If your doctor has told you your thyroid looks fine, but you don't feel fine, this episode is for you. What's up? Welcome back to Talking Nutrition. I know we've been a little on and off with our episodes, but we're back, okay? I promise you that one. Weekly from here on out, no more excuses, no more nothing. I will say this, there's been a lot going on. I actually moved a couple of days ago at the time of this recording, but now that I'm all good, got my own spot, we're just ready to lock in, okay? So I do promise you, rest of this year, weekly episodes, okay? If there's any week where you open your Spotify and there's not an episode for you to listen, I want you to call me out on that, okay? But I'm also going to challenge you here to check every single week, okay? And to stay with us, all right? We're diving deeper into thyroid right now. Why is that? To be quite honest with you, I was talking about thyroid in a podcast, sorry, in a post of mine, okay, on Instagram, Instagram Reel, that really blew up in a way, because I'm speaking to things that people are really struggling with, you know what I mean? But I'm not sure if you run into this yourself too, I'm not sure how often you post on social media, with what purpose, but as a, I don't really see myself as a content creator, but you know, it's part of what I do, it's part of how I promote my business and how I showcase my clients' stories and transformations and the amazing results they get, and it's also obviously a way for me to help others, right? Because that's one thing I will say, okay? It's also not that I'm just doing this podcast to promote my business, or just to sell my coaching. And as you always know, the links are always in the show notes, I don't have to tell you that, you've been here for a long time, okay? But that'd be something else to let you tell you, why am I coaching? Like every single episode, I think you'd be going by two episodes, you know what I mean? But all joking aside, like it's also to pay it forward, okay? When it was 2020, sorry, 2012, not 20, 2012, I was overweight myself, and this is before social media blew up. I think Instagram started in 2012, or just about, and definitely wasn't like, we were taking photos of our meals, you know what I mean? Excuse me. And the misinformation, I will say, was there already, you know what I mean? It's not that much has changed. I think the exposure of most people these days to misinformation is bigger, right? I mean, we all do this, we're scrolling and left and right, and you know, we're wasting a lot of time on social media, but that's another episode for another time. Back then, the misinformation and just the misunderstanding of certain, you know, how it really works, okay, was definitely there already. But it was in the form of blogs, forums, your articles, obviously, I mean, mainstream magazines are still full of it right now. Do not go there, right? Netflix documentaries, or just documentaries in general, I remember in 2012, like, illegally downloading certain ones. I forgot what they were called, but very dogmatic, right? Very much, hey, this is the way in any specific diet, okay? I watched a few of those. And I tried some of those, and it never lasted, it never sucked. So I've lived the frustration of, I mean, I was just about 30 kilos overweight at the time, okay? Just about, what is that, like 60 pounds or so? Let's say 25, 30 kilos. At my worst, it was 30 kilos, okay? So that's 60, 65 pounds. I've lived the struggle, the experience of really wanting to make a change, but just not knowing what to do, where to begin. I didn't have the role models in my life at that point until I signed up with the CrossFit gym, and I might have told you about this already, but my CrossFit coach back in, I want to say this was 2013. When he started to teach me nutrition, then it clicked, you know what I mean? But it was all very basic. But all I'm trying to say is, I'm trying to put it forward here, okay? I'm trying to put it forward by providing accurate research-backed information. I try to showcase my client stories and transformations to inspire you, but also to help you with actionable steps to take, okay? And the longer I've coached, the more hypothyroid cases I've gotten, okay? Now, these are not people who come to me who say, hey, I have hypothyroidism or I have Hashimoto's and help me heal or fix it. No, these are people who really want to get healthy and lose weight, okay? But they are struggling with hypothyroidism, and that actually makes that whole conversation very difficult. Because what you'll learn also in this episode, doctors will not test for the right labs. You might be put on T4 medication, and that's it, okay? You might have heard about gluten-free and dairy, and we'll touch on Hashimoto's, which we will do a dedicated episode to Hashimoto's, which is an autoimmune condition, just so you know, okay, that maybe you're listening to this and you have hypothyroidism, okay? What you've been told, check your TPOAB. I'm going to say that right away, okay? Because most cases, about 90% of Hashimoto's, sorry, of hypothyroidism are Hashimoto's cases, okay? So it's not really the thyroid in that case that is the issue. It's actually the immune system attacking the thyroid, scarring the thyroid, and then it impacts that production, okay? But we'll dive into thyroid today. Anyway, long story short, I put out content to educate you, to help you. Because in all reality, most people who watch my posts or read my posts on Instagram will never become a client. Most people on my newsletter will never become a client. Most people listening to this podcast will never become a client. Why do I then still show up? And I know podcasts, we've not done as much. But why do I still show up for you pretty much free content? Like I said, because I've lived it. I've lived the frustration of really wanting to make a