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Disclaimer 01:13
A quick disclaimer before we begin. The PEMF podcast does not contain any medical advice, and the content provided is for informational purposes only. If you have any health concerns, please visit a healthcare professional. Welcome back to the PEMF podcast.
Andy Smith 01:32
Today we're joined by Dr. Izabella Wentz, a pharmacist, a thyroid educator, and bestselling author who's often referred to as The Thyroid Pharmacist. Dr. Wentz, welcome to the podcast.
Dr Izabella Wentz 01:43
Andy, thank you so much for having me. What a pleasure to be here with you.
Andy Smith 01:46
And as always, like, I really like to have people on the podcast who I resonate with and have had an experience with. So we met two weeks ago in Cannes, and, uh, that was for the Shield premiere, which is Biohack Media. So, um, you know, that's a documentary that's coming out soon, so stay tuned for that. And straight away we met, we, we clicked. We were there with our partners and, uh, we'd managed to get some time away from the kids. So managed to get a couple of tequilas in, not very biohacker of me, um, but it was a great way for us to, to, to meet and to, to have a good experience with each other. So I wanna just drill down on what, what you're all about. And as we have on the podcast, we have specialists in different areas. And so before we get into the thyroid dysfunction, uh, that's affecting the most, what is causing it, the link with gut health and women's health and much more, let's just do a quick fire, a quick fire round. So what's the most common trigger behind thyroid dysfunction?
Dr Izabella Wentz 02:48
Selenium deficiency.
Andy Smith 02:50
One lifestyle habit that impacts thyroid health more than people think?
Dr Izabella Wentz 02:54
Going gluten-free.
Andy Smith 02:55
The most overlooked thyroid symptom?
Dr Izabella Wentz 02:58
Not sweating.
Andy Smith 02:59
And how much of a role does gut health play in thyroid dysfunction?
Dr Izabella Wentz 03:03
A huge role. Every person with an autoimmune thyroid condition has some degree of gut dysfunction, and they oftentimes don't even know it.
Andy Smith 03:11
An underactive or an overactive thyroid, which has the biggest impact on the body?
Dr Izabella Wentz 03:16
Hmm. Both. The overactive thyroid can actually kill you, though.
Andy Smith 03:20
And one food you'd remove first with people with thyroid issu- issues?
Dr Izabella Wentz 03:24
Gluten, gluten, gluten.
Andy Smith 03:28
Is gut health more important than people realize?
Dr Izabella Wentz 03:31
It's absolutely much more important than people realize. Getting your gut health in order can help you get into remission when you have a thyroid condition.
Andy Smith 03:39
The most common mistake people see or do when trying to fix their thyroid?
Dr Izabella Wentz 03:43
When they have autoimmune thyroid disease, they might get on high doses of iodine to try to make their thyroid work better. Unfortunately, in the presence of selenium deficiency, this can put more fuel to the fire, and they can actually accelerate the damage to their thyroid gland.
Andy Smith 03:59
Thank you for that. Let's take a deeper dive into this. Why do you think we are seeing so many thyroid problems in today? Like, why is this such a buzzword? Why are we talking about it so often? Why do we hear the word thyroid so much?
Dr Izabella Wentz 04:13
Wow. I think a lot of what's been going on in recent years is we are exposed to so many more different chemicals in our environment coming from personal care products that women are applying to their skin, the perfumes with endocrine disruptors that they're spraying on their necks, right? Um, the foods that we're eating, they are filled with chemistry, and I'm a pharmacist. I, I used to believe in better living through chemistry. However, the thyroid gland tends to accumulate and concentrate various chemicals, and numerous chemicals and pollutants have been tied to thyroid dysfunction. So really, I think it is the consequence of our environment becoming more toxic.
