Recently, I interviewed Stacy, and we discussed her diagnosis, the symptoms she continues to deal with, why she opted for a natural treatment approach, her dietary and stress management practices, the need for comprehensive functional testing, and more. If you would prefer to listen to the interview you can access it by Clicking Here.
Dr. Eric Osansky:
Welcome to another Save My Thyroid audit. I am chatting with Stacy from Ohio. Thank you so much for joining us, Stacy.
Stacy:
Thank you for having me.
Dr. Eric:
I’m looking forward to the conversation. Stacy has been dealing with Graves’ Disease. How long have you been dealing with Graves’?
Stacy:
I was diagnosed in March 2022.
Dr. Eric:
Have you taken any antithyroid medication since then?
Stacy:
I went the natural route, so I have done everything naturally. Just some herbal medicines.
Dr. Eric:
Similar to what I did.
Stacy:
Yeah.
Dr. Eric:
How did you find me? I think you’ve read both of my books?
Stacy:
Yes. When I was diagnosed, I did a search for Graves’ and found your book. That is actually what inspired me to treat my Graves’ naturally. I started researching what can I do, and that’s what inspired my journey to go this route.
Dr. Eric:
Wonderful. Any family history of Graves’ or any other autoimmune conditions?
Stacy:
Graves’, no. My mom does have the opposite as me. She has low thyroid. It does run in the family for thyroid.
Dr. Eric:
Okay. What are some of the common symptoms that you’re currently experiencing?
Stacy:
A lot of the symptoms in the beginning, those have subsided. I am still experiencing a little bit of heart rate. It will drop down into the 50s, and it will spike anywhere up to 150. That’s just from walking. The heart palpitations go along with that. Tired all the time. Insomnia. I can get out of breath just from walking every now and then.
I feel a lot better, but with that, I started getting some bloating issues. I don’t know if it’s all related. Some symptoms have gotten better, and I have gotten some new symptoms.
Dr. Eric:
Some symptoms have improved; some other symptoms have come on. When was the last time you had a thyroid panel?
Stacy:
June. I had TSH, T3, and T4 tested.
Dr. Eric:
Did it show you were still hyper?
Stacy:
No. What is considered normal but not optimal. My TSH dropped; it is going back down. My T3 and T4 are going up. It wasn’t enough to cause alarm basically.
Dr. Eric:
This was a few months ago in June.
Stacy:
Yes.
Dr. Eric:
It sounds like the herbs are helping. Still not optimal in experiencing some of those symptoms you mentioned, like increased heart rate, fatigue, insomnia, out of breath, some bloating. Not all those necessarily relate to elevation in thyroid hormone.
You’re taking specifically bugleweed and motherwort?
Stacy:
It’s been quite a while since I came off of that. Once my thyroid levels got back into the normal range, I came off of that. One of the ingredients was melissa. There is a whole bunch of other ingredients that I can’t read the names of.
Dr. Eric:
Lemon balm, it sounds like. Did it seem like it was helping?
Stacy:
Pretty quickly, from the initial, the TSH, which I guess is always the last to improve. My T3 and T4 almost immediately started to go down.
Dr. Eric:
How about antibodies? It sounds like you didn’t test them last time. But have you tested them in the past?
Stacy:
No. In the beginning, it was odd because my antibodies- I was only tested for TPO antibodies. Initially, I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s. Then it was determined that I actually had Graves’. I was misdiagnosed, I guess. They were 321. I wasn’t tested again until almost a year later. They actually increased to 631. I’m not sure why the jump. It doesn’t seem to be as much of a concern. It is for me.
Dr. Eric:
The doctors usually don’t pay much attention to that. It sounds like you didn’t have the Graves’ antibodies tested. They diagnosed you with Graves’ based on the hyperthyroidism and having the TPO antibodies. Assuming if you had one auto antibody that you probably had the other one, but they didn’t test the other one.
Any eye symptoms? Any symptoms of thyroid eye disease?
Stacy:
No eye symptoms. I actually asked my eye doctor because I visit every year. He said everything is great. My vision is actually improving. I’ll have an eye twitch every now and then, but I think that’s more along the lines of cortisol related. That is the only thing with the eye that I notice.
Dr. Eric:
Okay. How would you like your health to be 6-12 months from now, if you could paint a perfect picture?
Stacy:
Well, I guess I’ve never really paid much attention to my heart rate before until I was diagnosed. I could tell a difference when it varies, when it jumps. I guess it’s stable, my heart rate.
One thing I didn’t mention, in the beginning, I had gained over 30 pounds before I was diagnosed. I was one of the ones that didn’t lose weight during the Graves’ diagnosis. Having difficulty losing weight. I would like to be able to get that weight off, get my heart rate under control, and finally be able to sleep through the night and not be tired all the time.
