Can child birth cause Hashimoto’s? So the short answer is yes. The longer answer is, here’s how that happens. Okay. So the answer is yes. I would… In my patient population over the years I’ve been in this… In my mind as I look at all the people who come in and I listen to all of the triggers that are described in the patient history as they’re giving it to me… I mean pregnancy might be number one, but if it’s not number one it’s definitely number two, behind stress responses.
So it’s huge. It is just like… A female patient walks in, she sits down, and then I say, “Okay, give me your story. When did this start?”. “Well, it started after my…”
They might not even know they have Hashimoto’s, when they came in to me, they might just suspect it. And they go, “It started after my third child, after the birth of my third child. It started after the birth of my first child.” I’m like, “That’s enough. You got Hashimoto’s.”
But seriously, what happens… There’s a lot of things that happen there, okay. The first thing that has to happen is that person has to have, that mother, has to have the genetics to develop Hashimoto’s. You have to have…so somebody, somewhere in your lineage has to have had some sort of thyroid problem.
Today we know, and I keep quoting the Mayo Clinic, okay, but today we know that… Well, one of my mentors says, “Look, it’s all Hashimoto’s, if you have a thyroid problem.” Mayo Clinic, let’s just go with the Mayo Clinic because everybody, you know… They have credibility with a lot more people than maybe my mentor does. They say 85-95% of hypothyroidism is Hashimoto’s.
Usually you’re going to have somebody that has thyroid back in your family and then you have your child. Now if you’re compromised during that period of time… If you haven’t been eating well, and if you’re stressed, and if you’re working too much, and if you’re fighting with your husband, and all that type of stuff; this all makes it more likely that you’re going to be compromised enough, so that when you start making antibodies… And this is a massive oversimplification of what happens, okay. All right. You’re compromised, you’re carrying a baby, you’re giving all [inaudible 00:02:41], you’re giving all of your nutrients and so on and so forth, to the child. So, your immune system is challenged, especially when you start making antibodies, to give to the child.
Now, if you have the ability to make anti… You’re making excess antibodies to give to the child… Again, for those of you who are in the field of immunology and all this type of stuff, I know this is a gross simplification, okay. When you start making a lot of antibodies and if you have the gene that says I can get it and you’re compromised and mom’s compromised, and she is, especially in the third trimester when she’s going to have a baby, then you can get… Those antibodies can exacerbate your immune system to attack your tissues that your genetic code says can be attacked. If it’s… most of the time it’s Hashimoto’s. I suspect it’s because… And there’s probably data out there on this, but it’s…
I mean, the thyroid is so metabolically active. You have to have thyroid hormone T3 in every cell in your body, every cell for it to work right. Which is why if your thyroids off it affects everything, everything go’s. If your thyroids low, everything slows down. Your bowel slow down, your hair starts falling out, you get constipation, and so on and so forth. So, basically that’s what happens.
It is extremely common. Now, I’ve been to… For a variety of reasons, again, without getting into physiology of it… If you are a new mom and you have had this phenomenon that I’ve talked to occur to you, the academic and intellectual wisdom is you have to wait a year for the symptoms to go away. Because there are a variety of other physiological mechanisms that could create a situation that makes it seem like you have Hashimoto’s. If you still have it after a year, then the likelihood is that you’ve set off an immune attack against your thyroid.
I mean, if you’re getting the thyroid stuff going… You’re putting on the weight, or the weight’s not going away, I had three babies and this time… They went away the first two times, and now it’s not going away, or you’re getting dry skin, or you’re getting constipation that you didn’t have before, or your hair is falling out. You’re going to get [inaudible 00:05:06], you’re fatigued, you can’t think, you have brain fog… If you had that for a year and you can last for a year without checking it out…If you have that for a year, then it’s a lock that you developed an immune attack against your thyroid after child birth.
Childbirth is like I said, it’s one of the… it’s the first or second biggest trigger. That’s the delineation, it’s a trigger. Child birth just puts you in a situation where you become vulnerable and you’re making antibodies and they’re raising your immune response. If you have the genetics it’s putting you in a situation where it has triggered an attack against your cells because your genetics in your cells said it was okay to do.
I think that covers it. I think it covers it pretty thoroughly for what we’re looking for here.
