The Thyroid: Cure, Cause, or Symptom?

Thyroid Problems don’t Happen Without A Reason.

The thyroid slows down in response to a threat. What is slowing down your thyroid?

Hypothyroidism is an underactive thyroid gland. The thyroid gland can’t make enough thyroid hormone to keep the body running normally. People are hypothyroid if they have too little thyroid hormone in the blood.

https://www.thyroid.org/hypothyroidism/

Millions are searching for answers to their thyroid troubles. But hypothyroidism doesn’t have to be a life-long illness. You can improve how you feel, starting today.

Let’s establish fundamentals, eradicate big mistakes, & find what’s holding you back.

Understand the Thyroid

1

What The Thyroid Does

The Thyroid Regulates Metabolism

The thyroid creates thyroid hormone, which signals the body to maintain the metabolism.

  • A fast metabolism keeps digestion fast, uses nutrients faster, and extracts more energy from food.
  • When the metabolism is moving too fast, it is called hyperthyroidism. Hyper– means “too much.”
  • When the metabolism is too slow, it is called hypothyroidism. Hypo– means “not enough.”

In healthy thyroid function, the correct amount of thyroid hormones are produced, and this will be observable by testing that the body has healthy blood levels of thyroid hormones.

Both hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism have serious risks to long-term health outcomes.

Hypothyroidism; Not Enough Thyroid Hormone

A slow metabolism is a protective measure, protecting the body from the potential dangers of using up scarce nutrients too quickly.

Hypothyroidism appears to happen in these common scenarios:

  • In times of famine (when nutrients are scarce)
  • When gut health is poor (nutrients also are scarce)
  • Infection

Thyroid function will slow when the body is under significant attack from pathogens (viruses, fungi, and bacteria).

Immunodeficiency allows pathogenic activity to increase. A suppressed immune system has many causes: nutritional, digestive, circadian, infectious, and stress-related. When the immune system is impaired, the metabolism slows.

Gut health is almost always lacking in immunodeficiency, both as a potential cause and typical symptom. The gut is — and should be — home to countless species of microbial life — and these microbes become more pathogenic when the immune system is weakened.

Treating hypothyroidism without addressing the root causes may result in inferior outcomes, especially when compared to treating the problem holistically.

To overfocus on thyroid performance while ignoring potential root causes of hypothyroidism is to miss an opportunity for a more full recovery.

2

Hypothyroid Symptoms

What does it feel like to be “hypothyroid?”

Hypothyroidism presents with a litany of common symptoms that are clearly recognizable.

Symptoms Of Hypothyroidism

  • Fatigue
  • Low Body Temperature
  • Brain Fog
  • Poor Sleep
  • Sluggish Digestion
  • Weight Gain
  • Constipation
  • Hoarse Voice
  • Slow Pulse
  • Hair Thinning
  • Depression
  • Stiff, Achey Muscles

A primary symptom of hypothyroidism is a low body temperature.

In hypothyroidism, the body — and especially extremities — will feel noticeably cold. Everyone else may feel warm in a room, but a hypothyroid patient will feel cold.

By contrast, a hyperthyroid patient will feel warmer than others in a room.

Persistent fatigue that does not improve with adequate rest is a clear symptom of hypothyroidism.

Brain fog is incredibly common in hypothyroidism, as chronically elevated cortisol and inflammation work against brain function.

Insomnia is pervasive when the thyroid slows. Sleep and rest both require adequate energy supply. In hypothyroidism, energy metabolism is weakened and sleep, therefore, suffers.

Depression is also a tell-tale signal that the thyroid is depressed. For the mind to work optimally, it needs adequate thyroid function to help recruit and deliver energy to the brain. Without adequate energy, the brain struggles to balance its neurochemistry. Insomnia always worsens brain function.

Gut health, too, also suffers — and plays a major role in negative mental health outcomes during chronic illness.

3

The Thyroid Slows Down For A Reason

Cause / Effect

Hypothyroidism is often discussed — even by experts — as if the thyroid slows down for no reason at all.

There Is Always A Cause

It’s important to realize that the thyroid always slows down for a reason. There is always a cause for every effect.

Let’s examine the causes of hypothyroidism.

4

Stress

Stress Suppresses Thyroid Function

Ray Peat talks about “stress” as a suppressor of the thyroid — and it clearly is.

It’s not acute stress that causes hypothyroidism in a healthy person, but rather when the stress is chronic, or permanent.

When the body perceives ongoing stress, it recognizes there’s a threat.

