Note: The text below is a transcription from the video above. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
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Hi, happy New Year. Hope you had a good holiday. Hope you didn’t delve into too many of your triggers if you’re a Hashimoto’s patient, and flare up all of your thyroid hormones and create all kinds of symptoms. And I got a lot of feedback. Thank you for the very good feedback that I got from asking you to give me feedback on other topics. It’s an interesting thing that so many of the questions that were on other topics, actually have affiliations with Hashimoto’s. I thought that was interesting.
So we have a lot of, I think, very good questions. I think a lot of very pertinent questions that I might not have ever have covered. Other conditions that could very well be … may or may not be connected to Hashimoto’s. And some very controversial conditions that were asked about. So we’re going to be covering those over the next several weeks, and on and on. Certainly we’re going to continue on Hashimoto’s, because that seems to be the biggest thing out there. And I really think it is. This Hashimoto’s thing is … I think people are just seeing the tip of the iceberg of this tsunami. And I’m really getting to see that more and more in practice, and especially after we’ve gotten so many questions and going, “Well, that could be Hashimoto’s. That could be at least contributing. That could be this, that could be that.”
Okay, so we’re going to do that. Today, we’re going to talk about … the question we’re going to answer is, “I’m eating as well as a human being can possibly eat, but I’m still having my Hashimoto’s symptoms.” And I actually see this a lot. I see it a lot now, because in the day when we first started doing this, and all we knew was … we told everybody, get off of gluten, casein, soy, corn, and eggs. That’s what we did. And those were allergies, they weren’t sensitivities. At that time, we weren’t even testing for sensitivities. We were just putting people on diets. And eight months later, we’d have them reintroducing foods and it was crazy. And we’re much farther along on that.
But now, you’re watching me. You’re watching a lot of my other colleagues, probably, online. And you’re getting a lot of data. People are coming in here much more informed, in a manner. Maybe not as informed relative to the fullness of the topic, the full context of Hashimoto’s. But people are coming in here knowing that diet’s important. A lot of people. Not everybody, but most people. So people have tried diets. And then you have that person that comes in here and goes, “How much better can I eat?” A lot of vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians. “I’m eating great, and I still feel terrible.”
So the first answer to that is, if we … most patients who come in here who have autoimmune thyroid disease have a thyroid problem. Which is probably the second most common cause for digestive issues. It slows down your digestive system, and then you start not digesting your food properly. Stomach’s slowing down, pancreas is slowing down, gallbladder’s slowing down. And this is the way you start to develop food sensitivities. The number one cause for that is stress. So a lot of these folks are stressed even though they’re … and they’re particularly stressed because they’re eating great and they’re not feeling good.
And some people are actually coming in and saying, “I feel good. I’m eating this diet. I’m eating as good as anybody. But if I get off of this diet, just one food, all my symptoms come back.” So that’s a person who already has developed a bunch of food sensitivities and they’re managing it by just not eating those foods. But the problem with that is whatever caused all those food sensitivities in the first place … in other words, your broken down digestive system and whatever caused that. Whether it’s because you had stress or because you have a thyroid problem or because you have CBR, whatever it is. There’s a number of things that can cause you digestive system to breakdown. You have an ulcer in your stomach, that breaks down the rest of the system. So usually that person’s going to have something like that.
And what happens is they keep eliminating the foods and eliminating foods, and they feel better. A lot of them feel better, a lot of them don’t. And the reason for both is they still have the broken down digestive system that caused this in the first place. And so they’re eliminating foods and they’re eating new foods. They’re putting the new foods into the old digestive system that’s calmed down because you’ve eliminated … you’re not eating a lot of foods that stir it up all the time. But it’s still not a correct functioning digestive system. So now you put a new food in there and you go, oh, that food’s not okay. That food’s not okay either. So you put that new food in there and then it goes through the digestive process, it doesn’t get digested properly. And then it goes through the whole process of becoming a food sensitivity and now you can’t eat that.
So really what it is when that person’s coming in and they’re eating better than 90% of the planet, first thing I think of is, okay. Number one, we probably have a broken down digestive system. What’s causing that? The next step is, is it thyroid, is it stress? Do we have them go back on this diet and see what their symptoms are and see if they blow up? And is it small intestinal bacteria overgrowth? And so you need to figure out what’s causing it in the first place. And then you need to understand how the digestive system is broken down. Then you have to put them on a diet for them. Which usually is not just one diet, by the way. Usually it’s a combination of two or three diets.
If you have a thyroid hormone problem, you have to take triggers out for that. If you have food sensitivities, we run a food sensitivity test, you have to take those out. If you have all that plus small intestinal bacteria overgrowth, you got to take those out. Which is, you’re left with meats and vegetables. And then you tell me you’re a vegetarian, and then that can also be a challenge. So the diet can be a little challenge for a while, but you have to figure out the right diet for that person. And there may be other things that person may have gastritis, maybe they got an ulcer. So you have to figure out the right diet for that person to bring everything down, to lower the temperature. To dampen the immune system if they have an autoimmune thyroid disease, to do those types of things.
And then once you’ve done that and once you’ve figured out what’s causing their digestive system to break down, now you can use herbs, botanicals, if it’s chronic stress responses. I do functional neurology as well as functional medicine. You have to figure out how to get the brain more calmed down. And one of the ways of calming down the brain is getting all that other stuff under control. But while that’s not under control, you have to work with the brain with different herbs, botanicals, neurotransmitters. Who knows, maybe even some brain rehab exercises or things of that nature. Because if that’s the cause, you have to take care of that at the same time.
But this is a person who comes in, who’s eating better than anybody on planet Earth. And either still doesn’t feel well, or if they reintroduce their foods, everything comes back. So that’s the framework. That’s the framework for what’s happening to you, if that’s what you’re experiencing.