Speaker 1: Welcome to Medicine and Health with doctor Paul Anderson. This
Speaker 1: is a show about opening the open, mysterious world of
Speaker 1: how doctors think and how science works. This program exists
Speaker 1: to educate and how are you go? Now? Here's your house,
Speaker 1: Doctor Paul Edison.
Speaker 2: Health with Doctor Paul Anderson, And in our series on
Speaker 2: why Can't I Get Better? This session we're going to
Speaker 2: talk about the effect of one of your hormonal components
Speaker 2: in your body that's fairly important, which is your thyroid.
Speaker 2: And there's of course a lot of hormonal components, but
Speaker 2: in chronic illness, one of the places that kind of
Speaker 2: can go off of the rail, so to speak, and
Speaker 2: not work as well as it used to or not
Speaker 2: work as well as it should is actually the thyroid,
Speaker 2: and so it's worth bringing that up now in this
Speaker 2: series of why Can't I Get Better? What we're talking
Speaker 2: about are people who have usually had an acute infection
Speaker 2: or an acute trauma, or some combination thereof, and then
Speaker 2: at some point in the future, after they never really
Speaker 2: fully recover, they don't get better, or they have one
Speaker 2: of the very difficult to treat and assess chronic illnesses
Speaker 2: such as long COVID or post COVID syndrome, things such
Speaker 2: as chronic fatigue syndrome CFSME, or fibromyalgia or any other
Speaker 2: number of chronic illnesses that go on and so they'll,
Speaker 2: you know, legitimately wonder why they can't get better. Well,
Speaker 2: in this session, we're going to talk about your thyroid.
Speaker 2: In other sessions we talked about like toxins and other
Speaker 2: infections and immune inhibitors and all this other stuff. Well,
Speaker 2: with your thyroid, the thing to keep in mind is
Speaker 2: it is what operates the metabolic rate inside your body.
Speaker 2: So in other sections we talked about the mitochondria and
Speaker 2: how they make your energy. Well, they get their marching
Speaker 2: orders from the thyroid hormone, which tells them at what
Speaker 2: rate to put out energy. Now, go back to the
Speaker 2: cell and mitochondria section that we did. You also know
Speaker 2: that there's other things that can mess with the mitochondria function,
Speaker 2: such as not enough of oxygen and other nutrients going in,
Speaker 2: or too much toxicity and junk. It's not moving out
Speaker 2: of the cells fast enough. So obviously it's not just
Speaker 2: the thyroid, but the thyroid does play a role. So
Speaker 2: your metabolic rate is operated by your thyroid gland ther
Speaker 2: thyroid gland puts out thyroid hormone, and one version, the
Speaker 2: T three version of your thyroid hormone has receptors on
Speaker 2: both the outside of the cell and on the mitochondria
Speaker 2: on the inside of the cell, and so the receptor
Speaker 2: on the outside of the cell turns on the feeding
Speaker 2: system for the cell, half of which goes to the mitochondria,
Speaker 2: and then the internal receptor actually up or down regulates
Speaker 2: your metabolic rate how fast the mitochondria go to do
Speaker 2: their thing. So back in the mitochondria and cell section,
Speaker 2: what we said is if anything slows down the mitochondria,
Speaker 2: your energy production slows down, and you slow down, you
Speaker 2: don't feel right. Well, there's a number of reasons that
Speaker 2: that can go on, and not enough or abnormally functioning
Speaker 2: thyroid hormone can be a piece of that puzzle. So
Speaker 2: when we think about that, we think, well, how, you know,
Speaker 2: the thyroid, like, you're not dead, it didn't stop working.
Speaker 2: How did it get injured with your you know, whatever
Speaker 2: triggered your chronic illness. Well, there's a couple of things
Speaker 2: to think about. The first thing is that your theory
Speaker 2: could have been totally normal and serving you very well
Speaker 2: for your whole life, and then you get enough stressors
Speaker 2: into your system, and your hormonal system tries to respond,
Speaker 2: tries to bounce back and respond against those stressors because
Speaker 2: your body is ill, and so the thyroid has feedback
Speaker 2: mechanisms that will say, we're creating too much metabolism in
Speaker 2: this person who's sick. And so sometimes with patients, I
Speaker 2: would make the analogy that if your motor is really
Speaker 2: not operating well and you just have to go a
Speaker 2: few blocks to get down to the auto repair shop,
Speaker 2: if you don't put too much of the gas on
Speaker 2: and you don't run your motor too fast, you're going
Speaker 2: to get a little bit more distance out of it
Speaker 2: while it's not running well. Whereas, if you you know,
Speaker 2: floor it put a lot of gas into a motor
Speaker 2: that's very dysfunctional, the motor may break sooner, it may
Speaker 2: have other problems. And your body literally has a version
Speaker 2: of this that it largely regulates through your hormonal system.
