← The Human Upgrade: Biohacking for Longevity & Performance
The Human Upgrade: Biohacking for Longevity & Performance
Here's Why You Still Feel Like Sh*t After Doing Everything Right... : 1434
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- [00:00]
A
When I was 26, one of the first longevity doctors built my labs and he called me up and he said, dave, your testosterone is lower than your mother and you're almost undetectable.
- [00:10]
B
Low. T is the first hormone dysfunction to show up with. 99.5% of our patients have testosterone extraordinarily low, more often below the detectable threshold.
- [00:23]
A
You just feel helpless. I don't have what it takes to handle life. And it's true. Directly suppresses function. And they put it in water and we've known this since 19, 1945. And you're drinking tap water and you're brushing with fluoride toothpaste and then you're eating wheat that's treated with bromine. You're taking a stack of drugs.
- [00:41]
B
Got my life back in a couple months. Had a full thyroid panel, changed medications.
- [00:44]
A
It was like someone turned the lights back on. I just felt my body relax and I didn't realize how much effort I was spending on everything I did.
- [00:52]
B
If someone hadn't helped me, I would be on disability by now.
- [00:55]
A
I really believe that you're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Imagine relaxing and connecting with friends without touching an ounce of alcohol. Alcohol is toxic no matter how you slice it. It wrecks your sleep, trashes your mitochondria and accelerates aging. There's a better way to relax without the toxic load. People in the South Pacific have used kava for over 3000 years for stress relief, mental performance and social connection, all while supporting brain health and longevity. That's why I'm excited about Tru Kava's new instant powders. For the first time, you can get the authentic whole food kava experience in a clean mix and go sachet format. I travel with these powders because they actually deliver all the deeply relaxing social benefits I want without destroying my sleep score and metabolic health. If you want the effects of alcohol without the downsides, this is the Upgrade. Head to Trucava.com and use code DAVE10 for 10% off. Are you ready to plug into the latest science of longevity and human performance? Come to beyond the Biohacking conference where biology, longevity and consciousness collide in real Life. Join us May 27th through 29th, 2026 in Austin, Texas. Experience breakthrough tech. Meet world class experts and connect with people who are also committed to being the best versions of themselves. Because strong community isn't optional. It's how we live longer. Register now@BeyondConference.com Live longer. Live better. Live beyond. You're listening to an episode of the Human upgrade that is recorded live at the studio here in Austin, Texas, with another Austinite who runs the modern thyroid clinic. And if you're a longtime listener, you know that thyroid is foundational to your biology. If you're cold, if you're tired, if you can't lose weight, if you're anxious, if you can't sleep, if you're stressed, if your hair and skin are tweaked, thyroid is one of the lowest hanging fruit that you could do. And the reason this is so personal for me is that when I was 26 and I went to one of the first longevity doctors in the industry, really back in the Bay Area, he pulled my labs and he called me up and he said, dave, your testosterone is lower than your mother. Which was true. And your thyroid's almost undetectable. And when he put me on thyroid, it was like someone turned the lights back on. It was so amazing. Like, ah. I just felt my body relax. And I didn't realize how much effort I was spending on everything I did. And it was because someone had turned my thermostat all the way down me, basically, or toxic mold, maybe. And when I managed to get that fixed, it changed everything. And this is the thing behind your energy. So I thought, what would happen if we brought in a top expert on thyroid and we just go deep on it? Because most doctors, especially western doctors, just test for one marker, which isn't enough. So McCall McPherson is going to teach us how the thyroid really, really works. McCall, welcome to the studio.
- [04:24]
B
I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me, Dave.
- [04:28]
A
You're very welcome. You also have a thyroid story, kind of like mine. What happened with your thyroid? How did you learn about this?
- [04:35]
B
Mine was 27, so not super far from a timeline from yours. And I was already practicing medicine, already diagnosed with a thyroid disorder on Synthroid, and was like, Bed Bo. I was spending 16 hours a day in bed, overweight, hair was falling out, depressed, couldn't function. Weekends were spent in bed, like, trying to recover.
- [04:55]
A
But you were medicated. Synthroid is a thyroid medication.
- [04:58]
B
Oh, yeah, we're gonna have to dig into that one for sure. So naturally, like, I was like, oh, I just need a dose adjustment. I went to my doctor and he's like, no, your thyroid's fine. Actually, we need to reduce your medication. Right. And I broke down. I'm like, look, if you take anything from me, I'm going to be unemployed. I'm going to be disabled.
- [05:16]
A
Yeah.
- [05:17]
B
Did some. Although he did want to put me on Lipitor for my cholesterol problem at 27. Of course. Right. Did some research, came back with a little post it, asked him to run what I found a full thyroid panel to be. And that was hard to find back then. There wasn't thyroid advocacy platforms. And he said no. So got on the wait list for one of the only integrative medicine docs in Austin back then.
- [05:37]
A
How can a doctor say no when a patient wants a lab test? Like, what are we paying them for
- [05:41]
B
all day, every day? This is happening in the thyroid world. Insane. Insane. So saw an integrative doc and got my life back in a couple months. Had a full thyroid panel, changed medications, obviously that profoundly changed the trajectory of my life, and started applying this in my own patients. Dug into absolutely all the research and in my little integrative psychiatry practice, like 80% of my new patients became thyroid because my patients spread my my name and work far and wide. And eventually when my first out of patient, fluid, out of state patient flew in like, I don't know, 13 years ago, oh, my God, I'm doing the wrong thing. Like, my life's work is thyroid. And from that modern thyroid clinic was born. And now I get to help people just like you, just like me, get their lives back.
- [06:25]
A
Are a lot of psychiatric symptoms tied to thyroid function?
- [06:29]
B
Totally.
- [06:29]
A
Yeah.
- [06:30]
B
Treatment resistant depression was my entry point with patients for sure. I was reading a study in the last couple months that advocated for people with treatment resistant depression for their TSH to be below 2, which is unheard of in regular medicine. They're like, look, people aren't really responding until their TSH is much, much lower than medicine calls for it to be. So absolutely huge, huge mood disruption.
- [06:55]
A
Wow. So maybe it's not treatment resistant depression. They just don't know how to treat it.
- [07:00]
B
You're a smart man. Yeah, nailed that one.
- [07:04]
A
So you mentioned tsh. Walk me through the thyroid signaling and thyroid hormones, but make it as simple as you can for sure.
- [07:12]
B
So your brain sends a message to your thyroid and asks it to work harder or less hard by a hormone called TSH or thyroid stimulating hormone. Naturally. Its job is to stimulate your thyroid. Right. That stimulates our thyroid to produce a hormone called free T4. Largely. Free T4 is like crude oil. We don't put crude oil in our car. We need it to make gasoline to make our car go. But if we can't convert that crude oil into gasoline, we're not really going anywhere in our car. Right. So T4 is produced in your thyroid gland outside of your Thyroid. It's converted into gasoline, your active hormone. What we need for metabolism, energy, cognition, hair, skin, hormones, all the things. That hormone is called Free T3. Okay. Sadly, no one checks that. We'll talk about that later, I'm sure. And then there's also an inhibitory hormone that can come from T4. This is particularly an issue for people on levothyroxine, synthroid, tyrosine, unithroid, reverse. T3 is its name, and it actually can bind and block to the same landing spot as T3, your gasoline hormone, your most important hormone. And keep it from absorbing, keep it from doing its job. And unless you're checking all of those things right, we can't get the full picture.
