DR. AMIE HORNAMAN: EPISODE LINK

THE THYROID FIX: BOOK LINK

TRANSCRIPT:

Colleen: Welcome back, everyone. We are talking about our thyroid today with Dr. Amie Hornaman and her new

book, The Thyroid Fix, The No-Nonsense Guide to Fix Fatigue, Fogginess, and Fat That Won’t Budge.

And I’m showing that to the YouTubers. This is the book. Congratulations on the book.

And you are known as the thyroid fixer. How long ago did you get that title?

Dr. Amie: Well, it was kind of like a self-proclaimed title. People would ask me. Like, what do you do? I’m

like, I fix you. It just kind of came out. I’m like, I fix broken thyroids.

That’s what I do. So yeah, it was very much self-proclaimed, but it definitely came from my own

pain to purpose story because like so many listeners right now hearing the sound of my voice.

I was misdiagnosed. I was blown off. I was dismissed. I was medically gaslit.

So because of that, I took on this role of like… need to help these people.

I need to help these women that are being told they’re normal when they’re not. So that’s really

how I stepped into the thyroid fixer because I had to fix myself first after seven doctors told me

that I was normal and everything was fine.

Bridgett:  Right. And, you know, in your book, you talk about how

you did all the things you were working out. You were really watching everything you did. And it

really broke my heart when one of your trainers, I think it was, told you he thought you were not

telling the truth.

Dr. Amie: Yeah.

Bridgett:  Yeah. And I thought, oh, it’s so disheartening.

And I think that happens to a lot of patients sometimes when they’re trying to share their story

with their primary care doctors. And you almost can feel that they don’t believe you.

 It is so common. And you talk about,

too, in the book, the testing that is done at the doctor’s office. And you also include what you

need to ask for and what needs to be included. Can you talk about what commonly is tested,

but what really needs to be tested?

Dr. Amie: Oh, yes. So important. So if you go into your doctor and let’s

say you listen to the show, you’re like, you know, I’m going to go in and I’m going to have my

doctor test my thyroid. If you just stop there with that request and you don’t list out exactly

what tests you want done, you are going to get this half-assed test, meaning you’re going to get

TSH, which is thyroid stimulating hormone. We can break down what that means.

And you maybe kind of sort of might get a free T4,

which is actually the inactive thyroid hormone. So basically,

you’re going to get your brain tested and you’re going to get the inactive thyroid hormone tested

that does literally nothing in your body. And right there, when I say that to you, do you go, well,

I thought we were testing my thyroid. Right. And that’s the problem.

We’re not testing thoroughly enough. to really see what is going on in your body.

What is going on with your thyroid and specifically your thyroid hormones?

Colleen: Just to start, because a lot of people don’t even know where their thyroid is, what their thyroid

does, what dysfunction can do. Can we start with what’s your thyroid and what does it do?

Dr. Amie: Yes, absolutely. So your thyroid gland runs your entire body.

So I always say from head to toe, it runs the show. Literally from hair on your head to

your brain function, your eyesight, your metabolism. Obviously that’s a big one.

Whether you’re going to gain weight, lose weight. dictated by your thyroid, your energy,

your digestion, your body temperature, your heart rate,

your mood, everything is regulated by this little gland that’s in your throat.

And this little gland has power because it dictates your hormones.

It dictates every system. in your body cardiovascular digestive reproductive circulatory every

system in the body relies on this little gland working properly it’s like it’s their captain and if

the captain isn’t sending out the orders then every other system down below is like twiddling their

thumbs, like listen we’re just waiting for our orders down here we can’t do anything so keeping that

in mind, that really sets the tone for everything else we’re going to talk about, especially

people’s symptoms that they’re dealing with, because it all comes back to the thyroid.

Bridgett: And, you know, you’re talking about people, these symptoms start. So they’re doing things like you

were doing, working out, everything’s going okay. Then all of a sudden you’re doing the same

things. You’re starting to put on weight. You might lose your hair or some hair starts shedding

really badly. You’re tired all the time. You’re sluggish.

