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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Today we’re going to talk about Hashimoto’s treatment after thyroidectomy. Like anything else with the human body, nothing is as straightforward as you’d like it to be. So the theory is, and again, it depends on why you had your thyroid taken out. Did you have your thyroid taken out because you have Graves’ disease? Did you have your thyroid taken out because you have Hashimoto’s? Did you have it completely taken out or partially taken out? I’m assuming this question refers to completely taken out. And did you have it out because you had cancer? Okay.
So basically let’s go to Hashimoto’s and Graves’, and Graves’ is a very small part of the population, so I’m going to talk mostly about Hashimoto’s. So when you have your thyroid out, and I’ve watched some thyroid surgeries years ago and asked some questions, and it seems like a lot of times they just take out maybe part of the thyroid in cancer. But in Hashimoto’s and in Graves’, they’re usually going to take the whole thing out.
And so the theory is because of where the medical model is at this point in time in 2022, okay, they’re still not addressing Hashimoto’s as an autoimmune problem. They’re still addressing it as a thyroid problem, which leads to the theory of I’m going to take it out and I’m going to be able to control your thyroid hormone levels by giving you the right thyroid medication. And that alone is a crapshoot, figuring out what is the right thyroid medication for that particular person. That’s a whole other subject that I have a presentation on online.
And so it gets a little complex because of their model. All right? So two things. One thing is they don’t always get all the thyroid tissue out, and it’s attached to certain structures where it can alter things if you mess up. And the other thing is they’re treating it as though it’s a thyroid problem and not an autoimmune problem. So if you’re still not aware that there’s 40 triggers or more now, and I know I’ve got one online that says 39, but there’s more since then. So if you’re not aware of that and you’re not removing those triggers, those triggers are still there. Very seldom does a Hashimoto’s patient have one autoimmune problem. They usually have Hashimoto’s and autoimmune gastritis or Hashimoto’s and arthritis or they have Hashimoto’s and cerebellar antibodies and on and on and on and on and on.
So in several different ways, the immune response is still a problem. And if you have thyroid tissue that is still remaining, you will have thyroid tissue that is still getting attacked. And have I had these patients come in? Oh, my God, probably a couple hundred over the period of time I’ve been doing this. And so, I mean, it’s something I’ve seen a lot. And they respond well to treatment, because when you have an autoimmune problem … Hashimoto’s is an autoimmune problem first, and it is a thyroid problem second. When you have an autoimmune problem, that is the battle. That is the battle, and you have to find out what triggers are there that are flaring that person up, whether they’re flaring up tissue that’s remaining or whether they’re flaring up other autoimmunities that have molecular mimicry or epitope spreading.
These are two ways that autoimmunity affects other tissues and causes other autoimmunities in your body. You don’t have to know what they are. All you need to know is these things are there. And so you’re autoimmune, you’re autoimmune. It’s the bottom line. When you get that thing out and you’re still having issues, you need to attack the immune response. So you have to find out. For Hashimoto’s, everybody in the world now knows gluten is a problem, and hopefully most of the world knows iodine is a problem, though I know there’s a bunch of rock heads out there that still think there’s not.
But you have to start looking for those triggers and getting, if you have bad gut, 70% of your immune system is there. So the gut’s got to be fixed. If you have SIBO. I mean, just all of these things need to be addressed, even if you have your thyroid taken out if you have Hashimoto’s. And the same thing with Graves’. Graves’ is an autoimmune problem. I’m more on board with them. I’m not that on board with taking out thyroids for Hashimoto’s. I’m not on board with it at all. Okay. Graves’, I’m a little bit more on board with it because Graves’ goes off. You get really hyper symptoms. You can have that thyroid storm and die. So that’s a little bit more of an emergency acute situation. They give you drugs to kill the thyroid or dampen function.
But same thing. If you get your thyroid out there, it’s still an autoimmune problem. It’s still an autoimmune problem and you still need … And this is my experience. Okay? And it’s just not me. I mean, I have colleagues that are heavily on board with this, and several of them do research and things of that nature in this field. But if you have an autoimmune problem, you have to take care of the autoimmune problem. That’s it.
Cancer is a little different thing. Cancer is not an autoimmune problem. Cancer’s cancer. So if you get cancer, you get it out. They give you thyroid hormone medication, and you’re feeling good. That’s good. If they give you thyroid hormone medication and it’s not working and you are still getting hypothyroid symptoms, because that’s usually what’s going to happen if you don’t have enough thyroid. And so your hair starts falling out and you start putting on weight and all those types of things, and they keep raising your thyroid hormone. It could be that even though you don’t have autoimmunity, the thing I would look at would be I would look at your gut. I would look at your intestines, and I would look at your liver and how those are doing, because that’s where those medications are converted into active form.
The medication. If you’re a cancer patient and you have had your thyroid taken out and they’ve given you medication, that medication, depending on who you go to, is usually going to be T-4, and then that has to be converted somewhere in your body and it has to be converted in your liver and in your intestines. And you might not have had any attention on that before because you had thyroid cancer and everybody’s looking at that.
And so if you take medication after you’ve had your thyroid out for cancer and you have to start having problems, you have to look at, okay, why isn’t this? And it also gets converted at the receptor sites on your cells. So for women, if this happens to you and then you look beyond the liver, maybe you look beyond the intestines and you look at your estrogen, especially if you’re not menopausal. And you look at your estrogen and because estrogen can clog up and compete at receptor sites for thyroid hormone.
So those are basically it. Hashimoto’s, Graves’. Look, you’ve still got to get your immune response under control. And cancer, you take the medication, it works. You’re good. You’re good. It’s not working? There are other things, but in my world, it’s usually liver, intestines, and too much estrogen in the system. People who are taking hormone replacement therapy for estrogen will have a hard time getting their thyroid hormone to work right sometimes after they get their cancer thyroid removed.
I think that’s it in a nutshell. I mean, it is one of those topics that you can really get into the weeds on and get into all these little nuances. But I think if you’re alerted to this and this is your situation, it’ll probably help you to get a direction that you maybe didn’t have before you listened to this.
