Recently, I interviewed Malka, who opens up about her ongoing battle with thyroid eye disease. She talks about her challenges, unexpected setbacks, and the constant search for solutions. We also talk about the lifestyle changes she’s made, the risks of different treatments, and the tough choices she faces while fighting to preserve her vision. 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’m very excited to chat with Malka here, as she has been dealing with thyroid eye disease, cataracts, and other vision issues. Malka, thank you so much for joining us. 

Malka: 

Hi, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. 

Dr. Eric:

I’m sure this will be a really interesting conversation. I work with a lot of people who have thyroid eye disease. Definitely want to hear your background. You have been dealing with Graves’ itself for- 

Malka: 

A long time. 

Dr. Eric:

20+ years, correct? 

Malka: 

When my 21-year-old son was a baby, that is when I started feeling off. I lost a lot of weight. I was only 25. They said, “This sometimes happens,” and they put me on PTU. I took it for 18 months. It came, it left, we’re done.

One of the other things I found after that, the glare started bothering me. I didn’t connect it to anything else. After that, I was okay. 

Then I had twins in 2009. When 2009 came, I started not feeling well. Having trouble breathing. They said that hyperthyroidism could come back when you have twins. I said that was interesting. I didn’t know that. I went on another 18 months of PTU. It’s twins. It’s a separate thing. 

It came back again. One of my doctors mentioned, “By the way, you have steroid cataracts.” I have never taken steroids. I don’t have asthma. I said, “Okay.” Keep an eye on it; just wear glasses. Wear sunglasses.

In 2020, I had a very stressful thing happen in my life. I started losing weight. I would go to the couch and be out of breath. I lost a ton of weight; I lost 20 pounds. When my thyroid came back this time, they said, “This is Graves’.” Once it comes back this third time, it’s become autoimmune rather than just coming and going. 

I went on methimazole for about 18 months-two years. I went back. Something came. I had another stressful event. I came back again. 

It was interesting. When I was in remission, I looked at the bloodwork. When the doctor said I was at goal, I started having on my eyelids eczema. It was very strange. My eyes were very dry. I went to the eye doctor, and the eye doctor said, “This is thyroid eye disease.” When I went to go check, he said, “I can’t correct you to 20/20. You need cataract surgery.” I’m 45 years old. I wasn’t expecting to need it that quickly. I waited for a second opinion, and the doctor said at that point, my eyes were very bad. They did cataract surgery a few months ago. 

Now that my bloodwork was back at goal, now, I started having another issue. This was about six months after my cataract surgery. I started seeing this shiny image in my eye every so often. I went to the doctor in August. She said my optic nerve was very swollen, and she was worried. She told me to go for an MRI. I had already done one. Both times, they said there is nothing wrong with the brain. 

At this point, I still haven’t seen a neuroophthalmologist. They gave me an appointment in October and in January, so I am still waiting. It happens to be my eyes have gotten worse in the last two weeks. At first, it was just that. Now, over the last week, there is gray. I can’t see so well. It’s a little bit scary. I really can’t see so well out of my right eye. My left eye is fine. It’s almost worse than when I had the cataracts. 

Even when I did the cataracts, you couldn’t compare one eye to the other because you get one eye done and then the next one. Thank goodness I have two eyes because one is doing most of the work right now.

I had gone to one of your sessions. These last few months, I had the second thyroid eye disease. That is when I decided to go on AIP. Even though I’m at goal, I wasn’t quite sure exactly. Let’s see if I can get rid of it by diet. 

I have been almost two months now on AIP. I am eating tons of greens and trying all this different stuff. You had mentioned some vitamins, so I got Vision to the Max. It has a lot of the stuff you mentioned, like green tea extract, turmeric, and zinc. They are all in this one thing. 

It is just concerning at this point. I have an appointment coming up in two weeks in October. I will hopefully see if the pressure is less. It’s not your typical thyroid eye disease response as far as I can tell. That’s where it’s been a little bit concerning. That’s what pushed me to go speak to you and see what you have to say. 

Dr. Eric: 

You said you chatted with me through one of my sessions. Was it a Facebook Live? 

Malka: 

It was one of the classes. 

Dr. Eric: 

One of the five-day events. 

Malka: 

I asked you a question. I asked you about SDIT to see if you had ever heard of that being helpful. I did six months of that. Overall, I feel so much better in general. My health is better. One of the side effects is constipation. I always had constipation. 

I say the irony of Graves’ is when you’re losing weight, it means you’re sick. When you start gaining it back. All the weight I keep trying to lose, it all comes back. Now, I have been able to lose weight in a healthy way. Overall, I do feel very good on this diet. It’s very hard to find stuff sometimes. I worked it out. 

I also have a gallbladder issue, separately. I can’t eat a lot of meat. That also took a lot of the stuff you could eat, like whole meat and anything fatty. I can eat eggs, but I can’t eat avocadoes. I find oily foods really aggravate my gallbladder. I have had a few gallbladder attacks. I have to be careful. 

I’ve heard there is a connection between hyperthyroidism and the gallbladder. I don’t know if that’s connected. At one point, they wanted to take my gallbladder out. I said I wasn’t doing that. I have just been hyper-careful about what I eat. It’s very hard. I like meat. It’s hard not to eat it. I’m careful with my diet. 

I did hear about you, so I asked you in one of your last lives. 

Dr. Eric: 

As far as the gallbladder, listen to your body. The problem with the gallbladder is it mainly is a bile metabolism problem. It’s not really the gallbladder itself. Just addressing the bile metabolism. I do have some information on my website, NaturalEndocrineSolutions.com. I also have a few interviews on my podcast where I interviewed a few practitioners about the gallbladder and bile metabolism. 

Some people could benefit from bile salts. There are numerous supplements to help support the gallbladder, or the bile metabolism. 

Problems with estrogen metabolism could affect bile metabolism. How do you know if you have problems with estrogen metabolism? Sometimes, a history of ovarian cysts, uterine fibroids, thyroid nodules, a family history of breast cancer could be some indications. Endometriosis. 

There is also a test you might have heard me or others talk about called the DUTCH test. It’s a dried urine test that looks not only at the hormones but the metabolism of the hormones, including estrogen. Something you might want to look into. If you have had numerous gallbladder attacks, try to figure out what the cause of that is. 

Malka: 

Okay. Good to know. It’s secondary, but I think it’s all connected. I personally feel the cataracts are connected. It was interesting because I was looking up on the thyroid eye disease website. What are your risks of having thyroid eye disease? One of them was cataract surgery. Really? I would never have connected that. I feel like my eyes got worse right after my first session. 

I had these experiences where the reflection of the sun on something would bother me so much. Everyone would be like, “It’s totally fine. It’s a fence. Why is that bothering your eyes?” “I don’t know, it’s killing me.” I do think there is a connection. Otherwise, I can’t figure out why I would have cataract surgery at such a young age. I have seen connections between thyroid eye disease and cataract surgery. 

Dr. Eric: 

I have had a few people with cataract surgery and thyroid eye disease. I can’t say it’s a large sample size. This is a little bit unique as far as what I usually work with. 

I know you said neuroophthalmologist. That’s the one in two weeks? 

Malka: 

Yes. The regular doctor- I’ll tell you what was interesting. My first doctor who told me I needed cataract surgery was a doctor who knew about thyroid eye disease. That’s why I went to him. I wasn’t comfortable with him doing my surgery. I wasn’t comfortable with the office. 

I found a separate doctor who was a cataract doctor. I think what happened was when I went in in August, she panicked, and I panicked. I forgot to tell her that I have thyroid eye disease. Had she known, she was looking at it from a cataract point of view. She was just looking to see if it was a dislodged retina. That was her main concern in the beginning. 

When I came home, there is a thyroid issue also. They were very hard to reach. I was waiting to see how I went health-wise to try to see- I wanted to make these appointments. This was a neuroophthalmologist. They said, “You are not a current patient. We will see you in the new year.” January is a long time to wait when my doctor says I needed to be seen yesterday. 

That’s been my struggle. I haven’t been able to make an appointment. There are only five in my area, so it’s hard to find. My regular doctor was like, “You’re going to the neuroophthalmologist. They’ll deal with it.” I haven’t been to the regular eye doctor either. I have an appointment on October 16, so I will hopefully get that pressure checked and see if there has been any improvement. 

Dr. Eric: 

They did say the retina is intact, right? It’s all just swelling. 

Malka: 

Swelling of the optic nerve. 

Dr. Eric: 

That’s good about the retina. They haven’t done anything as far as steroids, prednisone. Not that I’m telling you to take that. 

Malka: 

No. That’s why I’m also not running. When I spoke to my endocrinologist, he called me up to talk to me about it. I called her and told her I was struggling. I was very scared. It was very nerve-wracking. She said that there is this medication. I think it’s called Tepezza. 

Dr. Eric: 

Yep, Tepezza. 

Malka: 

You have to get a shot for eight weeks. I’m looking at the side effects. This is not where I want to go. Even for the things it says it’s for, it says it’s for eye bulging. I don’t have that. I am not having a lot of the symptoms that are typical. The thought of going that way is also what pushed me not to call them every day and ask for an appointment. I don’t want to go on that type of medication. 

I’m okay with going on medication when you need to, but for me, this feels like it’s not going to solve the problem. It will just make 100 other problems. I’m straddling between regular medicine and trying to be more of a naturalist. I’m between the two, I would call it. 

Dr. Eric: 

I agree with the Tepezza as far as, usually, it’s for bulging. Sometimes for double vision. I haven’t had a lot of people take it, but it seems to go well for the bulging. Double vision, hit or miss. For swelling of the optic nerve, I don’t know if that is the approach I would take. For me, it wouldn’t be the approach I’d take. I think it’s wise to speak with the neuroophthalmologist and see what they have to say in a couple weeks.

In the meantime, my guess, I could be completely wrong. Feel free to shoot me an email after your appointment. I’m thinking they are going to give steroids to reduce the inflammation. There is definitely a time and place for that. 

You have done the AIP diet, which is great. It hasn’t completely helped. It helped partially. You’re still having vision problems. There are other natural agents that you could take. Some you might be taking. You’re doing the vision supplement, which is fine. 

As far as helping with the inflammation associated with eye disease, the eye supplements probably are going to have minimal impact. I would say within the next couple weeks, there is definitely some things you could do. We’ll talk about these to help potentially lower the inflammation.

Like I said, there is a time and place for steroids. I don’t love them. You probably don’t love them. Most people don’t. 

Malka: 

Especially now since they told me that I got cataracts from steroids. 

Dr. Eric: 

I understand. 

Malka: 

Keep me away from them. I haven’t been on them yet, and they caused me all these problems. Every doctor I have spoken to doesn’t know why I had cataracts, but the steroids equal cataracts to me. That was already a trauma in and of itself. 

Dr. Eric: 

I understand. You don’t want to play too many games with the optic nerve. 

Malka: 

That’s true. If they tell me I have to do it because it’s getting worse, then I will have to do it. 

Dr. Eric: 

I am not telling you to jump to the steroids. If I were you, I would try to do other things as well. I’m just saying the optic nerve is affected when there is a lot of inflammation, it’s perfectly fine to do things naturally. If things don’t help naturally, that is when you might- Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they won’t recommend steroids. I’d be surprised if they don’t. 

I don’t think they’ll jump to Tepezza. Like you said, it’s getting infusions every few weeks for a total of eight. They will want to do something quickly. You would have to get approved with your insurance. It’s very expensive if insurance doesn’t cover it. I could be wrong, but I don’t think they will recommend Tepezza. It will be something like prednisone.

As far as what else you can do in the meantime, the basics, which you are already doing as far as eating well, AIP diet. Try to do a good job of managing stress. Try to get sleep. 

Malka:

I am working on sleep. I don’t get a lot of sleep, but I am working on it. I have been trying to exercise. I have been doing smoothies. Mostly green smoothies. Lots of green vegetables. I have changed completely, eating—my favorite food is cake—to enjoying vegetables. I have really tried everything. 

I have been having selenium. I have been eating Brazil nuts to get selenium. I really run the gamut. As far as what I could find on my own. I am ready to write down whatever else you think would be helpful. I am really looking to do whatever will work. 

Dr. Eric: 

Before I forget, exercise. Make sure you don’t overdo it with exercise. You don’t want to overtrain. 

Malka: 

Don’t worry about that. All I do is walk. The truth is, even when I exercise, I always have to watch my thyroid. Even a little bit too much, and my heart starts racing. Even when my thyroid is good, I always have to watch my exercise. If I push too much- I’ve had a few times where my heart started beating very fast, and I couldn’t slow it down. I was really struggling to get it back to normal. I’m always very careful that I don’t do too much. I really listen to my body. 

Dr. Eric: 

Wonderful. Sounds like you’re doing great with that. 

Vitamin D. Make sure you have healthy Vitamin D. If you haven’t tested for it, I would say 25 hydroxy Vitamin D, you want it to be at least 50. Ng/ml is the units. 

Malka: 

Is that D3? 

Dr. Eric: 

D3 is what you would take if you’re deficient in it. D3 with K2. Doing a 25 hydroxy Vitamin D test. If someone is deficient- 

Malka: 

I’m always deficient. I have never not been deficient. 

Dr. Eric: 

Make sure you get those levels above 50. The only way to know is by testing. Some would even say higher for autoimmunity, like 60-80.

Omega-3 fatty acids. I don’t know if you eat fish or take an omega-3 supplement. 

Malka: 

The problem I find with them is they are oily, and I am worried about my gallbladder. The oil part of it is- 

Dr. Eric: 

I get it. 

Malka: 

I can’t eat salmon. I had salmon years ago, and I got salmonella poisoning. Every time I have tried it since then, my body is like, nope. I get sick from it. My body remembers. That was even before Graves’.

I have been having flaxseed, but that’s omega-6, right? Not omega-3.  

Dr. Eric: 

It’s some omega-3. Flaxseeds and walnuts, for example. Chia seeds. They have to convert into EPA and DHEA, which they’re not very efficient in doing. There is also algae oil. Some companies have algae oil supplements, which doesn’t have as much EPA and DHEA as a fish oil but is still better than nothing. At least until you support the bile metabolism. 

Malka: 

That would be the better thing. If I handle this, I could go back to that. 

Dr. Eric: 

There is a company called Omega Quant, where you could do an omega-3 index or a more comprehensive fatty acid panel. You ideally want the omega-3 index to be at least 8%. A lot of people, if they are not eating fish or supplementing, they will be at 4-5%. That is also something to look into. 

The selenium that you mentioned is important. The only thing with Brazil nuts, first of all, they’re not AIP. You are straying a little bit with Brazil nuts. 

Malka: 

Oh really? I thought it said they were on there. 

Dr. Eric: 

No nuts and seeds if you are following strict AIP. 

Malka:

I am not doing AIP. I am doing one of the ones on your list. I am not doing strict AIP. 

Dr. Eric:

From The Hyperthyroid Healing Diet? 

Malka: 

Yeah. 

Dr. Eric: 

You must be doing level 2. 

Malka: 

I am doing one of them. It’s not the real AIP, but I am doing one of them. 

Dr. Eric: 

I eat Brazil nuts. I eat organic Brazil nuts that I get from Costco, and I do like them. But you don’t know how much selenium you are getting from Brazil nuts. Usually, for thyroid eye disease, I will recommend selenium supplementation, so we know how much someone is getting. 

Malka: 

200? 

Dr. Eric: 

Typically, I will recommend 200mcg of selenium. In some cases, I will recommend 400mcg. I won’t put someone on it for too long because of selenium toxicity concerns. The selenium is important. 

There is alpha lipoic acid, which also helps to decrease oxidative stress. NAC can also help with that. I don’t want to make this about pitching my products, but I don’t know if you have seen my thyroid eye disease bundle. 

Malka: 

It’s all the things you recommend basically. 

Dr. Eric: 

Pretty much. It’s at TEDBundle.com if you want to look at it. It has SMT BerbALA, which has berberine and alpha lipoic acid. Alpha lipoic acid helps reduce oxidative stress associated with thyroid eye disease and in general. Berberine has a lot of different properties. There is research studies with both alpha lipoic acid and berberine and thyroid eye disease. Berberine can support the gut microbiome and help with thyroid eye disease. 

There is another supplement called SMT Immune, which also has different ingredients, like curcumin and resveratrol and proteolytic enzymes. If you want to take that, you want to take it away from food, on an empty stomach. That really helps with inflammation. 