- [08:25]
A
So TSH causes the body to produce T4, which might convert to T3, and it's T3 that is really responsible for the action. So if anywhere along that process, something's broken, you're not going to know if you only measure TSH, right?
- [08:42]
B
Yeah. Research shows TSH. And even if someone's checking your TSH in your T4, it reflects variations in your T3 in 1 to 2% of the time. That's so.
- [08:53]
A
So it's not a very trouble.
- [08:55]
B
Yeah.
- [08:55]
A
It is still useful, though, to know if the brain is calling for more thyroid. You have some kind of a problem. So I tell people, like, if you only get TSH for longevity purposes, I want to see it around one or slightly under one. What do you think about that?
- [09:10]
B
I agree. I agree. Always below 1.8. At 1.8, it doesn't even matter what everything else is. Even if it's perfect, People are debilitated. They're, like, using more energy to produce their thyroid hormone energy. And so there's a differential, and that drives symptoms.
- [09:28]
A
And, you know, a lot of doctors say, oh, it's a two or three. As long as it's below four, you're fine. And that's just wrong. If you want to feel like crap all the time, have a high tsh. Right.
- [09:38]
B
Can I tell you something crazy?
- [09:39]
A
Yeah.
- [09:40]
B
So medicine is working overtime right now and has been since about 2019 on stratifying out patients to treat them less and less. And now what's happening in the world of thyroid is doctors, clinicians are being told not to treat people until their TSH is over 10. If their T4 is okay, 10, or in some cases, 20. Who's telling that?
- [10:01]
A
Is it insurance companies or something?
- [10:03]
B
No. Research. Research from the top down is now advocating for not treating subclinical hypothyroidism which is overt hypothyroidism, until their TSH is over 10.
- [10:16]
A
So who is the leading evil researcher behind all this? There has to be like one mean spirited person doing that. Who is it?
- [10:22]
B
Right. So I don't know the person, but there were two studies. One, the last one happened in 2018, and it completely changed the trajectory of thyroid care. Like, we were kind of headed in the right direction, headed towards lower TSHs open to T3. We literally picked up the train and put it on an entirely new set of tracks to treat less and less people. They're trying to stratify people out of treatment based on age, all kinds of things. It's getting crazy.
- [10:46]
A
Wow. Well, I'm hopeful that the, the new powers that be at the FDA are not going to stand for that because they just said hormone replacement therapy is good for women, which We've known for 23 years, but the agency hadn't been responsive to. So I'm actually really hopeful that they seem to be responsive to longevity and to just increasing our health. And if you want to reduce your risk of almost every disease, it seems like having a working thyroid might do that.
- [11:14]
B
Absolutely. Even subclinical hypothyroidism is like increased chance of heart attack of over 68%. I mean, it's crazy. It's the root cause for so much of the chronic disease burden in our country.
- [11:25]
A
It's kind of weird. Having low thyroid function does something to your ldl. What does it do?
- [11:29]
B
Right. It slows that transport and the removal of your cholesterol. It impacts your insulin, like, metabolically. You go into complete dysfunction so early on.
- [11:39]
A
So you can raise your LDL and raise your insulin resistance, which are things you don't want to do just by having a dysfunctional thyroid. What percentage of people have dysfunctional thyroids?
- [11:49]
B
Oh, Dave. So, I mean, in my opinion, if you're a woman and if you're a woman with children, it's not a matter of if, but when. Like, I think ubiquitous. Right.
- [12:00]
A
It's funny, my former wife, a mother of my children and co parent after we had our second child, she's a medical doctor. And I'm like, you have every sign of thyroid dysfunction. You're so tired, like it's affecting your hair. And it took about a year for me to convince her. And we got the test and yeah, it was almost undetectable until it's because when you're pregnant, your body takes all the stuff that was supporting a thyroid and gives it to the baby. Right. So we've got to really pay attention around fertility and pregnancy and postpartum, especially with thyroid, right?
- [12:34]
B
Absolutely. And the highest risk for autoimmune thyroiditis or Hashimoto's graves, et cetera, is postpartum. Like those big hormonal shifts in women, perimenopause, menopause too. Incidence increases, risk increases. We have to be paying better attention and not like shuffling these women away and being like, oh, you're fine, your TSH is normal. Go eat less, exercise more kind of thing.
- [12:56]
A
You know, I did the eat less, exercise more when I had thyroid dysfunction. I did 90 minutes a day, six days a week, half weights, half cardio, for 18 months straight, and I never lost an inch or a pound.
- [13:09]
B
I'm so freaking happy that you say that because I think women, especially men, I feel like people believe you a little more. But women, they'll say, look, no, I eat well, I exercise. And their clinician doesn't believe them. Doesn't believe them. It doesn't matter if you drink water and exercise, you can't lose weight.
- [13:28]
A
Thyroid dysfunction, the thermostat's turned down. There's no body heat. It's not consuming calories. And I remember going to the doctor at the Palo Alto Medical foundation and I told him this exercise regimen. I was eating as little as I could. I was miserable. And I said, I'm doing all this. And he just looked at me like, liar, I know you're eating Snickers bars or something. And I wasn't. And that was why I started learning from the. The people in the longevity field back then who were all in their 70s and 80s. And I'm the only guy under. Under 30 in the room. And thankfully, I had a couple good lectures about how thyroid really worked and the right care. I don't think I would have even stayed employed if I hadn't fixed my thyroid.
- [14:08]
B
I tell my patients on a weekly basis, if someone hadn't helped me, I would be on disability by now. I really believe that. And medicine writes it off as it's not a big deal. It's super common, it's super easy to treat. If you have persistent sympt and you're on Synthroid, it's not your thyroid. It must be something different. Yeah.
- [14:24]
A
So what is Synthroid?
- [14:26]
B
Synthroid is a brand Name of a T4 form of levothyroxine, like tyrosine, levoxy, unithroid. These are all just brand names. It's entirely crude oil hormone. It's all inactive, and it's dependent completely on Someone's ability to activate it. And a lot of things disrupt the activation of your crude oil hormone to convert it to gasoline. So I think by and large it doesn't work for a huge percentage of the population and it never will, irrespective
- [14:53]
A
of the dose, because your body can't convert it. It's funny, a really close friend was over, it was about a year ago and she's always cold and had the signs, early 40s age, all the signs of thyroid stuff. And I said we should get a test. I don't want to get a test, but it's so obvious. So she ordered some T4 from the Internet, which you can do, which is synth red basically. And it didn't make much of a difference, but it made a little difference. So then she finally got a test and sure enough she was not converting T4 to T3. And when she got on T3 it's like not cold anymore, more energy, more clarity, more emotional regulation. I mean it's a huge difference and it's cheap. And what she ended up going on is what I take as well, which is a mix of T4 and T3. A thyroid glandular, what do you see works most often? Do people need to just take the synthetic T3? Do they need to take synthetic T4? Do they need to take them both or do they just take a natural thyroid extract?
- [15:53]
B
It's a good question. I mean, honestly, I wish there was an easy answer, right? I wish there was sort of a one size fits all approach, but there really isn't. I would say. The one thing that I would say with clarity is 100% of our patients at modern thyroid clinic are on some form of T3. We have no patients on levothyroxine based medications alone. I don't think there's a place for them in our practice. Although sure they might work for a small percentage of the population. I think everyone's needs are different and it's based on their biochemistry. I did really well on Glandular for a really long time and then stress and things that impact the activation of my hormones got in the way. So the ratio of inactive hormone in glandular T4 is pretty high compared to T3 and that no longer worked for me anymore. So I had to layer in some T3 on top of that. Someone maybe post thyroidectomy might need longer acting T4 with some T3 layered in. It really should be bio individual, right? Based on our own biochemical needs.
