Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Welcome, my outside the box thinkers, to the anti aging Unraveled podcast, where I am your host, Dr. Lori Gerber. In this podcast, we will explore the fascinating world of personalized anti aging medicine that considers the whole person inside and out, and how all systems are interconnected to each other. In today's world of modern medicine, we often find ourselves like just another number in a system that prioritizes quick fixes over sustainable and more natural solutions. Well, let's get ready for a paradigm shift in health and beauty. We look far beyond treating symptoms and aim to get to the root cause of our health and cosmetic issues. This podcast is your go to source for all things natural, outside the box, and innovative in integrative medicine and cosmetic dermatology. So sit back, relax, and get ready to dive deep into the world of functional medicine and aesthetics. With me, Dr. Lori Gerber. Let's take a trip down the real skin revolution pathway together.
[00:01:05] Hi, everybody. It is Dr. Lori. I'm so excited to be back with another episode of anti aging unraveled. I know it's been a little while, life has gotten a little crazy, but I'm really excited to bring you the newest episode, and it's one that's actually pretty near and dear to my heart. And I hope to make this a three part series. And the series is going to be about the thyroid and cortisol connection. So our stress response hormone and our thyroid and how they interact with each other. The second one will be all about cortisol regulation and adrenal fatigue, and we will kind of link that to our thyroid connection and how it affects our thyroid, and last but not least, how the gut and the immune system affect both of these, the thyroid and the cortisol connection. So today we'll focus on the thyroid and a little bit of cortisol and the adrenals. And this is something that plagues me, and it's plagued me for quite some time since residency. I do have autoimmune thyroid disease and got that during my residency and really out of the clear blue and subsequently developed a lot of Thin skin, fruit allergies. So almost everything. So, those of you that know my story, after pregnancy, most of these things started happening to me. And then after my autoimmune thyroid started, I became pregnant, had my son, and then became allergic to literally all thin Skinned Fruit. So, again, that gut Immune Thyroid Connection. And of course, I was a Resident running myself ragged a lot of hours. And we can talk about how the CortiSol, how they affect each other, but this is something that I've struggled with for quite some time. So I wanted to talk a little bit to start, guys, about what does the thyroid do? We've all heard of Low Thyroid, but really, it's like your gas Pedal, it's the drive that keeps you going. It's your energy, it's your metabolism, it's your ability to kind of lose weight, lean out. There's a lot of functions. And the thyroid that's checked at our primary doctor's office is really, they're only checking a TSH, which is a Stimulating hormone. It actually doesn't even come from the thyroid. It actually is part of the Circuitry that regulates the thyroid. So my goal is to teach you what needs to be drawn, what doctors, or what you can look for in your own labs, and what that means. So the two major hormones in the thyroid are your t three and your t four. They're the regulators of our body functions, and also there's CAlCitonin RegulatioN REsponSible for our CAlcium balance and bone density. There's also two minor hormones, t one and t two, which we're not going to talk too much about in this Particular Podcast, but we will in Subsequent. But I think the real thing to understand is doctors, for the most part, are only checking a tsh. We're not looking at the total t four, total t three and available t three and t four to our bodies, which means what is actually available for your bodies to use? It's one thing for a Stimulating Hormone. I love to say, asking for more hormone, say, hey, come help me, please, I need more. And it goes up, and our doctor will tell us we're hypothyroid or low thyroid. But really, what is our t three and t four doing? How much do we have? And actually, in our body, we really only produce 20% of our daily requirements. So where does the rest of that come from? And really we have to create it. Our thyroid will make about 20% of the actual molecule itself, and we have about 100 micrograms a day of t four, which is our inactive thyroid hormone. It's the one that actually doesn't do that much, but it has to make active thyroid hormone, which is t three. T three is our life force. It's our gas pedal for the most part, and we have about 30 micrograms a day of that. And in order to make the majority of our thyroid hormone, we actually need iodine. We need a lot of things, but iodine, in a process called, I can never say this deionization takes an iodine molecule off of t four. Four actually means four iodines and makes it thyroid hormone with only three iodines. T three. And