SMT BerbALA also helps with inflammation and oxidative stress, as they go hand in hand. It’s not addressing the cause of the autoimmune component associated with thyroid eye disease. Obviously, the prednisone that they will probably recommend isn’t doing that either. It’s just helping to lower inflammation. 

The goal would be either to take the Thyroid Eye Disease Bundle or something similar that is good quality, and see how you do over the next few weeks. See if the pressure reduces. If things are heading in the right direction, maybe you don’t need to take the steroids if that is what they recommend. I can’t tell you not to take them. That would be a decision you have to make. That is the approach I would take. 

Of course, you have attended my five-day events. You’ve read my book. You know it’s about finding and removing triggers and healing the gut, which goes deeper. As far as the short term, trying to get that inflammation down. Those are some things you can do in the meantime. 

Malka: 

I haven’t quite found my trigger. On this diet, I have tried the coconut milk because all the other milks are off. Coconut makes my stomach hurt every time. It’s interesting. You’d think this diet is so limited, but even in there, I can’t handle the coconut milk. I can handle a little bit of coconut, but every time I put coconut milk in something, I get a bad stomachache. I am wondering if that’s a sign of a trigger. I have eliminated 90% of what I usually eat, and this one thing still gives me a stomachache every time I eat it. 

Dr. Eric: 

It’s probably not a trigger. It is a source of fat, so it could be related to the metabolism. Many times, people have to go beyond diet. Even in The Hyperthyroid Healing Diet, the focus is on diet, but there is a section that talks about going beyond the hyperthyroid healing diet. Diet and lifestyle is where you want to start off. It’s great that you have done that. 

If someone is still having autoimmunity, those auto antibodies, the TSIs in the case of Graves’, then they want to do things other than the diet. Not to say to go back to eating the cake that you love, but still to eat healthy and follow the level 2 diet. You can continue following that. 

In addition to that, you might have to do other things, like reduce your toxic load, maybe do some functional medicine testing. You said stress was a big factor when this started in 2020. Maybe do some adrenal testing. I talk about this in great detail. 

Malka: 

Adrenal testing. My numbers are good as far as the doctor is looking at. She says I’m at goal. Everything is within normal range. I don’t know if my numbers of the regular thyroid stuff will even come up. They’re saying I’m fine. I started out at goal. 

My 11-year-old son was just diagnosed with Celiac. When I got my last set of bloodwork done, I asked them to test if I was Celiac. In order to test for Celiac, you have to eat wheat. Once I found out I do not have Celiac, I was able to go on the diet. I didn’t want to go on the diet until I tested my blood to make sure I didn’t have Celiac. Once I found out I don’t have it, then I went on the diet. I have been off of wheat and all this stuff. My numbers are fine. There are other numbers that if I did more testing, you would probably find other stuff.  

Dr. Eric: 

I am talking more about the antibodies in the thyroid. TSH, free T3, free T4, it sounds like those are looking good. I am wondering about the TSIs. If they are still elevated. If not, that’s great. I would think with the thyroid eye disease still being an issue, those would still be- 

Malka: 

I am saying I see the free T3. I am looking through some of my tests. TSH? 

Dr. Eric: 

No, that’s different. It would either be TSI or TRAB. 

Malka: 

Would they have tested that automatically? 

Dr. Eric: 

Not every single time. A regular doctor usually won’t. Usually it’s an endocrinologist, and they won’t test it all the time. 

Malka: 

I think she didn’t test them because she was testing for the Celiac. She didn’t want to do too many tests. She tested my cortisol for me because my friend mentioned cortisol. She said cortisol was also fine. 

Dr. Eric: 

Maybe next time ask about TRAB or TSI. I like TSI better. It’s more specific.

I would focus that Vitamin D. Get the Vitamin D tested. Make sure you have healthy Vitamin D levels. 

Some of the things we mentioned, like you don’t have to take specifically the products in the thyroid eye disease bundle. Just show you have another brand of selenium, which is fine. As long as it’s good quality. 

Those agents that I mentioned, those supplements, the alpha lipoic acid, the berberine, the natural agents that help reduce inflammation, like the curcumin, the resveratrol. I just mentioned a few. I would look to take that approach. Hopefully, that helps with the inflammation. It might not completely resolve it, but if you see it heading in the right direction, hopefully you will be able to avoid the steroids. 

That’s a conversation for you and the doctor to have in a few weeks. Definitely keep me posted. Feel free to shoot an email once you have that consultation. 

Malka: 

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. 

Dr. Eric: 

You’re welcome. Thanks, Malka. Appreciate you doing this audit. Hope you learned some things. Look forward to hearing from you in the near future. 

Thanks, everyone for tuning in, especially those with thyroid eye disease. I hope you found this to be valuable. Even if you don’t have thyroid eye disease, there are some things you can take away from this. Either way, thanks for tuning in. As usual, I look forward to catching everyone in the next episode. Take care, Malka. 

Malka: 

Bye, thank you.

Recently, I interviewed Sara Raymond,  who invites us into the subtle, powerful world of hypnotherapy, where transformation starts beneath the surface. In this episode we discussed her autoimmune struggles coupled with anxiety and addiction has empowered Sara to learn and share how personalized, gentle hypnotherapy can open a door to deep, sustainable healing. You’ll also hear why healing too fast can backfire and why safety and self-compassion matter more than ever.. If you would prefer to listen to the interview you can access it by Clicking Here.

Dr. Eric Osansky:
I am super excited to chat with Sara Raymond. We are going to be talking about hypnotherapy. I am excited about this conversation. As I was telling Sara, I actually was searching for a hypnotherapist. I can’t say I was searching too hard, but I wanted a hypnotherapist and didn’t know who to have on the podcast. Glad to have Sara here.
Let me go ahead and go over her impressive bio here. Sara Raymond may just be the compassionate support you’ve been searching for on your healing and personal evolution journey. A hypnotherapist and trauma-informed transformational coach, Sara combines over 20 years of experience as a Pilates, yoga, and meditation teacher with a deep passion for helping people reconnect with their inner wisdom and embrace their inherent fullness.
As the co-founder of the Mindful Movement, Sara has cultivated a global community, offering free meditation and self-hypnosis practices to over 900,000 subscribers on YouTube. Known for her compassionate and authentic approach, Sara brings a wealth of personal and professional insight as a recovering overachiever and perfectionist, creating a safe space for growth and transformation.
Her new book You Are Not Broken: A Compassionate Guide to Uncovering Inner Wisdom and Transforming Your Life with Hypnotherapy provides readers with the tools to release self-doubt, reframe limiting beliefs, and create sustainable, meaningful change. Welcome, Sara.

Sara Raymond:
Thank you. I appreciate it.

Dr. Eric:
If we could dive a little bit more into your background. What led to you first of all becoming a hypnotherapist and then eventually writing your book?

Sara:
I was teaching Pilates and yoga for many years before diving into the world of hypnotherapy. I found myself on the hamster wheel of looking for more training and more credentials and more education to be confident. I wasn’t an impostor in the field. At that point, I had been teaching for at least 10 years. I had lots of experience and lots of training. Logically, I was experienced, and I was good at my job, but the limiting beliefs, the subconscious patterning, had me seeking more and more and more. I couldn’t have told you that at the time.
It had me looking for a way to feel more confident and had me looking for a way to understand myself a little bit better and some of those patterns that had me striving and looking for the perfection and the overachieving tendencies.
At that stage, it really led me to find the answers that I was looking for. This started with meditation and then led to hypnosis. I am just a teacher by nature. What I do and what I find valuable, I typically will end up teaching and sharing with others.

Dr. Eric:
If you could give a definition of hypnotherapy and maybe talk about what differentiates hypnotherapy from other types of- I don’t know if you would refer to hypnotherapy as a type of mind/body medicine like meditation or yoga. If you could define it and distinguish between those.

Sara:
I would put it in the category of mind/body healing. I do take a bit of a somatic approach to hypnotherapy because of my background with working with the body and working with the mind to inform the body. I think there is a lot of wisdom in the body that can be accessed through hypnosis and hypnotherapy.
If I could give a definition, that’s a hard one because it’s kind of broad in that we’re in a therapeutic relationship. Hypnosis is a way to bypass or set aside the logical, conscious, thinking mind, which is where we mostly live as adults. It allows you to access the inner wisdom of the subconscious, of the emotional side of your experience, which is where all of our beliefs live. They live in the subconscious and drive our actions and drive our behaviors.
In order to change a behavior and action, you have to first change the belief that is driving it. Long-winded answer to tell you that the hypnotic or therapeutic experience, it’s giving you the opportunity to access your subconscious mind, to make change.

Dr. Eric:
I assume hypnotherapy, the person has to be a willing participant. You can’t really hypnotize someone if they’re not willing to be hypnotized.

Sara:
Yes and no. Yes, in that if you want to use hypnosis, you have to want to make the change. I couldn’t send my husband to a hypnotherapist to say, “Load the dishwasher differently” because he doesn’t want to do that. People will get in touch with me and say, “I really want my husband to stop drinking. Can you help him?” The answer is no, if he doesn’t want to change, then this won’t work.
But the reason I was saying that you can be hypnotized without wanting to is that when you’re watching a show that has an emotional quality to it, essentially, that is a form of a hypnotic state. When you’re driving home from work on a very familiar route, and you get home and say, “I don’t remember making those last three turns,” you’re still aware, and you’re still safely driving your car, but you’re in a different brainwave state than a highly alert brainwave state. Essentially, there is a bit of hypnosis in there.

Dr. Eric:
That makes sense. Good point, in bringing up alcohol. You have to want to be motivated to give up alcohol. Same thing with smoking. I heard hypnosis can help with smokers, but if they don’t want to quit smoking-

Sara:
And with those in particular, it can be a little tricky because we may say we want to because that’s what we think we should do. If underneath the surface, you really don’t want to, then it still will be really challenging to use hypnosis as a tool to quit smoking or drinking in that case.

Dr. Eric:
What kind of people do you work with? Do you have some people who come to you who want to quit drinking alcohol? Is it more focused on people with stored trauma? Is there a population you see more of?

Sara:
I get a wide variety. Because I offer the free content on YouTube, lots of people find me. There is so much broad content that is available on the channel. Because it is free, and it is available to everyone, it has to be somewhat broad. It can’t be very personalized.
I do get a wide variety. I get a lot of folks who are healing some physical ailment or emotional challenge. I get a lot of anxiety.
If I do get people who are wanting to quit drinking or smoking, it’s usually associated with something deeper. It could be associated with wanting to have a child and having infertility, I should stop drinking because it contributes to the infertility.
Or the drinking could be more related to anxiety, like a coping strategy for anxiety. The real issue is the anxiety. When we can work with the anxiety, then you may not need that coping strategy of drinking alcohol. That’s the approach that I take with some of the clients that come in wanting to quit some substance.

Dr. Eric:
You work with a wide array of people. Do you have a favorite type of client? This person comes in. Obviously, everybody is different, but still. That category of person comes in. I feel really good about being able to help you compared to other categories.

Sara:
I like working with clients who are vested. The clients that really want to do the work, and they are willing to be vulnerable and willing to be brave throughout the process. It’s not one particular issue or situation that I would call my favorite client, but it’s the approach that they take when working on themselves or when trying to help themselves.

Dr. Eric:
You know that my audience consists of those with thyroid conditions. A lot of people with autoimmune conditions. How can hypnotherapy benefit these people?
I talk all the time about blocking out time for stress management, mind/body medicine, incorporate things like meditation, yoga. Some of these people have anxiety, and hypnotherapy can help with that.
Sometimes, anxiety is because of hyperthyroidism. We need to address the hyperthyroidism and lower the thyroid hormones. Also, a lot of these people have stored trauma. Obviously, a lot of people in general have stored trauma. I guess that’s one way that maybe it can help a lot of people who have these chronic health conditions.

Sara:
Absolutely. I think the approach has a lot of layers to the benefits. When I work with clients individually, they all receive a personalized recording. It’s very specific to their needs, their desires, the beliefs that they want to be embodying, the feelings and the qualities. The hope would be that there would be a consistent practice of that recording. It would support, like you said, the stress management. Taking time for yourself to be still, to be quiet, to calm your nervous system. All of these things are happening with the use of the personalized recording. There is that benefit.
I also think that with autoimmune, what I see a lot is, I don’t want this to come off as me blaming or saying it’s someone’s fault. There tends to be lack of self-care at times, which is sometimes around feeling worthy of the time it takes to care for yourself.
I have also experienced thyroid issues, and I have been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s. I am familiar with that. I have an experience of prioritizing work over my self-care and other people’s needs over my self-care. I know that it’s a common tendency.
What I’m getting at is that when you take the time to work through this practice on a daily basis, it’s showing yourself that you are worthy of taking care of yourself. There is this layer of developing- It’s not developing because I believe worth is inherent. We are all humans; we are all worthy. It’s remembering the worth by taking care of yourself and taking the time and prioritizing yourself.
Additionally, we can look at the innate wisdom of the body. It may sound silly in this logical, alert state we are in now, but to close your eyes, be in a calm, relaxed state, and even just ask, what does my thyroid want me to know? You approach it from a very biological way. The physiology of the thyroid. That is important and valuable. You couldn’t manage thyroid without that.
I think the innate wisdom or the messages of the body can also support and bring another layer of healing into the equation that wouldn’t come from the medical world. It’s not a replacement in any way. It’s a support, and it’s another way to be informed.

Dr. Eric:
I agree. I also agree with what you said about prioritizing yourself. That is a question I ask on the questionnaire. A lot of people actually choose that they take care of others before themselves. They don’t prioritize their own health. You really need to do that if you’re going to get better. I’m glad you mentioned that. I think that’s important.

Sara:
Absolutely.

Dr. Eric:
You said you made a personalized recording for everyone. Obviously, you have all the YouTube videos. When someone works one-on-one with you, it’s different because they get that personalized recording rather than just the general videos, which can be helpful. Could they work one-on-one with you remotely, or is it better to work with you in person?

Sara:
Right now, I am only working with clients remotely. There are pros and cons. One of the biggest pros is that safety is so important, and the feeling of safety is important to allow this process to unfold in an effective way. When you can be in your own home, or you can be in a safe place, and I can be on the other side of the screen, I think there is more value in that. It can be very valuable; I wouldn’t say “more value.” It can be very valuable to have that feeling of safety to allow you to go deeper perhaps and understand or uncover more.
Whereas if you had to come into my space, and you have never been there before. Maybe there are noises you don’t recognize or the chair’s not comfortable or whatever it is. It can make things a little bit more challenging for you. Then you have your own space. You can feel safe and really go a little deeper into what’s below the surface.

Dr. Eric:
By working remotely, you can also help people not just all over the country, but all over the world, which I’m sure you do. That’s a great feeling.

Sara:
It’s always fascinating to sit in my home in Maryland and meet with someone in Spain or England or wherever they are. It’s pretty interesting.

Dr. Eric:
Same here. I do telemedicine calls, and it’s always nice. Sometimes, I’ll work with people who are local, but a lot of people from different parts of the country and the world. It’s pretty neat.
Session-wise, this probably also varies depending on the person. Is there a minimum number of sessions people should expect to go through when working with you? Or is it just let’s see how the first session goes and take it from there?

Sara:
Everyone is different. I do have a lot of clients who end up working with me one time. The initial package that I have is a two-hour session, so we talk a lot about past history. We talk a lot about triggers or things that are reactivating old feelings or wounds. I like to get a lot of background information around relationships and family upbringing and dynamics. Within that two-hour session, there is a process that we go through together. It’s a client-centered conversational style of hypnosis. That is all looking at the past, looking at what happened that caused this pattern of behavior or this anxiety or the feeling that you’re experiencing, the issue at hand.
Then there is a healing process that we would go through depending on the individual, what their needs are. Might be some amount of letting go of old beliefs. It may be some amount of self-forgiveness. It could be working with the inner child. Lots of different strategies and approaches for that depending on the individual.
After that, the personalized recording is really looking at moving forward. It’s very forward-looking. It focuses on the beliefs that you do want to have and the feelings and emotions that you want to embody, the qualities that you want to live by. That is meant to be used every day, so you start to have some consistency and repetition of these new beliefs. You’re having to nurture them to fully adopt those beliefs and feelings.
There is a follow-up interaction that we have with some coaching that is a bit of either closure on the topic or that might be a catalyst for the next step, which might look like more hypnotherapy or more coaching. The coaching, I will incorporate some process-oriented techniques. Just depends on the individual.
Lots and lots of people come and work with me for the one package, and they find, not freedom, but a sense of lightness from the issues at hand and the shift they feel happy and content with being enough.

