There’s few good days…
Most days you feel like crap… some days are just worse than others…
There should be SOMETHING you can do about it, but no matter what you try it doesn’t seem to work.
I don’t know if I have it nailed down completely, but I know I have been slowly feeling better and better…
It all started when I recognized one of the biggest flaws about the way the white coat man/woman approach hypothyroidism…
By THEIR definition, hypothyroidism means you have an “underactive thyroid”…
Basically saying that your thyroid isn’t producing enough thyroid hormones for your body to function properly.
… but see this is why there’s so much confusion and conflicting information.
If your thyroid isn’t producing enough hormones, then taking hormones should fix the issue, right?
Well, that’s what most people hope for, but in most cases it’s not just the thyroid that isn’t functioning.
The way I see it is, if you take hormones and you feel normal, then you have found your root cause… it’s your thyroid… and your mission should be to figure out why your body isn’t producing the hormones it needs.
… but if you take hormones and you still feel like crap (sometimes worse!), then you have to dig deeper… it’s not just your thyroid!
In my case taking more hormones was not the answer.
Aside from not being able to make hormones, my body was also having trouble converting the thyroid hormone T4 into T3.
This process happens in the liver, not the thyroid.
In other words, my thyroid was producing some T4, but my liver wasn’t doing anything with it…
So I started to research more about why the liver wasn’t converting T4 into T3… the main reason I found was because I wasn’t getting enough bioavailable protein delivered to my liver.
Bioavailable protein means the protein has been digested or broken down enough that the body can actually use it. My body wasn’t breaking it down enough so I was not getting enough protein even though I was eating a lot of protein!
No protein delivered to liver = no T4 to T3 conversion = hypothyroidism…
If your liver doesn’t convert T4 into T3 it’s almost as if the thyroid hadn’t produced the hormone to begin with.
The body doesn’t function on T4… it functions on T3.
One of the culprits for not getting enough bioavailable protein delivered to my liver was my damaged gut flora. This is common with all hypothyroid but especially in Hashimoto’s and we’ll go into depth since it is a very important piece of the puzzle.
I was struggling to digest food in general, but especially proteins.
I would eat good healthy food, but my body was still not getting the nutrients it needed because my gut wall flora was damaged and they are the ones that digest food and make food bioavailable for our bodies to absorb.
My first solution was to take digestive enzymes.
Later, I figured that what I needed most was protein enzymes so I started eating more pineapple and papaya (later I just made a smoothie out of it with pineapple, papaya and oranges)…
It worked!!
Recipe:
2 organic oranges* (home made fresh squeezed juice)
1 cup organic papaya
1 cup organic pineapple
The best type of orange is seville orange which is more sour than sweet… we’re actually going to cut back on sugar, but later since it’s not very easy to change, but it’s KEY to produce hormones!
This pineapple + papaya smoothie helped me break down protein and make it bioavailable, but later I started getting smart and instead of using this band-aid solution I started to upgrade my sources of protein.
Baby steps…
I found better quality proteins. Three of my favorite are bone broth, spirulina and blue-green algae.
What I’m going to share with you will go against many mainstream beliefs so it’s important that you keep an open mind.
No doctor (that I know of) will talk about food.
… but as you’ll see, food is a big part of the equation.
There’s also a few supplements I’ll be recommending and I know that if you actually follow what I’m about to share with you, you will feel better…
Again, this is the same information that helped me personally feel normal again.
This is not theory, I know this from personal experience.
Once I started applying this information I no longer had to worry about putting 30 pounds out of nowhere or feeling fatigued all the time.
Here’s more or less the structure of the program based around the most common problems that need to be solved when you have hypothyroidism.
- Is your thyroid producing enough T4 hormone?
- Is your liver converting T4 into T3?
- Is your T3 “free T3” or “reverse T3”?
- Are the cells of your body able to absorb free T3?
When you answer YES to these questions (free T3 for #3) then you should feel normal again… at least you will not be fatigued or putting on weight non stop.
So that being said, let’s get started with Lesson #1 – Hormones 101 – How to make your body produce its own hormones[/text_block]
