Hashimoto’s Is Not a Thyroid Problem!

Note: The text below is 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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Okay, so today we’re going to talk about, I’m going address something that I say to my patients all the time, which is Hashimoto’s is not primarily a thyroid problem. Hashimoto’s technically is not a thyroid problem, at least not first. It is a problem of your thyroid secondarily. The initial problem is autoimmunity. This is why when you go to your medical doctors they have nothing for you to offer other than a thyroid medication. If that doctor doesn’t understand thyroid medication applications it’s not uncommon for people to come in here saying, “I took the thyroid medicine and it made me so much worse. Well and then I changed to the natural one and it made me worse.” Some people take the medication and it made them feel better for a couple of weeks or even a month or two and then they crashed because they’re treating the thyroid.

So the technical name for your condition if you have Hashimoto’s is autoimmune Hashimoto’s hypothyroiditis. The autoimmune is the key. It’s an autoimmune problem. Your immune system has at some point been given the okay by your DNA to attack you and it could attack your skin. It could attack your salivary glands. It can attack your intestines. It can attack your bones. It can attack everything. But if you have autoimmune thyroid disease, it has decided to attack your thyroid.

If you came in here and you had autoimmune thyroid disease, lupus, celiac, autoimmune gastritis, it would still be the same approach to that case. It would be get the immune system under control first because it’s an autoimmune problem. The interesting thing to me is it’s 2022 and Hashimoto’s has been being discussed now for approximately 20 to 22 years. Even though it was discovered in the early 1900s, it has only been an entity that has been brought to the table in the last 20 years. That’s 20 years. That’s a long time and still the medical profession… Look, I’m not an anti-medical profession basher per se, but in this one particular area, this is stunning to me.

The medical profession has not made the jump to the fact that all these other diseases, MS, Sjogren’s, lupus, autoimmune gastritis, celiac, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, all these are autoimmune diseases. If you have Crohn’s disease they don’t treat you for a gut problem. They treat you for autoimmune Crohn’s disease. If you have Sjogren’s or lupus, they’ll give immunoglobulins or they’ll give you steroids because they’re treating it not as a skin disease, but they’re treating it as an autoimmune disease.

It’s been 20 some years and the medical community has not made the jump to this is an autoimmune disease. Maybe that’s good because you’re going to go in there and if they treat it as autoimmune disease, first thing they’re going to do is give you steroids or immunoglobulin therapy or something like that. You’re going to feel better. You’re going to feel better. I have people take prednisone for something else and if they have an active Hashimoto’s they go, “Could this be helping my Hashimoto’s?” It’s like yes, because your Hashimoto’s is an autoimmune disease not.

Then secondarily it is a thyroid problem because not unlike the others, where in Sjogren’s you’re getting salivary attacks and in lupus, you’re getting skin attacks. In Crohn’s, you’re getting gut attacks. In thyroid, you’re getting thyroid attacks. Once the immune response is dampened, now if things are still off and you’re still having thyroid dysfunction, now you can treat the thyroid aspect of the case because it’s a thyroid aspect of an autoimmune disease. It’s pretty clear. It’s not rocket science to understand this, but the medical profession relative to thyroid is what’s your TSH? Oh, you got high TPO?

I’ve heard all kinds of crazy things. Oh, well it’s not high enough. Oh, we’ll just let your thyroid go until it dies. Well, why is it going to die? Because it’s an autoimmune attack on your thyroid. I mean, I can go on for this for a long time and I’m not supposed to do these things for a long time, because then I’ll lose you guys. But it’s first, you need to understand that’s why you’re having trouble. That’s why you went to the doctor. That’s why you took the thyroid medication and it didn’t do anything or it made you worse because… That’s a whole nother thing as far as thyroid medications and how to figure out the right one for an autoimmune thyroid patient.

Because it’s totally different than if you were a strict hypothyroid patient. That is not autoimmune hypothyroid patient. That’s a hypothyroid patient. Hypothyroid, not autoimmune. Hashimoto’s graves, autoimmune. Hyperthyroiditis, if you’ve been diagnosed with that, very probably misdiagnosed as an autoimmune. Although there are things that can cause your thyroid to be hyper, but again, they’re not even thyroid problems. Those are also other physiology problems.

So autoimmune thyroid disease means that technically it’s not a thyroid problem. You could treat the thyroid with thyroid medication and iodine, which will make many of you worse or selenium or myo-inositol from now until forever for your thyroid if you don’t treat it first as an autoimmune problem, which it is.