Dr. Eric:
To confirm, the first appointment is two hours. After that appointment, you put together the recording. That is something they will listen to every day. Most people go through a follow-up call with you. After that, it might depend on the person. Some people might be good to go. Some people might need additional support.
Just out of curiosity, is the recording five minutes? 30 minutes? On average.

Sara:
It depends. People always ask me what time of day should I listen? What is the best length of time for a practice? The answer is what is going to be effective for you and what you’re able to consistently commit to. If you came to me and said, “I want a personalized recording,” and I made it 30 minutes because that’s what I wanted. You only set aside 15 minutes a day. You will look at it and say, “I don’t have time for that today,” and keep putting it off. It’s dependent on what each individual can commit to and be consistent with.
I’m sure you give some type of dietary advice or exercise advice when you’re working with patients with thyroid issues. One size doesn’t fit all for those situations. If you were to give a strict vegan diet to everyone, there will be some amount of people who just can’t live like that, or it doesn’t work for them. You have to work with what’s best for that person and what they can commit to.

Dr. Eric:
Is there anybody who wouldn’t be a good fit for hypnotherapy, other than those people who don’t want to make change in their life? Anybody else who wouldn’t really be a good fit?

Sara:
That’s a good question. There is probably lots of mixed opinions about this in the psychology and counseling world. In my experience, anyone who has a tendency to dissociate, that can be very challenging and problematic.
Someone who has a really significant traumatic past, that might be out of my scope of practice. I might pass it along or refer to a psychologist or someone who has more experience with that. Everyone in some capacity has had some thing that we might call “trauma” these days. It’s a very popular phrase, meaning a lot of different things.
My approach is very compassionate. It’s very much intending to meet the person where they are and take a pace that they’re ready for. If you try to heal too fast, or if you try to do anything too fast, or too much, that is essentially another form of trauma. It can reactivate old wounds and old patterns, and that is the last thing we want to do. Healing can be slow. It can be nonlinear. It generally is nonlinear. I tend to take a very slow, compassionate approach, where it’s very client-centered. I want to meet you where you are and move at a pace that is just right for that person.

Dr. Eric:
If someone goes through that initial consultation because you obviously can learn a lot from the person in two hours, and you just feel like, I’m sure, even in advanced cases, you can still offer some value, but if you feel like it’s maybe better for them to work with someone else, I’m sure you would refer them out somewhere.

Sara:
Yes. During this time, my language is always trying to be safe and giving permission to slow down or take breaks. The client is always in the driver’s seat. They are in control of the pace and depth and the direction that they go. If something doesn’t feel comfortable, or something feels unsafe, we are going to stop and work with whatever is available.
In my other profession, in my other side of my career, I work with physical bodies. We are doing movement. The invitation is always to work in a pain-free range of motion. Sometimes, that’s teeny-tiny. Sometimes, it’s much bigger, and there is no pain. If you work through pain, it can cause more pain or more injury. The same is true with the mind.

Dr. Eric:
Makes sense. I will ask you this question. A little bit personal. You’re a yoga instructor, meditation instructor, hypnotherapist. How much time do you personally spend weekly or daily on stress management? Maybe not as much because of your background, and you don’t feel like you need to. I’m just curious if that’s the case. Maybe you only spend a small amount of your time, or maybe because you focus on that, you spend more than the average person.

Sara:
It fluctuates. A fluid amount of time, I would say. Sometimes, if there is more stress in my life, I might need to pull back from work a little bit, or spend more time on my self-care and stress management. Over the years, I guess all of the practice that has been done is building capacity for me. It’s building the ability to recognize when I am in a state of stress or feeling overwhelmed or I have taken on too many things, which is definitely a habit of mine (to say yes to too many things).

Dr. Eric:
Same here.

Sara:
Most podcast hosts who are doing this as a side gig have that tendency. It’s part of your career, not a side gig.
The practice of building awareness of my own nervous system responses and my own stress responses are really important. Years ago, I don’t think I would have recognized that I was feeling stressed or going in the direction of being stressed before it was too much. I think I can see that happening sooner, and I can take steps to manage that.
To answer your question, I don’t have a specific amount of time. I like to do a lot of movement. I like to make the things that I really enjoy practices of mindfulness. I spend a lot of time in the garden, or I have a lot of plants. Obviously, I have a lot. It’s a very calming practice to take care of them and be with that experience. Some of that is my self-care.

Dr. Eric:
Makes a lot of sense. It really varies, depending. If you’re under more stress, it would make sense that you do more from a stress management perspective. It sounds like you’re always doing things and taking care of plants, also very calming, I can imagine. I can’t say I take care of plants on a regular basis.

Sara:
What do you do for stress management? What’s your go-to?

Dr. Eric:
Good question. You’re probably familiar with Heart Math?

Sara:
Yep.

Dr. Eric:
I do deep breathing, and I do sauna. I use the Inner Balance from Heart Math. Can’t say I do yoga. Haven’t really tried it. I tried Pilates actually. I did it years ago. It’s mainly deep breathing, meditation, and Heart Math. I have used apps in the past, like Headspace. I can’t say I do that these days.
Most of my patients don’t use Heart Math. They might do meditation or yoga. Some might do tai chi. Depends on the person. A lot of people just do things like incorporating prayer and walking and other things that are very calming, which is great. I try to do that, too. I get out in nature. Probably need to do more than that.

Sara:
Just being able to recognize what the needs are in that capacity. Sometimes, the self-care is more calming than trying to bring the nervous system into the calm state. Other times, some people will get stuck in that calm state. It’s more of a freeze response. They may need something more high intensity in terms of the movement. It might need to be more vigorous, like kickboxing or jumping on a trampoline or lots of different needs. Being able to recognize what that is is part of the self-care process.

Dr. Eric:
Before we talk about your book, is there anything else that people should know before working with a hypnotherapist?

Sara:
Make sure you feel comfortable with the person. You have some amount of trust, even if you haven’t worked with them specifically before. If there is some way to build rapport, build trust, that would be important to go into the experience feeling safe. Ask as many questions as you need to make sure you can feel safe. Trust that person has the capacity to hold space for you and what you’re going through.

Dr. Eric:
Wonderful. Sara, definitely want you to take a couple of minutes to talk about your book and what people can expect when reading it.

Sara:
The title really is the premise of the book. You’re not broken. The underlying message is one of compassion and acceptance. Not to say that whatever you’re going through will always be. I will just give up. It’s more this is the reality. Let go of the judgment of the reality. With that, the release of the judgment, the release of the feeling broken, is where the healing can take place.
It’s not to say that you have to feel broken or have to have some judgment of your experience in order to take action to do something. You can do that from a place of acceptance and compassion. The healing will be more effective that way.

Dr. Eric:
Is Amazon the best place to get that? Your website?

Sara:
Amazon is great. Any bookstore. You can go to Barnes & Noble. A lot of independent bookstores carry them. Sometimes, they charge a little more because they have higher overhead. Anywhere you buy books, you can usually order it.

Dr. Eric:
What are some ways people can find you? You have a YouTube channel and the podcast that I was a guest on recently.

Sara:
The YouTube channel is a really good starting place. It will give you an opportunity to get to know me, even though we are not meeting face to face. As a practitioner or listener of the videos that I offer, you can start to see my style and energy. It’s really important to build trust with the person you’re working with. This can be a stepping stone to that.
Whether or not you ever work with me, that doesn’t necessarily matter. Starting to build that relationship with me and with yourself is a good place to start. It’s all free. There is 500-some videos to choose from.

Dr. Eric:
All right. Sounds great. Can they also follow you on social media?

Sara:
Most of the content is on YouTube. I’m on Instagram and Facebook, but they’re not the most engaging places where I spend time. TheMindfulMovement.com also has a lot of free resources. There are a couple free courses that are available on that website. Lots of articles that can be useful. Various topics and so forth. There is a lot of information. When did we start? 2016, I think. Years of information to sift through. You will find something that you might resonate with.

Dr. Eric:
Check out Sara’s book. Visit the YouTube channel. Also, TheMindfulMovement.com.
Thank you so much for this conversation, Sara. This was amazing.

Sara:
Thank you. And thank you for taking the time to be on our podcast as well.

Dr. Eric:
That was a lot of fun. Thanks again. Have a wonderful day.

Recently, I interviewed Sandy Kruse,  who endured a total thyroidectomy and survived the exhausting struggle of hyperthyroidism. In this episode we discussed about her difficult recovery, and the moment she realized that truly listening to her body was the key to healing. From experimenting with medications to refining her nutrition, Sandy’s experience offers powerful lessons on navigating thyroid health and more. If you would prefer to listen to the interview you can access it by Clicking Here.

Dr. Eric Osansky: 

I am looking forward to chatting with Sandy Kruse. We are going to be talking about thyroid cancer, which is something I have not spoken about on this podcast. This is going to be an amazing conversation. Let me give Sandy’s short but sweet bio here: 

Sandy Kruse is a registered holistic nutritionist, a certified metabolic balance coach, and the podcast host of Sandy K: Nutrition and Lifestyle Queen, now just under 1.4 million downloads. Sandy educates on how we can all age better through living a life of balance, body, mind, spirit, and soul. Welcome, Sandy K. 

Sandy Kruse: 

Thank you so much, Dr. Eric. I’m so happy to be here. 

Dr. Eric: 

I’m happy you’re here as well. This is going to be an exciting conversation. Can’t wait to get into your backstory, which we’re going to do now. I really want you to jump into your background a little bit more. Of course, lead into your thyroid cancer journey. 

Sandy: 

I think it’s important to talk about it from where it began. I do believe that genetics or epigenetics always has a part in everything as it relates to our health. What can trigger these genes to actually express? 

With me, it started when I had my second child at age 35. The first baby was the easy one, and the second one wasn’t. I had a trauma birth. It was really stressful because I wasn’t well, and here I was taking care of a newborn and a toddler. I had a spouse that traveled almost weekly and a baby that had colic and all of the things that a lot of new moms deal with. 

You go to see your general physician, and usually, they check on the baby. What was missing: “Hey, how’s the mom? Is the mom okay?” I really wasn’t okay. I had lost so much weight so quickly. 

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when thyroid issues began for me. I kind of had an idea that I had postpartum thyroiditis which was never diagnosed. I had all of the symptoms. I was very different from my first delivery and first pregnancy. I didn’t have enough breast milk. I wasn’t sleeping. I was extremely stressed. I could tell there was something wrong, but I didn’t know what was going on. 

Then fast forward quite a few years later. My baby was five. She was diagnosed with a soft tissue sarcoma. It is a malignant tumor. I can’t even explain what it’s like to have a sick child, but it wasn’t a good time for our family. 

Almost exactly one year after that, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. My daughter and I actually had, it was her second surgery and my first surgery to remove my entire thyroid gland and two lymph nodes, one year apart. It was October 2010 and October 2011. 

Then the story begins with what happened afterwards. It wasn’t the simple Here, take one pill, and you will just be great. You will be fine. You don’t need the gland. It definitely wasn’t that. 

Dr. Eric: 

I assume it was a papillary thyroid cancer? 

Sandy: 

Yes. 

Dr. Eric: 

You got the ultrasound. That didn’t confirm the cancer. You got the biopsy after getting the ultrasound. That is when you found out you had thyroid cancer. 

Sandy: 

It was an incidental finding. What happened was I had a migraine with aura. It was the first time in my life. You’re a doctor. Most people who have migraine, usually it starts at around puberty. It’s something that a lot of people deal with their entire life. I had never had one. 

I had a migraine with aura before I was diagnosed, before they did any kind of testing, and I thought I was having a stroke. I was 41 years old. It was visual aura. 

I also had this weird thing. When you research symptoms, a lot of times, a doctor will say, “No, no, there’s no correlation.” I always had this coughing or choking or gagging. I remember even stopping the car once. I had both my kids in the car. You know when it feels like you have saliva that goes down the wrong way, and then you can’t stop coughing? I had so many of those incidents. 

I had a family doctor that wasn’t really big on testing, but he was actually on vacation, and it was a substitute doctor. She was a female doctor. She said, “You know what? It’s weird that you’re having your first migraine ever at 41. Let’s do some testing.” They did do the carotid artery ultrasound to make sure there were no blockages or anything in the brain. They did the MRI. The carotid artery ultrasound, they said it was all clear, but they found five nodules in the thyroid. They were bilateral, so that means on both sides, and only one of the nodules was actually cancerous. 

The way they found that out, which was also rare, as people who have had fine needle biopsies know that they often come back inconclusive. When they did the fine needle biopsy on me, they immediately said “suspicious for papillary carcinoma.” In a way, that was lucky. I know many people who have many of these biopsies that come back inconclusive. You probably know that. 

It was actually pretty quick. It was all within two months that I had my thyroid removed. They suggested to remove the entire gland because in western medicine, they don’t believe you can do things to shrink nodules. Maybe I would have done something different now with what I know now. Having known that only one of them was malignant. They suggested I remove the entire gland because the nodules were bilateral. I had a lumpy thyroid. 

Dr. Eric: 

Very rarely these days do they recommend a partial thyroidectomy. Now there is radiofrequency ablation. Not sure if you’re familiar with that. They can target specific thyroid nodules. When that first came out, I wasn’t really for malignant nodules. Now apparently, some cases of thyroid cancer, at least one of the conversations I had with Dr. Angela Mazza on the podcast, pretty sure she said it could actually help with some cases of papillary thyroid cancer. Back when you got it, I don’t think that was an option. Now potentially in some cases. 

They removed the entire thyroid gland. How was the recovery time? How did you feel after the surgery? A few days later? A few weeks later? 

Sandy: 

I should note that I was with one of the top endocrinologists. I had a neck surgeon at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital. I was there for three days. Now, I think it’s like boom, bam. You’re in, you’re out. I was there from Wednesday-Friday.

The recovery, it’s crazy. The way that they want to give you all of these pain meds. I got home. I was taking extra strength Tylenol, to be truthful. I didn’t think it was such a big deal. Then they gave T3 to me to begin. I actually felt pretty good after I had my thyroid removed. Then they made me go off everything to do the Thyrogen injections. There was a nurse that came to my home to give me two injections from what I recall. I don’t know what the process is now. It’s to test to ensure that none of the gland, none of the tissue is left, that they removed everything. 

That was when the struggles began. They put me on T4 only. They put me on Synthroid. The only reason they put me on T3, which we all know is the active thyroid hormone, right after the surgery was because it has such a short half-life. It exits the body very quickly. Once I was ready to do the Thyrogen injections, I would have none of this hormone left in my body. T4, it can be 4-6 weeks.

Dr. Eric: 

A couple things. Backtracking. You said you saw one of the top endocrinologists, which is important to mention because if someone needs any type of surgery, not just thyroid surgery, again, you probably want to go to someone who has done a lot of the surgeries. I know everybody has to begin somewhere, but still. If I was having thyroid surgery, I would do my research and try to find an experienced surgeon. 

I’m glad you mentioned that. You randomly didn’t choose anybody, or your primary or someone else. Maybe your primary gave you some guidance. Sometimes, they let the endocrinologist just make the decision for them.

I also wanted to ask you, as far as making sure that there was no thyroid tissue left, did you receive any radioactive iodine in addition? You did not? Sometimes I’ll give radioactive iodine after the thyroid surgery. 

Sandy: 

I didn’t need it because I only had the one nodule, and it was small enough that they said you don’t need to have it, thank god. 

Dr. Eric: 

I’m glad you didn’t have to get that. You started with T3. You felt okay. Switched to Synthroid. From there was downhill. 

Sandy: 

It was really downhill. Really bad. I had all the symptoms of hypothyroidism. You name it: hair loss, no energy, weight gain. I had edema, swelling. I could go on. The biggest thing that I’m going to say to anybody who experiences hypothyroidism is this extreme loss of vitality. It’s like the essence of who you are as a person is gone. Everything in your body slows down. I started to experience a lot of that. 

I was hypothyroid for a while, but I kept getting the, “Well, you’re within the healthy range.” We all know that range can be pretty vast. Everybody is so individual. When they made me go off of everything, the last time I had bloodwork, I was at a 32 TSH. I had little kids. That was when I was like, I have to start researching what’s going on in my body. 

This is well before I went back to college for holistic nutrition to understand how all this is interconnected. I was told that I just need one pill. Then I learned about T4, T3. I learned about T1, T2, T3, T4, calcitonin. The thyroid produces so many more hormones than just T3 and T4. It all began with me getting the book Stop the Thyroid Madness. Have you heard of this? Everybody has. 

