I know you have a personal story regarding thyroid health. Can you share that with us?

Transcription

1 Understanding Our Thyroid Epidemic (and Overview of the Summit) Guest: Dr. Amy Myers The contents of presentation are for informational purposes only and are not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This presentation does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Jordyn: Hi, my name is Jordyn. And I m the content manager for Dr. Amy Myers. And I have the great privilege of interviewing her for The Thyroid Connection Summit. So let s get started. I know you have a personal story regarding thyroid health. Can you share that with us? Dr. Myers: Absolutely. So it was my second year of medical school. And I started with panic attacks that I d never had before. I had insomnia that was just unbelievable. I was losing weight. I wasn t changing my diet at all. I started having muscle weakness and anxiety. And then ultimately, I had this tremor that my friends in medical school saw and said, You know, you ve got to go to the doctor. So I broke down, eventually went to my primary care doctor. I never went to the doctor at the time. But I found a primary care doctor. And I went. And she just said, Uh. She brushed it off and told me that it was just medical school stress. That everything I was learning in medical school, I just was thinking I was having it. It s a classic second-year syndrome where we re learning about all these different diseases. And people take them on as if they re having them. And so she brushed it off and told me that that s what was happening and that it was simply just stress. And I said, No, this is impossible. Amy Myers MD. All rights reserved. 1

2 My mother had died a year earlier of pancreatic cancer, very unexpectedly. I had gone into the middle of nowhere in Paraguay in the Peace Corps. I had survived that and come back. And I d never handled stress in this manner at all. So I knew intuitively there was something going wrong with me. And so I insisted with the doctor that she do a full workup. In about a week or so later, she called me back. I m not really sure that she apologized. But she told me that I had a thyroid condition called Graves disease. And it s actually an autoimmune condition where my thyroid was attacking itself. And she told me that I had this Graves disease and that s why I was having all these symptoms. My thyroid was becoming overactive. And so it was causing everything to rev up: this weight loss, these panic attacks, these tremors. And, really, in conventional medicine, you have three choices when that happens to you. One is to take some medication to shut down your thyroid gland from overproducing the hormone. The other is to have your thyroid ablated with iodine-131. It s kind of like blowing up your thyroid with like Hiroshima. And the third is to have your thyroid cut out or removed by a surgeon. Now, none of these sounded good to me. To back up, when I entered medical school, I actually went to conventional medical school, but with the desire to do exactly what I m doing now, which is functional medicine. Although, I didn t know what it was called. But I was taking all my electives in integrative medicine. I had, in my fourth year of medical school, did an internship with Dr. Andrew Weil and had been down in the Peace Corps doing holistic gardening and medicinal gardens and herbs with people. And I taught myself yoga down in the Peace Corps. So I was very into this holistic idea of medicine. So none of these sounded appealing to me. And so at first, I didn t do anything. I actually turned to Chinese medicine. Which is something my parents had used when I was a child. And about a month or so later, that was really not working for me. After lots of pills and powders and terrible herbs, my symptoms were getting much worse. The insomnia was really awful. And so I eventually went back to the doctor and begrudgingly took the medication. It was called PTU. And after a couple of weeks on that, I felt really terrible. My hair was falling out. My skin was dry. My nose and lips were cracking. And I was just terribly, terribly fatigue. So I went back to the doctor. And he checked some blood work. And he actually told me that my liver was being damaged by this medication now. It could happen to one in a million people. And it was happening to me. I eventually could ve even died if I had Amy Myers MD. All rights reserved. 2

3 stayed on the medication. It was something called toxic hepatitis. So he basically told me that I had to go get back in bed and wait until my liver recovered from this. And I had to get off the medication immediately. So then, of course, I m in bed. And a couple of weeks after the medication has worn off, I m feeling even more hypothyroid. And the symptoms have gotten a lot worse: the tremor and the anxiety and the panic and the insomnia. And I spent those several weeks in bed just Googling and researching every alternative: the holistic, natural approaches to hypothyroidism. I couldn t find anything. I even reached out to Dr. Andrew Weil. And he didn t know of anything. So after all of that, and I was just feeling so down on myself about this whole situation, I eventually had to have my thyroid ablated. I didn t know any other choice. And so I had my thyroid blown up like Hiroshima. And I don t have a thyroid anymore. And you can read more about it in my book, The Thyroid Connection, about the rollercoaster after that because it wasn t fun. But that s really my story. And eventually, even though I ve realized that conventional medicine had solved my problem of Graves disease by blowing it up, it had never really gotten to the root cause of why I had this. And I knew having one autoimmune disease, I was three times more likely to have another. And after I finished medical school, I went into emergency medicine because I still didn t know about functional medicine. Eventually, went off to a conference, heard about functional medicine, and dove right in. I learned about all the root causes of thyroid dysfunction and all chronic disease, frankly. And I took all the coursework through the Institute for Functional Medicine, opened up my clinic in Austin, Texas, wrote my first book, The Autoimmune Solution. And I ve helped thousands of people recover from autoimmune conditions, thyroid conditions. And that s really where my passion comes from is having experienced this myself, I then went through the program that I now call The Myers Way to help figure out my root causes of why I got in this boat. And though, I can t get my thyroid back, I can certainly live a healthy, productive, vibrant life. And I ve helped many, many people, either spare themselves with Graves disease from having to go through what I ve gone through, to people whose come in after the fact, and again help them regain their life, as well as with Hashimoto s and thyroid cancer and thyroid cysts and all kinds of Amy Myers MD. All rights reserved. 3