change. I already quit smoking that year. And as I quit smoking, I was like, I'll just quit drinking too. But that weight loss, that was the hard part. Or at least I thought so because I didn't have the knowledge. I didn't have the habits and skills that I was still to learn, okay? And especially when it comes to thyroid stuff, it becomes a bit more complicated, yet it's still pretty simple, to be honest with you, okay? There are steps you can take to improve things. Now, with autoimmune, it's all about how long has it been going on, how long has your immune system attacked your thyroid, how scarred is your thyroid, okay? It might have been impacted, you know, for life, to where you would need, you know, a thyroid medication to supplement what your thyroid is not producing. But in other cases, if it's pretty early on, then you can, you know, mitigate the damage, okay? And I don't like to use the word damage, but in this case, I mean, it is pretty much irreversible, okay? So when you have Hashis and your immune system continues to attack the thyroid, it does get to a point where it's kind of beyond repair, okay? So I don't love this whole term of damage, but that is kind of what happens, and with the thyroid specifically, other organs are a little bit better in healing itself over time, okay? The thyroid doesn't do that as well. So it's one of those where we'd rather catch it early, and I'm going to show you how to, even if you don't have an autoimmune. Another reason being, even if the thyroid is scarred beyond repair, if the immune system is not addressed in case of an autoimmune condition, this may turn into the second, into the third, into the, like, it keeps going, because the immune system is never kept in check. There's a reason that immune system is firing, okay? But, this is a very long intro already. Look, I put out content, I put up a reel, discussing labs. And I swear, like, more than half of the comments were all negative. I want to see your credentials. This is illegal. I hope you end up in court. What you're doing is illegal. You're not a doctor. Look, no, I'm not a doctor. I'm not playing doctor either. But what I do, and I want to start this podcast really with a story of my client. What I do is educate my clients so they can go to their doctor with the right information. They can go to a specialist and ask the right questions. So, they get the medical care, not for me, but from their actual doctor or specialist, okay? They need and deserve store time. A client came to me without a menstrual cycle. She's early 30s, mid 30s. One and a half years of no menstrual cycle. She was not on the pill, okay? So, coming off of the pill, you would expect your natural cycle to come back. That was not the case. Now, we will probably do an episode on this to where, hey, if you're trying to come off of hormonal birth control, there's actually specific strategies you can, or steps you can take, okay, to support your body, to kind of, like, pick up your own production, again, for your hormones, but it's a different story. But in her case, it didn't come back. So, a year and a half with no menstrual cycle. I told her, well, look, some people may then call you, you know, menopausal. But that early, there's usually a reason for it. A lot of times, this comes from under eating, overtraining, right? A lot of stress. Micronutrient deficiencies, especially when people have a history of doing a lot of cardio, you know, cutting carbs, and, you know, really that high energy output with a low energy intake, right? Food intake. That's usually where these kind of things can happen, okay? So, you know, it always goes back to nutritional lifestyle in most cases, at least for what you can do about it, okay? But it can also be the root cause, okay? And stress is a big one, also when it comes to thyroid, okay? But she had no cycle for a long time. She had all the symptoms that I know are, you know, indicative, let's say, of hypothyroidism. Because I'm going to tell my clients, too, hey, I'm not here to diagnose anything. I'm not here to treat anything. That's your doctor's job. I'm going to help you with the nutritional lifestyle. I'm going to help you manage stress. I'm going to help you sleep better. I'm going to help you eat better, okay? That is what I do. So, by no means am I playing doctor here, okay? As much as these, I mean, you should, I mean, anyway, if you want, message me on Instagram, I'll show you, but it's fucking funny, too. These people are just trying to rip me away, you know? But hey, I also don't care. These people also don't know how I work with my clients and how their doctors are taking care of that part, okay? It's just trolls, really. People who spend their day scrolling social media, leaving negative comments. And if I talk to some of my peers, it can actually be a lot worse, okay? My friends have been called meth heads and, you know, crazy shit, okay? Anyway, back to the story. So, my client didn't have a menstrual cycle for a year and a half. And I told her, look, there's got to be a reason for it. We've pushed maintenance calories for a long time. We didn't have her diet for a while, okay? So, we focused on food quality. We managed her stress. We did look at her Dutch test. And what I did see was her cortisol production was low and her cortisol clearance was also low, cortisol clearance rate, okay? And usually when you do a Dutch test, right, you are looking at your adrenals, you're looking at your sex hormones, but you can find out more. And this is really cool, okay? Or very helpful, maybe not cool, but I saw her cortisol production being low and her cortisol clearance rate being low. Now, I know that this could be indicative of hypothyroidism. Now, this is where you want to pay attention, okay? This is why I do what I do, why I educate people. I told my client, when was the last time you had serum labs? When did you get