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The Good Question Podcast
Unlocking Thyroid Wellness Dr. Amie Hornaman On Functional Medicine & Hormone Health
00:33:53
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- [00:01]
A
You're listening to the Good Question podcast with Richard Jacobs. Our goal is to make each of our guests exclaim, hmm, that's a good question. I don't know the answer. Because when that happens, it means you, the listener, may be inspired to learn more beyond the interview and to ask great questions yourself that lead to new insights. In this podcast, we cover historical and current anthropology, comparative religion, and history. Welcome. And let's get started.
- [00:36]
B
Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Good Question podcast. My guest today is Dr. Amy Horneman. She's the author of a book called Thyroid the Thyroid Fixer. She recently sent me a complimentary copy, so thank you. I appreciate it. Amy is the CEO and founder of Advanced Thyroid and Hormone Clinic, the international telehealth practice that helps patients in the US And Canada. And she has her own podcast, top rated, called the Thyroid Fixer, where she empowers listeners with the truth about thyroid health, hormones, and functional medicine. So welcome, Amy. Me. Thanks for coming.
- [01:05]
C
Oh, my goodness, Richard, it's my pleasure to be here. Thank you.
- [01:08]
B
Yeah. Tell me a bit about your background. Usually, you know, when someone is an advocate for a specific condition or organ, they've gone through some trouble themselves, so hopefully not you, but. But what happened?
- [01:18]
C
Oh, yeah, you know it. You know it. So, like you said, pain, a purpose story. That's why I'm here. So we'll rewind about 25 years. I was a former fitness model competitor. I did fitness and figure competitions, which is kind of like a bodybuilding competition. I did not look like a dude. I actually looked like a female. But you had to. You had the diet down and really get in the best shape of your life. Leanest, muscular, lowest body fat percent, the whole deal. And I had done this plenty of times. I love the challenge. I love the challenge of getting my body to that. To that place of elite fitness and then competing at that level. So I had done plenty of shows before. This one shows getting ready for work with my coach, stepping on the scale, sending in my measurements every single, single week. And this one particular show, every time I get on the scale, the scale starts going up. Like, what the heck is happening? This is crazy. It doesn't even make sense. So, you know, I'm thinking to myself, all right, maybe I need to eat less and exercise more, right? So I start restricting a little bit more, working out more. Scale keeps going up. And I mean 5 and then 10 and then 15. Ultimately, 25 pounds came on the scale before I stopped getting on the scale because I didn't want to become any more depressed than I already was. So I fell into. I mean, you know, I got to tell you, Richard, as a woman, maybe you guys feel this way, but as a woman, when our bodies rebel against us and we start gaining weight out of nowhere, that's a bad day. Every day. Like, that's just. That's just bad. So maybe you guys don't care as much, but we do. So I was. I was gaining weight, I was tired, I was losing my hair. All of this is in my 20s. So I did what we all do. I went to my doctor and I told him what was going on. And he said to me, did some labs, and he looks at me and says, everything's normal here. You're fine. And I thought, okay, well, I don't feel normal. And I don't feel.
- [03:21]
B
You smell the gaslighting in the background.
- [03:23]
C
Right? It's starting, right? You can totally start to smell the gaslighting. Well, it got even worse when I saw doctors number two, three, four, five, and six. And all six, all six of them told me, normal, fine, nothing to see here. Eat less and exercise more. It's all in your head. So, you know, I think often, I'm like, thank God I didn't stop, because I could have so easily stopped. And how many people do when five or six medical professionals in a white coat tells you that you're normal? You kind of start to go, okay, well, maybe it's me.
- [04:00]
A
Maybe.
- [04:00]
C
Maybe I am eating too much. I don't know. So I didn't stop. I kept going. I mean, it was a very, very frustrating time. I was embarrassed, I was frustrated. I was wearing sweatshirts at the gym, just hiding my body. Didn't want to go out with friends, didn't want to date, didn't want to do anything. I mean, I was just. I was just a wreck. But I'm thankful that I kept going. I went finally to doctor number seven. Doctor number seven says to me, you know what? You have some nodules here on your thyroid, and your labs show that you have something called hypothyroidism. Here's a pill. So, I mean, listen, Richard, I was pumped up. I left that office. I'm like, woo. I got a name for what's going on with me now. And I have a pill that's gonna fix me.