- [16:51]
A
One of the reasons that I added lab testing to upgrade labs, companies called Axo Health, guys, if you want to go there and check it out, we include a full thyroid panel in that, even though it's more expensive, because I think everyone has a right to know. And so, of course, I run it on myself because it's my company and, you know, I got to test it out. And about a year and a half ago, I noticed that my tsh, for reasons I still don't understand, had crept up to about two. I'm like, that's terrible. So then I increased my thyroid medication dose, and magically, my brain worked even better and things improved biologically. So even if you're pretty well maximized, things in the environment can affect your thyroid function. And so this is why I think an annual test. And as you said, if you're over 40, especially if you're a woman, you really should get this tested. Do women have thyroid problems more commonly than men?
- [17:45]
B
Absolutely.
- [17:46]
A
How much more?
- [17:47]
B
Probably nine times more, roughly.
- [17:49]
A
Holy crap.
- [17:49]
B
Yeah. No, it's a significant difference. I mean, if you want to talk about our patients at Modern Thyroid Clinic, 98 to 99% of them are women.
- [17:56]
A
So I'm just expressing my feminine side with my thyroid disorder? Is that what you're saying? I feel judged.
- [18:02]
B
I also think you're more in tune. Like, I think you care. Men sometimes are not invested in feeling optimal in their health. They just. Just ostrich head in the sand.
- [18:12]
A
Our. Our audience is pretty good at that because we care about how we feel. Like, he's the energy and things like that. So you can show up the way you're supposed to, but if you don't know, you can do something about it. That's the thing. And it's funny, some people are saying, oh, biohacking is just for men. I'm like, no. 58% of followers have been women since the beginning of the movement. Because women, on average, make better biohackers than men because more bodily awareness, maybe more intuition, too. Yeah. So you're treating primarily women. When do you recommend that people get their first thyroid test? Is there, like, a time when it goes sideways?
- [18:46]
B
So, I mean, if you have a family history, I'd say check your kids, even. Right. I have had patients as young as four, and certainly even babies can have thyroid dysfunction. I think every time people get labs drawn, they need to be checking their thyroid. Like, I don't think you can check it too much or check it every three months. So the. If you're listening to this, check your thyroid, use Dave's. Dave's labs, and get it Done because you need it. Everyone does.
- [19:09]
A
And fortunately, lab testing has changed a lot. Back in 2008, I started probably the second direct to consumer lab testing company. We ran a specialized lab test that detected like antibody or non antibody mediated immune proliferation for implant materials. Kind of.
- [19:26]
B
I don't even know what that means. That's impressive.
- [19:29]
A
I'm a nerd. We were just figuring out people were sensitive to their medical implants even though they're supposed to be hypoallergenic. And we had a way to test for it. But I'm like, why would you have to get a permission slip to just order the test? And so it was incredibly difficult. Now though, it's easy. So you don't have to go to the doctor and beg for permission to get a thyroid test. You can just order one and then you can take the results to your doctor and say, I already have a test, I want to talk to you about treating this. And so that's Axo Health and there's many other places you can order thyroid tests online. Just make sure you get a full thyroid panel. Right. What's in a full thyroid panel?
- [20:01]
B
Yeah, and I would piggyback off of that and say, look like if your doctor, like my doctor didn't want to run a full panel, don't try and convince them, like don't try to convince your doctor to practice medicine or clinician in a different way, it's not going to happen. Nor are they going to know what to do with your results in that case. So go to a direct to consumer lab. Absolutely. What is in a full thyroid panel is TSH free T4, free T3, reverse T3 and I prefer everyone also get antibodies tracked thyroid peroxidase and thyroglobulin antibodies bodies because research shows about 89% of people that have hypothyroidism also have Hashimoto's, which is dealt with in a completely different way. And you need to know if in fact you do have that because it's a different entire approach.
- [20:44]
A
And those last two antibody tests mean that you have an autoimmunity condition that could be causing all or at least some of your thyroid problem. Because you could have other things causing it as well, right?
- [20:56]
B
Absolutely. So Hashimoto's is the name. It attacks your thyroid and erodes away that hormone secreting tissue, replaces it with scarry inflammatory tissue. That doesn't really work as well. Therefore overall production of hormones decreases. But you're right, there are other things very much that impact how your thyroid functions as well. But the interesting thing about Hashimoto's that I know you're aware of is if you have one autoimmune disease, you're at a 30% increased risk of developing another. So if you can reduce those antibodies, you can use those numbers and watching them reduce over time as a way to infer your overall autoimmune disease risk reduction for more serious things like ms, et cetera. Because if that goes into remission, I'm completely in remission. I've been in remission for over a decade now. I used to have a giant goiter.
- [21:42]
A
Oh, wow.
- [21:43]
B
I know. That shows that, hey, my chances of developing more serious things, other issues reduces also.
- [21:50]
A
How did you go into remission from Hashimoto's?
- [21:52]
B
It was a long process, but I think it started with the fact that I figured out I was celiac. So. Yeah, that's a big one. Right? That certainly helped. When you're living with a thyroid problem, it's really hard to like pull up your bootstraps and your whole lifestyle because you can barely get pants on every day. Too tired. Which is kind of our approach at modern thyroid too is like we don't ask people when they come in to go on AIP forever, right? Like we want.
- [22:18]
A
AIP is autoimmune protocol. Yeah, autoimmune protocol. Basically a diet that's less inflammatory. Kind of like the bulletproof diet. Yeah, yeah.
- [22:27]
B
Almost too extreme though, you know, bulletproof is like realistic. So we don't ask them to change their whole lifestyle. We give them the platform to do it by fixing their thyroid because it's so impactful. And so I struggled with that until I got the support that I needed biochemically from originally armour and then I took out inflammatory foods. I moved out of a moldy house. I, you know, quit do. I was able to exercise and eat well because I had the energy and the capacity to do it. And that's ultimately what people deserve. They deserve a leverage point from which to build their lifestyle off of.
- [23:01]
A
We have had such similar paths, haven't we? I did the documentary on toxic mold, guys. If you've ever seen it, moldymovie.com, it's free, but it's a full on documentary about toxic mold. And in all of the research I've done about this, the two things that are most likely to cause Hashimoto's are mold and wheat.
- [23:19]
B
Yeah.
- [23:20]
A
Is there anything else on the list for you?
- [23:21]
B
Dairy. So it's interesting.
- [23:23]
A
Interesting. Just milk? Just from cows or all dairy?
- [23:26]
B
Kind of all dairy. But I would say heavier weighted on cows and I wouldn't have expected that. I went into, I do inflammatory food testing right. On my Hashimoto's patients and I've done thousands and thousands of these by this point. And clearly like pattern wise, I'm a data nerd. Like I'm just an analyst by nature. Dairy, I see about twice as often as I see gluten from an igg inflammatory standpoint.
- [23:50]
A
This is dair protein specifically.
- [23:51]
B
It's Casey, it's all. So we do like mozzarella, sheep's milk, goat's milk, dairy. Casey, like everything.
- [23:58]
A
Ghee probably isn't on there because there's no protein in it.
- [24:01]
B
Yeah, no, I don't have ghee on there.
- [24:03]
A
Okay. Ghee is, is protein free if it's made right. So most people who can't tolerate dairy can tolerate clarified butter.
- [24:09]
B
Yep.
- [24:10]
A
And I think there's some nutrients in butter that are important. Oh, totally.