in order to do that process, guys, we need a lot of cofactors and a lot of things to go right. And in many of our bodies, this doesn't work appropriately. So we're going to kind of tease that apart, talk to you about what will maybe affect that conversion. But if we can't convert t four to t three, then we don't feel great because it's our life force, right? It's our gas pedal. The most commonly prescribed drug on the market, which we're going to talk about is t four. It's levothyroxin or synthroid. And unfortunately, the t four that's on the market has a lot of binding agents, a lot of fillers and is very poorly absorbed. And then it goes back to, can everyone make t three from t four? And the answer is no. So what's required for us to do this conversion? How do we actually feel better? We need zinc, adequate protein intake, obviously iodine, which I mentioned, we need selenium to actually create active t three. We need vitamin a and d three so that, that t three, that active thyroid hormone can actually communicate with cells without that d being adequate. And the a, we can't communicate with our cells efficiently with that t three even if we can produce it. So it's so important when we're doing labs, which we'll talk about, to actually look for these things. We're looking for zinc, we're looking for selenium, we're looking for a, we're looking for d three. And when our body cannot do that job, so let's just say you don't have enough or your body can't convert. I always say it can't get across the border, it can't create this active thyroid hormone. There is a byproduct that is called reverse t three. It's a non functional hormone. So it's almost like you're making broken hormone and you're making a lot of it. And that can happen for a lot of reasons. And a lot of those reasons, guys, are what's going on in your own bodies. For example, a lot of cortisol. So too much stress hormone, insulin resistance and diabetes. So if your sugars and insulins are not working appropriately, severe calorie restriction. Are you starving yourself? Are you trying to do a diet that's too calorie restrictive, that actually will tell your body and it will be ineffective in making more t three. Effectively, it'll make more reverse t three. Long term beta blockers. Not only do they make you a little bit fatigued because they lower your heart rate, but they actually reduce that conversion of t four to t three. Chronic inflammation. You guys know this is one of my favorite things to talk about, but chronic inflammation. So, again, we go back to gut or bug or a toxic exposure, pesticides, all these things that can cause chronic inflammation and autoimmune disease. Iron deficiency. When you have iron deficiency, you can't actually get the t four to the tissues to even convert to t three. So having low iron or even coming up with rip roaring iron deficiency is a really strong correlation with not making enough thyroid hormone and Lyme disease. And there are a lot of other bugs out there that can cause this inability to convert from t four to t three, Lyme being one of the most common ones to talk about. So you think that's really interesting, right? We have all these other things going on in our body that actually will inhibit us from adequate production of t three. Here's the interesting thing, guys. When your doctors are checking a tsh that is only shut down when you have adequate t four, the inactive hormone. So, meaning your body will stop asking for more thyroid hormone when it has enough t four, t three has nothing to do with that pathway. So even if your TSH is normal, you may not have enough t three or active thyroid hormone. So we really need to maximize the ability to create t three. What else can stop your body from having enough t three and t four, for that matter, is antibodies. When our immune system gets triggered, our gut gets triggered, our inflammation gets triggered, these antibodies are produced, and a lot of the time, the first thing we make our antibodies to is to our thyroid. So we have something called tpo or antithyroperoxidase antibodies, which attack the actual enzyme that helps to convert t four to t three. So if we're fighting that, it's an inappropriate attack of our own conversion of thyroid. Same thing with a thyroglobulin antibody. It actually fights the immune protein that literally synthesizes t three and t four. So, again, you can have these two attacks on your own thyroid. So what happens is you can have a normal tsH, and honestly, you might even have an adequate t three and t four. But what if you have these antibodies? Any given Day, your body can be fighting your own thyroid hormone, and you can't necessarily feel the benefits. Okay? And as long as that's happening, we know there's chronic inflammation, and every day. I always say it's a Polaroid Picture in time, right. It's saying, what does your thyroid look like that day and what do your antibodies look like? We need to shut those antibodies down. It's really important not to just treat thyroid numbers, but to treat those thyroid antibodies. So