- [04:41]
B
Right?
- [04:42]
C
Right. I'm pumped. So I gave it five months and nothing happened. No weight loss, didn't feel better, didn't grow any hair. So then I went to the ultimate doctor, Dr. Google, and started looking up some Stuff about the thyroid. What is this little pill that I'm taking? It's called levothyroxine. Oh, okay. This is T4. And T4 is an inactive thyroid hormone. It has to convert and become three. Okay, so there's this other pill out there called T3 or lyothyrenine that actually is the active thyroid hormone. That's what gives you a metabolism, that's what gets to your cells. So I went back to the doctor and I said, hey, there's this other medication. Can we pair it up with T4? Because a lot of doctors are doing that. Seems to be working pretty well. She says that's not standard of care. I don't do that.
- [05:30]
B
Right, yeah, I've heard that standard of
- [05:32]
C
care said, okay, thank you, I'm gonna find someone who does. And that led me into the world of functional medic. They break out of standard of care, we break out of that standard of care model. And my functional medicine provider saved my Life. He spent 83 more minutes with me than any other doctor. So beyond that five to seven minute visit that you normally get with your pcp. And he tested and he explained and he put the pieces of the puzzle together. And ultimately he put me on the right thyroid hormone replacement. That, that was right for me. And that actually moved the needle and got me optimized. So that is why at that point I careers because I was in a major medical system back then. I was in the equivalent to Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic. And I still was misdiagnosed six times, mistreated the seventh. So I knew how many other people are going through the same set of frustrations, misdiagnoses, mistreatments as I am. So that's why I'm here with you today.
- [06:31]
B
You get tired of idiopathic medicine.
- [06:34]
C
I love that term. Or, or seeing.
- [06:38]
B
Yeah, exactly. So I had a car accident years ago and they scanned my neck because I had, you know, head trauma and they sign nodules and a tendency papillary thyroid cancer. So they, they took my thyroid and all that. And I want to get it back someday, regrow it, but we'll see. So.
- [06:53]
C
Oh, interesting. We did talk about you. So what thyroid hormone replacement medication are you on?
- [06:59]
B
Well, I've been in Synthroid for years, but luckily I'm able to tolerate it. You know, it doesn't bother me at all, or it doesn't seem to, but then again, long term use, I don't know, you know what'll happen.
- [07:08]
C
Oh, Richard, can I turn the tables on you for a minute?
- [07:11]
B
Sure.
- [07:11]
C
All right. Okay.
- [07:12]
B
Okay.
- [07:13]
C
So you said all right. I'm to Synthroid, so I want to ask you, do you have any of these symptoms? So are you gaining weight? Are you trying to lose and you're not? Are you fatigued? Are you constipated? Losing hair? Are you cold all the time when everybody else is totally normal? Do your joints hurt? Muscles hurt? Is your, is your vision blurry? Are your nails dry? Is your skin dry? Any of those.
- [07:40]
B
Maybe a couple patches of like dry skin. But just the past year I turned 50, so it seemed like things are starting to kick in now. But it's been like eight years and I don't have any of those symptoms. But maybe now like a little bit less vitality, a little bit of dry spots, but that's probably about it. Otherwise everything seems to be okay.
- [07:57]
C
Okay, so here's why I ask. So here's a stat. Only 2% of those with hypothyroidism, which you technically have because you don't have a thyroid anymore. So we can say that you have hypothyroidism essentially. So 2% do well on T4 only, which is what you're on. 90% of us need T4 and T3 or possibly T3 only. And in the book, I don't know if you got to this chapter or not, but in the book I talk about those without a thyroid. And I say it is basically medical malpractice to remove someone's thyroid gland that we know once produced T4 and T3. We also know the thyroid gland is the main conversion location, like where your body takes that inactive T4 and makes it in the T3. That happens in the thyroid and the gut, in the liver, in some peripheral tissues. So we remove the thyroid gland that produce T4 and T3, we remove the gland that converts T4 to T3 and then we give T4 only. Like when I say it, it doesn't even make sense, right? Why wouldn't we replace with T4 and T3 if that's what the thyroid gland once made?
- [09:03]
B
Well, the thyroid gland is much better regulating than any man made device. Maybe they, it's. I don't know, maybe it's very hard to regulate the C3 side of things. So the conversion factor, I don't know, it's not.