your blood work last? She said, well, I can't really remember, right? So, it must have been at least years at the time. We didn't have them. Okay, no recent labs. You know what? In the meantime, check your body temperature, okay? So, she actually did order labs with her doctor. She checked her body temperature and it was very low, okay? And below a certain point where you look at your body temperature, okay, you can actually gauge, hey, is this just about where it should be or is it lower? And if it's lower, you want to pay attention to it, okay? It has to do with your metabolic rate. One way your body expends energy, okay, is through body temperature, okay? So, her body temperatures were low. So, I said, hey, look, let's keep tracking this for a little while, see if it goes up and, you know, with ovulation if it happens because that's another great way, by the way, to see if you're ovulating for about two weeks, body temperature should be pretty stable. The second half of your menstrual cycle, if it's there, would be slightly higher. So, you're going to see a bump here. That's a metabolic increase during a cycle after ovulation, okay? Because when progesterone bumps up, that's usually where you see that happen. So, it would go up for two weeks and drop again for two weeks and then kind of repeat. But her stayed down. So, we knew she was not ovulating. We also knew that her body temperature was lower than ideal. So, in the meantime, she got her labs and then we checked and we checked a few things and, you know, she got the message, hey, everything looks normal. But then I said, you know what? Like, I still, I don't trust it because as for her thyroid markers, and I knew because her cortisol production and clearance rate were low, I knew we had to look in the thyroid just to, even if it's just to rule it out, okay? So, I said, hey, okay, so they say it looks normal, but we're only seeing TSH here. All right, so that doesn't really say shit. And I'm going to explain more in detail in a sec, but we only have TSH here. This is only the signal from your brain to the thyroid, hey, we need to produce thyroid hormone. But that looked pretty normal, all right? We didn't have her free T4, free T3. There was no reverse T3, which I will say most doctors will attest, okay? So, I'm not even expecting it these days, unless we go the private route where you can order a thyroid panel that you would want. But no TPOAB, which is a big marker when it comes to Hashimoto's, okay? And then TGAB is very helpful, too. It's another autoimmune marker. But we didn't have those. So, I said, look, like, I really think it'd be worth going back. I really think it's going to be worth going back. And even if you only check your thyroid, and she actually checked, I think she ended up for that second time she went back for a very small panel. She got her thyroid markers and then a few sex hormone markers, okay? I think it was LH, FSH, estradiol, and progesterone. No, sex hormones were in the tank. But now we had her thyroid panel, a proper thyroid panel. And guess what we found? T4 was low, which is what your thyroid glands produce, okay? T3 was low, which is really what makes the metabolism work, let's say, okay? It's your metabolic gas pedal, let's just say. I'll repeat that in a sec. So, those two were low, and her TPOAB, right, which is an autoimmune marker where it basically indicates that the immune system is working over time and it's attacking the thyroid, okay? That was 220-something. So, now it all made sense. We're not even supposed to be looking into the sex hormone side of things here. We shouldn't spend a lot of time of, you know, like, trying to naturally support ovulation. Those are all great things. But it was the hypothyroidism that was down-regulating everything, okay, caused by Hashimoto's. Now it made sense, you see? And this is why it's very important. This is why I do what I do with my clients. And this is even a story I talked about in my post, in my reel, unless all I get is negative. But I'll tell you this, okay? Because, I mean, you might have seen my stories. I got a little, okay? Little triggers, I will admit. If it wasn't for me telling my client, track your body temperatures. And she also got the Dutch test, okay? If it wasn't for me saying, hey, when was the last time you got your labs, etc. She got her paddle. If it wasn't for me saying, hey, you got to go back to your doctor and ask for these markers. If that never happened, she didn't know that she had an autoimmune condition. Like, that's because no one asked these things, okay? That is why I educate. That is why I put out free content. I want you to understand these things so you can ask the right questions because we got to understand the medical system. The medical system is set up to treat disease. And that's totally great. I'm not against that. I think it's a great thing. We need a Western medicine. It's also not the end-all, be-all. But understand that doctors will start to medicate you when there's something wrong already. We're trying to get at it from more like a preventative standpoint, bringing it back to your lifestyle, your habits, your nutrition, your stress management, your sleep. So you can actually fucking do something about it, okay? But we got to understand that doctors, generally speaking, and it's okay, I do understand, but they will, generally speaking, not test a full panel and you might just miss a autoimmune condition. In this case, Hashimoto's, which means the immune system is attacking the thyroid, which down-regulates every process in your body. And if the immune system is not addressed, you may develop the next immune condition, autoimmune condition. And if that's not addressed, shit's just going to get worse. So if we do the right things by getting educated, we use these basic tools, even like, you know, a body temperature. You can do this at home. Really