And you go in and let’s say somebody actually does do the right testing,

that they actually test your, you will talk about soon, T4, T3, talk about everything there,

T2, and you’re diagnosed. Can you talk about the difference between hypothyroidism?

and hyperthyroidism and then also Hashimoto’s as well.

Dr. Amie:  Sure,

So when we’re looking at hypothyroidism as a whole, let’s start there because it’s the most

common. So hypo low and slow thyroid function, 95% of all hypothyroidism is Hashimoto’s.

It’s the autoimmune form of hypothyroidism. It’s where your body thinks that your thyroid is a bad

guy and likes to go out and attack it. It’s just that your body is really confused.

It’s been programmed like any autoimmunity. It’s been programmed to think that your thyroid is

doing something wrong. So we need to beat it up and downregulate it.

Hyperthyroidism or Graves’ disease, much more rare. We’re looking at maybe 3% of the population.

And that is where, yeah, there’s still that autoimmune attack on the thyroid.

But what the thyroid does is it starts dumping all of this thyroid hormone. And that’s where you’ll

feel anxious or jittery, hyper, like just like the word sounds.

You feel hyper. You have insomnia. You’re losing weight.

This might sound appealing to some ladies out there, but I’m telling you it’s not because it does

start affecting your heart. It makes you anxious. You know, you have diarrhea all day long.

That’s not fun. So Graves’ disease, I don’t see much of in the practice, if at all.

And it really just doesn’t occur that often. It’s very rare. Whereas hypothyroidism,

and also… huge. I mean, the current stat is one in eight women,

but what I see in my practice is more like one in two,

one in three. It’s because we’re not being diagnosed properly. We’re not addressing it properly.

So the one in eight stat, that’s just the diagnosed. Those are just the women that are being

diagnosed in the conventional system too, by the way. That’s not taking into account people who

bypass their PCP and see someone like myself and go into functional medicine and then get the real

diagnosis.

Colleen: So what you talk in the book about genetics and triggers and risks.

And I think it’s important for people to understand what are some of the triggers, how much of it

is genetic. Can we talk about that?

Dr. Amie:  Yes, yes, yes.

All hypo, well, with all Hashimoto’s, you’re going to have that genetic predisposition.

So this is where your mom, your grandma, your aunt, your sister has some kind of autoimmunity.

It doesn’t have to be Hashimoto’s. They just have autoimmunity of some sort, celiac,

rheumatoid arthritis.

psoriasis, Crohn’s disease. You have that genetic predisposition. Then you have to have a leaky

gut. So who doesn’t? I don’t know. At this day and age, who doesn’t have a leaky gut?

Our poor bodies are bombarded with franken chemicals all the time. So I would argue,

okay, most of us have a leaky gut. Okay. And then you have that trigger. So for autoimmune to

present itself, You have to have that trigger stress, high cortisol,

fluctuating hormones like during pregnancy, perimenopause and menopause.

Those fluctuating hormones can turn on an autoimmune condition.

So this is why we see so much autoimmunity, especially in women

in midlife, because when we go through perimenopause and then menopause,

our hormones are on a wild roller coaster ride. It’s craziness.

Your progesterone’s falling off, your testosterone’s dropping, your estrogen’s on an up and down

roller coaster for a while. And that is enough of a stressor on the body to turn on autoimmunity.

And that’s when we see Hashimoto’s present itself.

Bridgett: Right. You have also a checklist in your book to

go through. Just asking a questions, a list of questions that you just fill out.

I did it. And I was like, oh my gosh. I think I had,

I think I had 11 because I have two sisters that have Hashimoto’s, a brother with MS.

Um, I’m from a large family for a big family. So, you know, I’m cold now.

I’m not really losing my hair, but you know, um, I am on a GLP-1 and you talk about that as well

in the book. So since I have lost weight, I am not experiencing some of the things that I

previously would have, it could have been 13. So, yeah. And you know,

it also, and I’m sorry, I’m jumping around a little bit, but when you were listing the regular

numbers, two of the different hormones, the T1, T2, and T3, T4,

I went through my MyChart and I was like, okay, so they did TSH,

they did T4, they did one time a T3, but it was combined.

