is probably unfair, he's was just offering up what he had learned in the same way I was living my life 'healthily', as I had learned. His learning had not progressed as mine had not. But really think about it - no one ever became ill because they were lacking a prescription pharmaceutical. Our bodies were 'designed' to operate in a certain, very synergistic way, to overcome most illness, to thrive and really LIVE, not just EXIST with steadily increasing malfunctions. But they need the right fuel and conditions, just like your car does to run, or your garden does to grow healthily. We can choose to 'feed' our bodies for health or we can 'feed' illness, quite literally. We have to take our health into our own hands and wake up to the fact that we are ill for a reason, not because of bad luck. Our modern way of life, food choices (often unknowingly unhealthy), and exposure to chemicals has to be the cause, or why would there be such an alarming increase in chronic disease when medicine has progressed so much that it should be decreasing?"

So that was my story. I'm not saying everyone must rush out and become vegan, stop wearing make-up and use mud as a shower gel. Just really look into what is in what you ingest and absorb. Even a little improvement in what you do to yourself could make a little improvement to how you feel, but think what a big improvement could do for you...? If you are still searching for an answer, give it a try, and keep researching and 'tweeking' your self-treatment as you learn, as I am doing. Sometimes we need to turn the mirror on ourselves

Good luck, everyone xx

[Clutter]

TorixBear,

Poor conversion may be a thyroid issue or deiodination issue. It may not be anything to do with gut issues or autoimmunity. If FT3 is low then Liothyronine (T3) or NDT will raise FT3 and will usually improve conversion a little too.

[TorixBear in reply to Clutter]

No, I agree, not always but very often is, hence the reason I think it is important to know the 'why' part. And definitely was with me. I used T3 for a while, (I live in Czech and asked my endocrinologist if I could try it), and while it helped with the blood results for free T3 on paper, my hair kept falling out in handfuls, and psoriasis was unbearable. Hence the search for something more, the 'why?' Changing my diet and lifestyle resulted in my becoming hyper on that medication so I had to come off T3 and reduce T4 as my conversion began happening naturally. Hence me wanting to throw my story into the mix, for those that are still struggling, to maybe consider.

[Angel_of_the_North]

If you have no thyroid or it has mostly been destroyed, just taking T4 isn't how your body was designed and the best gut in the world isn't going to change that. The thyroid produces both T4 and T3, so that's what we need if we no longer have a functioning thyroid. We might be able to get by on just T4 using peripheral conversion (with a tip-top gut and liver), but that isn't how we were designed to function.

[Marz]

I grew up with healthy home grown food back in the 50's with an excellent cook for a Mum.

At 14 I had the BCG and at 27 was in hospital for 6 months with Gut TB - ileo-caecal. 5 operations later I pulled through complete with a Crohns diagnosis in addition. The drugs were horrendous for both ....

I was diagnosed with Hashimotos back in 2005 here in Crete so am still blessed with good food !

At 71 in a couple of weeks I am doing fine with my T4/T3 combo - weekly B12 jabs and a tray full of supplements 😊

Still carrying extra weight in spite of swimming miles in the summer - teaching yoga and walking my dog 😊 - so it must be the toxins in my wine ....😎😎😎

[Naomi8]

Other functional medical practioners say those with auto-immune need to go paleo or ketogenic to get well,which includes an awful lot of meat amongst other changes.

Do you supplement with B12,being vegan?

[TorixBear in reply to Naomi8]

Yes, you're right, a lot do advocate meat, but only organic, not factory farmed, because of the antibiotics and hormones (Paleo), saying that grains and pulses are harmful, but a lot of others say meat is harmful and the grains and pulses are beneficial. It's definitely a tricky one, but they all agree dairy is harmful and masses of veggies are vital to health, and all processed foods are ticking health bombs. I tried the Paleo diet first in my self-help quest and it made SUCH an enormous difference, but then I hit a wall, so to speak, so read further and made the decision to go vegan, which took me to the next level, where I sit now.

So yes, I have to supplement with a good quality B12 (in methylcobalamin form) but my levels are really good, as are all my mineral and vitamin levels. Non-vegans can get B12 from the bacteria in soil that the plant-eating animals they eat have ingested. Unfortunately modern produce is too 'clean' for vegans to get enough B12 from soil so we must supplement this, but everything else is in plentiful supply in a varied, whole plant based diet.

[TorixBear]

But incidentally, I still follow the websites and podcasts of a lot of functional doctors, regardless of the dietary 'camp' they sit in. It's their whole-body approach that 'speaks' to me and I like to know what the latest scientific studies say via their sites - Dr Michael Gregor, Dr Josh Axe, Dr Joseph Mercola, Dr Neal Barnard, Dr Izabella Wentz, Dr Amy Myers, Dr Chris Kresser etc etc. Vegan works for me now, but I am still learning and am open minded if my symptom remission begins to falter. Although the moral issue of animal consumption would be very difficult to ignore now I know what I do