good gauge for your T3, by the way. You can start catching these things on time, okay? And then you can start to address it. Now, that was quite a bit of a long intro, because I see we're already 18 minutes in, but guess what? It's very important to not just list a bunch of markers here and give you like the, do this and that. No, we got to understand why this shit is so important. I want you to listen to this stuff and really think, oh shit, okay. No, I need to take my own health into my own hands. I need to take that responsibility and ask the right questions. I need to get educated. And it doesn't mean that everyone needs to start studying this shit, but work with someone. Like, if you're unhealthy, you're stuck, you're like, work with someone who can educate you on this. Could be me. I have many great peers, okay? If you ever have any questions, you just hit me up on Instagram. If you want to learn more about coaching, hit me up. Totally happy to chat. I don't just sell anyone into my coaching program. Either way, we do a call, okay? And if I'm, like, if you and me don't resonate, I know a whole lot of great practitioners who will be happy to get on a call with you. So you know what? Like, I'm also just here to help. That's the most important thing. If you want to coach me, great. If you need help from someone else, amazing. I know some of the best in the space. And guess what? If you want to figure it out by yourself, I still got some free resources, too, for you. I just put out a couple days ago a free thyroid and Hashimoto's deep dive on my website right now. And I will link it in the show notes, too. The thyroid decoder, okay? There's a symptoms quiz in there. There's a full breakdown of the labs, understanding your labs, even understanding certain trends. Hey, this is high, this is low, et cetera. What does that really mean? Hashimoto's, understanding that there's three levers to it, okay? The three legs, the three-legged stool, they call it, okay? Three factors, okay? But look, like, you got to make sure that if you are dealing with some type of health issues, and maybe you're just overweight or we're dealing with things like PMOS, and there's so many conditions that are reversible, okay? I have two clients who put their autoimmune in remission. One was Hashimoto's, right, right now, and one had ulcerative colitis. And especially the one with ulcerative colitis, like, he went to his doctor and they were, they couldn't believe it. They're like, what are you doing? Like, keep doing what you're doing, because he put it in remission. Half a year ago, his numbers were through the roof. For years, he was going from one medication to the next. Antihistamine, immune suppressant, anti- inflammatory medications, and it only got worse. Colonoscopy after colonoscopy, he'll be rolling around on the floor, on the bathroom floor, in pain, and waiting for it to go over, okay? Run into the bathroom six plus times a day, diarrhea every single day. That's no way to live. He's literally below the criteria, the reference range now, you know what I mean? Of like, hey, you have ulcerative colitis. He's good now, which is crazy. And it's all through nutrition and lifestyle, the right strategies and basic supplementation, making sure that we heal from the inside out, okay? And it's not to say that medications are, you know, like, we should never get on. No, of course not. But I think we need to use medications when we really need to. And I think we can do a whole lot ourselves through nutrition and lifestyle and food and all this great stuff, you know, like, there's so much you can do in the kitchen. There's so much you can do about just sleeping a little bit more, actively managing your stress. And it's really, to be honest with you, the main thing I want to teach you in this, I was going to say class, but this episode, all right? You have the power in you. You have the ability to fix these kind of things. Put them in remission. Reverse these things. And look, even if you're, in quotes, just overweight, it actually becomes even easier. Now, I'm not going to say the lifestyle change, the behavior change is easy by definition, okay? But I'm telling you, there's things you can do. You can do it by yourself. You can do it with guidance, which you can absolutely fix your current state. Now, let's dive into what normal actually means on labs, okay? Look, understand there's a difference between a general threshold, a big range, like, with, for example, TSH, I believe, like, anywhere from, like, zero point something up to, like, four and a half. Like, a general range based on people young and old and unhealthy population and everyone included, an optimal, okay? Because your TSH, which is the signal from the brain to the thyroid, hey, we need to produce thyroid hormone, okay? If that's a 3.5, well, they would still consider that normal. If I see a 3.5, I'm like, hey, it's not alarming yet. I want to see T4, T3. But it sounds like the body is, or the brain is, is calling out the thyroid a little bit more than it should have to, to produce sufficient thyroid hormone, okay? So, I like between a 1 and 2 that's generally considered the functionally optimal range for TSH. But even then, I'm going to tell you this, TSH, I don't love going off of it because a lot of times it's a T4, T3 conversion issue, okay? A lot of times it's Hashimoto's. So, the TSH is really kind of like a, almost like a lagging metric and it's helpful to have, but I wouldn't put any value on it. And here's the crazy thing. A lot of thyroid cases are just judged based on TSH. I know multiple doctors, okay? And I'll bring some on this podcast too. And I have these conversations with them because I'm legit very curious, okay? So, I asked one of my friends, I was like, hey, when you went to medical school, okay? First of all, like how much did you guys dive into nutrition, a lifestyle? And