Dr. Eric: 

Yeah. 

Sandy:

It’s a patient advocacy book. That’s where I began. My stress might be affecting my ability to convert that T4 to the active T3 that I need. Then it was this light bulb moment. I went back to this endocrinologist who is like this well known worldwide- You need to give me T3. He was kind of shocked because nobody was talking about this, and nobody knew about this. Probably 95% of his patients were on T4 only. Then things started to change when I was on a combination of both. 

Dr. Eric: 

Did they even test for T3? You mentioned that your levels were within the healthy range, which the healthy range isn’t the optimal range, as we both know. Many times, they will just do TSH. Sometimes, they will do a T4. Did they all along monitor the T3? 

Sandy: 

They did. I actually checked on this today, on what bloodwork I have access to. I can only go back as far as 2016. They did at Mount Sinai a full panel. They would regularly check thyroid globulin (TG), which I know is important for people who have had thyroid cancer. You want to have almost undetectable TG. If you have TG, that means it could be back. 

Yeah, they did check. In Canada, I know this can be a problem in the US as well. TSH is like all they will check if you go see a general practitioner. If you go to an endocrinologist, with a thyroid problem, if they’re good endocrinologists, they will check TSH, free T3, free T4, TG, other antibodies, depending on what your thyroid issue is. 

Dr. Eric: 

That’s good. When you said that reluctantly he gave you T3, I assumed at that point, they would have done a T3 test. I didn’t know if prior, but it sounds like they did all along. Many times, T3 will be on the lower side but within that lab range. They will still ignore it even though it seems obvious that there is a problem converting T4 to T3. You were on T4, and then both. When you were on both, you felt a lot better. 

Sandy: 

I did. Except I was looking at some of my levels from 2016. For about five years, they suppressed my TSH. I would be at undetectable levels of TSH, so 0. It would be 0. But then there were times that I had pretty severe symptoms of hyperthyroid because of that suppression. There were times that my free T3 levels were above 7. 

Now I’m telling you this. I don’t know if the US labs are the same. It was very high. For a good five years, I had some anxiety and other stuff going on. 

I always find this so funny when they say people lose weight if they’re hyperthyroid. I gained weight. I gained weight because I had so much of that nervous energy that I would constantly be eating. It didn’t matter. I have had some struggles with weight since then, regardless of whether I’m hypo or hyper. 

Dr. Eric: 

You think you were in a hyper state for about five years? 

Sandy: 

About that. My endocrinologist said it was really important during that time, and I don’t know if they do that anymore. As you know, women who are in perimenopause, who are in a hyperthyroid state for too long, can have pretty severe bone loss. 

Dr. Eric: 

That’s what I was going to bring up, if you ever got a bone density scan. Being on that dose for quite a while. 

Sandy: 

Yes. I started to work out. They took me off the higher doses of thyroid meds. They just said that if I’m in a more suppressed TSH state, there is less likelihood that the cancer would come back. That is why they did it. I think they read somewhere that they changed that since for people who have had thyroid cancer because of the bone issue. Yes, I do get bone density tests pretty regularly. I’m still okay. It didn’t do any damage. 

Dr. Eric: 

Glad you get your bone density tested regularly. That’s good. 

I’ve listened to some of your other interviews in preparation for this podcast. Obviously, your background is as a nutritionist, so I want to talk about some of the recommendations as far as protein, for example, intermittent fasting. You also have experience with proton pump inhibitors (PPI), being on the acid blockers. 

Sandy: 

Yeah. It’s a very sore spot for me because I feel, and I have written about this, like I was harmed by being put on those. I started to have infections that wouldn’t heal. I don’t even know if I want to talk about it here. They sent me to a gastroenterologist. This was shortly after I was on T4 only. 

Remember how I was saying everything in the body slows down when you’re in a hypothyroid state for a long time. Healing slows down. You can have a lot of weird things go on in the body because your body is not able to heal. Everything is just downgraded. 

I was sent to an endocrinologist. I never had GERD or any kind of heartburn or anything. They put me on a PPI and said I had too much acid in my stomach without any kind of tests. I became addicted to this PPI. There is something called a rebound effect. I have been on it probably for about 10 years. I went through states where I was borderline anemic. I had ferritin levels as low as 6. For those of your listeners who know what ferritin is, it’s your iron stores. 

I had such a severe rebound effect that I thought I was having a heart attack. That was when I started to have severe GERD. It was only after I was trying to get off of the PPI. I did everything I could. I went off of it for a year. When I did, and they did the scope, they said I had Barrett’s esophagus. Then they told me, “You better get on that PPI again. Otherwise, now, having had thyroid cancer, you’re at risk for esophageal cancer.” I went back on the PPI.

By the way, I had done everything as it related to diet, lifestyle, all of those things to get rid of the heartburn when I went off of the PPI. None of it worked for me. Nothing. I tried weaning. I tried everything that was recommended. Nothing worked. There are some genetics in there that I think might play a part in this. I have family members who have similar issues. 

When I went back to college, which I was 46, it was with the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition. I then started to wean off but so slowly. Still today, I am on an over-the-counter dose of 20mg of Nexium. But I was on very high prescription doses. I consider that a win. 

The way that I prevented becoming anemic all those years was by, I call it faking my own digestion. I started taking digestive enzymes with butane HCl. Then I started to take additional butane HCl. 

Of course, we know there are contraindications. This isn’t advice for anybody. If you have an ulcer, you can really exacerbate your issues. I didn’t. I had very low stomach acid. Still to this day, I take high doses of HCl, and I take a digestive enzyme with every protein meal. That’s how I’m keeping my mineral balance. We all know, without stomach acid, things can go downhill over the course of- I have been on PPIs for about 10 years or more. 

Dr. Eric: 

That’s a long time. You said at one point your ferritin was a 6? 

Sandy:

Yes. 

Dr. Eric: 

I assume you monitor your iron levels. More recently, they are a lot better? 

Sandy: 

When I was doing the butane and still menstruating- This is important for your female listeners. If you are still menstruating, that has a big effect on ferritin. I had other issues with estrogen dominance. I had so many things that were going on in my 40s, and I had no one who could really help me. That is one of the reasons I went back to college. 

While I was still menstruating regularly, I would probably sit at about 15-16. If I got up to 20, that was a real win for me. Now, I actually just did bloodwork. I’m sitting at a 39. I’m now in menopause. One year of no periods, technically textbook, now I’m in menopause finally, at 55. 

Dr. Eric: 

You have never been vegan, vegetarian. Even when your levels were low, you were always eating meat? 

Sandy: 

Well, yes. I was always eating meat. This is all relating to the weight side of it. What the heck? I didn’t even know my body anymore. I’m a small person. I’m only 5’2”. What’s happening? I can’t eat this way. 

I think for me, it was almost like this double whammy of perimenopause and no thyroid gland. It was a double whammy for me. There was a time that I thought, oh, maybe raw food is the answer. Maybe becoming more vegetarian. I was never vegetarian. Never. But I avoided more animal protein at one time. These are all little stints. 

I have done many diets. I have done low carb, keto, intermittent fasting. I have done a lot of these things in the end. It’s all about the balance. 

Dr. Eric: 

Agreed. Definitely want to chat with you about intermittent fasting because that’s a hot topic these days and over the last few years. I don’t have anything against intermittent fasting. Sometimes, it can get extreme. Even sometimes 16-8 fasts are too much for some people, let alone 18-6. I’m talking about regular people who are doing it on a daily basis. “I am going to go 20 hours and have a four-hour eating window or six-hour eating window.” I’d like to hear your thoughts on intermittent fasting. 

Sandy: 

The biggest thing I’m gonna say is I became insulin-resistant while I was intermittent fasting. How is that possible? I was 52. This was the first year that I went from regular cycles to I only had four periods that year. That was the year that estrogen dropped, that I started to experience hot flashes. I was still intermittent fasting, listening to the Maniverse. Sorry, no offense, Eric. I call it the Maniverse. 

Dr. Eric: 

No offense taken. 

Sandy: 

You know, I’m like, I was treating my body almost in a robotic way as opposed to listening to my body. If you go back to my history, I have some issues with cortisol. Maybe my resiliency to the stress it was causing me is not as strong as your resiliency. We’re also bioindividual, and we just need to listen to what makes sense for us. 

I think intermittent fasting is fine for some and not fine for others. Now, the only thing I will do is 12 hours overnight. I don’t eat late at night. I don’t snack. 

As you know, I became a certified metabolic balance coach. The reason I did that was they said, “You do the program. You’re recording with us. You gotta learn.” Okay. I did, and I learned so much about what was going on with my insulin sensitivity right in the latter stages of perimenopause. Then I learned this isn’t suiting my body. 

Of course, I started to research my own genetics and predispositions for type 2 diabetes. I have quite a few. I don’t have a thyroid gland to boot. I really have to look at all the variables. 

I hope people don’t get confused by this. When you really tap into what makes sense for your body, you can thrive. No matter what, without a thyroid, with a thyroid that is maybe not working so great, but you can. 

Dr. Eric: 

I definitely agree. I love what you say about listening to your body. I’m sure there are people who are doing intermittent fasting and are thriving. There are also those who don’t feel good. Maybe they should eat at 7am and do a 12-hour fast. Stop eating at 6pm/7pm. We are not saying to eat at 10pm. 2-3 hours before going to bed, I would recommend not eating. If you’re hungry first thing in the morning or an hour after eating, I agree with you. 

No snacking. Even that, it’s different. I’m more with you. A lot of people snack for the sake of snacking. If someone is dealing with hypoglycemia, or if someone is hungry, that’s a sign that they are not getting enough protein. If you really feel like you need a snack, that’s not a different conversation because it is tied into this, but there could be a reason why some people feel like they need a snack in between meals. I think we’re on the same page.

Sandy: 

This was when I was 47 or 48. I’m getting close to menopause. Better start working out. I started working out. I would lift pretty heavy at times. Then I was very much into taking in a lot of protein. 

That’s the other thing. You hear a lot of these doctors saying, “You must have this much protein in every single meal,” or “this much per day,” or whatever. How can you say that? How can you say that when you have no idea what Sandy Kruse is doing? How can you say I need this much protein? That’s why I’m always about the balance. Yes, we need protein, but we need protein to suit our body and our needs and our lifestyle. I do think too much protein is not great for longevity. 

Dr. Eric: 

Like you said, it depends on the person. Hopefully everybody who is listening to this is on the more active side, exercising. Those who can do resistance training. Some might be healing and not ready for that yet. There is a time and place for more protein. But I agree. 

There are people who are not getting enough protein. On the other side, there are people who are overloading and struggling to get enough protein. There are different units of measurement, but experts talk about 1g of protein per lb of body weight. If someone weights 120lbs, which isn’t really heavy, they would need to eat 120g of protein. If someone is 180lbs, they would need to get 180g of protein, which is a lot of protein and not easy to do. 

Sandy: 

There are ways you can do that. I remember when I was working out more heavily, I would do amino acids. Not protein powder because we know a lot of protein powder has a lot of garbage. It is hard to find a really clean protein source.

You know what I am starting? Collagen. I am starting to take that every day. A big thing that happens to a lot of women when your estrogen starts to decline is you start to get a lot of these aches and pains and joint problems. You know this. Menopause can really trigger a lot of these not so great things that go on with the joints in your body. I am doing a collagen powder, but a very full spectrum collagen. 

Dr. Eric: 

Okay. Like a whole-body collagen? 

Sandy: 

You know the one I’m doing is Dr. Josh Axe’s Ancient Nutrition. I like it. 

Dr. Eric: 

I’m not familiar with the ingredients, but I know he has his bone broth powder. 

Sandy: 

Yeah, it’s clean, and he uses a marine collagen. He uses a bovine, very clean. He doesn’t use erythritol. I am not a fan of erythritol as a non-caloric sugar replacement. No thanks. 

Dr. Eric: 

Do you like any sugar substitutes, like stevia or monk fruit? 

Sandy: 

I think I have been damaged honestly. I used to be so robotic in everything I did, to be truthful. It never served me. When I was keto, I would only take in Swerve. Do you have that in the US? 

Dr. Eric: 

Doesn’t ring a bell.  

Sandy: 

It’s a mix of erythritol with other non-caloric sweeteners. Then I would take in erythritol. I don’t mind stevia. I don’t like monk fruit. I feel like a lot of these non-caloric sweeteners are more processed than just having- I prefer to use a raw organic coconut sugar. It’s better for your glycemic index. Less processing than erythritol. I know a lot of people like monk fruit, but my gut can’t take it. I think that’s the key. Sugar alcohol can kill you as it relates to the gut. It depends.

I remember I was baking. I can’t eat sugar, so I’d be baking almost every day. What am I going to bake today with erythritol? It wasn’t good for me. Now, I will use date sugar. I have used coconut sugar. I will use raw unpasteurized honey, or I will use pure organic maple syrup. Those are the things I will stick to.

Then if you need a granulated sugar, a raw turbinado sugar, something like that. That’s it. I’m not going to use all of the non-caloric stuff. It doesn’t make me feel good. Not that I eat a lot of sugar anyway.  

Dr. Eric: 

Makes sense. I agree with especially the honey and maple syrup in moderation. Not everybody, but for many people, good option. When I have green tea, herbal tea, I was guilty years ago of adding stevia to it. Now, I just have them plain. I don’t add anything. I don’t even add honey or maple syrup. I just have it like it is. 

Sandy: 

Me, too. If I have some sort of flu or something going on, then I will have a teaspoon of honey. Who cares? Sure. It will raise my blood sugar, but I won’t worry about it because my body needs it. 

Dr. Eric: 

There you go. Hopefully you don’t have to do that too often. 

Sandy: 

No. 

Dr. Eric: 

Before we wrap it up, I did want to ask you about spore-based probiotics, Akkermansia. I heard a conversation you had. I am more of a Lactobacillus/Bifidobacteria person as well. I am still skeptical a little bit with spore-based probiotics. 

As far as the research, there is more research with the Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium. When someone is exclusively taking a spore-based probiotic, to me, it’s because they heard another practitioner but also the company hype them up, which I understand. If they sell them, I get it. It’s a business. 

I’d like to get your thoughts on spore-based probiotics as well as Akkermansia. There are now supplements available. I think it’s just one company that offers it. 

Sandy: 

Pendulum. 

Dr. Eric: 

Yep. 

Sandy: 

Here is the interesting thing about spore-based. I am born in Canada, but my parents are Croatian. They lived on the farms. My dad is going to be 88. We are talking old-school. My mom will be 79. I love to listen to their stories. How they grew up on the farm. What they did. How they lived. How they grew their crops. How they reared their animals. All that kind of stuff. I find it fascinating. it’s like looking at the blue zones and coming up with a modern way to live.

If you look at how farmers lived, sure, they would get spore- and soil-based probiotics. Usually, it would be entered through the air when they’re doing their farming. Maybe there would be some residue left on their produce. They’re not ingesting giant amounts of spore and soil-based probiotics normally. 

The way that I look at it, in my little brain, Eric, it doesn’t make logical sense to me. I don’t care about the company that is doing all these big advertisements. I truly don’t care. I look at what is logical to me. Maybe getting a little bit is okay. What do we have in our gut? What is it, a trillion different bacteria in our gut? Give me some of the human strain that I may be lacking because of the environment that I live in and maybe the food quality that I have access to. Give me some of the human.

The other thing is proliferation. From what I have researched on spore-based, they can really proliferate in the gut. 

Dr. Eric: 

Can they? I know the Lactobacillus and Bifido, you have to keep on taking them. 

Sandy: 

Right. But spore-based, I believe the research, and you can check on this because I am not definitively saying, pretty sure they can proliferate. Do I want that? Let’s look that up to confirm. I’m not 100% sure. 

Dr. Eric: 

I will do some research. 

Sandy: 

We all know the Lacto, Bifido, those are transient. I have done some research on L. reuteri though. Apparently there is more to come on L. reuteri. I don’t know if you have ever made your own yogurt. I tried, and it was a fail. I will try again. Some strains can proliferate, but a lot of these human strains that we are taking from the bottle don’t. They are transient. 

As for Akkermansia, I took it for a short period of time. It’s all in this marketing stuff. I have no loyalty to any of these supplement companies that we’re talking about. I took Akkermansia according to- I think it was a two-month protocol that I did. Some of the advertising that is out there saying it acts like a GLP1 and can help with your weight. I saw nothing, zero. Maybe there is other factors in there. We don’t know for sure. I saw nothing. 

