Note: The following is the output of a transcription from the video above. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
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We’re gonna do, most of what I’m doing lately is questions that I’m getting, ’cause I think we pretty well covered Hashimoto’s from top to bottom over the last year or whatever it is.
But, so the specific question that I got that I’m going over today is, “Can Hashimoto’s cause pain?” And that one’s kind of an interesting one because that brings me back to when I first started doing functional medicine and functional medicine really evolved relative to addressing chronic pain.
I think it’s fair to say specifically chronic fatigue, immunodeficiency disease, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, just that pain, that like peripheral neuropathies, and those conditions. (chuckles) And I was working with a gentleman who was close to my mentor, Dr.
Kharrazian. And every time I would have a hard case ’cause I was just starting out, I would call, and I would say, “What do I do on this case?” And he would always say, “Test the thyroid.
” (chuckling) So finally, you know, he said, “Are you not testing the thyroid?” And at that time I was trying to save people money, still trying to save people money. But at that time I was trying to save people money because the testing we were doing was so crazy.
It was thousands and thousands of dollars out of pocket ’cause we didn’t know what to do. So I wouldn’t run a one thyroid lab marker. And, so I called him and he said, “Dr. Kharrazian has a message for you.
” He says, “If you don’t test the thyroid “on every chronic pain patient that comes in the door, “he’s not talking to you anymore.” (chuckling) “He’s not going to communicate with you anymore.
” And I was like, “Ugh.” So, of course I tested the next 10 people who had chronic pain for Hashimoto’s and seven of them tested positive. And that was with the parameters that we were using back then which were much wider than the parameters that I use.
So I suspect that could have been even more but that kind of opened my eyes. So the answer is, “Yes.” And the reasons are so many it would take me easy an hour to go over them but I’ll just kind of give you the concept, the idea, and a few specifics.
So I mean certainly when Hashimoto’s starts to flare up, when you get a Hashimoto’s flare particularly, or maybe you just have a low grade irritation to your thyroid, because there’s variations from one to 10 as far as how severe your flares could be, you are creating inflammation.
You’re, also creating in many cases, but not all, you’re also creating damage to the thyroid. Those of you have to keep raising your thyroid medication or it’s all over the place, your thyroid’s being damaged.
And then when that happens, it’s vomiting out hormones. I mean, you damage the cell that has T4 and T3 in it. They go into the system and then you have too much thyroid hormone in your system. And then that can create an inflammatory response.
And then if you have vulnerabilities throughout your system because Hashimoto’s patients don’t come in here with Hashimoto’s, they come in here with Hashimoto’s and gut problems, Hashimoto’s and celiac, and Hashimoto’s and gad antibodies through cerebellum.
They don’t come in here with like one thing. So then all of those things will flare up and that is a source of a connection of pain. Gosh! Hashimoto’s also flares up several of your hormones. But I think the biggest thing is it creates these swellings.
For example, one of the things that was interesting to me as someone who practiced chiropractic for a long time is Hashimoto’s can actually cause swelling in certain areas of your system that will cause pain that will mimic of like a pinched nerve.
So a lot of people will get swelling in this area from the Hashimoto’s and then that’ll cause a pinched nerve that will maybe lead your chiropractor to believe they have a pinched nerve in your neck because it’s here.
And the same thing will happen in the groin, and so you can get a sciatica-type pain from it. So that’s another source of pain. Then you get into the fact that Hashimoto’s is maddening, it’s hypothyroidism, largely, and then it intermittently more synced to a hyperthyroid response.
When you have the hypo-thyroid aspect of it it slows everything down. If it alters your blood sugar, what a lot of you may not realize is, you know, blood sugar, or it goes to your brain, blood sugar, blood sugar is necessary in your brain, your muscles, your red blood cells.
But if you’re, altering blood sugar physiology to your muscles you’re gonna get pains. You’re gonna get achy muscles. You’re gonna have muscles, that just. Oh, I remember what I used to say.
Well, like, “I ache all over. “I feel like every fiber of my body is like aching.” You’ll get, and then it certainly drops your blood sugar to your brain. Yeah, it’s definitely one of the causes of migraines.
So it’s a mechanism where Hashimoto’s control, your thyroid essentially controls your metabolism. And when your metabolism goes down the ability of yourself to make energy is limited. And then all of those metabolic processes whether it’s blood sugar, whether it’s processing your B vitamins, your liver goes down.
So now your liver is not processing your fats, right? Your B vitamins. You go to the doctor. Now, you got high cholesterol and high LDLs because your liver is not processing properly because you have a hyperthyroid.
So they put you on a statin drug which screws up all your co Q 10 and all your muscles. And then you get pain from that. (chuckles) That was a shot across the bow there. So, yeah, so I mean, it’s connected to chronic pain consistently across the board.
If I learned a lesson back then it was if a patient comes in here, this was the lesson. If the patient comes in here and they’re in chronic pain and or they have the mystery disease and the mystery disease is, “I’m hurting everywhere.
“I got every symptom known in existence to, “you know, man and woman, and all of my tests are normal.” Then I check them for OSH, check the antibodies for Hashimoto’s. That was a clinical pearl that we had long time ago, a long time ago.
And I think it still holds true. So yeah. So Hashimoto’s can absolutely cause or perpetuate a lot of mechanisms in your body that create chronic pain and yeah I’ll just leave it there because that’ll keep going on for a long time.
So the answer is yes, Hashimoto’s can cause chronic pain.