4 autoimmune diseases. So that s my story about my thyroid and why I m so passionate about what I do. Jordyn: Wow! You can really tell from your story how passionate you are about this. So what led you to write The Thyroid Connection book and host this event The Thyroid Connection Summit? Dr. Myers: So my first book, The Autoimmune Solution, was clearly a passion because of my own autoimmunity and all of the people that I ve seen in my clinic regain their lives and take back their health and get off these terrible medications and even reverse their diagnosis of autoimmunity. And being that thyroid is so close to my heart, and that conventional medicine failed me, is what I often say, and it s my mission for it to not fail you, too, I just really wanted to take a much deeper dive. Just really specifically into the thyroid because clearly it s my passion. It s what I experienced. And there s so many people and I know that we ll get into this in the interview but there are so many people being failed by conventional medicine. Particularly, when it comes to the thyroid. We re really in an epidemic state right now with the research showing that there are about 27 million Americans with thyroid dysfunction. And 60% of the people don t even know they have it. And again, I can dive deeper into that about why conventional medicine is really failing all of us with thyroid disease, but because it is affecting so many people. There s probably nobody listening to this talk that doesn t know somebody with some sort of thyroid dysfunction, either a close family friend or a family member. It s really affecting everybody. It s one in eight women. And it s on the rise. And so I m so passionate about educating people ways that they can reverse this condition for themselves, prevent this condition, and most importantly, make sure that they re getting a proper diagnosis with their doctor. So that s really what propelled me is obviously preventing anybody from being in my boat and seeing so many people coming into my clinic and getting feedback from people having read The Autoimmune Solution about really wanting that deeper dive into the thyroid. Jordyn: It seems like you can t get a group of women together nowadays without at least one of them having a thyroid condition. Is there a thyroid epidemic now? Or are we just better at testing for it? Amy Myers MD. All rights reserved. 4

5 Dr. Myers: No, I think there s really an epidemic going on. The testing really hasn t changed, I think, in my lifetime. The standard test for a conventional medicine doctor is a TSH. And though those reference ranges have been attempted to be changed certainly in recent years, the testing hasn t changed at all. And frankly, the reference range, although they ve tried to change them, really haven t taken hold either. So I think that this is really and I talk about this in my book really five key factors that I m seeing. Which is, of course there s a genetic predisposition towards this. But what we know from twins studies with autoimmunity, and most thyroid dysfunction is autoimmune in nature, either a hypothyroidism called Hashimoto s or hyperthyroidism like I had called Graves disease. Certainly there are some other dysfunction going on with the thyroid. But most of it is autoimmune in nature. And we know from twins studies with identical twins and autoimmunity, 25% is the genetics and 75% is these environmental factors that I frequently am talking about and certainly write about in my book, which is the diet, our leaky gut, toxins, infections, and stress. And we can, of course, talk more about each of those, as we go on here. But I think because we are in such a state that our diet has been so altered with GMO. We re eating heavily processed foods. Our wheat has been hybridized. It s being sprayed, unless it s organic, with glyphosates or Roundup. Our guts are leaky because of this Roundup. Because of this hybridized gluten and these GMOs. Because we re on antibiotics. Because we live stressed out lives. Because we re on acid-blocking medications. We live in a very toxic world now with nearly 890,000 chemicals in our environment. Many of which are tested in three weeks or less by the EPA. And usually they re tested by the actual company that is producing the chemical and then tested in isolation, not all together. And then, we have infections that are getting into our bloodstream because of this leaky gut. We have more infections showing up every day from West Nile to Lyme to this Zika virus to new viruses, the Avian flu. And then, we re living stressed out lives with working all the time and social media and EMFs. And just this idea that we all have to be on and connected at all times. And then, these foods and toxins and infections are all stressing us, as well. Amy Myers MD. All rights reserved. 5