The research that I did on Akkermansia is that you don’t want too much of it. It can actually do the opposite for your intestinal barrier that you want. 

Too much of anything, I’m like off of it. I did do a protocol. Have you heard of Vitract? It’s a gut test. 

Dr. Eric: 

I don’t think so.  

Sandy: 

I think they test for Akkermansia. I think the GI Map does, too. 

Dr. Eric: 

It does. 

Sandy: 

I do know that they often will recommend to test your gut for Akkermansia first. Too much isn’t good. What can I do? How about I eat fermented foods? My parents still ferment their own cabbage, like very old school, in a big barrel. They do it every winter. I just tell my mom to make me some cabbage rolls. It’s the best. 

So eat it. Preferably eat it. Eat prebiotics. Eat postbiotics. Eat probiotics. The way you do that is to eat a variety of foods. Then supplement with a human strain. That is very simple, but that is how I do it. 

Dr. Eric: 

There you go. I love it. Very helpful. We covered a lot of different topics here. Is there anything else I should have asked you that I didn’t ask you? Anything else you want to say before we wrap it up and tell people how to find out more about you? 

Sandy: 

I don’t know if you have a lot of female listeners, but it’d be useful. 

Dr. Eric: 

I do. 

Sandy: 

You do? We might have to do another episode on menopause when you have thyroid issues. I have done a ton of research. This will be too long for me to get into. We are talking about how estrogen affects the thyroid. I just came off a very hyperthyroid state, which I haven’t been in for so long, just because I took seven keto DHEA. It was recommended to me for cortisol regulation. There is a lot.

I think this was a good place to start. I think that people have to know that there is a way to come back. When you get in touch with your own body and go, “I don’t feel right,” you have to learn how to advocate for yourself. 

I am on four different thyroid meds. Three different thyroid meds, four different doses. I work with my endocrinologist just to make sure that my balance is optimized.

Dr. Eric: 

Makes sense. I didn’t ask you, or maybe you brought it up. Have you taken desiccated? 

Sandy: 

I am on it. 

Dr. Eric:

You said you have four different doses. T4, T3, and along with that, are you rotating that with desiccated? 

Sandy: 

I am on two different doses of T4, and it changes. Recently, it changed again because of the whole DHEA debacle. We won’t get into that here. Yes, I take two different Synthroid. I take Cytomel. I take a desiccated every day. 

Dr. Eric: 

Sounds like it’s working for you, which is great. You’re feeling better. I’m sure your numbers are looking a lot better. We will definitely have to get you back on the show to talk about menopause and share your story as well. Would love to have another conversation with you, Sandy. Thank you so much for being on.

If you could let others know where they could find you. You have your own podcast and also a Substack. 

Sandy: 

For my podcast, just go to SandyKruse.ca. There, you’ll find all the links to my podcast, where you can find it, where you can listen. My podcast is now over five years. It’s all about wellness as we age. It’s really body, mind, spirit, soul because I am a big believer that we are not robots, and we all need to understand our bodies better in order to age better. The goal is really how can we optimize that and try and not get one of these nasty diseases that a lot of people are getting in their midlife years? That’s my podcast. 

I am a writer as well. I released my essential thyroid guide last year. That was self-published on Amazon. It’s called The Essential Thyroid Guide. It is 100% not a clinical guide. It is a patient advocacy guide. It’s simplified, so you can understand all the factors that can affect your thyroid health.

I also have Substack, where I write a lot of short explorative essays, where you can think about things as they relate to your own health. You don’t make mistakes. I have made a lot of them by listening to all of these health gurus out there. You really need to decipher resonance for yourself. 

Dr. Eric: 

I agree. I told you before we started, I signed up for your Substack and listened to your podcast. I also was interviewed by you. Highly recommend the podcast, the Substack, and definitely check out her essential thyroid guide on Amazon. 

Again, thank you so much, Sandy. This was a great conversation. Really appreciate you sharing your journey with thyroid cancer. 

Sandy: 

Thank you so much, Eric. I really appreciate meeting you and you having me here today. 

Dr. Eric: 

Same here. The feeling definitely is mutual. 

Sandy: 

Thanks. 

Recently, I interviewed Jenny,  our thyroid health audit participant, who shares her journey with Hashimoto’s and secondary infertility, two challenges that often go hand in hand but are rarely talked about together. In this episode we discussed how addressing root causes, not just lab numbers—can open new possibilities for healing and conception, 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 very excited to chat with Jenny here. She will talk a little bit about her health journey. How are you doing today, Jenny? 

Jenny: 

I’m doing well, thank you. Appreciate the opportunity to meet with you. 

Dr. Eric: 

Thank you as well for doing this. We were chatting a little bit before this, and you filled out the application I have everybody do, so I can get an idea of your health challenges. 

You were recently diagnosed with Hashimoto’s. The biggest challenge is dealing with infertility. Can you give a little bit of that background? When were you diagnosed with Hashimoto’s? As far as the infertility, you received IVF as well, so if you could talk about that. 

Jenny: 

Certainly. My spouse and I are navigating secondary infertility. We were able to have one child naturally. We went to try to have a second child and were not able to. After a while of trying, I had reached out to my OB to get some potential bloodwork done. They look at your ovarian reserve, your TSH, and something else. 

At that point, my TSH was in the normal range, but from my understanding, it was higher than what they wanted to see for somebody who was trying to conceive or pregnant. From what I learned, that range may not be the most accurate range in terms of TSH functioning. 

At that point, I was put on levothyroxine. I took that with hopes that maybe that would be the magic thing to get my TSH down, and then I could get pregnant. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. 

We eventually got referred to a reproductive endocrinologist. At that point, we did a lot of bloodwork. Within that wasn’t a full thyroid panel, but it did include TSH again and TPO antibodies, which were high. That was a little over a year ago. 

No one told me, “You have Hashimoto’s.” No one said there was any concern with my thyroid. They just said something like, “There has been a little damage to your thyroid. That’s all. It’s unlikely that your thyroid is impacting your ability to conceive.” 

We continued to do interventions. We did several IUIs. They were unsuccessful. We went to do IVF as well. That was unsuccessful. That’s another topic, and it was really devastating. We realized we must be missing something. Something was off. 

I had done a lot of research on thyroid through this process. Was it worth introducing supplements, working to get rid of toxins, changing my diet, stress management. As you can imagine, it’s really hard when you’re doing IVF. “Don’t be stressed,” but it’s one of the most stressful things ever.

I met with an endocrinologist this summer. Pretty off the bat, she was like, “You have Hashimoto’s, mild hypothyroidism.” I also have a family history of this. My dad has Hashimoto’s. My paternal grandmother. I don’t know if she was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s, but there were issues with her thyroid. She had a goiter, so I’m pretty sure she had Hashimoto’s. 

Then I went into a deeper dive. I have to figure this out. What can I do to support my thyroid? Consulting with some of your work, some other folks and their work as well. 

Dr. Eric: 

When you did your research, is that how you came across me? Did you come across my website or book? 

Jenny: 

I came across your book and website around the time I did that initial bloodwork with my OB. They were talking about thyroid. I was like, “Okay.” My mission is to have a baby. I have to do everything I can. My dad pointed me in your direction. He has an extensive library of thyroid books and resources. 

Dr. Eric: 

Glad he found me and referred you to me. 

When they first tested TSH, sounded like it was within the lab range but higher than optimal. They didn’t look at thyroid hormones. They just put you on levothyroxine based on the TSH alone. Eventually, they retested the TSH. It sounds like they still didn’t do a full thyroid panel, just TSH and TPO antibodies. Then they saw the TPO antibodies were high. Do you know if they tested the TG antibodies, which are also associated with Hashimoto’s? 

Jenny: 

No, I don’t have any bloodwork for that. I haven’t had a full panel done. I had asked my endocrinologist about that and was met with just looking at the TSH and TPO antibodies. They didn’t feel like we needed to test T3 or T4. 

From some of my more recent research, and maybe this is a question with you, I am hoping to do a bit more advocacy for myself to try to get a full panel done. I feel like that would be helpful, even if they are not considering it on their side of things, just for me to have an understanding of where I’m at and with a strong desire to reduce my antibodies. 

Dr. Eric: 

When it comes to testing TG antibodies, I could understand why they’re not doing it. It won’t change their approach. They will give thyroid hormone replacement regardless, the levothyroxine. 

I think it is crazy for them not to look at thyroid hormones just because maybe you’re taking the levothyroxine, which is T4, but T4 has to convert into T3. It’s not always reflected with the TSH. The T4 influences the TSH more. For all we know, the T3 might be on the lower side, even if the TSH is looking better with levothyroxine. T3, being the active form of thyroid hormone, if that is on the lower side, that definitely can affect conception. 

If you can’t get it through your doctors, I would pay out of pocket. I realize you have already spent who knows how much money on the IVF. Depending on where you go, if you go to some walk-in labs, they might charge you over $100. If you shop around, you can get it for like $30-40, TSH, free T3, free T4. Not a full thyroid panel with antibodies, but at least a look at the thyroid hormones. 

Make sure that T3 is optimal. I do see a lot of people with Hashimoto’s where that T3 is on the lower side. Definitely want to look into that. 

Like I said, the TG antibodies, for the sake of what they do, I could understand not testing. Actually, on the podcast, I interviewed a few healthcare practitioners who talked about fertility. Based on my own research, too, when you have low thyroid, that could affect conception. The antibodies could also increase the likelihood of having a miscarriage. It doesn’t mean that you will have a miscarriage, so it’s nice to get those antibodies tested to see. 

Maybe you just have TPO antibodies, and TG antibodies look fine. If that’s the case, you won’t need to retest those again necessarily. If they’re both high, and the goal is to eventually normalize them, which is my goal when working with someone, then I would say it’s a good idea to retest. But test it first, since you haven’t tested it at all yet. 

The priority would be T3 and T4. Then same thing. If you had to, you could pay out of pocket for the TG antibodies as well. It’s unfortunate that most doctors, including endocrinologists, will just look at TSH. Some will do a TSH and T4. As I just mentioned, you do want to make sure you are converting T4 to T3. 

You might have heard of reverse T3, which sometimes can be helpful, too. Like I said, I realize you have already spent a lot of money. Reverse T3, some people really think highly of it. Everybody with Hashimoto’s should get reverse T3, they say. I do try to include it. 

To me, it wouldn’t be the priority. When we prioritize the blood test, TSH and thyroid hormones are the priority. Antibodies are important. Reverse T3, kind of on the back end. If you can get that done, great. If you can’t get that done, usually we could look at the other numbers and get a good idea of what’s going on. 

Jenny:

If my T3 is lower, the recommendation would be to shift what medication I am on? 

Dr. Eric: 

Yes. If you are having a problem converting T4 to T3, ultimately, you want to try to address the cause of the problem. While doing that, you might choose to take T3. 

There are a few different options. They probably would recommend synthetic T3, something like Cytomel. There is also desiccated thyroid. A lot of doctors aren’t big fans of that, especially during pregnancy. Things like Armour or NP Thyroid, which have T3, T4 as well as T1 and T2, which are less well known. They would probably recommend synthetic T3. 

Another option is compounded thyroid hormone. You go to a compound pharmacy and get T4 and T3. 

You would want to address the cause of the problem, too. Approximately 60% of the conversion from T4 to T3 takes place in the liver. Another 20% takes place in the gut. 

Sounds like you have already done some good things for your health, like working on diet. Stress also could affect that conversion. Having higher cortisol could impact the conversion of T4 to T3. If you have to take the T3 to help with the conception, that is fine. You want to ideally identify the cause of the conversion problem and then address it. 

Jenny: 

Certainly. That’s where I feel like I’m so close yet so far away at the same time with figuring out the root cause. My TPO antibodies went up by 400 over the last year. I thought I was doing all the stuff I needed to do to help support my thyroid. Granted, I was under a high level of stress. I was taking a lot of medication for infertility reasons. They were working to reduce inflammation, but I still had a lot of inflammation happening because of all of that. 

I was really disheartened when I asked to get my TPO antibodies rechecked recently and saw they had increased by 400. I was so hoping the opposite. 

Dr. Eric: 

It can be challenging to lower and normalize the antibodies. It’s not uncommon for them to rollercoaster back and forth, which can make it challenging. Let’s say you test antibodies again in a few months. If they decrease greatly, again, sometimes can be misleading. Obviously, that’s what we ultimately want to see. 

It sounds like something might be missing. Diet and lifestyle, very important. It’s a piece of the puzzle. If you have my book Hashimoto’s Triggers, there are a lot of triggers. Food is one. Stress is one. There are a lot more, too. It could sometimes take some extensive detective work, depending on the person. That’s the next question: Have you done any functional medicine testing at all? 

Jenny: 

No, I haven’t done any functional medicine testing. I’m interested in that. I was in such an urgency to have a child and wanting children close together and got pushed in a variety of directions into the more medical route. I do feel like that would be beneficial for me, and I’m hoping to do that. 

On my own, I have really worked on foods I’m eating or not eating. One big thing has been balancing my blood sugar. I was always super hangry, and that has gotten a lot better.

I am taking a lot of supplements. Some of that is good; some of it is frustrating. I don’t want to move through my life taking this many supplements. Some of them I don’t even know if they are doing anything or not. Either they were recommended for infertility reasons or suggested in some thyroid resources I found. 

I’ve had gut issues throughout my life. They’re a lot better now. I don’t experience that as frequently. I feel like I’ve had a lot of growth there. 

I have no idea how my liver is doing. I know the liver functioning is important, and there can be a lot of buildup there. I wonder about that. 

I feel like I’m going off from your initial question now about functional medicine. Here I am telling you all the things I am trying to do so far. I’ll stop here. 

Dr. Eric: 

No, that’s okay. Getting back to the liver. When you do a basic blood test, like a comprehensive metabolic panel or hepatic panel, they are looking at liver enzymes, AST, ALT, sometimes GGT. That doesn’t really look at the function of the liver. 

If those levels are low, that is what you want. If they’re higher, that means there is some type of damage. I see that more with my hyper patients when they are taking antithyroid medication for example. The levothyroxine wouldn’t do that. 

That doesn’t tell us how you’re detoxifying, what your toxic burden is. There is really not a great test to look at our toxic burden. You can do testing to look at heavy metals. You can do other tests to look at other types of environmental toxins. 

In that respect, I would say definitely do as much as you can to minimize your exposure to environmental toxins. Even without knowing levels of heavy metals and other environmental toxins, they might do liver detox, and that is hugely harmful. Sometimes, it can cause certain side effects, like die-off effects. 

The supplements, I definitely recommend supplements, but that is one reason I do testing. There are some general supplements, like omega-3 fatty acids, probiotics. Depends on the person. We want to do testing to see what imbalances someone has. My guess is you probably had at least some blood testing, like Vitamin D. I’d be surprised if they didn’t look at Vitamin D levels. 

Jenny: 

I did have Vitamin D. That’s fine. Vitamin D, iron, B12, magnesium. 

Dr. Eric: 

How did your iron look? Another challenge is hair loss, which could be related to the thyroid but also nutrient deficiencies. I don’t know if you remember your iron numbers. Like the thyroid, they might be within the lab range but outside of the optimal range. 

Jenny: 

I don’t have the specific numbers in mind, but I believe it was fine, within the lab range. I also had some resource that I was consulting, more functional medicine. It seemed like it fell in that range, so that wasn’t a concern.

My B12 was really high. 

Dr. Eric: 

I assume you’re not a vegetarian, that you eat meat? 

Jenny: 

Yeah, I do. 

Dr. Eric: 

If you ate a meal higher in B12, whether it was beef or something else the night before. If you are taking a B12 supplement, you probably are taking a prenatal? This has not only folate but B12. 

Jenny: 

Yes.  

Dr. Eric: 

I usually don’t get too concerned when I see B12 high. It is common on a blood test. When that is low, that could be an issue. When it’s high, it’s usually because you are getting exposed to it either through the diet or supplementation. 

There is another marker called methylmalonic acid, which is a better indicator of B12 status. Usually not tested by most doctors. That might be something to look into if you’re concerned about that.

With diet and lifestyle, what you’re doing as far as trying to eat a whole, healthy foods diet. 

The stress is huge. I know you’re doing things to manage your stress. I would continue on an everyday basis. That doesn’t mean that you have to spend an hour per day on stress management. Consistency is important. Just because some people will maybe do yoga 2-3 times a week, and that’s it. You really want to be in the routine of stress handling. 

How is your sleep at night? 