The stress response is to release energy to optimize performance — so the temporary threat can be escaped.

When stress becomes persistent, however, the body has overextended itself, releasing its stores of energy for too long.

Over time, the body knows it must begin to conserve energy — prioritizing long-term survival over optimum performance.

This means the body adapts to chronic stress by becoming hypothyroid and lowering its energy metabolism to preserve energy and nutrients.

In hypothyroidism, even acute stressors become quite problematic — greatly suppressing thyroid function.

The stress response quickly uses up nutrients, hormones, and caloric energy. Gut health is harmed by persistent stress, and this makes it more difficult to absorb needed nutrients and calories for future challenges. As gut health falls, immunity worsens with stress, as well, leading to elevated pathogenic activity in the body. Nutrient depletion develops as a result of high energy demands and poor digestion.

In hypothyroidism, the body is dealing with all these challenges at once.

Stress, A Concept

Any challenge to the body can be denoted as “stress.” However, it’s not wise to label all stress uniformly — lest we begin to treat all problems with the same solutions.

For instance, biological stress can be classified in the following ways:

  • Infectious
  • Toxins
  • Lifestyle
  • Circadian
  • Nutritional
  • Dietary
  • Traumatic
  • Job-related
  • Exercise-related
  • Emotional
  • Spiritual
  • and more.

It’s smart to individually identify each source of stress rather than trying to generally combat “stress” with food, relaxation, and general stress avoidance — as is popular.

Thus, we identify the precise problems in play — in order to understand the best way to fix them.

Thinking of stress as a homogenous entity and then attempting to lower stress — with diet, individual nutrients, or hormones — can lead to subpar results, imbalances, and years of leaning in the wrong direction for healing.

5

Causes Of Hypothyroidism

  • Infections & pathogens
  • Environmental toxins
  • Nutrient deficiencies
  • Undereating
  • Unbalanced diets
  • Overexercise
  • Poor sleep habits
  • Poor gut health
  • Mold exposure
  • EMF exposure
  • Mental & emotional stress
  • Poor lifestyle choices

Low-carb diets are often a contributor to hypothyroidism. This is especially true in unhealthy environments, heavy exercise, intense work requirements, and poor sleep habits.

Bad sleep habits can be quickly destructive to thyroid health, especially when combined with any other form of stress.

Many types of stress can build up over time, each pulling downward on the metabolism.

READ MORE: What Is Illness?
6

Pathogenic Load

The body’s “pathogenic load” is an important component of most chronic illness, including hypothyroidism. 

The body can harbor various viruses, fungi, and bacteria throughout the body in levels undetectable by current tests, yet high enough to cause ongoing problems.

Immunodeficiency is often the result of hypothyroidism, but it also seems to be a premier cause of it, as well.

When immunity is low, the body only partially fends off invaders, but not well enough to keep the pathogen at bay.  The chronic inflammation and immune response (thyroid hormone antibodies) can make cells resistant to nutrients and even thyroid-stimulating hormones, themselves. 

Pathogens also impair the absorption of thyroid hormone from the gut.

In addressing thyroid function, it’s important to continually work to restore immunity against these pathogens — whether they be viral, fungal, or bacterial.

The Low-Grade Infection

Look at the difference between acute bronchitis and chronic bronchitis. 

Bronchitis is merely inflammation of the throat as a result of an infection. 

When acute, it resolves itself within days, possibly a couple of weeks.  When chronic, it persists for months or even years — the body is unable to fend off the invader in the throat.

Sufferers may have a persistent cough or sore throat that they “just can’t kick.”

Unfortunately, this type of low-grade infection can happen anywhere in the body — with symptoms that don’t always present as clearly as a cough.

Read more about pathogens & your health…
(From the “5 Paths To Health”).

In chronic infections like this, doctors are often unable to identify the strain of bacteria, virus, or fungus causing the issue.  They may struggle to identify where in the body the problem is located, even with ample testing.

The gut is a main hub for microbial activity, as are other moist surfaces: the mouth, nose, skin, and vagina.

Your Body’s Microbiome

We must understand the body’s entire microbiome — in the gut, mouth, nose, ears, skin, vagina, and more — in order to combat ongoing infections.

The body can have multiple low-grade infections (or “co-infections”) that don’t clearly produce medical symptoms — until they manifest as autoimmune disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, sluggish digestion, hypothyroidism, et al.  

As the immune system slows down, the rate of infection rises — as does the rate of hypothyroidism (which, in return, lowers immune function further and further).