- [24:14]
B
And not everyone needs to be dairy free. I feel like people should test, like they should know. So we're not over restricting.
- [24:19]
A
How do you test?
- [24:20]
B
I do a blood test, IgG Food Inflammatory testing for sure. And then for anyone, I'm worried about celiac. I run a full celiac panel as well.
- [24:30]
A
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- [27:47]
B
I mean in my opinion, standard American lifestyle propagates autoimmunity, but it also propagates poor activation of our thyroid hormones which is, you know, influenced by stress, inflammation, sleep, micronutrient, depletion protein restriction, caloric restriction, over exercise, all of these things. And additionally, environmentally, you know, things pollutants in our environment, in our air and our water, directly influence thyroid function and increase risk for autoimmunity. So it's pervasive.
- [28:20]
A
Isn't there a prescription drug for high thyroid in our water regularly?
- [28:25]
B
Oh, like iodine, you mean?
- [28:27]
A
No, no. A prescription. No, a prescription drug that they use to treat overactive thyroid, like methimazole, like
- [28:35]
B
that's in our water or ptu.
- [28:36]
A
I'm talking about fluoride.
- [28:37]
B
Oh, there you go. Okay. Yeah.
- [28:39]
A
Fluoride directly suppresses thyroid function, and they put it in water, and we've known this since 1945. That it does that.
- [28:47]
B
Yeah. Interesting.
- [28:48]
A
Yeah. And so that's probably a bad idea.
- [28:51]
B
Definitely.
- [28:52]
A
Okay, so I'm guessing you like water filters for people.
- [28:55]
B
I do love water filters and air filters, two of the very first things people need to do on their health journey.
- [29:02]
A
Okay. And iodine is necessary for thyroid function. And unfortunately, though, it's not that sticky, even though it will dye things pretty well, if you compare it to fluoride, which is in the same class of element, fluoride will displace iodine, and it'll make the thyroid dysfunctional. But there's something else that only we do in America, and as we treat our flour with bromine, and bromine also displaces this. If you go to Europe, they use iodine in their flour. And in the US So if you have thyroid issues and you're drinking tap water and you're brushing with fluoride toothpaste, and then you're eating wheat that's treated with bromine, you're taking a stack of drugs that suppress your thyroid function. Then you get fat and feel like shit, and you wonder why. Right, Right. So what are people supposed to do
- [29:51]
B
about everyone up for failure?
- [29:52]
A
Talk to me about thyroid dysfunction and libido.
- [29:55]
B
Yeah.
- [29:55]
A
In men and women.
- [29:56]
B
In men and women. So it impacts libido directly. Like, Low Thyroid hormone T3 will directly lower libido, but it also lowers testosterone. So those two things go hand in hand. Honestly, I'm not exaggerating when I tell you 99.5% of our patients have testosterone. Extraordinarily low, more often below the detectable threshold.
- [30:20]
A
Just like what I had at 26. Right, right.
- [30:22]
B
I was the same at 27. So low T is the first hormone dysfunction to show up with hypothyroidism.
- [30:30]
A
That is so big.
- [30:31]
B
Yeah.
- [30:32]
A
So I've been saying since I started blogging about this like almost 15 years ago, that pretty much everyone over age 40 would benefit from a low dose of something like an Armour thyroid, an eighth or a quarter grain. Because all the tables just show that your thyroid stops functioning over time. And the whole basic way of thinking about longevity is you should have the hormones of someone healthy at 30 years old and letting your thyroid go. But propping up testosterone and estrogen doesn't make a lot of sense. So if you're tired, you're foggy, your exercise isn't working like that, I think you should get a test and you look at that TSH number and you want that, I think around 1. What are the right numbers for T4 and T3 though?
- [31:19]
B
Yeah, so I want T4 free T4 to be between 0.9 and 1.2. That seems like a narrow margin. It's wider than people anticipate anything above 1.2 is 1, artificially suppressing TSH and 2, creating a reservoir for your inhibitory hormone for your reverse T3.
- [31:36]
A
Oh, so you could have T4 too high.
- [31:38]
B
You can have T4 too high. And that's so often an issue with people over 50 or anyone on levothyroxine based medications. And that like, the worse you are at using those meds, the better your labs will look. If you're just checking TSH and T4 to a regular doctor, because it will look robust, T3 needs to be between about 3.6 and 4.2, 4.4 for the bulk of your day. But depending on what class of meds you're on and when you take your labs based around those meds dictates a lot. And that's something medicine is completely unaware of.
- [32:11]
A
Oh, wow.
- [32:12]
B
Yeah. So if you're checking at peak, it's going to peak higher than not.
- [32:16]
A
And guys, I just decided to do this, but go to daveasprey.com thyroid and I'll put all these numbers and notes in there for you and I'll just make that a standard landing page. If you wanna know what's going on with your thyroid. Because this is such a big deal and if you are thinking about having kids, whether you're a man or a woman, for God's sake, get your thyroid in place first. You will have much healthier children and better fertility outcomes. Yeah. And you'll probably be hornier too, is what I'm hearing.
- [32:43]
B
Yeah.
- [32:44]
A
Okay. So those numbers are the guidelines for it. I want to ask about something that's pretty controversial. Let's go. It's iodine. So so many People are deficient in iodine in their labs, and we need it. But if you have Hashimoto's, that autoimmune thyroiditis, they tell you don't take iodine because it could make your antibodies go up. But it's not just your thyroid. Use iodine. Everything in your body needs iodine. So what are we supposed to do? Take iodine or not take iodine?
- [33:14]
B
You know, it's interesting. So I try and take a balanced approach to this. I try not to go to the extremist one side or the other. I think iodine's a little tricky to test and get accurate measurements for. So I think that's one variable that's hard to account for. And, like, are we getting an accurate number with a blood test? Do we need to do a urine test? What's the best way to measure this and get accuracy? I think most people could handle reasonably balanced levels of iodine, and I think it's fine. Particularly in people with Hashimoto's. I will monitor their antibodies if they're taking iodine and see if it increases. That's part of the power of data. Right. We can track and trend. But I'm more careful with those people with iodine, for sure. I don't really ever advocate for the flip side of, like, extremely high doses of iodine. That's where I kind of draw the line.
- [34:04]
A
Got it. And what's a normal dose and what's a high dose of iodine for you?
- [34:08]
B
I mean, I like 75 micrograms of iodine up to, you know, 100, 150. I think it's, you know, the. The drops of iodine is sometimes 10,000 times the dose that people need. And that's where I start to get kind of worried about even triggering Hashimoto's and people that haven't even had it before.
- [34:28]
A
Interesting. In the world of longevity, in the early aughts, there were people talking about 12.5 milligrams of iodine. Was it called the Brownstein protocol?
- [34:39]
B
Yeah, exactly.
- [34:40]
A
What's your take on that?
- [34:41]
B
That's a no for me.
- [34:42]
A
Okay, got it. And what about putting it on your skin to absorb it?
- [34:47]
B
Those doses that people put on their skin are super high.
- [34:51]
A
Yeah, got it.
- [34:52]
B
Around the same dosages. So I don't really advocate for that either.
- [34:56]
A
I used to talk about the spot test where you take one drop of like, 2%. It's called Lugol's iodine. You put it on your arm, and if it absorbs in right away, your body's Hungry for iodine. And if it takes 24 hours for the stain to go away, you're iodine sufficient. I'm guessing you don't like that test.
- [35:12]
B
I don't. But I'm curious if you still are in line with that view and what your updated view on iodine is.