Jenny: 

My sleep is generally okay. That’s one of the areas that I’m more recently focusing on. I have to acknowledge, I didn’t sleep as great last night because I was nervous about this conversation and being recorded. I kept waking up thinking about what I was going to say. Generally, I can fall asleep fine. 

I do think with balancing my blood sugar, at least a piece of it has supported me in waking up not as groggy. I don’t know for sure. I think just energy-wise, I am feeling better. 

I do have a Fitbit that tracks my sleep. I always have a very high level of light sleep and not much deep sleep.  

Dr. Eric: 

Okay. A lot of light sleep and not enough deep sleep. That’s something to work on. You haven’t had your adrenals tested, I assume? 

Jenny: 

No. 

Dr. Eric: 

Also something to look at. There are a few options with that. Saliva testing is really good for looking at adrenals. 

A lot of functional medicine practitioners would recommend DUTCH testing, if you are familiar with that, for someone who is struggling with fertility. That looks at adrenals, sex hormones, and the metabolism of the hormones as well as some other things. That might be something in the future that you want to look into. Have you heard of DUTCH testing? 

Jenny: 

I’ve heard about it. I don’t know too much about it. The name is familiar to me. 

Dr. Eric: 

Especially if someone is focusing on fertility, most practitioners of functional medicine recommend a DUTCH test. Not everyone. Some might just recommend saliva testing for adrenals and testing sex hormones in the blood. The thing is, you can’t look at the metabolism of the hormones in the blood. Still, I can’t say the DUTCH test is absolutely necessary, but the more information you get, the better. I would look into that. 

You have already done some tests through the blood. You mentioned iron and B12 and magnesium. Magnesium in the blood, they often look at serum magnesium. RBC magnesium is better than that. Sometimes, you have to take what you get if you are running it through insurance. I understand that. 

You mentioned the gut. You said the gut used to be a big problem, but not as problematic. Maybe you don’t need to do gut testing, like a comprehensive stool panel. You could always start conservatively. It’s really up to you. Some women understandably, especially if they have gone through IVF and want to do everything they can- 

I tend to be on average more on the conservative side with the testing. Not to say that you need to spend thousands of dollars on functional medicine testing. In this situation, since you did have a history of gut issues, and you can’t always go by symptoms, you might want to dig a little bit deeper. If you do decide to do functional medicine testing, maybe consider the DUTCH and a comprehensive stool test. 

Jenny: 

I would be open to that. I wonder if there is something there still. It was so bad for a large chunk of my life. I am grateful that it’s better. Big impact on my life. That’s what prompted me to go- I have been gluten-free for 14 years. That was what helped me a lot. Still didn’t resolve it all, but it helped a lot. I would be interested in doing a comprehensive stool panel. 

Dr. Eric: 

I think the next steps: Continue with the diet. Gluten-free is great. I usually recommend paleo or autoimmune paleo for Hashimoto’s. If you are concerned about AIP being too restrictive, paleo is still pretty healthy. It eliminates the common allergens, the refined foods and sugars, unhealthy oils.

Stress management, we spoke about. Just continuing to work on sleep. Reducing your toxic burden. Trying to minimize cleaners, cosmetics in your home. Try to eat as organic as possible. 

The functional medicine testing. Just to fill in the gaps. If you feel like you have done everything from a diet and lifestyle standpoint. Maybe you haven’t. Maybe there is still some improvement in that area. Even if you have done 100%, you want to make sure that everything goes according to plan with conceiving. 

I would recommend doing the functional medicine testing. Some type of adrenal testing, maybe digging deeper and doing the DUTCH test, possibly a comprehensive stool panel. 

That would be your homework for things to work on. Hopefully, you give me an update in a few months with some really good news. It’s not easy. I know it’s very stressful, very emotional. Even for those who aren’t having fertility issues, taking a functional medicine approach and trying to lower and normalize antibodies usually is not an easy process. I commend you for doing what you’ve done so far. I definitely would look into the functional medicine testing and give me an update in the future. 

Jenny: 

Thank you. I will definitely look into the functional medicine testing. I hope there is a good update. At the very least, I want to be able to be the healthiest version of myself and reduce some of these other symptoms that I have. If there is a baby, that would be beautiful. I hope there is an update for you. 

Dr. Eric: 

Hopefully you get the best of both worlds. You optimize your health, and you give good news of pregnancy and having a healthy baby. 

The good news is that there are still things you can do. It’s not like you have exhausted everything. If you had said you had done all the functional medicine testing, even diet and lifestyle, there is room for improvement. I think you can continue to work on that. Consider functional medicine testing.

I’d like to be optimistic and confident that in a few months, you will shoot me an email with some good news. Definitely do so. Again, thank you so much for agreeing to do this audit, Jenny. 

Jenny: 

Of course. Thank you for your time and speaking with me. 

Dr. Eric: 

Thanks, everyone for taking the time to listen. I hope you found this conversation to be valuable. I look forward to catching everyone in the next episode. 

Recently, Dr. Lisa Tamati, who is a world-renowned longevity and health optimization expert. In this episode, we talked about her powerful journey from ultra-endurance athlete to passionate health advocate, sharing how she helped her mother recover from brain aneurysm and cancer using cutting-edge therapies. Lisa highlights why reclaiming your health starts with the right mindset, targeted nutrition, and smart supplementation, and more. If you would prefer to listen to the interview you can access it by Clicking Here.

Dr. Eric Osansky: 

I am super excited to chat with Lisa Tamati, as we are going to be talking about a lot of different things: brain injuries, hyperbaric oxygen, genetic testing, I’m sure a few other fascinating topics. Let me dive into Lisa’s impressive bio here: 

Lisa Tamati is a globally recognized expert in longevity and health optimization, a trailblazing educator, and a serial entrepreneur. As a former ultra endurance athlete with over 25 years of experience competing in some of the world’s toughest races, Lisa has transformed her passion for peak performance and resilience into a mission to empower others to achieve their full potential in health and longevity. 

A podcaster for over a decade, Lisa hosts the globally top 200 ranked show in the functional medicine, longevity, and biohacking space, where she interviews world-renowned experts and explores cutting-edge advancements in health.

She is also the author of five best-selling books including Relentless, which shares her inspirational journey of overcoming adversity and achieving the seemingly impossible. 

Lisa’s career extends beyond broadcasting and writing. She is the co-founder of the biotech company Aevum Labs, dedicated to developing innovative solutions for aging and immune health. She has also founded several other successful ventures, leveraging her expertise to bridge the gap between scientific research and practical applications in wellness. 

In addition to her entrepreneurial achievements, Lisa is a sought-after speaker, documentary filmmaker, and former television host, known for her engaging storytelling and ability to simplify complex scientific topics for diverse audiences. Her columns and content focus on empowering individuals to take control of their health through evidence-based strategies, mindset shifts, and practical tools. 

Lisa’s work embodies a unique blend of personal grit, scientific expertise, and unwavering passion. Whether she is addressing professionals in the biotech industry, coaching athletes, or inspiring everyday individuals, Lisa brings unparalleled energy and insight into every stage. Learn more about her work at www.LisaTamati.com. Welcome, Lisa. 

Lisa Tamati: 

Thanks, Dr. Eric. I know it sounds good when it’s all written on paper, but in reality, just average. 

Dr. Eric: 

A lot of this, I didn’t know, and I have listened to some of your podcast episodes. Your podcast for over a decade. That’s a long time. And a former television host. I didn’t know that. That’s pretty cool. You definitely have done a lot. Now we are going to learn even more about your background. Why don’t you spend a few minutes telling us: How did you decide to make that transition, helping others in the health and wellness field? 

Lisa: 

As you said in the bio, I had a background as an extreme ultra endurance athlete. I spent 25 years racing all over the planet, doing really long ultra marathons, in the Sahara, the Moroccan, the Arabian, the Libyan, the Niger, the Jordan, Gobi. Did the US a couple times. Ran right through New Zealand. At one point, for charity. Lots of adventures in the Himalayas and the Outback of Australia. 

The funny thing was I wasn’t very talented as a runner. I was just bloody minded, and I didn’t have a lot of speed. I went fast. I was good at getting around obstacles, finding a way to do the things I loved. And I loved adventure.

When you spend so many years pushing the excellent boundaries of physical performance and mental endurance, it really teaches you a lot of lessons for life. You realize that all the limitations the world puts on you, “You can’t possibly run through this valley in the middle of summer. You can’t possibly run across the Sahara. You can’t possibly do this,” were wrong. 

That gave me a mindset of “Just because someone tells me I can’t do something doesn’t mean it’s true.” If I dedicate myself to something, I usually find a way to work it out. I might not be very talented. I might not be the most intelligent. I might not be the fastest. When you have a lot of grit and determination, and you’re willing to grind things out, you can achieve a lot of things. 

Having that ultra marathon background and doing expeditions and succeeding and having a lot of experience really set me up for what I’m doing now, which is in the longevity and health space.

I was thrown into this space because my mom, who is wonderful and always supported me through my crazy adventures, a decade ago, she collapsed on the floor at home and was rushed to the hospital. She had an aneurysm, and she was misdiagnosed from the get-go. They thought she just had a migraine. An aneurysm and a stroke at the same time, she had bleeding in the brain. 

We were left there for six hours in the ED, being told it was a migraine, and she was dying at this point. After six hours of desperation, I rang a friend who was a paramedic because I was getting ignored. I knew something was majorly wrong. 

She came up and took one look at Mom, and she knew her, and she said, “No, this is deadly serious.” She went to the doctor and told them to get a CT scan, which he finally relented and did. It came back that there was blood throughout the brain. We had to be shifted to Wellington because we live in a regional area in New Zealand. 

That put me on high alert. My mom was fighting for her life, and I didn’t know what to do. I was caught out. I made a silent prayer to whoever is out there in the universe. If they gave me a second chance, and if they saved my mother, I would dedicate my life to helping others and getting her back and doing everything I possibly could. When you’re in that moment of desperation, and you promise the world. 

I started to research. In that time, when she was in critical care down in Wellington and in and out of a coma, there wasn’t a lot I could do because she was in that critical situation. I started to observe everything. When you’re with someone 24/7, with a couple hours of sleep here and there, you pick up things that the doctors aren’t picking up necessarily. I started to have the oddest situation where I was missing something. I realized that I could make an impact. That grew over time.

After three weeks, my mother was out of critical danger. She’d survived. But she had massive brain damage. She was a baby with hardly any higher function. No ability to sit or put food in her mouth. Completely and utterly brain damaged at age 74. 

Then they said to me, “She is never going to have any quality of life again. Put her into an institution, and she won’t be with us very long.” I’m a fighter, so I wasn’t accepting that whatsoever. 

My desperate search to find things that would help my mom led me in different directions. The first thing I picked up was I didn’t think she was breathing properly. I thought she had sleep apnea because I have done a lot of racing at altitude, and I knew the signs of altitude sickness. I was seeing those signs in my mother. 

I tried to get the doctors to do a sleep apnea assessment. They wouldn’t do it. I smuggled in a consultant one night, who was a friend of the family. He came into the hospital, and we hooked her up to the machines to do a study. It came back with severe sleep apnea. She was stopping breathing hundreds of times a night. She was Cheyne-Stokes breathing, which is not far from not being on this planet. 74% oxygen stats, which is really deadly.

That was my first win. Then I was like, now we have oxygen, and we have a CPAP machine. I stated to realize I can make a difference, and I can do things. I dove further and further into the research. 

One of the things that I came up with was hyperbaric oxygen therapy. I read about the work of Dr. Hodge in America, who is a famous hyperbaric specialist over there. How much this could help with massive brain injuries. 

Then I went on a search for how I could get my mom hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and it wasn’t available in my town. Except there was a commercial dive company that did hyperbaric oxygen for their divers. I approached this dive company and said, “This is my situation. Can I please use your chamber as soon as my mom is out of hospital?” These amazing people said, “Yes, sign a legal waiver, and then we will let you use the chamber.” That was absolutely amazing of them to do that.

I remember the day we got out of hospital. I had a hell of a fight to get her home by the way, but I won’t get into that story. I took her straight down to this factory. Fragile, in a wheelchair, nobody home Mom. We put her on a forklift and stuck her in this big hyperbaric chamber. That was the only way we could get her in. We did this day after day after day after day. We did 33 sessions back to back with the weekends off.

After those 33 sessions, she started to respond. Now, she didn’t just get up and walk, but she started to have a couple of words. She was paralyzed on the right side. Her arm started to move. She started to have a little bit of flicker of intelligence behind her eyes. I knew that this was working. 

After 33 sessions, we lost access to the chamber because it had to be taken off on a contract. How do I get her a hyperbaric chamber? I moved her to my house and bought one. I stored it in my house, and I worked out how to get her into it because she couldn’t move on her own. All of these obstacles we had to overcome. I got her into the chamber. I found a way. I put her through session after session after session.

In this time, I was also starting the keto diet and how that affects the brain and ketones. Different supplements and functional neurology and vestibular systems. Everything I could possibly study in order to stay one step ahead of her rehab journey. Slowly, a real grind. 

After 2.5 years, to cut a very long story short, and I have written a book about this called Relentless, as you mentioned. We got her back to full health again, full power of attorney, full license, full driver’s license. You don’t get a driver’s license unless you’re fully there. Walking, up to 3ks, 4ks a day, going to the gym, going out and having an independent life again. It was thousands and thousands of hours of retraining her brain and working day in, day out. That taught me an awful lot.

That’s how I got into this space, Dr. Eric, to answer your question.  

Dr. Eric: 

That is some story. Definitely an inspirational story. When we think about traumatic brain injuries, this is obviously really extreme. I think it’s safe to say, in most cases, most people would probably give up. Like you said, you’re relentless. That is one of the books. An amazing story. Your mom is doing really good? 

Lisa: 

That was unfortunately round one. That was a decade ago. We got her back to full health, to doing everything again. Then she got hit with brain cancer. We had another similar experience at the hospital, where they refused to believe me that there was anything wrong. I spent three weeks fighting to get an MRI. 

When they did finally do an MRI, they found that half of her brain was covered in cancer, probably from the effects of what she had been through earlier. Who knows. They said, “She had weeks to live, and there is nothing you can do. She is too old to do major bone marrow transplants. She is unable to take the chemo; she wouldn’t survive.” 

I took my research to cancer. I didn’t accept that she had only weeks to live, and there was nothing I could do. Luckily, through my podcast, I have access to some of the most brilliant minds on the planet. This is one of the reasons why you and I do this, I’m sure. You meet some of the most incredible people.

I started studying this metabolic approach to cancer. Incredible discoveries in this space. I started to implement as much as I possibly could. I chased private oncology because our local oncology wouldn’t help us. I did advance genetic testing in regard to cancer. Worked out exactly what her particular type of cancer would respond to from a supplement, chemotherapy, and immunotherapy point of view. Then I threw everything in the mix. 

I managed to get a mild form of chemo called temozolomide, which showed on her genetic testing that she would respond to. Then I did all the natural approaches. I was just going to get natural, but we had weeks to live, so I had to go hard on both sides of the fence.

I have now released an audiobook called What Your Oncologist Isn’t Telling You, which is an interview series with 21 of those experts who work a lot with cancer patients, teaching them about the side of cancer research that is not well-known and is beyond what- 

The normal oncologist will be an expert in chemo and medication and surgery and things like that, radiation, but they don’t know about this metabolic side of the story. They don’t know that your metabolism- Sugar feeds cancer. At the very basic level, you want to be cutting carbs out. Then it gets more complicated. You can block different pathways with different drugs and do all sorts of things.

Long story short, it took us 12 weeks to get rid of the tumors on the MRI. We have been free of cancer, touch wood, ever since. You never want to say you’re cured because it’s a tricky beast. It can always morph and change its metabolism. I keep on my toes very much. 

We’re now 4.5 years into that journey. She is doing well again. We have had other issues like bone fractures and osteoporosis and placements and things like that. 

I think the moral of the story is to take control of your health. Be preventative in your mindset. Don’t outsource your health to any one person, any one doctor. Understand that we have at our fingertips now all of the knowledge of the universe, and even more so now with AI. We didn’t have AI a few years ago. We have everything at our fingertips, if we are willing to put in the work, if we are willing to do the hard work. 

If you have some way out of the way rare disease, you can very much research that disease and be more of an expert than your doctor will be because they haven’t come across that particular disease. That puts the power in our hands to take control of your health. 