So it didn’t have the reverse T3 and the free T3. That really,

you talk about how that T3 is almost like, you said,

was it the T4s, the bank, the savings account, and the other ones,

the checking account? T3 is the big one.

Colleen: Can you talk about

that, the checking account, you know, use those analogies. And explain, because Bridgett’s talking

about T1, T2, and people are like, what is she talking about? Yeah, but talk about what those are

and why it’s important to get the correct numbers checked.

Dr. Amie: Okay,

I love it. I love it. For your tests too, number one, I think you should pull them up because we

can go over those in a minute. Yeah. Number two. It’s funny, I literally just posted this in my

Facebook group. I said, because it dawned on me yesterday, I said the number one way to tell that

your doctor, whether it’s integrative, functional, or conventional, the number one way to tell that

your practitioner has no idea what they’re doing with the thyroid,

you won’t have a reverse T3. And I see this even in functional medicine.

Like these people will go to functional medicine practitioners and they’ll bring me their labs.

And I’m like, oh yeah, so how much you pay this person who claimed to know what they were doing

with the thyroid? Because you don’t even have a reverse T3 on here. It’s a shame.

 So I just had to throw that in. Okay, thyroid. Thyroid gland produces T1,

T2, T3. T4, all thyroid hormones. Some have actions on the body,

some don’t. So we are really going to focus on the ones that have powerful actions.

T1 doesn’t. It’s kind of, it’s just inactive. We’re just going to set it aside. We’re going to

circle back to T2 because that is very powerful, but we don’t have a medication for that yet.

It’s only in supplement form. So we’ll circle back. T3 and T4,

those are your key players. That’s what’s going to be tested. And that’s what we can use

pharmaceutically to replace those hormones. So T4 is inactive,

does nothing in the body. And that’s what I was saying earlier. You know,

if you walk into your doctor and say, hey doc, I want a thyroid panel. You’re going to get a brain

hormone and an active thyroid hormone tested. How does that help? So T4 is inactive.

It has to morph, transform. It has to literally become T3 to have any kind of effect on your body.

So when we look inside your body and we look at cells, whether we’re looking at your brain,

your heart, your muscle, your skin, anywhere in your body, those cells have receptor sites.

for T3, not T4, T3. So that’s why we can see that T4 needs to become T3 to do anything in your

body. Now, when we test these markers, what we’re looking for is the free unbound,

meaning it’s not bound to a carrier protein, delivering it,

it’s literally ready. It’s ready to get to your cell. It’s ready to give you a metabolism.

It’s ready to light your brain up. So we’re looking at that free T3 marker as that active,

powerful, ready to activate the cell hormone. And we want to know how much of that you have.

And we want to know if you have optimal amounts, not just a little bit, not just,

oh, you’re within normal limits. We want to know, do you have enough of this beautiful active

thyroid hormone to run your body? Now, we look at the free T4 because a lot of people will say,

well, why do we even pay attention to T4? It’s your savings account. Why do we even care?

Well, because exactly that. We want to look at that inactive thyroid hormone and we want to see how

well does your body take that and transform it into free T3.

Now, if free T4 is a little bit too high, I immediately go in my mind,

I’m like, oh, this person has a conversion problem. Okay, let’s look at another marker called

reverse T3. And reverse T3 tells us how well you’re taking that inactive thyroid hormone and

converting it to the active thyroid hormone and what’s getting in the way. And if you’re not

converting properly, we have to do one of two things. Number one, we have to change up how we are

addressing your thyroid hormones, especially if you’re on medication. And number two,

we need to look at the different factors that influence conversion.

I want to look at insulin and estrogen and ferritin and cortisol and all your minerals and your

nutrients. And I want to see, is there something going on here that’s preventing you,

preventing your body from taking that inactive thyroid hormone and converting it to active? Colleen: So in

the second part of the book, you talk about, okay, you’ve discovered you have a thyroid problem and

there are medical ways to fix it. And then there are more holistic ways of just doing it yourself.