Speaker 2: So thyroid is one of those big regulatory areas. Now
Speaker 2: you think, well, how could that go on? It's not
Speaker 2: usually a quick process. It's usually, let's let's say for
Speaker 2: the sake of argument, your thyroid was no problem, and
Speaker 2: then you get knocked down with an illness. And that
Speaker 2: could be you've got pneumonia, you've got lime disease, you've
Speaker 2: got a chronic other problem, you've got a bunch of
Speaker 2: other infections, you got COVID, you got whatever else it happens,
Speaker 2: or you got a trauma, you had a car accident,
Speaker 2: or big surgery, or maybe you know the trifecta. You
Speaker 2: get you know, an accident, a trauma, surgery, then you've
Speaker 2: got recovery going on. So your body, you know, is
Speaker 2: sensing this. So sometimes with a sick body, what the
Speaker 2: hormonal system will do is is it will say, let's
Speaker 2: slow down things. And it's using that sort of logic,
Speaker 2: if you will. It's sort of chemical logic. It's not
Speaker 2: sitting there really thinking about it, we don't believe, but
Speaker 2: it's chemically feeding back and giving this idea that the motor,
Speaker 2: you know, the body is not running well. We don't
Speaker 2: want to put too much energy, too much gas into
Speaker 2: it and make it run fast but ill. Right, So
Speaker 2: you can actually and you see this with people if
Speaker 2: they're real sick, and you upregulate their thyroid by give
Speaker 2: them the thyroid hormone. Though sometimes it'll feel sicker, and
Speaker 2: I tell them, well, it's like having a sick motor
Speaker 2: and then making it run faster. It's going to run fast,
Speaker 2: but not appropriately. So your body has these ways of
Speaker 2: turning down hormonally your your energy production system. Now, one
Speaker 2: way to do that is through the production of antibodies.
Speaker 2: And these are actual autoantibodies, meaning against us, and they
Speaker 2: can turn on during these acute illnesses and chronic illnesses,
Speaker 2: and they can be against our thyroid function. Now, the
Speaker 2: thyroid function is heavily dependent on taking basic things like
Speaker 2: iodine and the amino acid tyrosine and putting them together
Speaker 2: into either a triiodothyronine the T three molecule, or a
Speaker 2: tetra iodothyronine the T four molecule. And so our body
Speaker 2: does this through a bunch of little processes in our
Speaker 2: thyroid gland, which is right in the lower part of
Speaker 2: your throat. And so there are places when you inflame
Speaker 2: the thyroid or the system is backed up, et cetera,
Speaker 2: where the immuneesystem can go start attacking that production system.
Speaker 2: So it can start attacking in two major places to
Speaker 2: slow down production. And so a lot of times what
Speaker 2: happens is that people will get. You know, they have
Speaker 2: normal thyroid before and they're sick afterwards, and sometimes those
Speaker 2: antibodies don't get checked and you'll see that they went
Speaker 2: up because of the illness. So that has to be
Speaker 2: worked on to get the antibodies to come down, which
Speaker 2: is a long, slow process. But the longer the antibodies
Speaker 2: are elevated, the worst your thyroid function is going to be. Well,
Speaker 2: the other thing that your thyroid will do is it
Speaker 2: will actually start to trigger a mirror image molecule of
Speaker 2: the active T three hormone, and it's called reverse T three,
Speaker 2: and so they both can go sit on the receptor
Speaker 2: sites to turn things on. Right, So your metabolism has
Speaker 2: put T three in your system turned and on works
Speaker 2: faster by the T three binding to the receptor. Well,
Speaker 2: if you have reverse TE three, it will bind to
Speaker 2: the receptors, but it won't turn them on. It's sort
Speaker 2: of a blocking hormone. Now, a lot of folks in
Speaker 2: medicine will say, well, reverse T three is probably meaningless,
Speaker 2: It probably doesn't really help your clinical guidance, etc. And
Speaker 2: I would say for the average human who's healthy, that's
Speaker 2: probably true. Reverse T three is probably not a great
Speaker 2: measurement for healthy people. But because my world is chronically
Speaker 2: ill people or people with cancer, which is chronically ill patient. Also,
Speaker 2: what we see in the chronically ill patients, especially when
Speaker 2: they've had these inciting traumas and stuff, is that the
Speaker 2: reverse T three will go up, and that's your body's
Speaker 2: way of blocking the thyroid from turning on your energy.
Speaker 2: And so what will happen then is your energy production
Speaker 2: doesn't shut off or you'd be dead. It slows way down. Now,
Speaker 2: those symptoms then can be things such as fatigue, usually
Speaker 2: severe tiredness, sleeping too much. You can also have disturbed sleep.