- [09:13]
C
It's easy. And that's the point of the book. It really is. It really is easy to optimized when you just follow the steps and really know what you're doing. So for you, I would say, okay, if you ever don't feel 100% because we were, we were built as humans to be, to be badass, to live our best life to be. To be had, to have vitality and longevity. If you don't ever feel 100%, you reach out to me and I got your back. Because what it means is just need to add in a little bit of T3. We're not going to pull your T4. The T4 is still in there. It's working. You know, I would look at your reverse T3 to see how well you're converting that over, but just add in a little bit of T3 for you.
- [09:55]
B
So what do you think? What's that done for yourself and other. Other patients?
- [09:59]
C
Gives them their life back, really, because you're skipping the middleman. So you're actually giving the body that active thyroid hormone that it needs. Now, I personally am T3 only, so I don't convert. When you give me T4, all it does is it pushes over to something we call reverse T3, which is your antithyroid hormone. So reverse T3 is built in survival mechanism to our body, and it's good that we have it because if we're ever in a car accident and we're lying in the ICU, the ER, we're fighting for our life, reverse T3 will go up in order to basically say, hey, this person lying here injured doesn't have to burn body fat, doesn't have to think, doesn't have to have energy. They just need to lie here and survive. Now the problem is, is if someone is on T4 only or if they're on larger amounts of, of T4 medication, even form of natural desiccated thyroid medication, we want to check the reverse T3 because that tells us, are you taking that T4 and converting it to the active thyroid hormone that your body can use, or are you taking that T4 and converting it into reverse T3, which is basically putting your body in survival mode. So we want to test that to see how efficient your body is at doing what it should do to your T4 medication. Okay. Okay.
- [11:21]
B
I found that there's functional people in the thyroid world, but the. When you tell them like you've had cancer, they're like, oh, well, we don't, we don't deal with that. And they get afraid and they refer you to, you know, an endocrinologist that specializes in that. That's what I've experienced.
- [11:35]
C
Oh, gosh. We see thyroid patients or thyroid cancer patients all the time. All the time in the Practice because they're, they're in the same position as you were, as you are in that you don't have a thyroid anymore, so you need that proper replacement. And you know, it's a shame. And listen, I, I'm not blaming do. Right, they are, they're just very controlled by the insurance system.
- [11:58]
B
Right.
- [11:58]
C
And insurance companies, so they're kind of dictated to and told what they can and can't do. And really they're under very strict parameters. We're not, you know, so in functional medicine, especially in, at my clinic, we're not slaves to what the insurance companies say. So we really do practice personalized medicine. But you know, when you're going to your, your average ENT or endocrinologist, you have your thyroid removed. They're just following kind of the guidelines, like here's, here's the standard of care. You take out the thyroid and you give them T4. And all doctors everywhere have been taught that T4 monotherapy, T4 only is all you have to do. That's it, that's all you need to do. And everybody out there will, will be fine at converting that T4 to T3.
- [12:44]
B
But the reality is, endocrinologist, I said what about armor? Yep. What about that? Oh no, no, it's not tested and it can be contaminated. And you know, it wouldn't, I wouldn't do anything like that. That was the response.
- [12:55]
C
And you know what's funny is that armor thyroid or natural desiccated thyroid medication in general, that's the OG thyroid medication. That was the first one that we used in the 1800s to treat hypothyroidism. Synthroid that you're on right now actually wasn't approved by the FDA until I want to say the 70s or 80s. T3 was approved earlier, like 30s, 40s, 1930s, 1940s. T4 wasn't approved until later. So, so the original thyroid medication was armor, then came T3, then came T4 last, but for some reason T4 got put on a pedestal and, and all doctors everywhere were taught that's all you need. And they were, they were basically fear mongered away from the armor NDT medication and T3.
- [13:46]
B
Gotcha. Yeah, that's too bad. So how do you, if, if someone is going to convert and start having T3, are there any like adverse they should look out for? Like what, what should they expect to experience good or bad?