With the medical, I noticed NDT, and I don’t know what that stands for,

but NDT, I just know it’s dried thyroid glands of pigs. So that was interesting.

And what does NDT do and why from pigs?

Dr. Amie:  So NDT is natural desiccated thyroid medication.

People know it as armor thyroid, NP thyroid, nature thyroid,

used to be one back in the day. It’s the OG thyroid medication. I mean,

it’s from the 1800s. So back in the day, when people would have a thyroid issue,

which was actually very visible, I mean, a swollen neck, myxedema or a moon face,

swelling or fat distribution all over the body. Doctors would do exactly that.

They would dry out a pig’s thyroid gland and say, here you go, take some of this. And it was

working because we were replacing those thyroid hormones that were no longer being made.

Because when you dry out the thyroid gland, you basically have T4 and T3 in it.

So now you’re just giving someone the T4 and the T3 that their thyroid gland isn’t making very

well. Now I talk about the different medication categories in the book. And yes,

we do have that NDT category. We also have T4 and T3 as separate thyroid hormone replacement

categories. Meaning in T4, we have Levo, Synthroid,

tyrosine. In the T3 category, we have liothyronine or Cytomel.

Those thyroid hormones also work beautifully to get you optimized.

So when I am answering the question of, and I know you didn’t ask it, but I’m going to answer it

anyways. When I’m answering the question of what’s your favorite thyroid hormone replacement? Like,

what do we do here? I always say the one that works for you, in the combination that works for you,

in the dose that works for you. There really is no one size fits all. And the reason why I say

that, the reason why I brought up that question is kind of circling back to your NDT,

natural desiccated thyroid. When you say that out loud,

you know, I mean, you know, your audience, I know my audience, they immediately go, well,

I want that. Because it’s as natural in the title and I just feel better about it. Okay,

well, Susie, maybe we can use this for you. But we have to remember that number one,

it contains 80% T4. That might be too much inactive thyroid hormone for you.

If you have issues with this conversion process that has to occur. And we just keep dumping a

boatload of T4 on your body and your poor body can’t convert it. What does that help us?

It doesn’t. Number two, it is naturally derived thyroid gland.

So I’m going to take a moment and teach you something here, Susie.

You have Hashimoto’s. You have this autoimmune condition where…

your body thinks your thyroid’s a bad guy, likes to start a war. And then you ingest a thyroid

gland. Are you following me? Okay. So now your soldiers go,

hey, buddy, guess what? Thyroid gland’s coming in. You think we should start a war today?

Yeah. Well, that’s what we’re programmed to do, right? Yeah. Okay. So let’s go. And they go out.

And they launch an all out autoimmune attack because you literally consumed something that looks

like the thyroid gland. So it doesn’t work for everyone. And I just wanted to expand on that topic

because you brought up the NDT and I’m like, oh goodness, I know people are going to hear that and

they’re going to go, give me some of that. It’s like, it’s not always good. You have to find that

combination that works for you.

Colleen:  Can I just follow up just real quick on that?

I think, you know, a lot of women who are listening to our podcast are women who have gone through

menopause or are in the process, perimenopause. And so we’re kind of familiar with the conversation

of… bioidenticals, biosynthetic, and do we take a little bit of estrogen,

a little bit, you know, it’s trial and error. So is that a similar way of explaining,

because they are familiar with kind of that language or that description, a similar way of saying,

this is how we’re going to test out the thyroid medication?

Dr. Amie:  Well, it’s a little different from

hormones. I put all the thyroid medication is biosynthetic.

And I love that you said that because I, I have re-termed T4 and T3 as biosynth because so many

people are like, oh, are you on the synthetic? And you know, I mean, with hormones, as soon as you

say synthetic, they’re like, oh, I don’t take synthetic hormones. That’s bad.

So in the world of hormone replacement, yeah, synthetic is not the way that we want to go.

We want to go biosynthetic, right? Or bioidentical. In the world of thyroid,

we can do all the choices because they will all line up with your body.