- [35:19]
A
I think it's a quick and dirty test and I've seen it over and over. If people are deficient, the body will suck it up.
- [35:25]
B
Yeah.
- [35:26]
A
So there is data there.
- [35:27]
B
Yeah.
- [35:27]
A
And if you're just doing one or two drops, probably fine, depending on the concentration. And you can get Lugols anywhere between 2% and 20%. And Lugols is just a liquid iodine. And if you're in any non US country, for the most part, well, non western country you travel in India or Southeast Asia, they sell little bottles of iodine everywhere. Cause you gotta purify your water so you don't get parasites. So you're getting plenty of iodine in those countries. But I do use iodine. Probably my primary source of iodine is I will put a couple drops of it in hot saline and I'll do like a sinus flush.
- [36:05]
B
Okay.
- [36:05]
A
And there's pretty good data for doing that to kill about 99% of viruses, but it has to be a low concentration, under 2%, so you don't damage the membrane. And so I'm sure I absorbed some of that, but that would be about it. And I take a little bit of iodine within the ranges you talked about is in minerals 101, the multi mineral supplement that I make from subgrade labs. So I don't mind taking it, but I do have Hashimoto's. I've managed to get rid of my antibodies once or twice. You have to be exceptionally mold free in your environment, which is very hard. And you have to avoid all grains, except probably white rice, as far as I can tell. Does that match your experience?
- [36:44]
B
It does, yeah. Grains are one of the top inflammatory response. And mold just doesn't help any of us. It's hard in Austin especially.
- [36:51]
A
It is hard in Austin. And it's hard in coffee, which is. What do you know, like danger coffee. And before that, bulletproof. You know, I did that because I could feel the immune effects and like the jitteriness from the toxins. Do we know which mold toxins are causing this? Or is it actually the mold itself? The protein structures on the surface of the.
- [37:12]
B
Honestly, I don't know, Dave. I would. You know, mold is so freaking complicated that I defer it to experts because it's so incredibly nuanced.
- [37:21]
A
It's very nuanced. My belief, based on a lot of time and a lot of interviews with mold, is that the autoimmune triggering, where your body starts to misidentify what's going on your thyroid, it's probably caused by a protein on the surface of a mold spores, depending on the species. But it could also be that when the body detects that there's a threat that it can't identify. And mold toxins are very, very small molecules. They look almost like cholesterol, and they're too small for your immune system to spot most of them. So when the body's like, I know something's wrong, people are getting weird, creepy nightmare dreams, which is a common sign that you're in a moldy environment. And. And so the immune system starts like, searching, what could it be? What could it be? And so it becomes more and more and more sensitive. Your cell danger response turns up, your mast cells become activated, and then you're much more likely to get an autoimmune condition, including your thyroid. But it could also be rosacea, autoimmune, arthritis. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. And so we want to avoid mold, but whether it's that effect or whether it's the thing on the surface of the mold spores, for some species it's probably both, really.
- [38:35]
B
So even like mold outside, allergen wise,
- [38:38]
A
it could be depending on your genetics and your stress levels and things like that. And as someone used to be exceptionally mold sensitive, I grew up in a moldy basement that had been flooded, and we didn't know that in the 80s. It's dry, it's fine. And I had all these weird symptoms growing up, and I don't think that set me off. I don't think that set me up for very healthy outcomes in life if I hadn't done all this biohacking. So what that meant was, for many, many years, if I'd go into a moldy environment, I would get blood flow changes and you get this feeling of stress or mold. People know something called mold rage. You just become irrationally angry and you don't know why. And your body's like, I know there's a threat here and I'm going to find it. And it's you and it's totally not you. So that would happen. And so I developed this spider sense. I'd walk into a room, be like, this is moldy. And I just go out. And over time, as I calmed my Immune system and my nervous system and treated the mold stuff. When I first moved to Austin, I lived in a house that had like 40 plus water leaks in it and I lived there for four months without getting sick at all.
- [39:41]
B
Wow.
- [39:41]
A
That's how resilient you can be. But I don't recommend doing that. It's really bad for you. So I would say the body does know how to feel mold. And I've had experiences of going outside, particularly where it's moist and where the soil's been disturbed, where there can be nasty species present. And I've had that mold rage from outdoor mold. But most of the time, unless you're already sensitized, you're not going to get a mold reaction on just a generally kind of humid day. So most people are fine on that. I don't think that causes Hashimoto's. But if you're, you know, your home has water leaks and you get the toxic stuff and that's why, you know, home biotic. I think my smallest company is a environmental probiotic spray around this to help minimize risk. So I do think there's an unexplored or maybe ununderstood connection between mold exposure and thyroid dysfunction. Some of it comes because of mitochondrial poisoning directly and some of it comes from autoimmunity.
- [40:41]
B
Yeah.
- [40:41]
A
What are some of the other things people can do if their thyroid's low, besides maybe iodine, but not too much. Are there herbs or amino acids or supplements you can take that help with thyroid?
- [40:52]
B
You can. I mean, honestly, if it's reasonably poor in terms of production or activation, tough, like it's hard to completely compensate for that. But, you know, co factors are needed to activate our thyroid hormones. Lower levels of cortisol is needed to activate our thyroid hormones. So we can really intervene at the conversion issue, which again, I think conversion issues are ubiquitous. We almost all have them, especially as we age. So things like zinc, make sure your iron's good. Ashwagandha, magnesium, selenium. These things can help thyroid function. Selenium too can help reduce Hashimoto's antibodies. So there are. And just the nutrients from a high nutrient diet with low inflammatory foods also impact our ability to activate our hormones.
- [41:39]
A
What are the most inflammatory foods to avoid?
- [41:42]
B
Dairy's number one, gluten's number two. Number three is legumes. Number four is grains. And by the time, like nuts and seeds are in there too, but a lot lower down, but they're definitely present.
- [41:55]
A
I love it that you're picking on legumes.
- [41:57]
B
Yeah.
- [41:57]
A
And so Dan Buhner is a dear friend and an amazing human being and truly a believer in longevity. And we've had this conversation. We did like a joint interview of each other and we talked about it. And I'm like, I just don't think legumes, even though in some places they eat them, I just don't think that they're an ideal food. They're better than starving. But you're finding autoimmune activation from legumes in a lot of people, for sure. For me, too, there's something else that I think is a major trigger of thyroid dysfunction that isn't talked about as much. I wrote about it in the first chapter of the Bulletproof Diet, but I underestimated the importance. And it's oxalate. Do you have a perspective on oxalate and thyroid?
- [42:38]
B
You know, I don't, only because it's a little harder to pin down from a data perspective. But I mean, I've experienced issues with oxalates myself. I've seen my patients experience them. Not necessarily that are quantified, viable from a thyroid perspective, but certainly from a GI perspective.
