Heal Your Gut, Decrease Your Thyroid Medication Dosage, and Feel Better Than Ever

Laura is one of my patients who successfully decreased her thyroid medication dosage by more than half of what she was taking when she started over 15 years ago. We didn’t accept that her symptoms were just a sign of aging. Instead, we healed her gut, were able to reduce her thyroid dosage, and now she feels better than ever!

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Heal Your Gut, Decrease Your Thyroid Medication Dosage, and Feel Better Than Ever

“It’s pretty amazing to feel like you can reverse a dysfunction in your body. That’s a powerful thing!”

This is the recent sentiment of one of my patients, Laura, who had a recent shift in her overall well-being after we improved her gut health, which allowed us to reduce her thyroid medication.

I’ve been working closely with Laura to optimize her thyroid medication to help her feel her absolute best.

We worked on healing her gut, and within the span of few months her lab work started coming back as hyperthyroid. This meant she was getting too much thyroid medication. But we didn’t change her medication levels to cause this sudden uptick in results, we simply worked on her gut health.

Here’s what happened.

In an effort to ensure her gut was absorbing her medication properly and consistently, we took necessary precautions to fully heal her gut.

Healing the gut for those who take thyroid medication is especially important because it allows for effective absorption due to improved permeability of the stomach lining.

Once we improved the leakiness of her gut so it efficiently absorbed her medication, she only needed half of the original dosage.

I want to reiterate this point because it’s incredibly important.

After Laura’s gut health was improved, she only needed HALF of her original thyroid medication dosage.

She also reported feeling better in her overall health once the transition was fully made.

Here’s what she had to say about it:

“It was quite remarkable to me to, first of all, have that dramatic drop in medication.

And I was waiting to gain the weight back, because there was that part of me which was just waiting to see whether I was going to pick up some weight. Which I have not.

I feel better and feel like I’m getting more balanced.

And the dose that I am on now is half of what I had been on. And it’s actually lower than the dose I was originally on when I started 15 to 20 years ago. That tells me that my thyroid is functioning way more optimally now than it was then.

That’s such a remarkable thing!”

Before she came in my office, she was confused by the various symptoms she was experiencing, which seemed to only be getting worse.

Laura is the kind of person who worked really hard at her health and took good care of her thyroid. But at the end of the day, some of what she was doing wasn’t wrong, it just wasn’t exactly what was best for her.

Once we took the motivation and drive she had and focused it in the right direction, her health took off, giving her great results.

I also want to point out her thyroid autoimmune antibodies have reduced significantly, meaning her lab work confirms her perceived boost in vitality.

Laura’s story is the perfect example of how those on thyroid medication don’t always need more hormones. Throwing excess medication at a problem isn’t always the best solution. Just because you are hypothyroid (even after a medication increase) doesn’t necessarily mean you need more hormone, it means something else has been missed.

Laura went on to point out another very important point.

“As we age, there’s a tendency to be begin to believe that if you’re not feeling as well as you used to feel when you were younger it’s part of aging.

So, it’s a remarkable thing for me to realize, no, this isn’t aging. This was a problem with my thyroid, getting on the right diet, making sure I was properly diagnosed, and then getting my thyroid medication to be optimal.”

There’s nothing I like more than to see patients empowered by their treatments.

Laura and patients like her don’t have to accept their symptoms as fate, with no say in the matter.

As people are looking to stay healthier longer, it’s critical they become aware of the different treatment options available to them. And for many, these treatments involved looking outside the box.

By simply changing her diet to heal her gut, Laura was able to:

• Decrease her dosage by more than half
• Improve her quality of life
• Not gain any additional weight

And most importantly, she feels better than ever.

If you want to feel better and reduce your thyroid medication, I urge you to examine your gut health. When your body isn’t properly absorbing your medications, your quality of life pays the price.

The impact of gut health on medication absorption is still largely unknown to most, so share this tip with someone you know on thyroid medication – you just might give them the gift of a better life.

• Get help using this information to become healthier.
  
• Get a free gut health eBook and be notified when my print book becomes available.
• Healthcare providers looking to sharpen their clinical skills, check out the Future of Functional Medicine Review Clinical Newsletter.

What do you think? I would like to hear your thoughts or experience with this.

Dr. Ruscio is your leading functional and integrative doctor specializing in gut related disorders such as SIBO, leaky gut, Celiac, IBS and in thyroid disorders such as hypothyroid and hyperthyroid. For more information on how to become a patient, please contact our office. Serving the San Francisco bay area and distance patients via phone and Skype.