6 So I think that it s really an epidemic and a perfect storm happening right now with And we ll dig deeper into this with the toxins, but also with all the haloids that displace iodine in the thyroid, I think that we re really in this perfect storm right now. And it genuinely is an epidemic. It is not testing that has changed. Jordyn: I want to go back to something that you said earlier. That conventional medicine failed you and your thyroid. And that s what set you on this mission. Do you feel it s failing others, too? Dr. Myers: So conventional medicine is really failing those particularly with thyroid dysfunction in several ways. One, conventional medicine is really not even checking properly for the thyroid. Most conventional doctors stop at just the TSH, a thyroid stimulating hormone. And that is really testing what the pituitary is signaling to the thyroid. It s not actually testing your thyroid. They are not checking And again, I talk about this in the book. And we cover all of this in summit, as well. They are not checking a free T3, a free T4, a reverse T3, and thyroid antibodies to even find out if people have thyroid autoimmune dysfunction. Free T3 is really the most active form of thyroid hormone that goes into all of our receptors. And it keeps us warm, gives us energy, keeps us from having brain fog. And most doctors aren t even checking it. So that s probably number one. They re not checking the right test. Secondly, when doctors do check the test, they are using an outdated reference range or a reference range that really is something that s looking at a normal population, rather than what is optimal. So even if you do happen to get the right test, which most people aren t getting, even if you re only getting a TSH, conventional physicians are typically only looking at that reference range. And that reference range is way too broad. In 2002, the Academy of Endocrinology, which is the main group over the endocrine system, which includes your thyroid, said, This range is way too broad. Because when they did the figuring out what the reference range was going to be, they had all these people in that reference range who actually had thyroid dysfunction. So the reference range is way too broad. And we, even as a society and as physicians, recognize this. But yet, very few people have actually gone in and change this or view it in a different way. Amy Myers MD. All rights reserved. 6

7 So in functional medicine, we re looking for optimal reference ranges. So they re not doing the right test. They are not then looking at the reference range in a narrow enough way. They re looking at it way too broadly. They re typically not looking for the root cause. They re not talking to you about any of the five environmental factors that I discussed with you. They are not looking at nutrient deficiencies. So we need a lot of different nutrients for our thyroid to even work. And that s B vitamins. That s iodine. That s vitamin D, vitamin A, tyrosine, zinc, selenium. And if we don t have the right amount of these nutrients, our thyroid can t function properly. It can t make that conversion from T4, which is a storage form of the thyroid hormone, into that free T3, which is the one that we can actually use. And I see that as a big problem for people. Their TSH and their free T4 look great. But their free T3 looks terrible. And it s because they don t have the nutrients they need to make that conversion. And again, that has a lot to do with those five environmental factors or not eating nutrient-rich foods. We have leaky guts, so we re not absorbing things. We have a lot of haloids, chlorine, fluoride, and bromide in our environment that are displacing iodine. And we have lots of toxins like mercury and tons of stress that are creating this epidemic of this thyroid dysfunction for us. So those are really the main things that I see. They re not testing the right tests. When they do, they re using too broad of a reference range. They re really not looking at the root cause. And then, they re not looking at these nutritional deficiencies that can be creating thyroid dysfunction, as well. Jordyn: You mentioned these five environmental root causes that conventional medicine fails to address. Can you tell us more about what those are? Dr. Myers: Yeah. So as I mentioned, we re eating a processed diet. We are eating a lot of GMO foods. Gluten has been hybridized. We re spraying it with Roundup. And there s research out there showing that these things contribute to leaky gut. We re eating heavily processed diets with lots of sugar, toxic foods in terms of preservatives and dyes and additives. So all of this is really affecting the microbiome in our gut. And I certainly spend lots of time in the book talking about this. And we have a number of speakers talking about this in the summit, as well. And then, I always think of Amy Myers MD. All rights reserved. 7