- [42:54]
A
The Bleacher Report app is your destination for sports right now. The NBA is heating up, March Madness is here, and MLB is almost back. Every day there's a new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you've got to see for yourself. That's why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it's about staying connected to my sports. I I can follow the teams I care about, get real time, scores, breaking news and highlights all in one place. Download the Bleacher Report app today so you never miss a moment. There are definitely studies and if you're listening, it's going, oxo what? Oxalate is a plant defense compound. It's also made metabolically, and what it does is plants put it in the plant so that we won't eat them. And if you eat too much of it, then it forms razor sharp microscopic calcium crystals throughout the body. Anywhere there's inflammation, it'll gut well and we can handle about 200 milligrams a day with the average metabolism. And if you're eating a superfood whole grain, blah, blah, blah diet, you're probably getting a gram five times more than you can excrete. And it's got to go somewhere. And there are case reports including with imaging of calcium oxalate crystals in people's thyroids because you have thyroid inflammation, of course it's going to go there, right? And studies show that oxalates are directly toxic to mitochondria because they poke through the mitochondrial membrane, because they're, they're pokey little things. So people who have, say, chronic UTIs, totally. It's oxalate, it's cutting your urethra, which is why you keep getting infections. It's not the bacteria, it's physical abrasion. Step away from the beets and the whole grains and the nuts and the seeds and the legumes and all the other things like that. And of course spinach and kale and beets and all that stuff, raspberries. And I think that when people dump all the roxulate, which takes a couple years, if you're doing it right, you don't want to do it all at once. And you get it out of your tissues, your body works better, your autoimmunity goes down, your fibrosis goes down and your thyroid function can improve if you get the oxalate out of the thyroid. But again, it's fascinating. Yeah, it's complex and it's not the primary cause, but I think it's an under reported cause of aging and of other autoimmune conditions for sure.
- [45:08]
B
And miserable life.
- [45:10]
A
Yeah. Having a lot of oxalate in your body, like your joints hurt all the time.
- [45:12]
B
Everything hurts. Yeah.
- [45:13]
A
And I've had the joint, my big toe repaired from an old yoga injury. Fed three knee surgeries before I was 23 for arthritis since I was 14 and a few other injuries tore both shoulders and got them repaired and all that kind of stuff with stem cells. If I eat a high oxalate meal, all of those places hurt. And if I don't eat a high oxalate meal, I don't have any issues at all. It's reliable and repeatable. And do I feel my thyroid when I do that? I don't. So. Well.
- [45:45]
B
And that's the unique thing that I think people can harness about your knowledge, is that you feel good enough to be able to tune into those things. And I think the general population is at the disadvantage that they don't like, everything hurts, everything's tired, you know, and so these micro reactions that we're having, we can't data collect them because just feels so shitty all the time.
- [46:08]
A
It's like if there's a fire alarm going off all the time, you're not going to hear, you know, Tinkerbell in the corner whispering to you totally too loud. Okay, why did I come up with Tinkerbell? That's weird. I was in my head, I was like, is it a triangle? But no, it was like the little instrument I was trying to think of, like a small tinkly.
- [46:23]
B
It all works.
- [46:24]
A
Yeah, it totally works. She's whispering to me right now. Now, what are some of the unexpected downstream effects that you see in patients when their thyroid gets treated?
- [46:35]
B
When their thyroid gets.
- [46:36]
A
Yeah, they get treated. Like, what else? What changes in their life?
- [46:39]
B
I mean, honestly, big things, right? Especially for women. I mean, I view if you can give a woman her life back like that work is generational. It impacts marriages, it impacts their relationship with their kids, their ability to show up at work as a grandparent, everything. I think one of the interesting things is loss of irritability. Like, people think irritability comes from too much thyroid hormone, too much activation, but there's an inherent irritability in being fatigued. Like, anything anyone brings to you, it's too much reactive. I'm agitated. And once you give them the energy to cope with life, that irritability fades.
- [47:11]
A
So something. It's not your husband's fault anymore.
- [47:13]
B
Totally. Right. Or at least not everything's your husband's fault. Maybe something's.
- [47:17]
A
Fair point.
- [47:18]
B
Yeah. So I'd say that's a big one. But I think also, like, the chronic disease burden. I think so much of our chronic disease burden in our country is due to thyroid, and it's due to micro changes in thyroid that aren't being addressed as an entire system, and it's causing all these downstream issues. So if we can optimize it, we can help, you know, prevent dementia, osteoporosis, early mortality, unemployment. That's another one. A fascinating thing, Dave.
- [47:45]
A
Yeah.
- [47:45]
B
Studies that show the economic impacts of higher levels of T3 show longer employment, higher socioeconomic status, less early retirement, better wages. It just impacts our ability to show up at work. And I believe that. Right. Because I'm the example of that. I'd be on disability versus having a thriving practice. Two very different lives.
- [48:05]
A
Yeah. It's funny you mentioned disability back when we were about the same age there. I bought disability insurance at 26 years old. In fact, I think I still have it. I just saw a bill. I was like, oh, I've been paying for this for 20 years. But I was that afraid for my career because no matter how hard I tried, I felt like I was, you know, driving. And you have the accelerator all the way to the floor, and you push harder, but it's not going anywhere, and the car's slowing down, and you just feel helpless. You're like, I got nothing. Right? And it's actually kind of a scary feeling because you feel out of control. You're like, I don't have what it takes to handle life. And it's true. And then you find out, oh, I just needed to medicate my thyroid. So now my energy's back and then I can allocate it towards not yelling at people, towards working and focusing and all the things. Is there a connection between thyroid levels and adhd?
- [48:55]
B
Oh, absolutely. Imagine in kids. Like, I don't have the stats handy at the top of my mind, but I think kids are misdiagnosed with ADD ADHD all the time when they're literally struggling with hypothyroidism and often Hashimoto's. It's so sad. But they're not. Even my patients who are kids are not able to verbalize how they're feeling. So one of the symptoms I hone in on to gauge, like with parents and kids, well, how do you feel like you're doing in school? How's your focus? How are grades? Because, I mean, you know, executive function plummets the moment you have a nuance of a therapy issue.
- [49:30]
A
Absolutely. So I would suggest that before you put your kids on Adderall, which is not the ideal way to treat adhd, you might want to get a thyroid test. Right. And if your psychiatrist doesn't know how to spell T4 or T3, they're not the person to ask for the test.
- [49:48]
B
And then you can go again direct to consumer labs. You'll have the lab optimal ranges on your website. So people need to navigate this on their own. They can't passively sit back and expect their clinician to know how to effectively interpret order.
- [50:02]
A
Execute one warning for people. Lab labs are set based on the average human and they're oftentimes correlated to your age. So if the average human is sick and the average 45 year old has levels of this, great, you're in range because that's what they expect. You want to be superhuman. So say, what would a vibrantly healthy person look like at 25 or 30? And that's what you want to do. So follow the ranges that McCall shared earlier in the interview. Even if it says you're in the normal range, the normal range, normal is not okay in the U.S. right now. You do not want to be normal.
- [50:39]
B
And those lab ranges, who's going to the lab? Right? Like, if we want to base our optimal or normal ranges off what the lab says and they're determined on data sets within their own population, we need to be Asking ourselves, who's going to labs? It's not people who are like, oh, my God, I feel so great on this Tuesday, I think I'm gonna take a half day off work, go down to LabCorp and see what my thyroid looks like. No, these are sick people. They're looking for answers to their health problems, and they should not be who we're looking to for what we want to be. Like in terms of our lab data and every lab's definition of normal. I don't think people realize this is different. LabCorp is different than Quest, is different than the hospital. LabCorp by your house is different than LabCorp by my house.
- [51:19]
A
Wow. I'm glad you said that. Every one of these labs has different locations where they send your blood off to, and you can send the same exact blood to two different locations and get different results, and no one talks about that. Yeah, it's a problem. So one of the things that we're doing with AXO Health is, and this isn't quite rolled out yet, but very shortly here, we'll be able to go to a single lab for everything so that we have consistent results, because this really matters. So at least in the US Internationally, it's a challenge, and it's kind of a dirty secret of it. In fact, the typical lab testing experience today is like going to the dmv. It's horrible.
- [52:01]
B
They're so mean. Why are they so angry?
