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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All right. So is it Hashimoto’s or menopause? I like this topic. Okay. It’s just because I see it a lot. I see it a lot actually. It’s kind of interesting. So here’s what I see. So I have patients come here all the time who are in their early 40s. I think some of them are in their 30s, late 30s, maybe mid to late 30s. And they come in and I have this sheet that I have them fill out. And in that sheet there’s two sections. It’s a questionnaire that I have everybody fill out, and it’s like 289 questions. And there’s about 20 questions in there on female hormone chemistry. Do you have hormonal problems? You would know it that way.
So I got one section that’s for cycling females, and I got one section that’s for menopause, and I’ll get these patients and they’re like 42 and they’re filling out the menopause thing. And I’m like, why are you filling that out? And I’m like, well, I went to my doctor and I’m spotting sometimes. I have periods and they skip for three months. So they told me I’m on early menopause and they put me on estrogen. I’m like, you’re 40 years old. It’s like, I get that that probably could happen. But you have all of your organs. And you have fibromyalgia, right?
So, is it Hashimoto’s? Is it Hashimoto’s, which is a big part of a lot of fibromyalgia, is it Hashimoto’s or is it menopause? And I go, oh, well you have Hashimoto’s. Well what’s that got to do with anything? It’s got like everything to do with everything. And it isn’t just Hashimoto’s, but Hashimoto’s is kind of a big player.
So let me draw the whole picture for you here. So what causes you to have abnormal hormonal function, okay, hormonal biochemistry. In other words, what causes you to be like, I don’t have periods. They’re long, they’re short. I have one, I have one for 50 days. I don’t have one for three months. And then another one shows up. What causes that? Okay. If it’s not pathology, if you’ve been tested and it’s not pathology, it’s not that your ovaries aren’t working, it’s not that your cancer in that whole area, if it’s not that you have a brain tumor on your pituitary gland, it’s going to be that you have bad gut function.
It’s going to be that you have bad gallbladder and liver function. It’s going to be that you have poor adrenal function, better known as chronic stress and who’s got chronic stress today, right? Nobody, right? And it’s going to be blood sugar fluctuations for those of you who don’t eat as well as you should or don’t eat as frequently as you should, those types of things. And it’s going to be thyroid function because thyroid has a lot to do with progesterone management. And thyroid has a lot to do with all of those other things I just mentioned because if your thyroid’s off, it can screw up your entire gut, it can slow down your pancreas, it can slow down your liver from processing, it can put a strain on your adrenal glands, it can screw up your blood sugar. I mean, Hashimoto’s for those of you who may not be aware of it, it has its tentacles into everything.
So most of these women, I would say, I mean, I’m not going to put a number on it, but I would say 95% of those women or more were not in early menopause, they were not going through perimenopause. They had physiological dysfunction. And I would say, again, from a practical clinical perspective, treating the person for the Hashimoto’s, which entails treating them for the autoimmune aspect of that case and usually entails treating their gut, usually is going to entail detoxing them, usually is going to entail bringing their stress hormones down, thus treating that adrenal gland. All of that is going to be stabilizing the blood sugar even for those people coming and goes, I already eat good, I already eat well. But all those things screw up your blood sugar too, even if you’re eating good. Getting all that under control, I would say easily two-thirds of the time or more, that symptomatic pattern that caused them to be diagnosed with perimenopause stabilizes.
And they start having normal periods and they start losing all of the symptomatic abnormalities of poor female hormone chemistry like heavy scanty blood flow, heavy blood flow, menstrual problems, menstrual PMS and all that type of stuff. I’d say easily 65 to 70% of the time. And then on a treatment wise. Then once those people or patients that haven’t responded now, it’s still may be just because they have been out of kilter for so long with their female hormone imbalances that their female organs maybe like their ovaries and their luteinizing hormone, [inaudible 00:05:56] in their pituitary, maybe just need a kickstart.
At that point, there’s very, very powerful herbs and botanicals that can be used in different situations, whether it’s poor progesterone, poor estrogen, whether it’s poor, your brain has to tell your ovaries to work. And there’s hormones that are called FSH, and LH, whether they need a little bit of kickstart. And then a lot of those will be okay. When people are going through perimenopause and if you are of like, let’s say you’re 47, right, or 48 and they’re telling you got perimenopause, well that makes it a little bit more sense or even 49 or 50. But you have to understand if you’re going through perimenopause and you don’t feel good and you’re like, oh my God, it’s menopause and I’m sweating, I don’t want to die and it’s the worst thing I’ve ever had. You have a lot of this stuff happening. You don’t have to go through that type of a perimenopause.
And if you have Hashimoto’s, you’re way more likely to go through that if you’re not handling all these other things. Because once you get all of these other systems under control, you should just go from having your ovaries be the main feature of taking care of your female hormone cycles and so on and so forth, to switching over to having just your adrenal glands and your blood sugar being the important part.
And for those of you who aren’t aware of that, once you’ve gone into menopause, your brain’s no longer talking to your ovaries. It’s about your adrenal glands. That’s your secondary sex glands that makes testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, the HEA and a number of other things. It’s all about your adrenal glands. It’s all about managing your stress, managing your blood sugar, and getting all those other things under control and taking pressure off of your adrenal glands.
And you should have nice menopause too. Yeah, but either way, if you’re going, even if you’re going into, if you’re in perimenopause and you have Hashimoto’s and you’re having problems, yeah, the Hashimoto’s is definitely connected in some ways directly, some ways indirectly, by affecting other things. But this is functional medicine. Okay.
Functional medicine is not, you go to the doctor, I’m having this here, take some estrogen. It’s about looking at your whole physiology, seeing what organs upstream that are creating the chemistry that’s supposed to normalize that part of your physiology that you’re interested in, which in this particular case is your ovaries and your brain, your pituitary gland if you’re not menopausal yet, and your adrenals and your blood sugar if you are. And then treat that as opposed to just throwing an end product there of a estrogen and so on and so forth. And there may be some people who still need that after going through all that, but not many, at least not in my practice. So that’s the connection between Hashimoto’s and perimenopause, menopause, post-menopause, all the pauses. It’s a big connection, and it’s something that needs to be addressed for you to be able to resolve those hormonal issues.