8 diet and gut is hand and hand. And we really, there s so few people out there that don t have a leaky gut. Through the research of Dr. Fasano at Harvard, who s the leading researcher on leaky gut, really says that this needs to be in play for anybody to be diagnosed with an autoimmune condition. And back to the fact that the vast majority of thyroid dysfunction is autoimmune in nature, many people with thyroid dysfunction probably have a leaky gut. And things contributing to that, of course, the diet, infections like candida, and small bowel bacterial overgrowth. Or SIBO, like I like to call it. Then there s medications that we re on, stress, toxins, all of these things affect our gut and can disrupt the integrity of our gut wall. And I, of course, have tons of information on this in my book. And then, I even interviewed Dr. Fasano in this summit, which he is one of my favorite heroes. I have so many heroes in this summit that I m interviewing. Jeffrey Smith talking about GMO s. Heather White who used to be with the Environmental Working Group talking about environmental factors for us. So just an incredible lineup of speakers. Then, we have the foods, the leaky guts. We have toxins in our environment. Like I mentioned 80,000 out in our environment. I spent a lot of time talking about the haloids, which are chlorine, bromide, and fluoride. They re on the periodic table right next to iodine. And we have so many of these in our environment now, of course, chlorine in water. It s in our food supply. We have fluoride in our water. It s also in our soil in our food supply. Bromine. Bromine is in fire retardants. It s in much of our furniture, our mattresses, clothes. It s also in baked goods. So all of these things displace iodine in the body. And the highest concentration of iodine is in our thyroid. So it s one of the reasons behind this thyroid epidemic, in my opinion, is one of the biggest causes. Infections, I talked about. There are a number of infections. And I go into detail on this in the book, as well, about how they can have a similar structure to our thyroid. And our immune system can get confused. It s called molecular mimicry, and then stress. I spend a lot of time talking about stress in this book. And in the summit, we have Dr. Jim Gordon who s the head of the Center for Mind-Body Medicine. And he even walks us through a relaxing mindful meditation. Amy Myers MD. All rights reserved. 8

9 So the book really incorporates all five of these factors, spends a lot of time, a chapter on each. And in the summit, I ve divided the summit into days where we re walking through the foundation of the thyroid. How to understand testing and then walking into all five of these environmental factors. And have amazing speakers like I ve mentioned that are literally world experts sought out from all over the world for their opinion on each of these five topics. So I m so fortunate to be able to interview these people and get to ask them all of my burning questions that really come from all the burning questions that I hear from others regarding the influences of all these factors on the thyroid. Jordyn: After interviewing these 35 thyroid experts from around the world, what are some of the biggest takeaways that you learned? Dr. Myers: I think that we are genuinely in an epidemic. I think that was the agreement by everybody is that this is an epidemic. It is not that testing has improved or that we re getting better at diagnosing. There is something going on in our environment that is causing this thyroid dysfunction. So again, I heard from leading experts from Jeffrey Smith at IRT talking about GMOs, Heather White talking about toxins, Dr. Fasano talking about leaky gut and really giving the research behind all of this and how it really is affecting us. That these are new things in our environment that are affecting our thyroid and our immune system and our guts. And it is becoming this epidemic. The other thing that I ve learned is, as I see every day in my own practice, talking with other practitioners, like talking with Dr. Mark Hyman and talking with Dr. David Perlmutter, how they, too, in their clinics are experiencing this amazing shift when people start changing their diets, healing their guts, removing these toxins, practicing mind-body medicine or mind-body relaxation. They, too, just like I m seeing in my own clinic, they, too, are seeing reversal of these symptoms. They re seeing people s lives transformed. They re seeing people get their lives back. And so what I ve learned overall is that the environment is affecting us. And there are things that we can do to protect ourselves. And if you ve already been diagnosed and already have even done something radical like I had to do, have my thyroid ablated, that there is hope in getting your life back, to feeling better, and to having just abundant health and joy in your life. Jordyn: Many of us tuned in to your last summit, The Autoimmune Summit, Amy Myers MD. All rights reserved. 9