she's like, nothing. Like basically, you know, like an hour or so into nutrition. So, really not that much. Which is crazy if you think about it because that's the stuff that gets us unhealthy combined with a certain lifestyle. And that's also stuff that can get you healthy, but okay. She's like, no, we're kind of just taught to diagnose based on certain ranges and give you a medication for it. And especially with thyroid stuff, and it's a really old school kind of way of addressing it. They would look at TSH and say, hey, how much is the brain calling the thyroid to produce thyroid hormone? And if it's a little too high, they're going to give you more T4 medication or going to get you started on T4 medication. Okay? Still understanding, that's not the full picture. We still need to convert that, which I'll explain in a sec. But not sick enough for medications is not the same as thriving. It's not the same as being healthy. Living long and just being resilient and, right? There's a big difference between feeling really fucking good on top of the world and just not being sick enough to get on medications or just being sick enough to, you know what I mean? So we need to look at this from an optimal standpoint, in my opinion, okay? Maybe not everyone is striving for optimal health. Maybe you just want to lose weight. But guess what? Once you start getting healthier, you'll feel it and you're going to be like, yo, I want to feel like this forever. Okay? And it's all possible. It's all possible. Now, here are the five thyroid markers I would want to see. If it's my call and I'm going to tell my clients, hey, you know, you told me that you've always had a slow metabolism. I'm like, okay, well, do you have your thyroid labs? Well, not really. Okay, well, then we can't assume we have a slow metabolism. Or, yeah, I got a checked ones and they said it was normal or whatever. Or I was told I have a slow metabolism. Look, I'm going to tell my clients, Sue, you don't just have a slow metabolism. It doesn't work that way. The metabolism is adaptive. It will speed up, it will slow down, depending on your lifestyle, your stressors in life, your nutrition, the energy that's coming in. Okay? The metabolism will up and down regulate itself to keep things in check because your body doesn't really want to gain or lose weight. It just wants to keep things kind of like stable at like a baseline level at what's called homeostasis. Okay? You don't just have a slow metabolism. You don't. You can speed up and slow down with time depending on the inputs. Okay? These inputs could be stressors, could be, right? Overeating, undereating, all these different things. All right? Now, in early stages, most of metabolic adaptation is really mostly like hunger signals and satiety and non-exercise activity. Okay? So, even if I were to be in a place where I've been dieting for a long time, my body will downregulate certain parts of your metabolism, your energy expenditure, and a big part is general movement. And you might not even notice it. Yes, sometimes you can catch that with step counts, but even like talking with your hands less or twitching, blinking less, those little things, your body is going to do its best to save energy by slowing down your caloric burn. On the other side, and this is why my clients respond so amazing after years of dieting, I feed them up. Well, guess what happens? Their metabolism picks up. Okay? And I will say this. Okay? Most clients don't come in metabolically adapted. But either way, I'm going to have them feed up. We're going to go to maintenance. We're going to make sure, hey, we're staying here. All right? We're going to make sure that we have a good amount of food coming in. We're getting your routines and habits in check. You're going to sleep. You're going to manage your stress. We're going to lift weights to build muscle. And we're going to create a starting point where you're actually functioning on what your body truly needs. Okay? That will then come with a higher energy output, which I really like. So when my clients are at maintenance, we're going to put calories so we can really start to crank. Okay? And that's why I see people respond way better. Okay? They have a better starting point instead of saying, you want to lose weight? Here's your 12-week fitness program. We don't do it at OCS. If you're here just to lose weight for 12 weeks, I'm not your coach. If you want to really change your life for long term, you want this to stick, we can talk. Okay? Link of the show. It's all joking aside, though. Look, the five thyroid markers that I would want to see in a client. So first of all, TSH, I will still ask for it. I mean, it's kind of like one of those we assume that it's going to be there, so might as well look at it. I like a 1 to 2, okay? Between 1 and 2 seems to be that optimal range. I think I'm just about at 1.9 or so currently. I would have to double check. Both my T4, T3 are exception, like at the top end of that range. Reverse T3 I didn't get in my panel. I'm going to try and get it next time. My TPO antibodies were, I mean, they're detectable. They were not high, but they were there. So I want to monitor that. This is what I want you to learn about labs. It's not just look at the number. It's within range. Boom, here you go. Okay, cool. It looks normal. Look, even if you get labs and they tell you it looks normal, you have to ask for the results, so you have them for your own records, okay? Or, okay, I'm not going to tell you what to do. I would really want to have them for my own records, and that's why we partnered with an amazing company in Norway called Amino, where you fill out your own health profile, and our clients get a big discount there as well. If you want to learn about that, if you're from Norway, you're listening to this, you're not my client, let me know. I'll give you the code as well. It's