what happens if you don't treat it? What happens if your primary or whoever's checking your TSH and let's say they do check a t three and t four? And according to the labs that are out there, the low normal ranges, they're normal. What happens if, in my world, they're what I call subclinically hypothyroid and we don't treat this? And I find this to be the most interesting, one of the most interesting things I'll say during this talk. Subclinical meaning not positive on regular labs. According to traditional medicine, hypothyroid is linked with a greater than twofold increase in heart attack risk among women greater than 55. It's established as a cardiac risk factor just the same as high cholesterol and smoking and low t three. So low active thyroid hormone is a really strong predictor of death in cardiac patients. So if you have coexisting cardiac disease and a low t three, it might be directly implicated in poor prognosis of those cardiac patients. So we're going to talk about why that we don't treat some of this, what the fear is, and we're going to dispel some of those myths. But I think it's really important to understand there is a very distinct difference between conventional medicine and how they treat thyroid disease and integrative medicine models like what I do of one, diagnosis of the actual thyroid disorder, and two, the treatment protocols. So we're going to talk about those differences and really kind of go into them and tease them apart. But when we talk about these factors in traditional medicine, of what keeps t four so that inactive from going to t three active, the conventional medicine and etiology teaches us, okay, advanced age, smoking, diabetes, some of the common ones are pretty well known in traditional medicine. But I really think that we need to talk about what integrative medicine brings to the table with thyroid disease and what stops the conversion from t four to t three. So actually, for example, I'll give you some examples, excessive consumption of broccoli, kale, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts. I know that sounds strange, but believe it or not, they can inhibit the active thyroid hormone production, stress and anything that affects that cortisol, whole axis taking other medications at the same time as your thyroid medications, inhibiting that absorption and conversion. We talked about birth control pills, but they're extremely common in interrupting this pathway. Chemo or radiation, smoking and diabetes, toxic exposures. So pesticides and other xenoestrogens and other toxins in the air, believe it or not, extreme exercise over exercising. Why? Because we're going to talk about that cortisol or that adrenals fatigue your body, just pitter pattering out inflammation. My favorite, low iron. We talked a little bit about that. If your hormones are deciding to decline, is a menopause or andropause that will affect your thyroid? They almost always go together. Very rarely do I treat a menopausal andropause, male and female, with hormone deficiencies that I don't discuss. Low thyroid, low testosterone, low hgh and low progesterone are all implemented in that pesticides, low ferretin and low iron. We talked a little bit about that already, iodine excess. So having too much iodine, you can also see the same thing with having too little iodine. And obviously there can be a genetic predisposition in this ability to convert. Let's talk about the ones that are integrative, and I'm going to get a little bit more detailed. So inflammatory diets, gluten, dairy, sugar, corn, soy, things that are extremely inflammatory, they irritate the gut, they create inflammation, they create autoimmunity, and in turn they can create thyroid disorder, heavy metals, big one. Infectious disease. Again, I alluded to that earlier. There's so many underlying bugs that can affect this, any kind of cortisol abnormality, high or low. So not sleeping over, training, type A personalities, someone that is a chronic infection, you name it, anything that affects that, what we call HPA axis can cause an inability to create that thyroid hormone. Halogens such as fluoride, bromide and chlorine, they can actually interfere with the iodine molecule and the ability to convert that t four to t three and certain medications. We talked about birth control pills and beta blockers, but amiodorone, seizure medicines like a dilantin, prednisone, so steroids again, it goes back to that cortisol reaction, synthetic progesterones, so birth control pills again, and other synthetic progesterones, they can all affect that conversion. So I think the real key to starting to get diagnosed correctly with thyroid disorder is one not just looking for thyroid, right, looking for cortisol, looking for mineral deficiencies, looking for underlying bugs and infection. But we need a tsH, a free t three. So available active thyroid hormone, total of t four. What do we have available to create this t three? How much inactive stuff do we have? Reverse t three. Vitamin D, antibodies. I'm going to say that like a million