10 and read your first book, The Autoimmune Solution. What have you learned since then that you ve incorporated into this summit and your new book? Dr. Myers: Yeah. So I learned what a big role, at least in my own personal life, that stress was playing. I, myself, actually while I was writing The Thyroid Connection got an exposure to toxic mold. I ve had one before. But this one was way worse. And I got sick again. And so like I talk about in The Autoimmune Solution that when you re on the autoimmune spectrum, and you ve been diagnosed with autoimmunity, you can go back down that spectrum. But life is a journey. And things that are out of our control can happen to us. Or we can just simply slip up and maybe start going back to our old ways of eating or doing or being. And we move back up that spectrum. And that s exactly what happened to me. And so this book clearly is a labor of love, as any book is, and is so personal to me because it s about the thyroid. But it also was a teaching point for me in managing stress during this very difficult time of being exposed to toxic mold and trying to finish a book in three months or less. And so I have a whole chapter about everything that I tried and everything that I did to get myself back on track and to regain my health again while going through this very stressful time. And so this book is different in that clearly the book is much more about the thyroid. It s much more thyroid centered. It s also more of a how to work with your doctor book. The last book was a little bit more, Hey, conventional medicine is really getting this wrong. Don t do that. Do this instead. And if you re somebody with a thyroid condition like myself, if I didn t take my supplemental thyroid hormone, I would die eventually. So I really need to make sure that that s on par. And that it s addressed properly. That I m on the right dose. That when I get my test, my levels are in the right range. And that my symptoms are gone. So even if you re doing all the right diet, but you re somebody who needs supplemental thyroid hormone and you re on the wrong dose, you re not going to feel great. And likewise, if you re on the right dose, but you re eating the wrong diet and you re dealing with your stress, you re not going to feel great. So this book is much more of a partnership with your doctor, whether that s a conventional doctor or a functional medicine doctor. And how really to work with him or her to ensure that you re getting the right tests. They re being interpreted correctly. You re getting the underlying factors addressed. How to Amy Myers MD. All rights reserved. 10

11 do that. And it s a very step-by-step approach that has, of course, a 28-day meal plan to all those amazing recipes like I had in the last book. But it also deals with stress on a daily basis. We can t get rid of our stress. I live a very busy stressful life. And I can t get rid of it. I mean, I guess I could. I could stop trying to help so many people and have an impact in the world. But it s my passion. It s what I want to do. So what we need to do is learn how to recover from this stress and have some down time. And so I ve built that in to the 28-day program this time. All the things that I did over the last year while writing this book and recovering from my illness. And all the things that I continue to do today to keep myself healthy. And so that s one of the biggest ways that this book is different from the last book is really including that in the daily plan for everybody. Jordyn: Wow! Listening to you talk, I m getting so excited for this event. Can you tell us more about who this summit is for and what they can expect each day? Dr. Myers: Yeah. So the summit and the book, The Thyroid Connection, they re really meant to be companions of one another. And so actually, the summit was supposed to come first, and then the book. But my publisher was so excited about the book. And we had finished it early that they moved up the pub date. So the book will be out before the summit. So the book and the summit are both laid out in the same way. With the summit, it s a free online event that will take place over the course of eight days. So during those eight days, anybody anywhere in the world can listen for free to these amazing We have over 35 experts. Thyroid experts from around the world speaking on their specialty. And we ve aligned the flow of the summit to match the book. But the first two days of the summit are really the foundations. What is thyroid? How does it work? What are the right tests to get? How do you interpret your labs with your doctor? What other hormonal influences are there? How does it work with all the other hormones? And some special cases surrounding the thyroid. So that s the first two days. And then, the next day again models the book that we dive deeper into those five environmental factors. And we do one each day. So the first day is talking about food and our environment. So day four is talking about gut health and Amy Myers MD. All rights reserved. 11

12 the microbiome and leaky gut and how all of this influences the thyroid and thyroid dysfunction. Day five, we have toxins where we re talking about all the environmental factors and the things in the environment that can be affecting our thyroid. Day six we have all about infections and the impact of infections. A special talk on Lyme disease very specifically. And then, day seven we have all about stress. And that s where I m also super excited where we have Dr. Jim Gordon, who is from the Center of Mind-Body Medicine where he even has a meditation for us or a mindful meditation, which is really wonderful. I literally nearly fell asleep. I was so relaxed when I was interviewing him with that. And then, of course, the last day is an encore day where you hear the entire summit for free. So that s a breakdown of the summit, and again is a companion to the book. And who is this for? This is for anybody who knows that they ve been diagnosed with Hashimoto s, with Graves disease, thyroid cancer, thyroid nodules, thyroid cysts. Anybody who s been post-surgical thyroid cancer or thyroidectomy like I had from my Graves disease. And, of course, anybody who s suspecting that they might have a thyroid dysfunction or a thyroid problem, but has been told by their doctor, All of their labs are normal. And it couldn t possibly be. Of course, I uncover in the book and on the summit all the reasons why it still could be and, in fact, likely is. And anybody who just wants to support a family member or loved one or friend who has thyroid dysfunction and wants to better understand it. My book should be widely available in any bookstore. And I do hope that you will all join us for this amazing free event that will take place from October 24 th through the 31 st online for free. You can watch it anywhere in the world, me interviewing 35 or more experts on thyroid dysfunction. Please help me in spreading the message to anybody who is suffering from thyroid dysfunction. Conventional medicine failed me. And it is my mission to not have it fail you, too. Please help me spread the word. Thank you so much! Amy Myers MD. All rights reserved. 12