- [13:57]
C
So when you're well, we can do two things. So I'm coming back to you for an example then, so we could add in T3. And how we would do that, we would start very low and slow. We would start with something like 5 micrograms a day or 5 micrograms twice a day. And you would just start there. It's a very. It's a baby dose. It's a low dose, but you start there to kind of get your body acclimated. So we might give you, let's say 5 micrograms twice a day. And I say, okay, Richard, you're going take this for like a week or two, and then tell me how you feel. And you might come back and be like, yeah, I. You know, I don't really feel any different. It's fine. Okay, that's good. Now we're going to go to 10 micrograms twice a day. Hold that for a week. Richard, tell me how you feel. Oh, you know what? I'm. I'm good. I feel a little bit more energy. Kind of like the lights are coming on a little bit, you know, Nothing adverse. Nothing. Okay, then we're going to go to 15 micrograms twice a day, and we'll keep titrating up while paying attention to how you feel. And we'll hit a certain level where you're like, okay, this is.
- [14:57]
B
Feels good.
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C
Like, I feel a little bit more energized. My clothes are fitting a little bit better. It's like somebody cleared the cobwebs out of my brain, and my brain is firing, and I'm sleeping better. Perfect. That's where we're gonna hold it, and we're gonna hold that and just monitor you and retest and make sure that as we move along, we don't need any adjustments, but that's good. Now, you might have a sensitive person where we start them on 5 micrograms of T3 twice a day, and they go, holy cow, did I just drink five Red Bulls? I'm not sure here. I'm kind of sweaty. You know, experience that. It's like, okay, that's okay. It's. It's not going to last more than a day. You'll be, all right. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to pull that back. So Maybe we'll do 5 micrograms once a day, or we'll do 2.5 micrograms twice a day. And we're going to take this a lot slower. You might be on that dose for, like, a month before we tie trade up again. So it's very easy to personalize it to the person, and especially if you're dealing with someone that pays any kind of attention to their body. And if they, they report back that they're feeling what I call icky and sticky, if they're feel that like amped up, icky and sticky feeling, we just back off to the next lowest dose. So you don't get over medicated.
- [16:07]
B
Yeah. I remember a couple times in the beginning I felt crazed. I don't know why. I guess maybe it was too much at first. But yeah, I felt really agitated and like I couldn't think properly and over energized but like crazed for a while. It was a horrible, horrible feeling. And then it went away, which was good. But it hasn't repeated. Thank God.
- [16:27]
C
That is good.
- [16:27]
B
Years ago, that's what happened.
- [16:29]
C
You might have been like, and you know, this can happen with T4 as well. Then when you first add it in, you get a little bit amped up. Well, I'll also mention this, Richard. So when you and many people don't know this, but when you first remove someone's thyroid gland, you get what's called like a thyroid dump. So basically all. And you feel fantastic, if not even a little bit, you know, like you reported maybe a little bit amped up at first because you get this dump of hormones into the body and, and it's all thyroid hormone because we're removing your thyroid and then all of a sudden that levels out and it's like, oh no. I was feeling all amped up and jacked and now I feel down and sluggish and hypo again. So that that is a very common thing to have happen in the very beginning after a thyroidectomy.
- [17:21]
B
Okay. I didn't realize though, what, so do you deal in like of your patient cohort is, are a lot of them coming there because of cancer or is it just hypothyroidism or hyperthyroidism? Like what's common or what's the most common?
- [17:34]
C
So we get a little bit of everything. But I would say 90%, 95% are hypothyroid patients. We don't see a lot of hyperthyroidism because it's more rare in general. So the stats on hypothyroidism, low and slow thyroid function are 1 in 8Americans. Although we also have to remember how many people are out there misdiagnosed. So my stat is more like one in three. One in four have hypothyroidism. So I would say the majority we, we hypo, we will get post thyroidectomy, post cancer patients. And we welcome them because I. I mean, I have a special place in my heart for y' all who don't have a thyroid. Because it's hard. Like, you don't have a thyroid, but.
- [18:21]
B
But I at least attack. I'll be okay.
- [18:28]
C
That's true. Yeah, exactly. But no, it's hard.
- [18:31]
B
So what's. So usually the possible solution is to add in a bit of C3 and titrate it to a person's tolerance. And then they do much better after that.
- [18:40]
C
Oh, y. Definitely. Definitely much better. Because we're giving the body both hormones that it needs. Now, in my case, I only get the one because I don't convert. I would say of all hypothyroid patients on medication, only about 10 to 20% truly require T3 only. And they are. They are true non converters, as we call it.
