Managing a Thyroid Dump

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 we’re going to talk today about managing a thyroid dump.

This was a request. We asked for requests, and now we’re getting them. This is actually a really good one, I think. I like this question. It was much more extensive than that, and relative to I get these thyroid dumps. Thyroid dump, I’m taking that the person that asked this question means I get an exacerbation. All of a sudden I got thyroid hormones running into my body, and although the question didn’t expand upon the symptoms, I would assume you maybe get shaky, jittery, anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia, tremors, those types of things when you get this thyroid dump, and it was relative to my medical doctor is trying different things. This is with the medication that they’re already taking, and the things that I see that the medical doctors are trying, the endocrinologists, the alternative MDs are we’re going to try to, of course, change your dosages.

We’re going to try to do the different timing. We’re going to have you take it at four o’clock in the morning. We’re going to have you take it every other day. We’re going to have you take that plus T3, and just all those types of things. That works for some people, but it doesn’t work for a lot of people. It just doesn’t, because we’re talking about autoimmune thyroid disease here. The question was relative to Hashimoto’s and autoimmune thyroid disease, and I still get these thyroid dumps and it drives me crazy, and so on and so forth. It’s because you have to go back and understand that it’s really primarily not a thyroid problem. It’s really primarily an immune response, and you’re getting the thyroid dumps because you have different triggers that are intermittently triggering your immune system to create what’s called a little mini cytokine storm, or just a cytokine exacerbation.

All of your cells have these little cells called cytokines or inflammatory proteins. They go up and then they flare up, and then they either attack your thyroid peroxidase enzymes to cause you to make more thyroid hormone, or they attack your thyroid tissue, which may just beat you up and make you feel tired. They’re two separate things, and some of you have both of those. Some of you have one. Some of you have the other. So basically what happens is you’re missing the point when you say, “Well, I’m trying everything with the medications.” What causes thyroid dumps? To the person who wrote this question, I hope I am translating your question properly, but what happens is there’s like 40 things that could happen if you have not addressed it as a multi-systems problem that has to be corrected to dampen thyroid inflammation. Then it could be, oh my God, let me go down the list. It could be a stress response. It could be a broken down gut and you’re eating a food, and you’re having a sensitivity response.

It could be that you have small intestinal bacteria overgrowth and you haven’t fixed that gas, bloating, distension when you’re eating starches, fibers, or sugars. You eat one of those and then you blow. That could blow you up. It could be poor gallbladder function, and you’re eating something that’s making your gallbladder work too hard and that could flare it up. You could have blood sugar fluctuations where maybe some of you can’t… You start dumping and you start not feeling good, and you eat and you feel better. That’s a low blood sugar response, or you could have a response where you eat and you get fatigue after meals. That’s a high blood sugar response and an insulin spike dropping. Those are inflammatory responses. The inflammation causes those cytokines to flare up. Has nothing to do with your thyroid medication. This is where the nice thing is, there’s a lot more data coming out on this from the medical research communities, but they don’t know what to do with it because they’re not looking at it as an autoimmune problem.

I just shake my head when I say that. They look at MS as an autoimmune problem. They look at lupus as an autoimmune problem. They look Sjögren’s as an autoimmune problem. They look at rheumatoid arthritis and what do they do? They give you steroids to dampen all of these inflammatory responses that are taking place from all the things that create an inflammatory response, and it dampens and kind of crush your immune system. Well, when you have Hashimoto’s, you have to look into all these things. How many triggers are there? There’s like 40. There’s toxins. There’s overtraining. There’s so many different things that you could do. You could be taking the right thyroid hormone and that day maybe you go out, and you do too many things that day, and that’s overtraining. You create an oxidative stress is what it’s called. The oxidative stress creates inflammation, and then boom, you get your thyroid attack, and you get a thyroid dump. Too many thyroid hormones going out. Now you get those symptoms.

So I think that’s pretty much the answer to that. The answer is you have to do what I do with my patients. You have to evaluate the patients. Again, Hashimoto’s is a multi-systems disease, and it’s not just that there’s all these systems involved, but on top of it, they’re all interlocked. They’re a vicious cycle. So this one affects this one, and then this one affects this one, and then this one affects this one. There’s a domino effect there. You have to get the whole picture of that person. You have to figure out what are the triggers that are involved with them, and then you have to look to treat that person in an order. The order goes like this. You want to do first what is going to most affect the immune system, the endocrine system, and the brain. Those are the three things that are driving these problems.

For those of you who go, well, just my functional medicine practice was just doing my immune system and they weren’t really doing my brain and my endocrine system. That’s probably why you’re watching my videos because that hasn’t been done. So, it’s complex. It’s doable, but you have to understand that’s the model. That is the model. I’ve seen a lot of people try to alter it. I’ve seen people try to tone it down, make it simpler. There’s nothing simple about it. You have to look for all the triggers in that person. You have to understand the order and way in which you attack, and you can get pretty consistently good results once you’ve done that, but that’s not being done for you, the person who, I don’t use any names here, asked the question about why do I stop thyroid dumps when my endocrinologist is trying to manage it with all these different theories on how I should take my thyroid medication. So, that’s the answer to that.