Dr. Eric:
Those are of course really good goals to have.
Stacy:
Yes.
Dr. Eric:
In your opinion, what is the #1 thing preventing you from restoring your health? Is there a potential roadblock?
Stacy:
Not that I’m aware of. I do clean eating. I exercise. I’m at a loss as to what’s causing the symptoms.
Dr. Eric:
Let’s talk a bit about eating. Have you followed an AIP diet in the past?
Stacy:
Initially, when I first was diagnosed, I immediately went gluten-free and dairy-free. Then once I met with my doctor, he had me follow the blood type diet. Kind of similar to AIP, but I would call it more restrictive in the sense that there is a lot more things that you have to eliminate based on your blood type.
Dr. Eric:
Are you still following that diet?
Stacy:
Yes.
Dr. Eric:
Diet isn’t everything. Obviously, it’s important, or else I wouldn’t have written an entire book on it, The Hyperthyroid Healing Diet. But that being said, there are some differences between the blood type diet. It depends on your blood type. There are different variations. There are some foods that are allowed on a blood type diet that might not be allowed on an AIP diet, and vice versa. We are going to talk about some testing and see what you might have done.
If your diet hasn’t been working for you, not to say that it’s not offering any benefits, but there is still some work to do. It might be worth at least attempting for a month or two an AIP diet.
I wouldn’t combine the two; it would be too restrictive to combine an AIP diet with a blood type diet. You could try to do that, but I would probably recommend not doing that. Maybe just take a break from the blood type diet, follow an AIP diet for a few months ideally and see.
You very well might need to go beyond that. Even in The Hyperthyroid Healing Diet, I focus a lot on diet, but there is a lot more than just diet that I talk about.
This leads us to the next topic: stress. How has stress been over the last couple years?
Stacy:
Stress was actually probably one of my main triggers that brought the Graves’ on. I’ve done really well as far as management of my stress. I was in a pretty toxic work environment. I have since gotten a new job. Much less stress on day-to-day things. I don’t notice myself being stressed, but I very well could be, and it’s just not compared to what it used to be.
Dr. Eric:
It sounds like it’s definitely better than it has been. Maybe there are some stressors you’re not aware of. Without question, it sounds like it’s improved.
How about sleep? You’re experiencing insomnia. How long has that been going on?
Stacy:
I noticed it come on after the diagnosis. It would get better. I’ll wake up at maybe 2am or 3am, sometimes 4am. It takes me a long time to get to sleep. It’s not as bad as it used to be. There were times I couldn’t sleep at all. It has improved, but I still wake up and feel exhausted. Definitely an improvement from where I was two years ago, but still not where I’d like to be.
Dr. Eric:
Getting back to the blood type diet. Was that recommended by a natural health care practitioner?
Stacy:
Yes.
Dr. Eric:
You have been working with a functional medicine practitioner. Have you done comprehensive blood testing or just the thyroid panel?
Stacy:
Yes. I do get comprehensive blood testing done every year.
Dr. Eric:
You’ve done Vitamin D? Iron panel? Blood sugar markers, like hemoglobin A1C? I don’t know if you’ve done fasting insulin. Has everything looked good, or has anything been out of balance that’s significant?
Stacy:
Yes, I’ve done all of those. Nothing I can think of. Several years ago, my Vitamin D was very low. I’m thinking it was 17. I got it up. I think it was 80 this past time. I just had it done in March. I brought that up significantly. That’s the only thing I can think of that stood out.
Dr. Eric:
You’re in northern Ohio, so you probably need some Vitamin D supplementation, especially in the fall and winter months.
Stacy:
Yes.
Dr. Eric:
Vitamin D recently looked good, and the other markers looked okay. Hopefully, they paid attention to optimal ranges. For example, iron saturation, if that’s on the lower side but within range, some doctors won’t really pay attention unless it’s out of range. Hemoglobin A1C, if it’s on the upper end, some won’t say anything unless it’s above the range, and someone is in the prediabetic- Hopefully, being a functional medicine practitioner, they will focus on the optimal ranges.
Has the practitioner done any other types of testing? Any functional medicine testing, like adrenal testing or gut microbiome or anything like that?
Stacy:
I’m supposed to be getting the DUTCH test, but we were waiting. I’m just coming off of birth control from being on it well over 20 years. He wanted to wait until I was off of it for a good four months, just to get a better reading. I think that includes the adrenals.
Dr. Eric:
Wonderful. Yeah. Diet-wise, we spoke about maybe giving AIP a try.
Stress management, even if you feel stress isn’t a factor, if you’re not doing so, I would always block out time for stress management.
Sleep is important, but the question is why are you having the sleep issue? Obviously, it’s not that you don’t want to get more sleep. It is better than it was a couple years ago, but still not where it used to be.