READ MORE: Your Mouth Health

The pernicious cycle of depressed immunity and suppressed thyroid function often worsens while either is left unaddressed. 

7

The Gut

Poor gut health is extremely common in hypothyroidism — as both an effect and a cause.

Often referred to as “the seat of health,” the gut is responsible for:

  • Nutrient absorption
  • Toxin-removal
  • Hormone balance
  • Brain chemistry
  • 70% of your immune system

Stress directly harms the gut microbiome. The populations of microbes in the gut change quickly in response to stress.

Chronic, mild stress has the ability to more permanently alter species in the gut.

Stress also activates mast cells in the gut, causing “leaky gut” syndrome, a histamine/immune response, and a runaway stress response. Mast cell activation seems to be directly linked to thyroid function.

When the microbiome becomes less healthy, the body will also commonly begin to develop nutritional deficiencies.  Toxins will begin to build up in the body. Immunity is compromised over time when the microbiome suffers. Brain chemistry becomes altered.

For a very select few, improving gut health is as simple as taking thyroid hormone and possibly eating a less irritating, pro-thyroid diet. Unfortunately, this is rare. Improving gut health usually involves more than taking thyroid hormones and eating a pro-thyroid diet (some of which can make gut health worse).

Gut health and hypothyroidism go hand in hand. Here’s how:

The Gut Affects Hypothyroidism

Poor Nutrient Absorption

Your gut’s main function is to allow nutrients into the body.  As gut health worsens, nutrient absorption begins to fail.

Rising Toxicity

As gut health weakens, your body’s toxicity will rise, increasing nutrient requirements and blunting the absorption of nutrients into cells. Hormone levels (and balance) will begin to falter.

Falling Immunity

As your immunity weakens, pathogenic load will rise. More pathogens means ever-increasing inflammation and rising toxicity.

Brain Chemistry

The gut also controls brain chemicals, directly sending neurotransmitters (which are often made by microbes in the gut) to the brain. These chemicals can tell the brain what foods to eat or make you feel tired, confused, or even emotional. These chemicals can slow the thyroid further and even interfere with sleep.

The thyroid needs high nutrient supply, and low toxicity, inflammation, and pathogenic load to function properly.

When gut health is strong, acute stress does not suppress thyroid function very much, if at all. The gut is able to absorb nutrients, toxins are easily removed, and hormones are produced.

When the aforementioned four gut functions aren’t working properly, the thyroid will slow down the metabolism to preserve precious energy and nutrients. When gut health is poor, even the smallest of stressors can present a serious challenge for the body to overcome.

What Causes Gut Health to Decline?

Bad Habits

Destructive habits are common in modern life, and may include the following:

  • Bad circadian rhythms
  • Poor sunlight exposure
  • Restrictive diets
  • Poor hygiene
  • Sedentarism
  • Stressful lifestyle

Unhealthy Environment

Environmental toxins can directly suppress gut and thyroid function. Sick building syndrome is very real.

A common problem in buildings is mold.  In fact, it’s becoming quite an epidemic around the world. American buildings are built with methods and materials that encourage mold growth. Air conditioning systems tend to encourage fungal growth when not aggressively maintained every six months.

EMF impacts on thyroid health, causing blood sugar to become unstable, worsen gut health, and more.

Sick people tend to stay indoors… in the Very buildings that contributed to the illness.

Spiritual & Psychological Health

Spiritual & psychological health are both important components of overcoming challenges as well. 

If we are not taught how to process difficulties, we often internalize — or trap — our emotions and stress in such a way that causes the digestive system to shut down. 

The gut-brain connection is remarkably powerful — each affects the other. When difficult experiences are not processed and released, the digestive and gut functions respond to the brain’s emotional distress by locking up. Blood flow is restricted to the area.

Over time, long-term problems develop for the digestive system — as it responds to a perpetual fight-or-flight state in the brain.

8

Undereating

A Common Cause Of Hypothyroidism

When the body expects to receive too-little food, it tends to enter “starvation mode.”

Starvation mode becomes more likely under periods of high stress, when the body needs extra fuel to combat the stress.

This established fact has led many to argue that simply “eating more” (or “eating a lot”) will rekindle the metabolic flame. While there is truth to the frequent necessity to increase caloric intake — sometimes by a lot — it may not always be possible or simple to “eat your way” back to health, especially if undereating was accompanied by other problems (like a moldy house, nutritional imbalances, or emotional distress).