Speaker 2: Sometimes you can gain weight really easy. Your water retention
Speaker 2: can be very bad. A whole number of things happen
Speaker 2: when your metabolism slows down. But another thing that's super
Speaker 2: important there is that the metabolism slowing down will also
Speaker 2: make that mitochondrial problem that we talked about in the
Speaker 2: other segment more magnified. So let's say the mitochondria are
Speaker 2: already kind of sick and they're recovering from your illness,
Speaker 2: they're feeling slow. You're feeling slow if now you're blocking
Speaker 2: your thyroid, either through autoimmune issues or reverse T three
Speaker 2: or whatever, or you're just your levels of T three
Speaker 2: and T four go down, your mitochondria are going to
Speaker 2: be double slow, and so you're going to be double slow.
Speaker 2: So the things that you have to do first is
Speaker 2: realize that even if your thyroid was normal prior, even
Speaker 2: if you didn't have any antibodies to your thyroid or
Speaker 2: reverse T three prior, now your body is in a
Speaker 2: new situation. And so every chronically ill patient on the
Speaker 2: screening side, when we're trying to sort out how many
Speaker 2: problems they have creating their chronic illness, all of those
Speaker 2: patients really need to have the thyroid looked at in
Speaker 2: a multi dimensional way, and so that that would be
Speaker 2: the normal screening of the TSH test, and then usually
Speaker 2: they do a T four that's the primary output hormone,
Speaker 2: and sometimes now they'll do a T three as well.
Speaker 2: So those are the hormonal and the feedback parts. But
Speaker 2: then we also add on three other things. So that
Speaker 2: would be the two main thyroid antibodies that are blocking.
Speaker 2: There's others that do other things, but the two main
Speaker 2: blocking antibodies, which would be the antithybroglobulin and the thyroid
Speaker 2: peroxtase antibodies, and then we do a reverse T three
Speaker 2: just to get a three sixty. Look at the thyroid function. Now,
Speaker 2: maybe it's doing great, no problems anywhere there. Then you
Speaker 2: kind of focus on other things. You focus on the
Speaker 2: mitochondria more, You focus on many of these other things
Speaker 2: we talk about, but a lot of times in chronically
Speaker 2: other people, that's one of the factors that comes up. Now,
Speaker 2: the thing you have to keep in mind is that
Speaker 2: that's all you fix, and you've got all this other
Speaker 2: junk in your system, and your mitochondria can't work as
Speaker 2: there's a lot of metabolic toxicity and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: You're going to turn your thyroid on and you're going
Speaker 2: to feel actually worse because your thyroid's working hard in
Speaker 2: a system than sick. So a lot of times in
Speaker 2: chronic illness we have to play a little bit of
Speaker 2: a balancing game of getting the thyroid back online slowly
Speaker 2: so that your body starts to work faster and better,
Speaker 2: and then kind of start to fix the other things
Speaker 2: that are contributing. That's all these other sections that we're doing.
Speaker 2: On one, I can't I get better, and you fix
Speaker 2: all of those kind of at the same time or
Speaker 2: at least in a rotation and then your thyroid can
Speaker 2: get back to being normal. So there's a whole number
Speaker 2: of other things, but that's why the theroid is so critical,
Speaker 2: and that's why it gets feedback to it that slow
Speaker 2: it down. Now, one thing I like to say is,
Speaker 2: wherever you're seeing or hearing this, we're on all the
Speaker 2: pod burners. We're on CTR Radio, Facebook Live, and then
Speaker 2: on YouTube on DRA online, doctor Online, Please like, share
Speaker 2: and subscribe, do the notifications. It really helps. We need
Speaker 2: subscribers on all the platforms, especially over on YouTube where
Speaker 2: there's a really growing community for this sort of information. Also,
Speaker 2: I will put in the show notes some links. There
Speaker 2: will be some links to some information around this, and
Speaker 2: also some links to some provider referral services, etc. That
Speaker 2: may be of help to you. But that's about all
Speaker 2: the time that we have for thyroid. One of the
Speaker 2: things that we usually say is with thyroid, it's because
Speaker 2: it's a hormonal problem and there's all these things to test.
Speaker 2: You really need to work with a healthcare provider who's
Speaker 2: used to looking at chronically old people's thyroid so you
Speaker 2: can do all the testing, but also then they can
Speaker 2: treat you appropriately and that might mean hormonal treatment, it
Speaker 2: might mean non hormonal treatment, but that's really dependent upon
Speaker 2: how you're doing in that respect with your thyroid, how
Speaker 2: your labs are, and how you physically are doing in
Speaker 2: your body. Well, we're going to move on right now
Speaker 2: to our next segment, and I want to thank you
Speaker 2: for listening to this one and why it came better.
Speaker 2: Thybrid addition