times. Antibodies, antibodies, antibodies. Antibodies to thyroid guys are not normal. Even if your thyroid is normal, it is not normal to fight it. That needs to be addressed early and aggressively because when you have one autoimmune disease, then they start to trickle, you have more and then there's other immune dysfunction and that's the last thing you want. B twelve. Folic acid and ferretin and iron levels. These are all things that we should be checking to see just the thyroid, how it's functioning and making sure you have enough of those precursors. We know low iron exacerbates hypothyroidism, especially in, well, let me back up. Low iron exacerbates hyperthyroid hypothyroid. But we also know low vitamin D does. Again, we have these digestive challenges. We're probably gut disruptive already and then we can't absorb our nutrients such as iron and d. So as we go through these modules we're going to really start talking about d and not being able to absorb the nutrients and getting the absorption of those nutrients and treating that gut. So I don't treat anybody for thyroid disorder unless I'm replacing the minerals that they're deficient in such as d and b twelve and iron. Okay, so let's talk about some of these treatment options and again, how it changes from integrative to non integrative medicine and how honestly we can work together to basically have a good synergy here. So let's talk about the different types of replacement t four inactive thyroid hormone is able to be replaced by itself in something called levothyroxin, which is a prescription from the pharmacy or branded synthroid. You can use something like tyracent and tyracent come in gel caps and liquid. They are a clean no binding agents, no fillers. Replacement for t four. I love tyrasint. It's one of my favorite t four only. It's actually my favorite only t four replacement. They do also make a compounded or a pharmacy can compound. So like not a traditional pharmacy, they can actually make a t four compounded medication. T three, not as many people have heard of. This is called Leo threeanine and that is a generic prescription to replace active thyroid hormone. It's also known as cytomal. And again you can get a compounded t three and then there's combinations. So traditional medicine does use some combinations of t four and t three. Not many, but they'll use something called armor thyroid or np thyroid. So that's a physiologic combination of t four and t three. And it's pig or porcine based, but there are compounded versions of that. And actually there are glandular extracts that have everything that the thyroid has to offer in a capsule. So we're going to talk about when to use these different things and how we kind of combine them. But I think to really understand this, we need to make sure that we're looking for the right patient groups, because a lot of you may not realize that you have thyroid disorder again, that TSH comes back normal. Your primary says you're fine, but you have lots of gut issues, you have lots of food sensitivities, maybe an underlying infection. Maybe you have gluten sensitivity and didn't know it. Maybe you have what's called sibo, which is a small intestinal bacterial overgrowth where it's like inappropriate bugs in the small intestine. Maybe you have underlying liver disease or fatty liver. So these are all reasons that what I would say t four by itself, meaning only giving even a clean t four sometimes isn't enough because all of these things stop the conversion from t four to t three. So we call that like thyroid treatment failures or never feeling better because we can't get your numbers up to par. And giving t four again, there are certain t four s like Tyrason I love, because we're not going to make antibodies to that product, we're not going to fight it, and we'll talk a little bit about that. But it also covers up thyroid deficiencies sometimes and doesn't always address that root cause. Looking for the food sensitivities, looking for the other deficiencies, looking for the bugs and inflammation. And if we don't treat that and just give t four again, like I said, that TSh, that little helper molecule that's asking for more thyroid hormone, it'll shut that off and your primary will check it and it'll look beautiful. But your t three, that active gas pedal hormone, will never get high enough and you'll never feel great. So what do we call a failure where they never feel better? They are somewhat improved, but maybe you have lingering symptoms, or like half the symptoms are better, that they still have depression or anxiety or hair loss, fatigue, still with joint pains, cold or heat intolerance, maybe even increased blood pressure. And sometimes when we're not looking at high cortisol levels, we're actually misdiagnosing these thyroid disorder patients. We're treating them like they only have a thyroid disorder, but their cortisol levels are really high. Their stress hormone is really high, which is where that connection really plays a role. If cortisol or stress hormone is high, it'll actually make your tsh high. And if we