I know with your story, because you are on my podcast, you were a chiropractor. You became a chiropractor because you had back issues. Then you had Graves’, so now you are a Graves’ expert and have written all of these books and are a thyroid expert. You are a living example of what I’m talking about, too. You’re capable of going out and finding this- 

Of course, Dr. Eric already had a medical background. Yes, but I’m sure most people could take control to some degree. Maybe not to the degree that you’ve done where you have written three books on it. Perhaps you can do more for yourself than what you realize. I think that’s the gist of my story. 

Dr. Eric: 

I had my chiropractor background, but I had no experience with Graves’. I did pretty much what you did. I dove into the research. Wasn’t a whole lot of research on the natural approach on Graves’, so I went to seminars. I completely understand and agree. You want to take control of your health regardless of the situation.

Can I ask how long now has it been since the MRI? You said it took 12 weeks before the tumor was gone on the MRI. 

Lisa: 

That was 3.5-4 years ago. Four years of extra life we’ve had so far. She has an extensive protocol, and it changes constantly. I am researching constantly to make sure we stay there. I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m not saying that every cancer patient will get the same results. Every cancer is very different. 

But I also am saying to never give up. There is hope. My mom had advanced cancer. This was not at the beginning of the journey. This was way advanced. Now, when I went to a brain surgeon a couple months ago, he was like, “I can’t believe she was on my list today. I didn’t expect her to be alive. I can’t believe she’s walking. I can’t believe she’s talking. I can’t believe that you’re here.” 

Yes, she has some disabilities now. She has hydrocephalus, so she has balance issues. She has to be supervised now when she is walking because of the water on the brain. That is why I was at the brain surgeon, to see whether he could put a shunt in to take off the fluid. We have decided against it. We are trying alternative methods. It’s too risky to put her through another brain surgery. But that’s about the only thing that we haven’t managed to get back. 

I have seen her brain go from completely gone, not much of a vegetative state, to fully there after the aneurysm, and then losing her again fully in the brain cancer journey, and then getting her back, and losing her again when she has had different infections. She is not able to talk or do anything. She is not there. Then bringing her back. Again and again and again. I have seen what the brain can overcome. 

I work a lot with people with dementia and Alzheimer’s and neurodegenerative diseases, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, that type of thing. A lot of people, when they get these diagnoses, they think it’s a death sentence, and it’s the end of the road. There’s only drugs, or it will just delay things. You could not be further from the truth. 

I have done extensive interviews with experts from the likes of Dr. Dale Bredeson to Dr. Elizabeth Yoo. The experts in brain rehabilitation. We can do so much. We can see a lot of things coming like Alzheimer’s and dementia. We can see it coming years ahead. We can do something very early on. It’s a lot easier. If it’s later on, there is still hope.

I often get accused of giving people false hope. I see it the other way around. I don’t like it when people take away people’s hope. For me, life is binary. You’re either alive, or you’re dead. If you’re alive, fight. For me, it’s that black and white. If the person wants to fight. If they have a loved one who is willing to support them, or whatever the case is. If they don’t want to, then that’s a different story. But if they want to fight, never give up. There is a chance. Even if it’s a small chance. 

The other thing is that medical knowledge is doubling every 79 days now apparently, according to some amazing statisticians. That means what used to take 100 years to double is now doubling every 79 days. There might not be a cure for what you have right now, but there may be next month. There may be somebody in the world who has got the answer for you. You just don’t know about it. Your local doctor doesn’t know about it. Your country doesn’t know about it. But you might be able to get it and access it. 

Never underestimate when you are looking  for things. There could be answers out there that are not on your everyday street corner. I feel that’s really powerful. 

Dr. Eric: 

I agree with you that if you address dementia earlier, there is a greater chance of getting good results. You also said, even if someone is advanced, there is still hope. If someone has had dementia, Alzheimer’s for 10-15 years, is it possible to completely reverse that? Is it just trying to maintain it, preventing it from getting worse? Or just reversing some of it? 

Lisa: 

There is a point of no return for sure. Having seen my mom’s brain go from completely black to full function again and again and again and again over 10 years, most people have given up way before they could have done something. Usually, we can get people at least reversed part of the way. We may not get them back to full baseline, but if we can get someone who is nonfunctioning, unable to dress themselves, go to the toilet, do those basic things, and get them to a level where they can do those basic things, they may not be able to work or drive a car or do everything they used to do, but they can function around their own house and talk again and do some interactions with their fellow human beings. That’s a win. That’s a huge win. Not only for the person, but for the caregivers. 

As a caregiver myself, having been in this role for 10 years now with my mom, and now she has these disabilities where she can’t move on her own, so I have to supervise her all day. She can’t get up on her own since a hip break. I know what a sacrifice is. I know how it limits me in my professional capacity to work. I know the monetary implications of it from a business point of view. The stress on the marriage, the rest of the family. It’s huge. 

If you can get someone who is completely incapable back to a level of functioning within the household, that is huge for a family. Yes, we may not be able to get them from completely full dementia to completely normal again, but we can maybe get them four or five steps back on the scale. That to me is gold. 

When we can get people that are earlier on in the pace and just are starting to have brain fog, forgetting where they put car keys, they know they’re not quite there, we can do a heck of a lot and reverse disease. 

There is a doctor called Dr. Dayan Goodenowe. I am doing his training at the moment. He is an expert in something called plasmalogens. They are a particular type of phospholipid that sit in the membrane of the cells. They are absolutely crucial to life. When we get sick, a virus or bacteria or have an insult, our bodies use these plasmalogens to put out the fire, putting it very oversimplified. 

If we don’t have a leg full of plasmalogens to draw back in from, it’s like the firefighter having a hose without any water in it. If we are low in plasmalogens, we are not going to have good synaptic transmission in our brain. Our sheaths will start to unravel. 

We can have problems with our heart because these plasmalogens are not just in the brain but elsewhere as well. These plasmalogens are absolutely crucial to life. They are in breast milk. Breastfeeding infants gives a lot of plasmalogen to infants through their milk. This helps with their organ development. 

As we get older, we get less and less of these plasmalogens because we have used them up to fight fires in the body. We can now replace them. Dr. Dayan Goodenowe has spent decades working out how to get plasmalogens through the digestive tract and into the cells to replenish these reserves. I am probably butchering his science nicely, so listen to my episodes on it. 

These plasmalogens are regrowing brain cells. They are regrowing the neurons. They are rewrapping the myelin sheaths around the nerves and the neurons. They are increasing the transmission between neurons. 

He is having actual reversals of Alzheimer’s, reversals of Parkinson’s, reversals of multiple sclerosis, of ALS. People with dementia. He is absolutely astounding. Highly recommend people check that out.

I have my mother on high levels of these two types of plasmalogens. One is called Glia, and one is called Neuro. They are not cheap unfortunately. It costs me a lot of money to keep her on plasmalogens. That is one of the major factors that has saved her brain. Alongside other things like peptides and hyperbaric, which we can get into in a moment. 

Please check that out. I have no monetary connection to Dr. Dayan or anything like that. I am just passionate about his work because I have seen the results. Not only in my mother but also with some of the clients I work with. It’s astounding. If you look at some of his testimonials. 

Endless cancer. It helps prevent the return of cancer. Once again, I have these on high levels for my mom. That is something I wanted to put on people’s radars today because it is still a relatively unknown thing.

He did a study on a 95-year-old with high plasmalogens. They have the same five-year mortality rate as a 65-year-old with low plasmalogens. In other words, that is 30 years’ extra life span you have just gotten back. Pretty astounding. If you can get your plasmalogen levels up, even for healthy people, I am in my 50s. You can prevent a lot of these things from happening perhaps. I think it’s a really good thing.

Dr. Eric: 

How are they administered? Is there a way to test your plasmalogen levels? 

Lisa: 

Good questions. There is a test called the ProdromeScan. Unfortunately, there is not that many practitioners who are trained in it yet. But you can do a scan, and it will tell you exactly what is the makeup of the fats in your membranes. 

Your membranes are like the brain of your cell. It’s not actually the DNA that we think of as the brain; it’s the membrane that is the most crucial. You could take DNA out of a cell, and a cell will survive. You take away the membrane, and it’s dead instantly. It’s what allows things in and out. 

When this becomes hardened, and when it becomes clogged up with cholesterol or whatever the problem is, or it has low plasmalogens, you’re in trouble. 

Your membrane is what separates your cells within your body. Otherwise, we would just be a big bag of fluid. It’s the membrane that separates the different things within the cell. Really crucial that these membranes are healthy. They are very complex. If you look at a diagram of a cell, you will see how complex the membrane is, as well as the cell.

You take it as an oil. It’s a capsule, or you can have it as a straight oil. There is one called Glia, which helps with the myelin sheath. If you think of it like an insulation tape around an electric copper wire. The tape is unraveling in our brain basically when we get things like MS and any neurodegenerative disease. That helps with that one. We usually put that one in first.

Then there is another one called Neuro. That increases the transmissions. 

One tunes the station, and one makes the station volume louder. We usually start with the Glia and then the Neuro later. That is usually the way it’s done. Pretty easy. A couple capsules a day. High doses. You can go up to- Mom has eight capsules a day of the Glia and six of the Neuro. It is a few hundred dollars a month, but he is working on bringing that down. Hopefully he will be successful because it needs to get out to more people. It is a very complex process to make these things unfortunately. 

They are not available in our food chain per se. They are in things like green lipped mussels and sea squids. They get digested in the digestive system, so they get broken down. He has developed a way to get them through into the body, so they are reassembled back in the cell. Go and listen to him speak about it rather than me. 

That’s plasmalogens, so that is something to put on people’s lists. I put that in every single case of any brain injury if they can. 

Dr. Eric: 

How about hyperbaric oxygen? Do you also recommend that, if someone can do it, for any type of brain injury? 

Lisa: 

Oh yes. That was the cornerstone of my mom’s recovery. I have a hyperbaric oxygen clinic. I sell them. I am a huge fan of them. Hyperbaric is basically you are compressing the oxygen molecules. You are on an oxygen mask in a chamber that has more pressure than we have at sea level. Even with the divers, they use these hyperbaric chambers. When they come up fast, we stick them in a hyperbaric chamber and bring them up slowly. 

What they have found is when you put someone on oxygen and go the opposite direction, putting them under pressure, the oxygen molecules are compressed in size. They dissolve into the plasma of the blood. As opposed to being attached to the red blood cell. 

When they are on the red blood cell, it is quite big itself, and then it has an oxygen molecule attached. That means it’s difficult to cross into areas, like through the blood-brain barrier and through inflamed tissue, where there is inflammation and a lot of damage going on. Think about wounds, cuts, ripped ligaments, anywhere where there is inflammation or systemic inflammation. You are also hypoxic, which means you are not getting enough oxygen to those particular tissues.

One of the main things it was used for was diabetic wounds. People who are going to lose their legs if they don’t get the nutrients delivered to the legs, which are dying from the damage to the blood vessels from having high blood sugars. Or their eyes. 

Hyperbaric has been used for that for a long time, but it also helps with wound healing, tendons. It speeds up the healing process. It lowers inflammation in the body, so it lowers all of the inflammatory cytokines. 

It produces more stem cells out of the bone marrow. Stem cells are cells that can come out of the bone marrow, look for damage in the body, and become the replacement tissue. The body that you have now is not the body you had when you were 20 or as a baby. Obviously, you can see those changes. As we get older, the stem cells start to deplete. We don’t get as much stem cell release.

Hyperbaric oxygen helps release more stem cells out of the bone marrow. That helps with the repair. That is one of the major things. 

It can create new capillaries. I have seen this on a patient who had heart issues. He actually came into the hyperbaric to heal a broken leg. Later on, he had a problem with his heart. When they looked at his heart, his heart had a blockage that had created blood vessels around the blockage. That is hyperbaric. It is creating new roads around the block. It can do that. 

In the brain, it can help set oxygen across the blood-brain barrier, so oxygen can get delivered to the damaged cells. In a case like my mother’s, you have areas of dead tissue in the brain. You can’t do anything to save those. They’re gone. But the brain is very resilient and can pick up the pieces, and other players can come in to replace the A team, if you like. You have a reserve bench. 

Often, around the dead tissue is an area called the ischemic penumbra, which is the damaged areas that are still alive. The neurons are still alive, but they are not firing properly. Those are the ones that we can rescue. 

We can see it on SPECT scans. We don’t have SPECT scans in New Zealand, but over in America, if you look at the work of Dr. Hart or Dr. Daniel Amen, they have hyperbaric SPECT scans. This is a type of scan that shows the improvements after you’ve had hyperbaric and can see the holes in the brain disappearing. They have been reestablishing these neurons, so they are working.

What you want to do if you have brain damage is actually exercise those cells. You need to do brain training and exercise and physical exercise as well. When you put together a program like that, you can do extraordinary things. 

I like to stack as well. I use hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Say someone has an unhealing wound or a broken leg. They come into the hyperbaric after they have done what they need to do at the hospital. They have session after session. 

You do need a lot of sessions. It’s a block of sessions, depending on the ailment, somewhere between 20-60 sessions. It’s not a quick fix. When they are coming in, they are speeding up that healing process. 

Then I like to stack it according to their nutrient profiles, their microbiome assessments, with different supplements that can actually be synergistic with the hyperbaric. I often do red-light therapy as well because I’m a fan of red-light therapy. That works synergistically as well. There are also peptides.

When we start to stack those things, you can have extraordinary results. Unfortunately, all of those cost money. I wish it was democratized. I wish that everybody had access to everything, but unfortunately, we are not living in that world yet. Hopefully, these things will change. As these things become more and more accessible, and they are. It used to be more than it is now to buy a hyperbaric chamber. Things are slowly coming down. All those things do cost. The one limiting factor.

For people who don’t have a lot of money to be able to do this, there are still things you can do. You might not be able to do it all. If you have the funds to do things, then you can go to town. It’s really how much you are wanting to.

The biggest thing I find though is mindset. If I have a person who is determined, come hell or high water, to find an answer to their problem, and they are willing to fight, I know with that person, I will get further than with someone who has been dragged along by their spouse and really doesn’t want to be there and is not interested. They don’t believe it. They will never get better because it takes effort and time. 

Biology is not one of these things that you fix in two seconds. It takes time and a concerted, ongoing effort. If there is anything I learned from ultra marathon running, it’s how to do that. How to grind it out day after day after day. 

Dr. Eric: 

I do have a question with the hyperbaric oxygen chambers. I dealt with chronic Lyme in 2018. That was one of the options that was given to me. I ended up getting IV ozone. I took herbs and homeopathy as well. I didn’t do the hyperbaric oxygen. But it’s intriguing. 

I believe they said that their hyperbaric oxygen chamber is different than the one that would be at antiaging clinics or the ones that you would have at home. Was that one more powerful? Can you still get good results? Apparently, you can get good results with a home chamber because you recommend the home chambers. 

Lisa: 

The only difference is the pressure that it can go to. The home ones now can go up to 2atm. They have worked out the technology. The one that you see behind me is a 1.5atm chamber. The one I have in my clinic is also a 1.5, so exactly the same. They are as powerful, but there are 2 atm, 2.5 atm, 3 atm. 

Usually in the clinic setting, we might go up to 2atm. Only in the hospital setting or in big hyperbaric centers, then they might go to 2.5 or 3atm. For most ailments, a 2atm is all you will ever need. For cancer, it would be better to be in a 2atm than in a 1.5atm. However, 1.5 is much more accessible for people. It’s also a safer level to go at. 

Once you go over 2atm or 1.75, I’d say, you really need to have clearance from a hyperbaric doctor. There are certain contraindications once you go up to those higher levels. Even at 1.5atm, there are certain things we won’t do it for. 

For example, when you are having chemotherapy, and you are actually having the chemo, we don’t do the hyperbaric. The reason is it will make the chemo more powerful, so we don’t want to make it more toxic. We want it to do its job but not that well that it does it more. We don’t touch that. 

If someone has COPD, we’d have to get a special hyperbaric doctor to say it’s safe for you to come in. There are certain things because oxygen can be an irritant to the lungs to a small degree. There is a thing called oxygen toxicity that happens at the much higher atmospheres, 2 and above, where you can get too much oxygen in too short a time, and that can cause seizures. 

That does not happen in the 1.5atm. The home chambers have what’s called an oxygen concentrator. That is only taking out the nitrogen and other bits out of the air and leaving you with about 93% pure oxygen, as opposed to 100% medical-grade oxygen that you will get in a hospital setting. 

100% is more irritating. In the clinic setting, you don’t want to have 100%. The commercial dive company, they had 100% oxygen because they were working with dive accidents. They had to have specialists. 100% oxygen is a bomb. It needs a lot of regulation around it. When you have these oxygen concentrators, there is no risk of any of that. It’s a lot safer.