- [52:04]
A
I. I feel like. Like we're hiring for a nurse Cratchit, and it's like, you want to hear your lab test? I'm behind bulletproof glass, and how dare you offend me? And so totally. Sometimes I come in and I feel like I should just, like, push a piece of beef jerky under the bulletproof glass so that they'll draw my blood more quickly. You ever think about that? Like, they just need to eat.
- [52:23]
B
They need to eat. They just. Maybe they need to smile. I don't know. Something's wrong.
- [52:26]
A
And, guys, I'm mostly teasing. I know actually, people who work in lab testing facilities in New York just fine. But sometimes there is a vibe. I think it's set up by the, you know, the machine, the robot. Like, sorry, you do not have an appointment. Like, it is the least friendly thing ever. And so I'm looking to avoid that, which is why in most states, I just send someone to your house if you want to pay. It's not a lot more, but it's a little more. But then you just have to deal with that. So, like, that whole industry Needs a big shakeup. Like, it could be user friendly.
- [52:55]
B
I think I've yelled at someone at the lab sitting there, and. And they were mistreating, like, an elderly man. I'm like, you can't treat him like this. You can't treat my Haitians like this. Like, what is wrong with you?
- [53:04]
A
Wow. Yeah.
- [53:06]
B
Yeah.
- [53:06]
A
Were you just yelling because your thyroid was low that day? I.
- [53:09]
B
Maybe I was, like, PMSing. Maybe my progesterone was too low or something. I hadn't biohacked that yet. And you have very low resilience.
- [53:17]
A
Maybe it was justified because treating our elders with kindness is a sign of a healthy society. And totally, I wouldn't be here if I hadn't learned a lot from people in their 70s and 80s and my 20s. I was just so sick that I was willing to listen, because most of the time in your 20s, you know, like, what are those little people now? Well, they were once your age. They probably learned something. So thanks for stepping up there. That's the right thing to do. All right. I was hoping that I would hear you talk about tyrosine. Tyrosine is an amino acid that's a precursor for thyroid. And if people are not having problems with their thyroid labs, it feels like taking a little tyrosine in the morning is a good way to support your body's ability to make thyroid hormone. Do you think it matters?
- [53:58]
B
I do, and I don't have my own data set on that, but I rely pretty heavily. Isabella Wentz is a big advocate for
- [54:06]
A
that, too, dear friend.
- [54:07]
B
You know, I love her. She's the freaking best. Best. And she has a lot of data on that. And I trust what she says religiously. She's so scientifically sound and well researched. So absolutely. I'll have to start my own data set with that.
- [54:20]
A
Got it. I include tyrosine in motivation 101 and one of the formulas I make because in addition to being a thyroid precursor for energy, it's also a dopamine precursor and a stress hormone precursor. So if your body needs to make stress hormones and it can't, it gets more stressed. So tyrosine is an underlying amino acid that we need that we don't get a lot of nutritionally. So taking a little bit of that in the morning usually boosts energy and boosts motivation. And if your body needs it to make thyroid, it could indirectly be an ingredient to help your body make thyroid if it has the right TSH and the right ability to make T4 and the right ability to make T3 and not reverse T3. And this whole pathway.
- [54:58]
B
Tell me the name of your product again.
- [55:00]
A
It's called Motivation 101.
- [55:02]
B
Okay, good. I'll try that with myself and some of my patients.
- [55:04]
A
Oh, cool. I'll give you a bottle. And it's got some other herbs that help with the stress response and specifically dopamine, so you just feel more motivation love. Because the painful thing that happens when you're low thyroid and low testosterone, as I was, is self motivation apathy. It's willpower. And willpower is mitochondrial. And there's just no energy there. So this voice sounds like I should want to do that, that, but I don't. And then you feel shame about that and you're like, what's wrong with me? I must just be lazy. I'm a failure and all that stuff. And then you get rumination. And it was just an energy problem. It wasn't like a moral failing. Right.
- [55:40]
B
I totally agree. And that's why I think, like starting with thyroid, Starting with the Motivation 101, those hacks for people are so life changing and it just truly equips them to do all the other things they need to do to continue to get better and better.
- [55:54]
A
Okay, what about vitamin D?
- [55:57]
B
Right? I think we all need vitamin D, honestly. Yeah, we need to get in the sun, we need to supplement if we're not in the sun or even sometimes a lot of people need to supplement nonetheless. But vitamin D deficiency is pervasive. It's. I mean, we are disrupting something in our physiology that's creating an issue across all populations. Even construction workers in Austin, Texas that work outside 40 or 50 or 60 hours a week.
- [56:22]
A
I'm glad you said that. So years ago, when I was running that longevity group, I had Dr. Cannell from the Vitamin D Research Institute in and we talked about the necessary levels of vitamin D. But then I thought, I should be able to make this from the sun. So I spent six weeks in Maui and I lived in Canada, so escaping during the winter was a good move. And I went, no shirt, no sunscreen, two to four hours a day in the sun. And I tested my levels afterwards when I wasn't taking it, and they were like 35. And I had sun damage from the skin. I never got sunburned. But it doesn't work in the modern world to do that. And so I was eating all the high fat foods. I think I did everything right. And it could be that genetically my body uses more vitamin D, has a hard time making it. There's all kinds of vitamin D genes, but I feel like it's really important. And is there a direct connection though between low vitamin D and low thyroid function?
- [57:19]
B
It's hard for me to say based on my own data because I think I've tracked like two people ever who have sufficient vitamin D, who aren't supplementing vitamin D. Right. It's like kind of like saying, well, if you have a pinky, you have a thyroid problem. If you have vitamin D deficiency, you have a thyroid problem. Like we all do in essence. It's fascinating. But sometimes I even compare thyroid issues to like vitamin D. It's like everyone's vitamin D deficient now. It probably wasn't like that a hundred years ago. Everyone is thyroid deficient now. Probably wasn't like that a hundred years ago.
- [57:46]
A
Yeah, I think you have a good point there. What about circadian disruption and thyroid function? Do you know much about that?
- [57:53]
B
I mean, I definitely see it and I see it especially correlating with low T3. I think low T3 or even elevations in TSH activate cortisol and cortisol dysregulation and it throws off our circadian pattern, which then in turn doesn't activate our thyroid hormones, becomes this self propagating machine that's hard to stop without an intervention.
- [58:15]
A
It makes so much sense, I think, that an unexplored contributor to thyroid dysfunction is a lack of darkness. Because your mitochondria, even in your skin, they communicate with light at the same frequency as these stupid LEDs. So you're going to sleep, you got LED street lights coming in around the curtains, which funny enough, increased depression by 69% in a study of 800 Japanese.
- [58:40]
B
Wow.
- [58:41]
A
And then you've got the green LED and the blue LED and the white LED and light coming under the door and you go to the bathroom. All these are disrupting the cell signaling. And just true, authentic darkness is a nutrient as important as sunlight, and we're lacking both. And when you get sunlight in the morning and darkness at night, it regulates the entire system, which would include your thyroid. But I just don't know how important circadian is for thyroid. I know it matters, but I don't know if it's a big one or a little one.
- [59:08]
B
I mean, because our society disrupts so many of these pathways, it's hard to tease them out, but I would imagine it's pretty important. But it begs the question. I mean, truly, we're kind of in a new time, right? Like we haven't been staring at screens for even our entire lives. Like TVs we didn't really watch when we were young because there was two channels. We didn't have cell phones, we didn't have iPads, et cetera. And so we don't really know yet the ramifications of what we're doing with screenshots long term. But certainly I think more and more and more research, hopefully in the world of thyroid too will come out because it's going to be disruptive to our physiology. It's unnatural.