don't correct that cortisol disorder, fixing the thyroid by itself doesn't usually work. And then sometimes we're not getting the whole picture, and we think, wow, all these things are isolated. When we give back t four, believe it or not, we actually have a higher risk of increasing cholesterol levels by about 15 milligrams per deciliter and that bad cholesterol by about five to six milligrams per deciliter on average. So t four by itself has also been shown to raise cholesterol. So I'm a big believer in if we're going to give thyroid replacement 95% of the time, we should be giving some t four and t three in combination. So a lot of people ask me this question. Why won't my primary, or why don't doctors like what's called desiccated thyroid, or t three and t four combined in a pill made from a pig, essentially, or pig extract? It's called armor, or sometimes NP thyroid. And like I said, they make a compounded version, too, and it's in a physiologic range. So it is very physiologic. I think the thing that our primaries and other docs don't really understand is that we really need this t three. And I think that's a really common misstep or misunderstanding, is that t three. A lot of us cannot convert from t four to t three. That is the primary reason. They just don't understand the need for the t three. And they also don't understand that it's a prescriptive, it's not a supplement, always a prescriptive t three to t four. And it is manufactured naturally, but it's still prescription. T four and t three. There's also a lot of talk about the quality control of desiccated thyroid, because it can be obviously animal dependent. Now, that being said, they do purify it and check levels and make sure that it's a physiologic levels. But in the past, there has been some recalls over what I would call suboptimal or superoptimal dosing. So I think that's part of the hesitation with most primary doctors and that we're not trained on it. I will tell you, it is not part of our training process in med school to learn about desiccated thyroid hormone. So we know that t three is needed. And the brain and the heart specifically have no transport of t four into those cells. They require t three. So if we're looking to get rid of brain fog and that kind of brain fatigue, a lot of the times, t four by itself does not work for that. When we see people in the upper one third of that free t three range, we see improvements in depression, we see improvements in immune function, we see cholesterol being lowered, bone improvement, so bone density improvement, heart health. And honestly, when you only replace t four, we don't see a reduction in kind of those aches and pains. A lot of the time that come with thyroid disorder, when you put t three on board, it seems to give a much better chance of getting rid of what we would call those myalgias or those aches and pains. Another reason primaries love to just use t four is it's relatively long acting. It has a long half life. So during the time that it's being produced, or, sorry, during the time it's being given, you will get a 24 hours kind of lasting release on that. T three, even in combination, tends to be very short acting. So you can give t three by itself, which I love to do with t four by itself. So these clean t three and t four s. But just know that t three is short. So it does usually need to be dosed at least twice a day, sometimes three times a day, depending on the patient. If it's wearing off on the patient, it's fast release, rapid absorption, improves the t three levels very quickly, and it peaks in about 3 hours.
[00:24:28] So the worry with a lot of docs is it can cause a hyper or an overactive like side effect if you dose it too quickly and too strong. So what is that? Palpitations, maybe not sleeping, sweating, some tightness in the chest, anxiety type feelings, because it's like revving up that gas pedal. Okay, now, I do see a better response with branded t three cytoml as opposed to generic. I would say about little more than 50% of my patients feel significantly better on the branded, and 73% of the patients, according to this one study, had an increase in energy, 55% had mood improvement, and 26 had improvement in hair growth. So they weren't losing hair anymore. And I think that's really important. The branded cytoml, again, we kind of go back to that branded tyrant sole and tyracent gel caps. Cytomel is gluten free and there's no cornstarch. So when we're treating thyroid, a lot of these patients have underlying, and you guys are probably shaking your head, have underlying gut disorder immune issues. So we really want to make sure that the medicine we're giving them does not have a lot of binding agents that are going to set these things off and that they're absorbed really cleanly. And that's really where this t three comes into play. Like I said, there are generic versions but I find the release on them to be a little less consistent and some more adverse reactions and have to start at a lower dose if this patient can get it covered to do the branded, I do prefer the