- [19:03]
B
But the rest will make someone convert better. Like, can you modulate your diet to convert better? Or like, what are the main factors you found?
- [19:10]
C
Yeah, so you can. As long as there's not a genetic component in there. So the factors that get in the way of T4 to T3 conversion, or the factors that push up reverse T3, insulin resistance, estrogen dominance. So you want to look at your insulin, your diet, you want to look at your hormone profile, cortisol levels, adrenal fatigue, high cortisol that will push up reverse T3 nutrient deficiency. Like if you're iodine, magnesium, vitamin D or selenium deficient, that will hinder conversion. And then there are these genetic snow snips. Snts. They're little blips in your DNA that. That hinder conversion as well. So I actually have a genetic snip on each marker, the D101 and D102 enzyme that converts T4 to T3. I have a malfunctioning enzyme, so I just don't convert. So if you give me T4 and it's. I. I know because I've experimented on myself. If you give me T4, even in a small amount, like 25 micrograms, like a tiny dose in, I will be 10 pounds heavier and clinically depressed. It's crazy.
- [20:20]
B
Yeah, that is. That's amazing. What about people that are on very high doses of T4 for a long time?
- [20:26]
C
Yeah.
- [20:27]
B
What is there long term effects where, you know, no one can make it after a certain point. They need T3. Or are some people okay for life with just T4?
- [20:35]
C
Well, fantastic question, fantastic question. So when someone is on T4 only for a long, long period of time, the most Important thing is now is there that 2% out there that truly are THR on T4 only? Yes, yes, there are. They do exist. They're kind of like unicorns, but they exist. But for those people, we still want to. For those people and for anyone else who is on T4 only and they're not feeling their best, we want to check something called reverse T3 that we talked about before, that survival mechanism. Because here's the thing. If reverse t3 is elevated, and I mean above a12, so in the book, I actually give you the optimal ranges of where I want you to be with these tests. So we don't just look at that standard lab value range on your lab work. We want to look at it through an optimal lens. So if you're reverse T3 is above a12 and you do nothing about it, you just coast. You're like, I'm taking T4 only and I'm not converting very well. My reverse T3 is elevated, you can be at an increased risk of cancer. Now here's what I mean. I want to break this down so people don't, don't get scared. There's a lot of Instagram influencers out there using that phrase as kind of clickbait that this thyroid medic medication causes cancer. And it's like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Time out. Synthroid. Levothyroxine does not cause cancer. It is not carcinogenic. You are not taking a thyroid hormone that is going to trigger a cancer cell in your body. What they mean by saying that, where they're trying to get you hooked is the fact that if you're taking, like you said, higher amounts of T4 and that is pushing up your reverse T3, it's putting your body in, into this lockdown survival mode. What gets affected your immune system. So now your immune system is working at a little bit of a lower capacity and it doesn't have the surveillance that it normally does. Our immune system is always on surveillance for mutated cells or cancer cells. We all have cancer cells. And guess what? Your body's killing them off every single day. So if our immune systems are down and our surveillance isn't working like it should, then you, yes, someone who is on T4 only who is basically stuck in a hypothyroid state can be at an increased risk of cancer because of the immune system regulation. Dysregulation.
- [22:54]
B
Yeah, that would be hard to tell if you've on too much for too long or, you know, do you assume, like everyone's on too much for too long. And they all need, you know, T3 because the numbers are so low that, you know, people that have functioned well without T3. So, like 1 or 2%.
- [23:08]
C
Yeah, exactly. 1 to 2% function well without T3 in the mix. So really, it's about kind of what we're doing, doing today. Education and teaching and making people aware, you know, kind of. Of pulling the, the COVID off of their eyes that conventional medicine put over their eyes. Because it's, it's easy to believe the medical community, because why not?
- [23:30]
B
That's.
- [23:30]
C
We. We grew up being told by our parents, like, listen to your doctor. He's an authority figure. He knows better. He or she went to med school. You know, they have the training. And yes, that is true, but we still have the ability to think for ourselves, and we still have the ability to tune into our own bodies. So, you know, like, if you're like, wait, I'm being treated. That's why I asked you in the beginning. I'm being treated for thyroid. I'm still not 100%. I have this symptom and this symptom. And this symptom still really bugs me. You know, I got these last 10, 20 pounds, just can't take off. Maybe I only poop every other day. That's not good. And, and if you have those symptoms, then that's just a, a sign and a signal to you to know that you need better treatment. Right. To know that. And the book is there to say there is better treatment out there and you can do this, and I'm going to show you how.