The DUTCH test might show some things like having high cortisol. Low cortisol in the morning could also be a factor with adrenals. That looks at the sex hormones. It gives a lot of good information. Looks at melatonin, the DUTCH complete. If your melatonin is low, maybe you need that. A lot of people just take melatonin. If you don’t have a melatonin deficiency, typically melatonin won’t help with sleep. That’s a good test to do.
It will also look at the B vitamins. Birth control can deplete those vitamins. It looks at the metabolite for B12 and the metabolites related to B6. That’s great you’re doing that test.
You also said you experienced some bloating. Is it when eating certain foods or just randomly?
Stacy:
After my cycle, for an entire two weeks. Two weeks out of the month, I am bloated every day. After that, I’m fine. This started probably about three or four months ago. This was prior to coming off of the pill. I’m not sure what’s related to this, if it’s thyroid, gut, or something else. It’s definitely becoming an issue.
Dr. Eric:
Probably not directly the thyroid. Maybe the hormones. We’ll see what the DUTCH test looks like. Gut might be worth looking into. Another thing to consider, when I dealt with Graves’, I had the opposite problem of losing a lot of weight. Some people don’t lose a lot of weight, like you gained weight and didn’t take any antithyroid medication. Obviously, it wasn’t due to that.
We need to look into other factors. Adrenals could be a factor. The sex hormones. The DUTCH test looks at the metabolism of estrogen, which could also relate to weight gain. inflammation overall.
I can’t say I do gut testing on every single person. With a lot of your symptoms, it’s fair to do the DUTCH test first, but maybe if you’re not getting all the answers you need with that test and switching to an AIP diet, that might be another good test to look into, doing a comprehensive stool test, like a GI Map or GI Effects or something similar to see if you have imbalances. You need to have a healthy gut to have a healthy immune system.
Also, if your doctor isn’t going to do it, at least on your own, I would test the TSI, just to get a number on that and see what that is looking like. When we have Graves’, that should be elevated. TPO antibodies sometimes will fluctuate. It has a greater tendency to rollercoaster back and forth. You said yours increased to 631, which is a pretty big jump going from the 300s. Definitely keep an eye.
The TSIs sometimes will do that. Usually, you will see a more consistent decrease when things are heading in the right direction. If things are not heading in the right direction with either of the antibodies, or ideally both because long-term you want both of them to be normal, that tells us that something is missing.
I do have an episode on the podcast, Episode #150, on lowering thyroid antibodies. I have a series of episodes that I’ll be coming out with. By the time this interview is live, it might already be out. I will have more episodes on antibodies because it is a hot topic. You read my book, so I talk about them in the book. A lot of what I mention in both books will help with antibodies.
There’s diet. I always will recommend stress management. Get the TSIs tested. If you’re doing everything from a diet and lifestyle perspective, it can be helpful. You’re already doing the DUTCH test. Maybe a comprehensive stool test, based on the results of the DUTCH test.
I’m sure you will be given recommendations from the ordering doctor. If things head in the right direction, great. If you’re losing weight, sleeping better, awesome. If not, then that’s when you might- That’s a challenge. If you do testing, and if things don’t go in the right direction, the question is to do more testing, or are there imbalances that were found then corrected?
If you did a DUTCH test, and there were a lot of findings, you focus on those findings for a few months, and things don’t move in the right direction. We could say let’s do a comprehensive stool test. But I guess you could also say maybe to do a DUTCH retest, depending on what it shows. That’s what the functional medicine doctor you’re working with should guide you on.
If you have problems with estrogen metabolism, a lot of times, that’s coming from the gut. It’s one of those things where maybe doing a stool test is a good idea. Maybe you don’t have to do it. Maybe you get the answers with the DUTCH test.
I’m sure you knew what I was going to say because you have read my books and have been following me for a while. Still, I read the book on the blood type diet a long time ago. I say this in the book, too. I will be biased with the diets I recommend. I even say in the book that there is no one diet that fits everyone, which is why there are multiple diets in the book. If any diet is not working, in your case, the blood type diet, makes sense to switch to another diet and give that a try. I think there is a good chance you will have to go beyond the diet.
I’m glad to hear you are doing the DUTCH test. I hope that gives good information. It’s one of those catch 22s. You are spending the money because you want answers. You don’t want it to look really bad, but you want to have findings that you could correct. Hopefully, you do the test and get some good answers that the doctor will give advice based on that will hopefully help with your insomnia, weight gain, and energy levels. If not, you might need to dig deeper than that.
Stacy:
Yeah. All right.
Dr. Eric:
Well, thank you so much for agreeing to do this audit. It was great having this conversation. Thank you for reading my books. I really appreciate that. I hope everybody listening to this found this to be valuable. Look forward to catching everyone in the next episode. Take care, Stacy.
Stacy:
Thank you. You, too.
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