When you hear often the hospital, 2.5, 2atm clinics, they will poo-hoo the soft-shell chambers because they are protecting their territory. They will charge a lot more per session than the clinics that are offering the soft-shell chambers that might be 1.5, maybe 2atm. There are soft shells that now go to 2atm. They are protecting their territory. Take that with a grain of salt. It’s the same pressure, and it’s going to do a lot of the same things. 

There is a difference between 1.5 and 2 and 2.5atm. You would have a better effect when it comes to wound healing and cancer at 2atm than you will have at 1.5atm. Most people will only be able to access 1.5, and it will still be very beneficial. That is the only thing. Does that make sense? It’s a little bit complex. 

Dr. Eric: 

I think so. You have one at your home. Besides your mom using it, do you use it just for wellness? Like sauna? I go in the sauna three days a week, not because I’m feeling bad, but for prevention, to increase circulation, detox. Do you do the same thing? 

Lisa: 

Absolutely. I use it for longevity, anti-aging, sport performance, detoxification, all of that. I typically do a block three or four times a year. I have it in my clinic, so I can use it. I also have the one at home. I rent them as well. I can get in them at any time. 

I usually do a block of 20 and then have a break and then a block of 20. It’s better to do things in a block. You get more epigenetic changes when you’re doing them close together in a block than when you’re having them spread apart, if that makes sense. 

Dr. Eric: 

When doing a block of 20, is it multiple times per week? 

Lisa: 

I do a block of 20. That might take me a month to do that. Then I might have a month off. then I might do another 20. Or two months off, depending on life. I try to do them in blocks of treatments. Sometimes, I will just do one here or there because I want to get away for an hour and hide. There is a bit of that, too.

You won’t feel much different. When you hop in a chamber, you’ll have pressure change in your ears, so you need to equalize your ears in order not to get baric trauma. That is like you do when you go up in a plane. You chew or move your jaw and try to equalize. Otherwise, you don’t feel any different. You will get out and go, “Is that it?” 

On a cellular level, these changes are happening. You’re turning on and off 8,000 different things. When you do that repeatedly, you are getting epigenetic changes over time. Stem cell release happens after about 20 sessions. If you have something serious, you might want a block of 40 or 60 sessions. If you really are dealing with something like Mom was.

In the first instance with Mom, we were doing a block of 40, a month off, a block of 40, a month off. That protocol, in the time off, is where we would see the big gains. It’s like the body catching up. When you go to the gym, you don’t see the gains the moment you go to the gym. It’s a week later that you start to notice that you were able to lift a bit more, or you were able to go a bit further. After a couple of months, you really start to see the difference of going to the gym or running. 

It’s the same with hyperbaric. It takes a little bit of time to get that momentum going. But changes are happening from day one just like they are at the gym. You don’t see that you’re fixed right away. You have to believe in and trust the process. 

Dr. Eric:

I’m pretty sure you’re the first one to get in depth about hyperbaric oxygen. 

Lisa: 

My mom wouldn’t be alive without it. It’s that crucial. It’s a cornerstone of these things. Time and time again, both with the cancer and the healing of different injuries that she has had, the concussions she had and the aneurysms, all of it. It was an absolute key. That’s why I have the clinic because I needed it for my mom. Why don’t I open a clinic? 

Dr. Eric: 

I’ll admit, when I dealt with chronic Lyme, first of all, I learned a lot about IV ozone, so I was set on it. Also, I’m not completely claustrophobic, but a little bit. When they were talking about going into the hyperbaric oxygen chamber, if I had to get out, I had to alert them. 

Lisa: 

Most of the chambers, you can control it from the inside. Honestly, everybody feels that the first time. Once you get over yourself, the first or second time, when you are in the clinic setting and are in a hard shell chamber, it’s a lot easier. There is a big viewing window. A two-way phone. 

The soft shells, it’s more. You have to release the pressure, and you’re out in a minute or two by the time the pressure comes down. If you intellectually work it through, you can usually overcome the claustrophobia. 

Millions of people use this around the world, and it’s safe. It’s worth that little bit of fear for the huge health benefits that you’re going to get. Some people can’t get over that hump. For me, it’s sad because they are foregoing something that could be super beneficial to them. 

Dr. Eric: 

If I know I can get out on my own, it’s fine. 

Lisa: 

You can. 

Dr. Eric: 

If I have to rely on someone else… 

Lisa: 

There is always a way for you to get out. All the chambers have a way for you to control the things to get out. You shouldn’t be left alone in the room when you’re in a hyperbaric chamber. Ideally, we always have someone in the room with them. Eye contact with them. They are able to take phones in there as well. They also have a two-way phone. There is a lot of safety things you can put into place and comfort things for people. it is a little bit of an issue. 

Getting in and out is a hard thing. If you have someone with a stroke, trying to get my mom, who was paralyzed. We had to get a hoist. With the soft shells that we had back then, it was a mission. We would get her in, and she would pull the mask off. We would have to decompress the room, open it back up, put it back on, and do it again. But we persevered. That’s hyperbaric. 

Dr. Eric: 

I’ll need to give it a try. I won’t do one on my own yet. I’ll go to one of those anti-aging centers. Try it out before I make that investment. Make sure I’m willing to- 

Lisa: 

Listen to a podcast. Then you’ll need to do it. Put it in your clinic. It’s the sort of thing you could do in your clinic as well. It’s hugely beneficial. 

Dr. Eric: 

Maybe something to consider. Thank you for discussing this. 

I know you have longevity supplements. You have an immune one you wanted to talk about because a lot of people listening to this have thyroid autoimmune conditions, which are more immune system conditions than thyroid conditions. If you could talk a little bit about whatever you want to talk about with your line of supplements. 

Lisa: 

Appreciate that. Once again, everything that I do, I’m looking for an answer for my mom. She had an immune system compromised. She is 83. Everybody’s immune system, as we get older, you get something called immunosenescence, which is the aging of the immune system. 

The more I researched this, the more I dug into this, the more I understood that absolutely foundational to all of the diseases of aging is a healthy immune system. It’s the reason we get a lot of these things. 

Cancer survivance goes down; you get a lot more cancers in older age because your immune system is not operating. You get more autoimmune as you get older because you’ve had all these insults, and your immune system is confused, so it starts to attack itself. This is all in the immunosenescence. 

When we have senescent cells, these cells are also known as zombie cells. The cells are alive, but they are not replicating properly or doing their normal cell life cycle. They have been trapped in a state with us, fueling our inflammatory cytokines that are causing systemic inflammation, and are not doing their job. Immunosenescence is the aging of the immune system. 

Stanford University has done this thing called the 1,000 Immunomes Project, led by Dr. David Furman, who I have interviewed on the show. For the past 15 years, he and his colleagues have been studying the immune system. It’s the largest immune system study ever done on the human population. Huge study. 15 years. Millions of dollars gone into this project from Stanford. 

What they discovered is that all of the hallmarks of aging are influenced by your immune system. When I was looking at longevity supplements, and I was putting in 100 different supplements quite literally for all of the 12 hallmarkers of aging, to try to cover all your bases. Studying this work actually, if we went to the immune system and worked on a formulation that helps stop the aging of the immune system, or slow it down, or reverse it even, could we then influence all of those hallmarks of aging? Indeed, that is the case.

Dr. Furman and his team have identified a lot of proteins. They have a test coming to market called the iAge Test. This is a test to see how well your immune system is aging. By correlation, if you like, how you are aging. This is the key thing. They have identified things all these different proteins they can measure in the blood. They definitively know how well you’re doing after 15 years of this research with your aging immune system.

We started to put a formulation together, working with teams around the world that have special ingredients that were aimed at fixing the immune system. When we get older, we have this thing in our chest called the thymus gland. When we’re young, it’s this huge gland in the chest. In the baby, it’s huge. This is where our T cells get their education. They become mature T cells when they go through the thymus. They go out into the bloodstream and can look for the baddies, the pathogens, the bacteria and viruses, and can help mount an immune response.

As we get older, that thymus involutes, which means it becomes useless. It becomes a fatty little nub. It gets fat infiltrated into it. It no longer does this. By the time you’re our age, it is pretty buggered. 

Scientists have been working on how to replace the thymus, and we haven’t worked out how to regrow thymuses yet. There are peptides we can use to give back thymic function, things like thymosin alpha 1, which can be very powerful in a younger immune system. Peptides are a bit inaccessible to get to.

We started working with a combination of products. We put four products into a formulation that has over 15 years of clinical research behind each of these ingredients. One is called Immune Defense Protein. It comes from New Zealand cows. Extract from the whey fraction of milk. 

We use whey a lot for body building and muscle building. It’s great for you. There is a tiny fraction, like 5% of the actual protein fraction, which is 1g in every 10l of milk, that has a suite of 50 bioactive whey proteins. They are there to protect the cow. In this case, it comes from the cow, from inflammation and infection. 

They include things like lactoferrin. If you look this up, it’s quicker to look up what it doesn’t do. It’s an amazing molecule that helps with iron binding, tight junctions, all manner of things. Lactoferrin makes up 40% of this Immune Defense Protein. There is something called lactoperoxidase and a suite of 48 others.

The synergy of these together is much more powerful than the pure lactoferrin. A lot of people know about lactoferrin. There are conferences held every year on the wonders of lactoferrin. IDP is much more powerful. 

We have paired that with something called Immunol, which is an extract of colostrum. It is the first food that a mother mammal produces for her baby. It gives the baby in the immunoglobulins, the transfer factors, the growth factors for that baby to develop really quickly and get an immune system up and going. 

Human babies are born with some immunity that they get through the placenta. In cows, the calves are born with no immunity. If they don’t get colostrum, they don’t survive. 100% their immune system is dependent on it.

We have taken this extract of colostrum, which has a lot of other things, because it’s a whole food. It has fat and other things we don’t necessarily want in our humans. We have taken the extracts out of it, the stuff that actually does the good things for you, and put that into an extract that is going to help with your immune system. It gives you back growth factors, like IGF1; transfer factors; immunoglobulins. It helps with tight junctions, gut and repair. It’s antioxidant, antimicrobial, antibacterial. 

The IDP and this together is just an absolute powerhouse. It’s colostrum times 50. Much more powerful. It helps with gut integrity. We have barriers right throughout our body, through our GI tract. Have you heard of leaky gut? As you know as a thyroid specialist, when you have leaky gut, you are exacerbating your possibility for getting autoimmune diseases because you are letting the bad stuff into the bloodstream, which is causing accelerated aging of the organs, damaging the brain, and can lead to autoimmune and all sorts of problems. We want to fix those barriers and get those tight junctions tight again. That is what this formulation does. It is clinically proven to do so.

We also have two other ingredients. One is called carnosic acid from the rosemary plant. Rosemary has been used for centuries in traditional medicines. It is a very powerful NRF2 upregulator. The NRF pathway helps upregulate your andogenous antioxidant capacity. It is also antibacterial, antimicrobial, antioxidant, and so on. 

It lowers something that the Stanford team identified as being one of the most important proteins in blood. When this is elevated, it means you’re going to have more immune problems, more cardiovascular problems. It is a protein called CXCL9. It is a chemokine. 

Carnosic acid, which is an extract of rosemary, helps lower that particular CXCL9 in the blood, which is a very powerful thing. 

The fourth component, and I could talk for an hour on each of these ingredients, is something called cara cara. Not cava. It’s related to cava, which you may have heard of from the Fijian. Cara cara is a native New Zealand plant that is of Maori descent. The native population here. We have used cara cara for centuries for a tonic, for everything. It’s one of those fix everything type of plants, in particular, for pain relief and gut health. 

It is a COX2 inhibitor, like your nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories. It does that without all the negative side effects. it also upregulates the NRF2, that endogenous antioxidant capacity. It also has all these antimicrobials and antioxidants. It also upregulates something called Interleukin 10, which is an anti-inflammatory cytokine that you produce in the body, which gets lower as we get older.

They all lower Interleukin 6, Interleukin 1 Beta, TNFL and NF Kappa B. These are all inflammatory cytokines that go up as we age. The Stanford University project, they identified systemic chronic inflammation as being at the core of all these aging diseases and the immune system breakdown. 

Our formulation, which has been done with a world-class scientific team behind this, who spent the last two years bringing this product to market. It’s now available. My company is called Aevum Labs. The website is AevumLabs.co.nz. 

You can look at your zonulin levels in the microbiome, which should be going down when you are on the supplement. Things like your lymphocyte counts. We don’t have clinical evidence for this, but anecdotally, we are seeing lymphocyte counts going up. 

We have clinical studies that say it activates natural killer cells, which are the ones that go out and kill things like cancer cells and pathogens that are infected. Natural killer cell activity is activated through this formulation.

Without going on forever, because I could, this is a super powerful, really foundational supplement that is safe for nearly everybody to take. We don’t give it to pregnant ladies, and we don’t give it to children. We are bringing out a second product that doesn’t have the cara cara and rosemary, so we can give it to these two populations as well. Otherwise, it is really safe. 

It is safe for someone like my mom, who is elderly, fragile, and has a bunch of complications. It’s what I wanted for her. It is helping protect her from infection and helping her bounce back when she does get an infection. Recently, she got a portacath infection. She got a port, which they stick in your chest to help you take IV and stuff when you get older. That got infected because of the plastic in the bloodstream. 

Giving her Rejuvenate meant she bounced back way faster than would be expected for someone having had sepsis from such a bad infection. I was glad to have my own product. 

It’s called Rejuvenate Pro. We are really proud of the work that has gone into this. This will really help people stay healthier for longer, and it’s all about health span and lifespan. Most importantly, health span, so we don’t have all these diseases. Thank you for letting me share about that. I am really excited about it. 

Dr. Eric: 

You’re welcome. It is available outside of New Zealand, too? For those in the United States? 

Lisa: 

It is coming to the United States. We have a team who will be getting it shortly in a few weeks’ time. They don’t have it yet. If you want it at the moment, hit the Shop button on my website, and you will see it there. That is the best way to get it. But it is coming to the States. Watch this space. It will probably be there in about two months’ team. We have a team in Colorado, Longevity Launch, who are going to be distributors in the States for it. Really excited for that. 

Dr. Eric: 

Wonderful. I might need to give that a try as well. Always open to trying different supplements. 

Lisa: 

Unless you’re pregnant, everybody should be on it. If you’re over 40, then it’s a no-brainer. If you’re autoimmune, then it’s a no-brainer. If you have gut issues, immune system issues, this is the thing. 

Dr. Eric: 

Wonderful. You provided so much amazing information. I know we could talk easily for another hour or couple of hours, but any last things you want to say before we tell people where they can find out more about you? 

Lisa: 

No, I just want to thank you for the work you do. I was so glad to have a thyroid expert on my show. They are few and far between, people who really understand thyroid. It’s something I’ve been studying for the past couple years and still haven’t gotten my head around. As you know, it’s very nuanced. To have your expertise has been so wonderful. You have a good man here if you have anything thyroid and chiropractic, of course. 

Dr. Eric: 

Thank you for the kind words. I appreciate that. Same with you. 

You said you have a physical practice, so anybody in NZ, they can come visit you. Do you also do remote calls as well? 

Lisa: 

Yes, I do. I work with people all over the world. I have a concierge health consultancy. People can hop over to my website, LisaTamati.com. 

Check out the podcast and YouTube channel. I’d love for people to subscribe there. Pushing the Limits is the name of the show. If you’re on YouTube, type in “Lisa Tamati,” and my channel will come up. It’s an incredible privilege. You will find that, too. It’s wonderful to learn from these people, isn’t it? 

Dr. Eric: 

Agreed. I have listened to some of the episodes you’ve had, and I need to listen to more. Your books, where can we find them? 

Lisa: 

A couple of them are still available on Amazon. They’re all on my website. Running Hot and Running to Extremes were my two running books I did. Relentless. Then the other two are e-books available on my website: the cancer book and another one for athletes on mindset. The first three should be on Amazon, I believe. I haven’t looked for a while. 

Dr. Eric: 

Thank you so much, Lisa. It was great being on your podcast and amazing having you on mine. So much great information that hasn’t been touched upon before on my podcast. Appreciate you taking the time. Look forward to keeping in touch with you in the future. 

Lisa: 

Exactly. Let’s stay connected, Dr. Eric. You’re in my network now; you’re on my radar. 

Dr. Eric: 

Same here. 

Lisa: 

Thank you so much, everybody. 

Dr. Eric: 

Thank you.