Andy Smith 04:59
And do you think, like we always talk about on the podcast, you know, with, with PEMF therapy, that we're, we're... Modernization is pulling us away from, from nature and stuff. There's mu- way more these days. So modernization and like you mentioned with, with sprays, endocrine disruptors, all that sort of thing, do you think we're creating this, like, perfect storm in this industry, in, in, in this, this era, should I say, that's making thyroid issues a lot worse?
Dr Izabella Wentz 05:27
Yeah, absolutely. And also the chronic stress crisis. There was a study that was done in rabbits when they were exposed to, um, toxins and poisons. There was a scientist that was actually petting the rabbits, and so they were getting pleasure as they were eating these toxins. And these rabbits that were, um, petted actually didn't have as terrible consequences from the poisons. And so I feel like between the toxins in our environment and the stress that we experience, we end up Getting into this state where we become super, super depleted and much more affected by our environment. So typically when I talk to people who have thyroid dysfunction, they're usually going through a period of intense stress. And stress can really lower our natural defenses, whether those are gut defenses or even some of these nutrients that help us detoxify the various chemicals that we're exposed to. And so really, it's like a whole body condition when a person develops a thyroid condition.
Andy Smith 06:35
Okay. And I briefly touched on it earlier. Now, we, me and you are in a documentary which is focusing around women's health, and unfortunately, women tend to get, like, the short end of the stick when it comes to health. And s- same to speak with, with thyroid issues. Um, you know, I've heard you saying that women are five to eight times more likely to suffer with thyroid dysfunction. Why do you think that is?
Dr Izabella Wentz 07:00
Hormones are thought to definitely play a role, so testosterone does tend to be protective of thyroid dysfunction. We do know that the incidence tends to peak about pregnancy, puberty, and perimenopause. So there's definitely that hormonal component. Estrogen can help us create more thyroid antibodies, which is not necessarily helpful for us 'cause that ca- can cause us to have thyroid dysfunction. Um, when we have high estrogen states, that also can backlog our detox pathways. And also, women, I feel like we're exposed to much more personal care products. So I don't know if you use that one in 18 or, like 18 products in one shampoo-conditioner that my husband does, right? Um, but I know I, in my bathroom, I have a lot more personal care products. These days I make sure that they are relatively clean compared to what I used to use. And so there's that toxicity component that we're exposed to as women. I feel like biologically we're just more wired to be in tune to our, um, environment. So women do carry the, uh, responsibility of bringing the next generation into the world, and we're so tuned into our environment to figure out, is this a good time to procreate? Is this a good time to be out into the world? Um, there's a couple of interesting anecdotal stories of people going through the Irish potato famine, where those that survived the famine had higher rates of thyroid dysfunction. And so from a adaptive physiology standpoint, having thyroid dysfunction is actually somewhat protective because it slows down your metabolism. It slows down your ability to conceive. It slows down your desire to be out into the world. And so when you have a famine, when you have a stressful situation, if you slow down your metabolism via thyroid dysfunction, you're more likely to survive that situation. If you're hiding out in a cave, right? And there's a famine, and you're just, like, nice and chunky and happy and sleeping, you're gonna survive a cold, harsh winter. And so this, you might be like, "Okay, we're not in a famine right now. There's abundant food." However, our body doesn't know that the stress we're putting ourselves under through watching 24/7 fear porn or exercising on a treadmill or just living a high-stress lifestyle, the body kinda gets the same message as though we were living in a famine or a war. So all that modern-day stress, um, it really impacts our, like, cave women and cave man bodies. At least that's my theory.
Andy Smith 09:40
Yeah. No, and I couldn't agree with you more in terms of, especially with the, the chemicals and things that we're putting on ourselves. Like, you know, when we're packing to go on holiday, like, you know, my wife is taking, like, bags and bags of different things, and it's just, you know, trying to turn things into more natural, you know, I, I've used now more natural deodorants and trying to make a bit more of a switch. Um, when talking about thyroid, we hear the term overactive and underactive thyroid. So people that are listening to this, can you just give a bit of a definition between what is an overactive and what is an underactive thyroid and w- what differences do they have in the body?