Now it’s about finding that combination for you. So let’s say,

I’ll use myself as an example. I cannot take NDT because…

I don’t convert at all. I am a non-converter. I have a little genetic snip on my DNA that says,

you give this woman T4, she doesn’t do anything with it. She just pushes it over to reverse T3.

Her body goes into lockdown survival mode. Done. So for me,

I am T3 only. I take the biosynthetic form, liothyronine T3,

and take it every day, have been for the last two decades. I’m doing great. So it’s really

it’s about finding exactly what’s going to work for you, but there’s no wrong answer in the thyroid

world like there is with hormones. Like, no, we don’t want you on a progestin, right?

We want you on bioidentical progesterone, period, end of story. But with thyroid,

yeah, we’ll put you on Synthroid, but the only rule over in the thyroid space for me is that you’re

not on T4 only. Because T4 only does not work.

And if you’re listening to this and you’re only taking levothyroxine, you’re only taking Synthroid,

you’re only taking Terascent, you will never… ever be optimized.

T4 only does not work. It’s not that it’s necessarily bad for you. It’s not that it’s synthetic and

it’s going to do all this damage in your body, but it’s not going to work either.

Bridgett: Right.

You use the word optimize and you use that in your book too, how you say the normal range and you

look at your things, you’re like, well, I’m in this normal range, but there’s so many women. that

go in and, and they’re taught, well, you’re, everything’s normal. Your blood works normal, but you

don’t feel normal. So talk about, could you talk about why optimal you want people to be optimal or

feel optimal?

Dr. Amie: Yes. Yes. You know, I think in this day and age as women,

we have almost started medically gaslighting ourselves and we’ve started telling ourselves that

what is not normal is normal. So meaning, oh,

well, I’m just aging. You know, this is going to happen to my body.

Yeah, body’s just breaking down. Oh yeah, that joint pain. Yeah, I’m getting older.

Oh yeah, my clothes are tight. My mom gained 20 pounds when she was 45 as well. Never took it off

again. Oh, but it’s normal to feel this stressed out and not sleep. You know, it’s just part of

life. No, it’s not. No, it’s not. And that’s the message that we’re all trying to get out there to

women is that you can age and actually believe it or not feel freaking amazing like you literally

can get to the age of 85 and 90 and not be battling weight all the time. You can actually not lose

all of your hair and have see-through lady hair where you can see your scalp through your perm.  You

don’t have to do that. You can have a full head of hair till the age of 80. You

can have a libido, you can have sex ladies until the day you die, did you know that? Like life is

meant to be lived to the fullest, but we throw in the towel. We throw in the towel on ourselves and

and we start accepting these symptoms as normal whether it’s driven into our heads through our

doctors, you’re normal, you’re normal everything’s fine, nothing to see here or whether we start

believing it. It’s a shame and that really is the message is like you can be optimal.

I always say you deserve to be the badass human that you’re meant to be. And that’s true.

I mean, you can actually live your best life, I promise you.

Colleen: For the women who have to have their thyroid removed, do many of them,

do they have to try everything before you get to that point? Or is it obvious when they get checked

that their thyroid needs to be removed?

Dr. Amie: Thyroid removal, that usually occurs when we find cancer.

If there’s a nodule or a goiter, a growth on the thyroid, and we biopsy it,

and we find that there are cancerous cells, we will do a partial or total thyroidectomy. There’s

also been removals because of goiters that you can visibly see on the neck.

But outside of that…

I mean, unfortunately, a lot of women, just like uteruses, a lot of women get things ripped out of

their bodies where they may or may not had to have gotten it out. Now, I always tell people,

listen, if you took your thyroid out, it’s okay. Whether you needed to or not,

don’t lament. Like, don’t cry over a lost thyroid, right? Because we can replace those hormones.

