1 Powerful Way to Overcome Your Thyroid Symptoms

Amy’s story of resolving thyroid symptoms by addressing gut health.

Many people are misguidedly diagnosed with an underactive thyroid disorder when their thyroid health really isn’t to blame. I’m passionate about not doing thyroid treatment too early because many patients waste time chasing unnecessary strategies.

As an illustrative example, meet Amy, who came to my clinic after reading Healthy Gut, Healthy You, to seek relief from fatigue, insomnia, brain fog, bloating, and weight gain, which are all symptoms of hypothyroidism. She had already spent more than a-year-and-a-half trying to get well.

Subscribe for future episodes

• 
• 
• 

Download this Episode (right click link and ‘Save As’)

Misdiagnosed Hypothyroidism

Amy was misdiagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, after seeing several doctors. She said, “For a lot of time, I just didn’t feel quite right. It just felt like something was off. I went to several conventional medicine doctors and did some testing and didn’t really hear anything useful. This led me to seek out a naturopathic doctor and a functional medicine doctor. Those doctors did some testing of my thyroid hormone levels and they looked a little bit deeper into the thyroid panel and diagnosed me with hypothyroidism, as well as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. I also got an additional diagnosis of SIBO and adrenal fatigue.” Amy’s functional medicine doctor put her on thyroid hormone replacement therapy with natural desiccated thyroid medication. Amy waited to see results, but after taking this prescription for a year-and-a-half, and not seeing improvement, she reached out to me.

Misreading Thyroid Test Ranges

Despite the fact that Amy had thyroid symptoms, her thyroid tests did not show hypothyroidism. Her thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) and T4 hormone levels were in range, and did not suggest she had a thyroid condition at all. Amy said, “I took the natural dessicated thyroid and I eliminated the foods, but I never really felt different. I kept trying to increase the thyroid medication, because since I didn’t feel any different, I felt like, well it must not be enough.”

Gut Health Improvements Helped Symptoms

Once we established that Amy didn’t need thyroid treatment, I suggested she eliminate her thyroid medication, and focus on her gut health instead. I recommended Amy try a Paleo low FODMAP meal plan and I recommended some antimicrobials for suspected dysbiosis. Within two months time, Amy finally saw some relief of her fatigue, insomnia, brain fog, bloating, and anxiety.

Sponsored Resources

DrMR: Hi everyone. I am very excited to announce we have two new versions of our Elemental Heal available. Elemental Heal in case you haven’t heard of it, is our great-tasting meal replacement, hypoallergenic gut-healing formula. We now have two new versions: One is low carb and the other is a fully elemental whey free and dairy free formula, and they both taste great. The really nice thing about these is they are the only of their kind available on the market. Including the fact that they don’t require a doctor’s note in order to use them.

So whether using Elemental Heal as a morning shake meal replacement, or as a mini gut reset for one, two, three or four days, or even all the way through to the application of exclusive or semi-exclusively for two to three weeks, we now have a formula that should fit your needs no matter how you’re using it.

If you go to drruscio.com and into the store, we’re offering 15% off any one of our Elemental Heal formulas. This discount is limited to one per customer and if you use the code, “TryElementalHeal” at checkout, you’ll get that 15% off. Please give them a try and let me know what you think. I believe you will find them to be not only a great tasting but also really friendly on the gut and will help give you a bump and a boost in how you’re feeling.

Improve Gut Health Before Thyroid

It’s really important to know that the scientific community has studied whether patients who do not meet the diagnostic criteria for hypothyroidism benefit from thyroid hormone. And the answer is, they don’t. I want to help you realize that before we go fine-tuning thyroid hormone levels, we want to work to rebalance the gut.

Double Check Your Thyroid Labs

You can be your own health advocate. If you’re floundering and you’ve been given a thyroid disease diagnosis, it’s not that hard to double check this yourself. Look at the labs that diagnosed you as hypothyroid. If you’re within the standard ranges for TSH and for T4, you do not have hypothyroidism.

Of course, make sure you get a second opinion from a doctor before you take yourself off of any kind of medication. But, if you’re looking to see if you’ve been given competent medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, this is a very easy first step that can suggest whether or not you need to dig a little bit further.

Amy told me, “The thing I really like about your approach is that you give good direction in terms of, if you’re not feeling a difference within a relatively short amount of time—a couple of weeks—try something else, think about it a little bit differently, or tweak something.”

Amy’s story is an excellent example of what can happen when you double check your thyroid hormone levels and improve gut health.