- [24:21]
B
Okay, so you, you. You can do telemedicine in all 50 states in the United States, or what's your. Where's your range?
- [24:28]
C
Yes, absolutely. So every state in the US we can prescribe to thyroid. We do thyroid hormone replacement, obviously, specializing in that, getting people optimized. And then we also do the bioidentical hormone replacement and peptides, because they kind of all go, go together. So thyroid and hormones always play together. So we have to look at a person's sex hormone profile and make sure that that's optimal as well. We want to look at insulin. We want to look at cortisol. You know, we want to look at everything so that we can treat you as a whole person instead of just, oh, we're just going to treat the thyroid and, you know, we'll. We'll check that testosterone level down the road. We'll check that in six months. Like, no, let's check.
- [25:10]
B
What if someone's on. On what? If someone's on trt, let's say, and they're on, you know, taking thyroid hormone, does that complicate stuff or does it just need to be watched more carefully? Like are there any medications that, that people will take, maybe especially later in life, that, that, that complicates what they need to do with their thyroid?
- [25:26]
C
Yes, there are not, not the hormones. So the hormone replacement, bhrt, like testosterone, that's actually going to make things better because it can actually improve the thyroid. What I mean by that is something like testosterone decreases inflammation and actually helps to reduce thyroid antibodies. So that's going to help the medication work better or help someone's thyroid work better. Something like Progesterone helps with T4 to T3 conversion, it helps with insulin resistance. So the hormones are going to work and, and they're going to make, they're going to allow the thyroid hormone replacement to work better. The medications that interfere would be things like beta blockers. We know that long term use of beta blockers can actually trigger hypothyroidism or downregulate. The Thyro people wouldn't be on this later in life or they might. I have run into some patients that come into the practice that are, you know, 45, 50 years old and they're still on birth control. And I have to tell these ladies, like, okay, stop. Number one, you're putting synthetic hormones in your body. Number two, you're an adult. You don't need birth control to avoid pregnancy anymore. So let's put in real hormones into your. But because being on birth control for more than 10 years. Years, and I was, I'm, I'm guilty as well, increases your risk of hypothyroidism by 243%. It's crazy.
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B
That's terrible.
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C
Yeah.
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B
So beta blockers, what for high blood pressure?
- [26:53]
C
Yeah, like high, high blood pressure, sometimes afib tachycardia. They'll use beta blockers. High heart rates.
- [27:01]
B
Oh, here's something, here's something very important to ask you. You know, Ozempic and Mounjaro and all that stuff's all over the place. But the conjugate indication they say is like, I guess in the mouse model, it gave mice medullary thyroid cancer. If you have hypothyroidism, should you avoid it? If you've had a thyroidectomy and thyroid cancer, should you avoid it? I mean, what's, is anyone looking into this?
- [27:22]
C
I love this question and I do have a chapter in the book on it. Okay. So GLPs, GLPs, Jekyll and Hyde, good and bad. So on the one hand, if, if a GLP is used in a microdose format, like a true microdose, not like influencers on Instagram are talking about a true microdose format, then what we see is a decrease in inflammat improvement in thyroid markers. So we can actually help that person's medication work better. Sometimes we can reduce the amount of medication that they need for their thyroid. Everything works synergistically. It's beautiful. Now to your question about the thyroid cancer. Those studies that allowed for that black box warning to occur where basically if you've had a history of modulated thyroid cancer, you're not allowed to use GLP1, they were actually using 20 times the amount that a human being would use in the, these rats. So the studies were performed on rats, not humans. We have no evidence to this date that GLPs have caused any kind of thyroid cancer. And where they got that data was literally from using a 20x dose. In addition, there are, there are components of a rat that we don't have that literally trigger that thyroid cancer. There are certain C cells that rats have that we don't. That combined with that super physiologic dose of a GLP triggered canc cancer. So you can't even replicate that same thing in humans. It's, it's kind of odd that they're even leaving that black box warning on it.
- [28:52]
B
So yeah, I'm sure you have patients that are on these GLP1 GIP inhibitors and yep, they've also had thyroid issues. And they're okay.