9

How Do We Recover?

Recovering from hypothyroidism means understanding what’s most important.

Unfortunately, a large majority of health advice concerning hypothyroidism is only helpful in theory — even when it comes from respected medical figures, alternative leaders, and rogue PhD’s.

When these big mistakes are made, progress can stall out — for month or years.

Unfortunately for many, it’s common to get somewhat lost in the “world of hypothyroidism,” and fail to see the larger picture of your health.

On the bright side, when big mistakes are avoided and a proper foundation is built, chances of recovery improve dramatically.

Pro-Thyroid Diet

Correct any deficiencies in the diet. Balance macros, eat enough calories, and choose mostly pro-thyroid foods.

Habits & Hacks

Second, start working on habits:  Sleep, light cycles, movement, hygiene.

Gut + Nutrients

Third, start focusing on gut health and nutritional balance.  Make sure both are improving every day. A healthy gut both detoxifies and absorbs nutrition — both necessary steps for metabolic health.

Environment

Finally, get clear of excessive environmental toxins, whether mold or EMF, chemicals or air pollution, or family and interpersonal drama.

10

Is Taking Thyroid Necessary?


Pathogens, gut health problems, circadian rhythm misalignment, environmental health risks — and other correctable impediments — often cause hypothyroidism.

Therefore, it’s only logical to address these matters prior to — or in conjunction with — taking traditional steps such as prescription thyroid hormone.

In fact, expansion of your focus can help you:

  • Require significantly less medication
  • Wean off medication
  • Avoid medication entirely

My Experiences

I have worked with many folks who were able to entirely go off prescription thyroid medication while following these steps.

Personally, I was able to improve all of my severe hypothyroid symptoms without the use of thyroid medication.

Already on thyroid medication? Don’t stop right away. Have a conversation with your doctor, and develop a plan to address the root causes of your hypothyroidism. Perhaps exploring these other areas will make your hypothyroid journey much easier.

Thyroid Health: Other Areas Of Emphasis

Infrared light and sunlight directly stimulate the thyroid naturally. Getting lots of infrared light can replace some or all of thyroid medication’s effect, while giving you more benefits than the medication alone. 

If gut health is poor, boosting the metabolism may not be the best approach — the gut won’t be able to absorb the nutrients you need. On the other hand, improved gut health can directly improvement the health of your thyroid.

Speeding the metabolism may be a questionable approach if you spend time in a sick building, due to the serious negative effects a sick building can have on gut health, hormones, inflammation, and poor sleep.

Proper nutrition (and balance) over the course of several months can do wonders for thyroid function (and gut health, sleep, and immunity).  

Conversely — mistakes made through unbalanced nutritional supplementation can dramatically force you into a “sick” state, hypo- or otherwise. 

Your location can greatly impact your thyroid — the quality of sunlight you get, the health of your buildings, local industry and waste-processing plants, and radio or wireless towers all can play a role in the health of your home or work. The health of your bedroom and living areas are also important, here.

A consistently great night’s sleep is critical to restoring thyroid health.  It’s virtually impossible to make big steps toward healing while going to bed late — or making other big mistakes that bring down your sleep quality.

11

The Goal

  • Recover in a balanced, sustainable way.
  • Establish fundamentals, eradicate big mistakes, and discover what’s holding you back.

This is how we heal: By taking steps that don’t have to be abandoned later.

Establish Fundamentals

Hard work and a laser focus often prove fruitless — if your foundation is not rock-solid.

Your fundamentals are the basic concepts you deem most important in your health strategy.

Eradicate Big Mistakes

Big mistakes and oversights keep you in a rut, searching for the wrong solutions that aren’t the answer — maybe even extreme solutions that will only push you further from success.

Discover What’s Holding You Back

Unfortunately, tunnel vision keeps many from realizing a bigger story occurring behind the hypothyroidism.

This is precisely what happened to me. I spent years hyper-focusing on food, micromanaging my metabolism — and I didn’t see why micromanaging became so necessary in the first place.

Undiscovered factors were holding me back, making every effort more difficult — while many endeavors only made things worse, created deeper imbalances — and I couldn’t even tell the difference.

When I expanded my vision of health, I finally saw what was holding me back — and that’s when I streamlined my recovery.

…and so can you.

A wise approach to healing:

  • Values balance
  • Saves you time, effort, and money
  • Promotes a deep, sustainable recovery

This completes ‘Understand Thyroid.’
To continue, select ‘Pro-Thyroid Diet.’


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