not publicly shared, though. It's for clients only. But as a listener, I can give you that. But you fill out your health profile, your habits and everything, your goals and things, and then you can even request certain markers, and they give you a full panel, a ton of markers, more than you'll ever get at your doctor's place, okay? And you then get it into your own records. They'll give you feedback. They'll give you specific, like, actual, because they have a medical team as well. They'll give you specific steps to take and things to keep in mind, right? By their doctors. But you're going to have it in your own app. You can even print it out as a PDF. You have it for your own records. The amount of times I tell people in my Instagram DMs, if they follow me because they saw my thyroid posts, they're like, you know, my doctor this and that, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, okay, look. Okay, cool. I can help you here. We can look at a few things together. But do you have your labs? Like, do you know these numbers? And they said, well, yeah, my doctor said it was okay. Or, like, it looks a little low, and they changed my medications. I'm like, okay, so do you know what your numbers are? No, I don't. I'm like, okay, did you ask? Because a lot of people, including yourself maybe, don't really know. You can just ask your doctor to get the results for your own records. Why do I tell you to do this? I like labs every six months or so. You don't have to do it this way, but do at least once a year. I mean, if there's one thing we can do to prevent disease, we can get our labs checked every single year. And I like the private route as much as it's more expensive. I mean, my clients are lucky with the massive discount we have. But, like, it's a bit more expensive than going to your doctor, okay? But you get the values that you want to, the markers you want to check. That's the massive difference here. You can get a full panel covering everything from liver, kidney, blood sugars, lipids, thyroid, all that stuff. Sex hormones, right? Certain micronutrients. Vitamin D is super important. Your iron, your ferritin, all these things. You can have a whole list of a ton of markers for your own records. Now what we can do, and I do every two, sorry, every half year or so. My last time was just about March. So I'm going to probably get my labs pulled again in September. And maybe we'll even do a podcast on kind of comparing the two. But if we now have today, let's say, and you get your labs checked in six months or 12 months, now you can compare. And the trends are more valuable than any number on your lab panel. Your lab panel is certainly super helpful. Get your serum labs consistently. I like at least once a year. You could do twice a year, which I do prefer. Especially if I coach with my clients, it really helps. Like, hey, we started. Get your labs. Boom. Six months later, where are you currently at? Cool. So these things have improved. Oh, cool. Yeah. Okay. Nothing else to cover? Perfect. Or if there's maybe something else kind of showing up. Okay. Now we see certain things kind of pop up, right? Which has to do with their lifestyle, stressors, et cetera, which also helps me to guide my clients. Because I'm not here to diagnose, I'm not here to say, do this, X, Y, Z, get with your medications. Absolutely not. But if I understand physiology and what the body is telling us, we can use our nutrition and strategies, right? And lifestyle practices to hone in on the things that your body is telling you. These long-term trends are so, so important. Okay. So as for the markers you would want to check, TSH, that's the signal from the brain to your thyroid. Then we have what's called T4. Free T4. This is metabolically inactive. This is almost more like a storage form, thyroid hormone. Okay. And your thyroid mostly produces T4. A little bit of T3, but mostly T4. T4 doesn't do much yet. Okay. T3 does. And that's our next marker. Free T3 or T3, short. That is really your metabolic gas pedal. This is what will act on every cell in your body. And this is what will help the body function optimally. This is what will help every process in your body work the way it's supposed to. Now, you also have something that's called reverse T3. That's your next marker. Okay. And I'll summarize the markers in a sec. Reverse T3 is more like that metabolic break. So you have T3, the metabolic gas pedal. Reverse T3, the metabolic slowdown, the metabolic break. Now, mind you, this doesn't automatically mean that reverse T3 is a bad thing. We will always have T3 and reverse T3. Okay. But there are factors that can influence that conversion. And we do want to have a good amount of T3. Now, reverse T3, right, is also there to kind of like keep the T3 in check. Because here's what happens. They compete for the same receptor on your cell. Okay. And reverse T3 is almost like a bad lookalike. Okay. They look similar enough. And my first mentor ever, Sam Miller, he describes this perfectly. He says, this is almost like someone showing up to work in the exact same car as you. And they take your parking spot. They're disguised as you. They have the same car. You park in your parking spot. That's kind of like what happens here with that reverse T3. Okay. It's almost like this doppelganger that's not really like you don't really want him to be there. So, that's slowing things down by inhibiting T3. Okay. So, what happens now? Like every process in your body, everything going on in your body slows down. Okay. And this is where, yeah, we're going to see things like sex hormone production, your ovulation and those kind of things, menstrual cycles. That's where these kind of things can happen. Digestion slows down. So, constipation becomes very common, which was another symptom I saw with my client. And she said, I'm constipated. I have cold hands, always fatigued. That's