So maybe you needed it, maybe you didn’t. But it doesn’t matter. We can fully replace those

hormones. The biggest thing that I say in the book, and I have a whole chapter just for my

thyroidectomy and partial thyroidectomy peeps out there, is that it is,

in my opinion, it is true medical malpractice to remove a thyroid gland and then replace it with T4

only. That doesn’t even make sense. The thyroid, when it was in your body working well,

it produced T4 and T3. So why would we take it out and then replace it with one hormone?

Anyway, you know what I mean? It makes no sense when you actually say it out loud.

So the big message for anyone that’s had their thyroid removed is you need both hormones replaced,

T4 and T3.

Bridgett: You know, when I read your book too, there were so many similarities.

When you hear about a doctor’s education for menopause, there’s like a few hours or a day.

And then when you were talking about for the thyroid as well, there’s very little education in the

area of thyroid. And I was like, wow. two things that really affect a lot of women and there’s not

a lot taught about it. And also you talk about thyropause, a term you came up with.

Can you talk about thyropause?

Dr. Amie: Yes, thyropause. My definition of thyropause is when your thyroid

gland craps the bed after the age of 40 due to fluctuating hormones. So very similar to what we

were talking about earlier. When we’re looking at autoimmune, we know that whole analogy of a three

-legged stool. where you have to have the genetic predisposition. Then there’s the leaky gut,

which we all have. And then there’s the trigger. And that trigger is often stress-related,

but I don’t necessarily mean like an emotional stressor. It can be a physical.

It can be a physical stress. It can be emotional, but nine times out of 10, it’s more that physical

stress where hormones are fluctuating. So one really big time that we see Hashimoto’s present

itself and get diagnosed is after pregnancy. Ladies,

pregnancy, beautiful time in your life, huge, hormonal, chaotic, stressful time. And that stress on

the body will absolutely downregulate your thyroid production and your thyroid from working well.

Same thing in perimenopause and menopause. Hormonal rollercoaster. And that isn’t

to turn that switch to the on position so that is thyropause and we really see it come on after the

age of 40 because that’s when progesterone will decline first and then testosterone right so when

we’re looking at perimenopause and menopause and as you ladies know we’re getting a bigger

spotlight on it finally. I mean thank you Halle Berry for you know coming out and talking about your

 experience going through menopause, that’s awesome. But what about the thyroid?

We’re shining a light over here on the hormones. We’re not shining a light on the guy that controls

the hormones, the thyroid. And if we address hormones over here in a beautiful way,

let’s add in that bioidentical estrogen. Let’s add in that bioidentical progesterone. Throw in some

testosterone. Amazing. It’s going to help tremendously. But if your thyroid is in the toilet,

you’re going to be the one over here going, well, my neighbor’s on hormones. And she lost all this

weight. And she wants to have sex with her husband again. And she has energy.

And her hair looks beautiful. And I got none of that. Like, this isn’t working for me.

Why am I even taking these stupid hormones? Nothing’s happening. Well, it’s because your thyroid’s

in the toilet. And nobody bothered to pay attention or test it.

Colleen: You also talk about in the book that if it’s caught early enough, there are things that you can do

naturally to improve your thyroid. Can you talk about that?

Dr. Amie: And I do want to highlight if it’s

caught early enough, because that’s the biggest thing. I get this question all the time.

Do I have to take thyroid hormone replacement, i.e. medication? Do I have to take it for the rest

of my life? Do I have to take it? I go, well. Girl, you’ve been dealing with this for 20 years.

Your thyroid basically is not even existing anymore. It’s been beaten up for so many decades.

If you stop taking thyroid medication and you want to do things naturally and go ground and do a

rain dance and pray to the sun, good luck. But without those thyroid hormones, you’re going to die.

Like, no. So what I mean by treating it naturally in the beginning stages is literally when you

catch that woman, who’s just starting to show antibodies. And she’ll be like,

you know, I have like five, maybe 10 pounds to lose.

You know, I’m a little tired. Not that bad. Not that bad. No, no, I’m not losing my hair.

No, I’m okay. I’m okay there. Her symptoms are not that bad. We’re starting to see the signs of

autoimmunity. And at that point in time, we can catch it and reverse it.

and put it into remission. But if you have the woman that’s like, I have put on over 20 pounds.