branded. Now why use t three and t four as opposed to a combo which we're going to talk about in a minute. I think the biggest reason to use t three and t four by themselves is to prevent antibody production. If someone is already making antibodies to their thyroid they are going to find that nine times out of ten they're going to make antibodies to a compounded or a desiccated thyroid extract. So if it's armor or antithyroid, usually you're going to start to make antibodies and obviously that defeats the purpose of the replacement. Now you can do both. I've seen it done where you give some t three, t four and a glandular which are defecated which especially if you can't get someone controlled, you just have to do a really good job of attempting to control their gut and their immune response to that thyroid. So we really want to make sure we're treating that gut from an anti inflammatory perspective, getting rid of those inflammatory food groups as much as possible, the gluten, the dairy, the soy and really try to optimize our antiinflammatory effect. I think when we think about these desiccated thyroid extracts we really need to understand that they are sometimes an adjunct and an add on to some t four and t three and sometimes they can be used by themselves. And when we talk about these, they generally speaking have all the thyroid hormones in them. So t two, t one and calcitonin. And what we see with this is that sometimes in certain patients, especially if patients have already been on these and you're trying to get their antibodies down, they're really hard to get off because they feel so good with the t two, the t one and the calcitonin. The other problem with desiccated thyroid extracts is their doses are already combined. So when you double or triple, you're doubling both the t four and t three. And in some patients, you don't need that. You need to just double the t three or just increase the t four. So it can be a little bit problematic to try to adjust dose if they're a really complicated patient. So I encourage you not to think one way or another, but just to understand that you can make antibodies to the desiccated thyroid extracts and to the other NP thyroid, so you can get prescriptive versions. And obviously, there are not. Obviously, but there's also non prescriptive versions that are supplements that are on the market that really are more just the whole gland put into a capsule. And that's really what I'm talking about with. But you can make antibodies to either the NP thyroid, the armor, or the whole glandular extract put into a capsule. So I think the studies are really interesting. The cognitive performance and the mood improved significantly with people using desiccated thyroid extracts. A lot of blood pressure lowering, improved cholesterol, improved insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome. So we see a lot more improvement of the, I would call the crossover body systems than we do with just treating with plain t four. We do see a lot of that, like I said, with t four and t three combined as well. Okay, so this is probably the last point I want to make. And then in our next session, we'll go through cortisol. And I want to put this out there, because I get this a lot from patients, and I get this a lot from primary care physicians and sometimes even endocrinologists, to be honest, that hyperthyroidism, overactive or overtreating, is associated with afib atrial fibrillation. So the heart inappropriately beating. And while that is at times true, optimizing the thyroid in general improves cholesterol and lipids, improves congestive heart failure, actually smooths out our heartbeat. So it's actually what we call a positive ionotrope. So it actually is, in theory, if you don't completely overtreat a positive ionotrope and actually prevent Afib and other kinds of heart arrhythmias and actually dilates the blood vessels, so it actually gives you more blood flow to the cardiac muscle. And I really want to stress that just because a tsh thyroid stimulating hormone is low on labs does not necessarily mean you're being overtreated. It just means that you are suppressing the request for more thyroid hormone. You're basically saying, hey, guys, I'm replacing this. You don't need to ask for more. And the real key to understanding whether or not you're high or low with treatment is actually checking that free t three. Total t four and your reverse t three and your antibodies to check treatment protocols and maybe even some iodine levels. And I also do that after taking the medication. So I'll have you take, especially if you're on a desiccated thyroid or an armor based or a t three, I will have you take that two to 3 hours before the labs. Again, remember, t three is short acting. So is the desiccated thyroid. They're both short acting. See what that peak of action is. See how high I'm getting your levels. If I'm getting your levels double or more than that, then obviously that's not what I want. If I'm getting you a little over where I would like your steady state to be, then I know