also one of the reasons I was like, hey, we got to check the thyroid here. So, that's a reverse diet. Sorry, reverse diet. I say reverse diet so often that I just set reverse diet instead of T3. But reverse T3, the metabolic break. Okay. Slowing things down. Not necessarily a bad guy, but if it's too much, it's inhibiting T3. Okay. And then we have TPOAB, TPO antibodies. This is your Hashimoto's screen, let's say. Okay. If TPO antibodies are elevated, this says hey, the immune system is starting to attack the thyroid. Okay. So, generally speaking, doctors may diagnose Hashimoto's when TPOAB is over a 34. Okay. And like I just told you with my client, it was a 220 something. Okay. So, that's quite high. Now, I've seen much higher. Just so you know, I've seen much higher. But, okay. In her case, 200 something. I was like, hey, this now makes sense. We shouldn't focus on the sex hormones. Right. You can still support them with, you know, healthy fats and these kind of things. And, you know, managing stress. But, this is really a thyroid issue. Actually, you know what? No, it's not. It's an immune system issue. Because the immune system is attacking the thyroid. The thyroid, okay, is the victim here. It's not the problem. Imagine you have a little campfire going. Okay. And you're trying to keep the fire burning. But it's raining. Right. And your wood's getting wet. And the flame is becoming smaller and smaller. Are you going to try and put more wood on the fire? Or are you going to try and somehow cover that campfire so that that rain fucking doesn't hit your campfire all the time? That's a little bit what happens here with that T4 medication if you're dealing with Hashimoto's. Okay. And this is just a great conversation to have. Okay. With your doctor also. And T4 may still help. But it doesn't really do much. It doesn't address the immune system. I've seen clients do really well with a T4, T3 combination. Okay. And this is obviously not me prescribing it. It's their doctor actually saying, hey, you know what? Let's try this. It's multiple kind of like combination medications for that. But we're not here to give medical advice. But, you know, if you've been on T4 for a while and you're listening to this, it might be worth at least exploring the possibilities. Or maybe at least looking into a T4, T3 combination. So that not only do you have that T4 coming in, a little bit of T3 as well to support the thyroid, while you address the immune system. And just thyroid medication will not address the immune system. So you're trying to support the thyroid, while it's still under attack. Okay. So to kind of summarize this, because I know it's a lot of info today and it's a pretty detailed episode. We have TSH, okay, a signal from the brain to the thyroid. We have your T4, which is what your thyroid mostly produces. Your T3, okay, which is your metabolically active thyroid hormone that you would want to see in a good spot. Reverse T3, if you can get it, but TPOAB is a very, very important marker here, because most cases of hypothyroidism are Hashimoto's, all right? Now, I want you to understand, too, how this conversion happens and what are some factors that you can control. Because, yeah, your T's age might look normal, but if your free T3 is low, you're going to feel like crap, okay? If your reverse T3 is very high, your body is slamming on that brake pedal. I have a client right now. I told him, look, I need you to check these markers, okay, so that I can show you how your body is responding right now. Because he's not been sleeping. He's been working himself into the ground. He's not been sleeping. And I was like, look, I'm going to bet money here that that reverse T3 is going to be high, okay? So this is another way of me holding my clients accountable sometimes. I'm like, hey, look, we have proof here, okay, that your body is not agreeing with your lifestyle right now. And this is only going to get worse, okay? But you want to start thinking of, like, what are some factors here? Now, your diet is a big one, okay? We do want to have sufficient iodine. Now, I don't think iodine supplementation is a great move, okay? So definitely don't jump on that unsupervised. Selenium deficiency, also very common. Selenium is a very important factor here, okay, for the thyroid conversion. But, I mean, the liver plays a big role here, okay? We have your iron, we have your zinc. Selenium I just mentioned, your vitamin C, E, K, your B vitamins. But then we also have factors that can inhibit that conversion to T3 by pushing them more towards reverse T3. Listen up, okay? Undereating, stress, trauma, infections, certain medications. So you see how diet and lifestyle directly plays into this. If we've been dieting for years and years and years, sometimes decades, you're going to be underfed. You might be deficient in certain key nutrients, okay? We might be shifting more towards that reverse T3, especially if you live a high-stress lifestyle. We're not sleeping well. So now you see what I help my clients with. It's all those things. And it's stuff that you've heard me talk about in nausea, like on this podcast. Ad nauseam, sorry. So that is what I do. And then I educate my clients, like yourself now, to understand how these things work so they can be an advocate for their own health. And get the right markers and actually see, hey, what's truly going on with my body. Because like my client, for example, she might have spent years trying all these different strategies of seat cycling and this and that. And, you know, get your cycle back naturally. While it was an immune system problem, which means that this has to do with the gut, which means that we're looking at leaky gut, potentially gut dysbiosis. Now we know what factors to influence here. Another one, by the way, high stress, can lead to low stomach acid. Low stomach acid is often indicative of low iron