I am counting the hairs that come out of my head and put them in a little baggie so people will

believe me. This is my daily hair collection. I haven’t pooped in three days.

I can’t sleep. My doctor has me on two different antidepressants and a benzo.

Can we just use thyroid hormone at that point? Like, can we just stop doing all the natural stuff

and just face the fact that your thyroid has been beaten up and destroyed for decades? And now we

need to bring in the hormone replacement because that’s what we’re doing. We’re replacing the

hormones that your body is no longer producing.

Bridgett: And, you know,

you say several times in the book, you cannot outrun this. You can’t. You can do all the things you

can out eat. You can’t out eat it. It’s great to eat. healthy. It’s great to avoid toxins.

It’s great to do all of these things, they’re just great things to do. But when

you’ve tried all these things, you just can’t outrun this. And I think that’s so important for

women to hear because we beat ourselves up so much and we feel ashamed if we’ve

gained weight or, you know, the hair’s falling out, everything, brain fog. And then you also,

you know, you’ve brought up several times, the joint pain, so many different things that can happen

with the thyroid issues. And one other thing, since I am on a GLP-1, you do address that in the

book as well. And could you talk about how the GLP-1s and the thyroid kind of combine or how that

works together?

Dr. Amie: Yeah. Absolutely. So GLP-1s,

fascinating. One of the most fascinating medications of our lifetime,

really.

It’s miraculous in some instances where we are really seeing massive changes in people.

And then we have the celebrities that are gone too far and they’re losing their muscle. I mean,

it’s a crazy med. But what we’re seeing with the thyroid, when it’s done properly,

and I’m going to highlight when it’s done properly, because that’s the important piece here.

When you’re working with someone that knows what they’re doing with the GLP-1 and with your thyroid

medication, the two can be synergistic and work with each other.

It’s a beautiful thing. Because when you microdose a GLP-1, you are lowering inflammation.

Sometimes we do see a decrease in antibodies. And then obviously we are,

even at a microdose, we’re still impacting the glucose and insulin signaling.

So we’re lowering that insulin resistance. We’re becoming more insulin sensitive.

We’re balancing our glucose. So we’re not having these erratic wild ups and downs with our blood

sugar. And with that, what we’re seeing in the thyroid is a possible reduction in the amount of

thyroid hormone that you need. So what I mean by that, I’ll take myself as an example because I use

myself as an example in the book. I shared already that I am a T3 only candidate.

So I take T3 only, the active thyroid hormone. And I took a pretty hefty dose.

I mean, I was on 75 micrograms twice a day, but hey, listen, that’s what my body needed to be

optimized. I don’t care. But the reality of T3 is that it will burn both muscle and fat.

It doesn’t differentiate. Now, T2 that we can talk about,

that only burns fat, but T3 is going to do both. So, and I know you ladies talk about this a ton.

As we age, we need to protect our muscle. There’s something called sarcopenia that happens where we

start losing our beautiful, precious muscle, our organ of longevity. We can’t do that.

We need to protect our muscle. So I started thinking, I’m like, okay, if I can decrease

inflammation and get my itty bitty thyroid or whatever that’s left of it to work a little bit

better, maybe I can reduce my T3 dose. Maybe. So I started to try.

Now I was on a microdose for a good year. And then I pulled back on the T3 at the one dose because

I split dose my T3. I dropped 25 micrograms out and I held there like,

okay, what’s happening? All right, I’m good. I’m good. I didn’t go hypo. This is good. And then

maybe three to six months later, I tried to pull another 25 microgram dose out.

So in total, I pulled down my T3 dosing by 50 micrograms.

I am now on a total of 100 micrograms. And that has allowed me to protect a little bit more of my

muscle. And I have noticed it too. I’ve noticed that I have more shape, more definition,

just a little bit more protection of my muscle. So yes, a GLP can reduce

the amount of thyroid hormone that you need. But the flip side, which I also share in the book,

for anyone that’s out there where your GLP-1 is not working, whether you’re on it because you want

to lose 10 to 20 pounds or whether you’re on it because you’re a type 2 diabetic and you’re taking

a GLP-1 and you’re like, why is everybody talking about this? It’s not working for me at all.