- [59:46]
A
Okay. So I would say that's a second line thing to pay attention to for all kinds of biohacking and quality of life and growth hormone and all the things and probably thyroids in there. But most important, what I'm getting out of this interview is get your labs done and then if they're off, which they probably are, if you're alive, as we're saying, then work with a functional doctor or maybe AI if you can't afford a functional doctor, that's okay, and then figure out how to treat it. And the treatment isn't going to be T4, that that's not a very effective treatment and it may even be harmful. So it's probably going to be either only T3 or a mix of T4 and T3.
- [60:23]
B
Correct? Absolutely. Spot on. Nailed it.
- [60:26]
A
Beautiful. Anything else people should know about their thyroid?
- [60:30]
B
You know, I think one thing that people don't know or the medical community at large, like we are trained as clinicians to be so terrified of T3 that bleeds down into patients experience.
- [60:42]
A
Why are you terrified of T3?
- [60:43]
B
We're trained. My training and I've talked with a dozen other clinicians, including our clinical director who's board certified endo. Our training is do not use T3, only use T4. If you use T3, you're going to give your patients a heart attack or a stroke.
- [60:55]
A
Oh my God.
- [60:56]
B
So there's dynamics happening in medicine, right? That, that one, make us afraid of these meds and two, don't equip us with the knowledge on how to effectively and safely use them. And medicine has adopted that paradigm completely. And patients now are also afraid of T3. And what's so fascinating is when you dig into the literature, you know, higher levels of T3 decrease mortality, higher levels of T4 increase mortality, increase cardiovascular events, higher levels of T3 decrease cardiovascular events. Osteoporosis, same. Higher levels of, of T4 increase, higher levels of T3 decrease. And in medicine we're taught the entire opposite. Now can T3 be dangerous if it's crazy high dosed and it's irresponsibly used. Yeah. But it takes, Honestly, it takes a lot to get there.
- [61:38]
A
You'll know if you have too much T3.
- [61:40]
B
Absolutely.
- [61:41]
A
So I went through a couple experiences around having too much T3. One of them, I went on a stack of SARMs. These are selective androgen receptor modulators that have a really strong effect on your cells, like using testosterone. And I put on 29 pounds of muscle in six weeks without changing my diet or exercise. I mean, I had to buy new shirts. It was like, it was insane. And the Hulk over here. Yeah, it was. It was like I went to an extra large shirt because I was popping buttons. It was. And by the way, I also tore ligaments because your ligaments don't grow as fast as muscle does. So I just got too strong, too fuzzy. I don't recommend doing that. There's a blog post how I did it though. So one thing that happened though is I started getting a racing heart and I actually had to back off on my thyroid because for some reason they activated my thyroid more than it had been. So I ended up going off of thyroid and then I quit taking the sarms because it was a six week cycle. And then about three months later, I'm like, why is my hair all frizzy and dry? And I was, oh, no, I was too low on thyroid. So that was a feeling of having too much of it. And then, in fact, that same friend I talked about earlier who was treating her own thyroid, she got a prescription for a T3 T4 mix. And the physician accidentally tripled her dose. And for the next maybe 45 days, she went through this incredible. So it's like something's wrong, Something's really wrong. And finally, like, maybe I'm going to die. And I didn't know until we talked about it. I was like, oh my God. Gosh. So we just looked at it. I was like, you know, I think that might be a lot. And when she backed off to the right dose, it was life changing. Skin, glowing, hair, healthier, weight loss, effortless, all that kind of stuff. So that feeling, it's a nasty feeling. But you'll know if you have too much T3. And so T3 is not going to kill you because you'll hate your life if you're on too much T3. It's actually quite safe unless the doctor's just careless and gives you 100 times the dose that'll give you a heart attack. But. But otherwise it's not dangerous at all.
- [63:41]
B
It's actually so cardio protective. Honestly, it's. I hope that in my lifetime, medicine changes its paradigm because we're really, you know, hurting a lot of people.
- [63:49]
A
Can we set a better goal?
- [63:51]
B
Yeah.
- [63:51]
A
Your lifetime might be like, another hundred years if you do this right. True. So how about in the next five years?
- [63:57]
B
I love that. Maybe around the time that my book comes out, we'll have a paradigm shift. I'm trying to push us towards that. We'll see.
- [64:03]
A
Well, when does your book come out?
- [64:04]
B
2027 spring.
- [64:05]
A
All right, we'll come back on the show around the time of the book. We'll make sure everybody orders it. Because, guys, biohacking is complex. You could spend $3,000 a month on supplements like I do.
- [64:16]
B
Do you get the hookup for that?
- [64:17]
A
Dude? Okay, like, I. Like, I would if I didn't get the hookup, but I take about 150 per day when I'm traveling and less when I'm at home, just depending. But I'm. Every pathway I can think of and everything, and they're stacked for my biology, my genetics. And you don't want to do what I'm doing unless you're really into this. But most people aren't going to do that. And most people don't. Like, you shouldn't do that. I do this for a living, and it's fun. So what should you do? The lowest hanging fruit. And the lowest hanging fruit is see what's going on in there, which is labs from a hormone perspective. Thyroid and your sex hormones, particularly testosterone, control most of how you feel. If you get those things dialed in, then you can look at the other basics, like vitamin d and minerals. 101. Not sexy, very affordable, but support everything. And then after that, what do I care about cognitive enhancement or libido enhancement or sleep or whatever? And then there's an endless number of supplements to do. But if you take all the supplements and your thyroid's off, you're still gonna feel like shit. And that's what I wanted you to hear in this episode because it's that big of a deal. Now, you mentioned you have patients who fly in to see you. You're here in Austin. It's modernthyroidclinic.com. okay, cool.
- [65:30]
B
Now, we're nationwide. We started as a brick and mortar here, now we're nationwide telemedicine, so.
- [65:34]
A
Oh, cool. So people can just do an appointment online. Okay. Even better. So there you go. If you need some help, you can. You can get it there. And if you've been struggling or if you're just over 40, and especially if you're a woman over 40, the odds are very, very high that you need this and either get the labs and do your own thing or give them a call or your local functional doctor. There's lots of people who know this and many, many more physicians who don't know this yet, but maybe they're listening to the show. And if you're a doctor and you're going, I am very angry that she said T3 is not dangerous. You just got triggered, which means you're carrying a loaded gun, McCall's fingers on the trigger. You shouldn't let her do that. Maybe you should learn the science. Just saying. McCall, thanks for being on the show.
- [66:21]
B
Thank you so much for having me. This was a wonderful conversation. And thanks for advocating for all the thyroid people out there to let them know, hey, this is important. Look into this and this is a cornerstone for longevity.
- [66:31]
A
You're welcome. And thanks for focusing on something that really makes a difference. See you next time on the Human Upgrade Podcast.
- [66:43]
B
The Human Upgrade, formerly Bulletproof Radio, was created and is hosted by Dave Ashley. The information contained in this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended for the purposes of diagnosing, treating, curing, or preventing any disease. Before using any products referenced on the podcast, consult with your healthcare provider carefully read all labels and heed all directions and cautions that accompany the products. Information found or received through the podcast should not be used in place of a consultation or advice from a healthcare provider. If you suspect you have a medical problem or should you have any healthcare questions, please prompt simply call or see your healthcare provider. This podcast, including Dave Asprey and the producers, disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. This podcast may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products or services. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products, products or services referred to herein. This podcast is owned by Bulletproof Media.