because we're not absorbing iron well. So it doesn't matter how much iron you eat in your diet. If your stomach acid is low, you're not going to absorb it, which could be caused, right, that low stomach acid by stress. Iron is very key for the conversion too. So you know what I mean? Like there's all these lifestyle factors that make a massive difference that medication will just not fix, even if you're on a T4 and T3 combination, okay? So this is where, you know, you could do a Dutch test to check your adrenals. That's often the root cause of these issues, okay? Your stress lifestyle. The gut, very important. So in severe cases, I would really recommend a GI map so you can really see how the gut's doing, okay? Because that's often overlooked as well. And really just becoming, again, like, becoming your own detective of, hey, like, this is where we're at. I've been told that I, my labs are normal, but I don't feel good, okay? That means that something is off. That means that we need to figure out, okay, ourselves a lot of times, what to do here. So what to do next? Now, we went over those labs, okay? So I'm going to put it this way. If I were to feel like shit and have low energy and cold hands, cold feet, constipated, right? I would really want to check my thyroid. So I'm going to start with a TSH, a T4, T3, reverse T3, TPOAB, TGAB. Now, for reverse T3 and TGAB, oftentimes we're not going to get them, okay? But ask anyway. If they really don't want to pull them, well, I'm going to go to private route because I would much rather pay out of pocket to get all the labs I need so I know, hey, I'm getting a full panel here, okay? But most importantly, which I tell you about every single episode, the nutrition and lifestyle. Are you sleeping seven, seven and a half hours at least as your baseline consistently every single day? Are you managing your stress? Look, we all are super busy. You are running around. Pretty much all my clients have kids. You know, like, I know how it is, okay? I deal with a lot of stress myself. The supplements aren't just going to do it there. You know, we got to work through the stressors. What are your main stressors? Is it financial? Well, we can take ashwagandha. But if you've got a house that's too expensive to keep up and a car that's too expensive and we're struggling to pay the bills every single month, should we look at the money or should we look at the next supplement? You know what I mean? If we are in a toxic relationship that's consistently stressing us out, that should probably be addressed, okay? If we're dealing with stuff at work, like, we need to work through these stressors, okay? So we need to work through them and we need to slow down and let the nervous system calm down for once. And we all could do better with this. I know I do. Now, we need to look at the gut, your micronutrient intake. Hell, I mean, the main strategy that you already know by listening to this podcast, you've got to spend most of your year feeding up, nourishing your body, making sure it functions, making sure it truly gets what it needs. Yeah, and then we can go and do a fat loss phase if you're like, hey, you know what? I'm ready. Let's do a three-month cut. Let's push. Okay, boom. We're good. But that's strategic in that most of your year, you're going to be fueled and nourished, okay? And of course, as for medication, I'm not going to make any calls on that. That's not my scope, right? And I will never play doctor, you know what I mean? But I'm here to educate you, okay? And that's my promise because I've been there trying to find help, trying to figure things out. Now, luckily for me, I was just, in quotes, overweight, okay? I was probably deficient in certain nutrients and all that. But like, it was pretty easy to fix because my lifestyle just needed to work. And when that was dialed in, I was training, I was lifting weights, running, eating healthy, that weight came off. And literally in a year, I lost 30 kilos. I stayed off. Now, mind you, after, okay, I started building muscle and those kind of things. So now I'm heavier, yet at a similar spot lean- wise or leanness-wise, okay, with more muscle. So, you know, like muscle weights too. And look, I get it. I know how frustrating it is to really want to make a change and trying all these different approaches, misinformation that's online, especially now these days with TikTok and everything. That's why I do what I do, okay? So obviously, this needs to be said too. And I mean, we're both grown-ups here. You know that you're listening to a podcast by a nutrition and lifestyle coach, right? I specialize in behavior change, mindset, fat loss, body composition, okay? We do a lot with basic supplementation, if it makes sense. But we look at stress, sleep, food. That's how you heal. So obviously, it's not medical advice, okay? We've talked about lab work. We've talked about certain medications, combinations. Listening to a podcast is not medical advice. Goes without saying, okay? So I'm not even putting this up as like a disclaimer in quotes. No, I'm just like, we're having a real conversation here. Like, be smart with this stuff, okay? This is to make you think more. This is to help you become your own advocate of your own health. And this is to ultimately help you get healthier, okay? If you need any help whatsoever, feel free to reach out. And last but not least, I did put out the Thyroid Decoder, my new free guide and symptoms quiz. I will link that in the show notes. It's a free download. You can write it from my website. And that's at least going to kind of get the ball rolling. It's going to be a recap, really, on what we just discussed in this podcast. And I think you're going to find it very helpful if you have been dealing with thyroid issues. I'll talk to you next week. As always, I'm your host, Johan Xvesters. Thanks for listening to Talking Nutrition. Peace.