Check your thyroid. Because I share a very impactful story. I mean, this one punched me right

between the eyes. We had this beautiful patient come in. She was full-blown type 2 diabetic.

She was on a prescribed max dose of a GLP-1 for a year and a half.

Did nothing. She didn’t lose weight. Her A1C was an 11.9.

For goodness sake, it was horrible. It didn’t drop. It wouldn’t drop. Well,

we checked her thyroid because, of course, she’s been diagnosed with hypothyroidism for the last 15

years. And guess what she’s taking? T4 only. And guess what number was never tested on her labs?

Reverse T3. So her body, when we did her thyroid labs,

her body was literally in this bear in the winter in a cave.

hibernation mode. I mean it wasn’t doing anything and it was because of that T4 only regimen that

drove up her reverse T3, locked her body down and not even a GLP-1, like the be all end all of

medications right now, right we got celebrities doing multi-level marketing programs with GLP.

Didn’t work. It didn’t work until we put her on the right thyroid treatment,

until we optimized her thyroid, then all of a sudden GLP-1 is working.

We’re watching her A1C. It’s dropping. It’s dropping. It’s dropping.

Eventually, her type 2 diabetes was reversed. Her A1C went to a 5.4.

She lost 150 pounds. Finally!  And I mean, she’s like another version of herself right now,

but that is how impactful GLP-1s and the thyroid,

 they play together. If one isn’t working, the other one’s not going to work either.

Colleen: Okay. So that’s interesting. But when a patient comes in, are these tests that she,

you know, for T3, reverse T3, are they covered by insurance? Are these going to be out of pocket

tests?

Dr. Amie: They are covered. And that is why my rule is if your doctor says no to testing,

it’s time to get a new doctor because it’s no money out of their pocket.

Even if you have craptastic insurance, your doctor should say to you,

hey, Sally, this reverse T3, you know, it’s going to be like $50. It’s not covered by your

insurance. You should be able to say, okay, thanks for letting me know. I’ll pay out of pocket.

Or you should be able to go and explore and buy one from Alta Labs for $19.

You know, but pay out of pocket for your labs then on these order your own lab test sites.

But if your doctor just flat out says no and doesn’t give you a reason,

has nothing to do with your insurance, it means that they don’t know how to interpret the test.

Colleen: Dr. Amie, thank you so much for coming on the show today, The Thyroid Fix. Congratulations on the

book. I think it’s going to help a lot of women. And one last question. Men have thyroids.

Why don’t they have problems?

Dr. Amie: Well, you know, men do. I have a special place in my heart for the man that has a thyroid problem

because, you know, we’re always going to see his testosterone in the toilet. You know that?

But it’s more rare. Testosterone my second favorite hormone. It provides this layer of protection

against autoimmunity and when we look at, like I said earlier hypothyroidism 95% of autoimmune is

hashimoto’s well these guys have this beautiful testosterone armor that really lowers their risk of

all autoimmune conditions. Women get hit harder. So we have the fluctuating hormones,

yay. And we just naturally have lower testosterone than men do. I mean, we just do.

So we have a lower protective layer than the guys do.

Colleen: Oh,

lucky us.

Bridgett:  I did have a cousin that had thyroid cancer and he

actually passed away from it.

Dr. Amie: Yeah. Which is so rare. Right.

It’s treatable, right?

Bridgett: Yes. And he went through all the things, you know, the radiation that you

talk about, everything. it just came back and it spread, you know, to his lungs and yeah.

So it’s so, it’s so rare, but it does happen, but you really don’t hear a lot about the thyroid

issues that men have. So that was a, that was really well explained. Thank you so much for that.

Colleen: Thank you so much for coming on the show. We appreciate it. We’ll make sure to have the link to the

book in our show notes and best of luck. Thank you, Dr. Amie.

Dr. Amie:  Oh, thank you ladies for all you’re doing.