you're absorbing it, and I know I'm getting you up high enough where I can keep you at a nice, steady state throughout the day. I'll also check a trough so first thing in the morning when everything should be worn off except t four, if you're using it. I will check to see what your levels are without those, to see what your low is again, to make sure we're not overshooting the mark. If you're staying too high when the medicine should be out of your system, then we're over treating. So that, to me, is the best way to check for thyroid replacement. And I'll do it intermittently. I'll do it where I have you take your medicine, and then maybe three to six months later, I'll have it. When you don't take your medicine. Another myth is that over replacing thyroid or replacing it too much, it'll cause a breakdown of bone or osteoporosis. And the studies have really shown that there's no decrease in bone density in pre or postmenopausal women and in all men with thyroid replacement, and it does not seem to affect it. And high dose thyroid does not appear to be a significant risk factor for osteoporosis. So, again, those are the two things I get a lot, and I think when we talk about the first one, the hyperthyroidism and Afib, I think that there's an association, but there's not a causality. So, meaning there's a whole lot of other things that can go into them. Having afib, it's not just the thyroid being overactive, is it? The electrolyte abnormalities that are going into this. Treating the thyroid itself to an optimal level does not create atrial fibrillation. If anything, it's actually beneficial for the heart muscle and the blood flow to the cardiac muscle. So I want you guys to think about that. And while we're kind of wrapping this session up, I want you to think a little bit about stress and whether that's exercise stress, brain stress, kids stress, travel stress, not sleeping stress, food sensitivities, making our whole body stress bug. Anything that stresses our system out creates what we call a cortisol response or a stress response. That cortisol regulates a whole lot of things, including our insulin and our ability to process glucose, but it also regulates our immune system. Again, if we talk about the things that we kind of reviewed in the thyroid section here, diabetes and insulin resistance makes your thyroid network efficiently. It makes it underactive or slow. Inflammation, autoimmunity, and immune issues also makes the thyroid not work efficiently. And last but not least, it can make antibodies to your thyroid if it progresses too far. So we're going to start to discuss that and also how that food sensitivity and gut plays into that in session three. But I want you to start to think about that. These are not isolated systems. So gut immune brain is what I call a pyramid. And thyroid, adrenal, pancreas is another one. And again, we just went through thyroid. Adrenal is where the cortisol is. Cortisol is made, and pancreas is the insulin and glucose response. So if you can think about those as interconnecting, this will make a whole lot more sense to you. And when we go to treat these things or tease apart what's going on with you, you'll understand, like, oh, yeah, I started with, I had a baby, and then I wasn't sleeping for six months, eight months, and then my cortisol was off. And then I started to have antibodies to my thyroid, and then my thyroid went low. Right, which is probably what happened with me. And I have food sensitivities my whole life that I didn't realize I had. So my gut immune was already set off with gluten and dairy and all kinds of other food sensitivities that were underlying. So, again, we're going to talk about how to fix this stuff. But if you can take this and put the connections together and realize they're not isolated, at least you can advocate for yourself, too, with your labs at your primary. Or, as always, you guys can come to me for a full workup. We have a link on our website. It's at mydoctorlori.com, and that's all spelled out. And you can fill out our wellness intake, or you can actually set up a brief intake with our patient liaison to see if you're a candidate or if you want to move forward. And I would love to talk this through with you. And we can go through your labs. We do a lot of labs, so be ready for that. But we try to get all the information so that we're not guessing. We're getting your story, we're putting the pieces together, and we're creating what we call a personalized, proactive, and participatory experience to get you better through integrative health. So I hope you guys learned a lot. I hope this is not boring as heck, and I can't wait to bring you the next podcast. We podcast, too. And like I said, it'll be on cortisol and adrenal fatigue and how it links back to thyroid and thyroid optimization. So I will see you guys next time for another episode of Antiaging unraveled. And don't forget to like my page and go onto our website and check us out. Feel free to sign up for our newsletter and get lots of information as well. Thanks, guys. See you soon.