- [29:00]
C
Oh yes. Yeah, definitely, definitely.
- [29:03]
B
Good to know.
- [29:03]
C
Now one thing we're saying for those folks out there who might be taking a GLP 1, 2 or 3, whatever, and, and they're not experiencing weight loss. Check your thyroid. So we had a patient in the practice, she came in. Now she was a full blown type 2 diabetic. I mean that's what GLPs were made for. So her, her A1C was an 11.9. It really should be like 4 or 5. Right? It was 11.9 and she was around about 150 pounds overweight. She was on a GLP for a year and a half, wasn't working. She was also diagnosed with Hashimoto's like 15 years prior to coming into the, the clinic. And she was on T4 only. So her reverse T3 was high, her free T3 was low. And basically her body was shut down, her metabolism was shut Down. We optimized her thyroid and then the GLP one actually started working. Her A1C dropped to A, to a 5.4. So she reversed her diabetes and she lost £150. GOP will not work. And I mean thank God she was at least getting the GLP covered by her insurance. There's a lot of people out there paying of pocket and they're saying, hey, this isn't working. It's like, right, we gotta check your thyroid first because your thyroid being in the toilet will stop that GLP from working.
- [30:17]
B
So your thyroid, like if someone, they feel okay but they have high reverse T3, what does that tell you? Let's say they seem normal, they're okay, or maybe they are having weight problems. But again, very high reverse T3.
- [30:29]
C
So yeah, that is that, that hibernation hormone, that survival mechanism hormone. So with an elevator reverse T3. Your body thinks that you are dying your thinks that you are lying in the icu. It's crazy. So we have to bring that down. Yes, we look at all the factors that drive up reverse T3. Like we mentioned, the nutrient deficiencies or cortisol or insulin. And then sometimes we have to adjust the, the medication, the thyroid hormone component, lower the T4 because T4 is the only thing that converts to reverse T3. It's the only hormone that can become reverse T3. So we lower the T4 and we add in T3 and that will adjust that reverse T3.
- [31:13]
B
Gotcha. Okay, so for people that want to, you know, that are having problems and want to work with you and find out how they can where what's like a central place for them to go.
- [31:21]
C
Absolutely. So you can go to doctor amy.com d r a m I e dot com and on there right at the top you'll see schedule a call, book a call. You can do that, it's free. We just want to learn about you, make sure you're a good fit for us. And then we're going to go over your different options for the programs that we have where we prescribe in all 50 states. So we got you covered there. And then of course you can listen on the thyroid fixer podcast. Tons of information there. That's a great resource if you want to dive deeper and learn more. I have specific episodes on reverse T3 on why T4 only doesn't work so we can go deeper. And of course the book thy rich fixbook.com if you're grabbing it before May 16, we are doing an all day live launch party. So if you have a copy of the book. If you pre order or buy it on May 12 launch when it's released, then you get a zoom link for that day. So that means that you get to participate. You get to ask your questions and have them answered live by me. You get to participate in all of the freebies that we're giving out from a year supply of thyroid fixer, part of my fixer supplement line, all the way to various tests that you can do at home. We have test plus consult offers where people can get tested at home and we review their labs. It's going to be a lot of fun. So make sure that you get your copy of the thyroid fix before May 16th.
- [32:43]
B
Excellent. Okay, well, anything else, Dr. Amy, or shall let you go?
- [32:45]
C
The last thing I will leave people with is just hope. You know, you got to have hope because going back to my story in the beginning, wow, what if I would have stopped, you know, what if I would have stopped on number four, number five or number six, you know, so you have to keep going. You got to listen to your body and if you don't feel right, if you feel like your body is rebelling against you, don't stop. Just keep going.
- [33:08]
B
Okay. Very good. Well, yeah, thanks so much for for coming on the podcast and sharing your knowledge. I appreciate it.
- [33:13]
C
Amazing. Well, thank you so much for having me. I greatly appreciate it.
- [33:16]
B
If you like this podcast, please click the link in the description to subscribe and review us on itunes.
- [33:24]
A
Thank you for listening to the Good Question podcast. Please email support@thegoodquestion podcast.com if you have any referrals to great guests for us to interview. Visit thegoodquestionpodcast.com to hear more interviews. And please help us spread the word by rating and reviewing us on Apple podcasts, iTunes, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen to this podcast.