Dr Izabella Wentz 10:17
Definitely. So a person with an underactive thyroid, typically we think of slowing down in the body. So their metabolism will be slower. Their digestive function will be slower. Their brain function will be slower. Uh, what do those things mean? So they're gonna be keeping on extra weight even though they don't want that. They're gonna have brain fog. They're gonna have fatigue. They're not gonna be able to generate as much heat, so they're gonna be cold intolerant. They're gonna have the pleasure of having hair that's falling out, potentially eyebrows that fall out. They might have fertility challenges, and overall you can just imagine they're just very sluggish and sloth-like. On the other hand, an overactive thyroid, this is a sped up metabolism, and this sounds kind of nice, right? In theory, like, who doesn't want a fast metabolism? But when it's too fast, you end up with rapid muscle wasting and losing too much weight. Like, you don't wanna lose weight, but you're just, like, wasting away. You end up with palpitations. Sometimes these can be very, very dangerous. You can have shivers in your body. Um, some people do develop, uh, eyeball protrusion. This is part of the autoimmune complex of an overactive thyroid. They might have, um, issues with anxiety or irritability or rage. Fertility and hair loss also don't get spared in this situation with their hormones. All kinds of hormones are gonna be impacted.
Andy Smith 11:53
And with all these thyroid disorders we're seeing at the moment, do you think they're massively undiagnosed? Like, are they still a lot of people walking around with, with undiagnosed- ... thyroid problems?
Dr Izabella Wentz 12:04
Yeah, absolutely. And there were a couple of studies done in health centers where they actually found, like, up to 28% of people were walking around with thyroid antibodies. Most of them were not diagnosed. Thyroid antibodies are an early indication that the immune system has recognized the thyroid gland as a foreign invader. Eventually, they will lead to an overtly overactive thyroid or an underactive thyroid, but for the first five, 10 years, they could just lead to some very, very strange symptoms. And most doctors don't do the proper diagnostic workup. They will just screen somebody for thyroid disease using a test known as the TSH, thyroid stimulating hormone test, and this test can be normal for the first five, 10 years, sometimes 15 years when you have, um, a thyroid dysfunction already happening.
Andy Smith 12:56
Mm-hmm. And what are the most common symptoms that people are, like, overlooking? So where, where do... You know, how do we know we have a thyroid issue?
Dr Izabella Wentz 13:03
I would say if you're somebody that's struggling with your metabolism, so you are like, "Hey, I'm eating well and exercising, but I just can't seem to lose weight," that's gonna be a sign that you have an underactive thyroid. If you're losing your hair, that's gonna be a red flag. If you have cold intolerance, if you lose the upper third of your eyebrow, that's actually a big red flag for thyroid dysfunction. If you're somebody that doesn't really sweat, most people don't complain about this being a symptom, but not sweating is actually a thyroid symptom. If you are a woman or a man with any kind of libido or fertility issues, menstrual issues, this would be a really important, um, consideration to have your thyroid function tested. Mental health symptoms, anxiety, panic attacks. I've seen people misdiagnosed with depression, with bipolar disorder, with psychotic disorders, when really it's their immune system attacking their thyroid gland and dumping all kinds of thyroid hormone into n- into their system, driving them a little bit crazy. Uh, these would be some potential symptoms. And then for me personally, it was fatigue. So I was like the person that would sleep for 10, 11, 12 hours, and I'd still wake up tired. That's gonna be a really big red flag that you have a thyroid issue.
Andy Smith 14:26
Mm-hmm. So you've mentioned the kind of the main ones, the red flags and that sort of thing, but I've also heard you saying that actually it can be so many different... Like, the, the, the symptom list can be unlimited. L- like, why, why do you think that is? Is there, is there a reason why it's affecting the body in that way?
Dr Izabella Wentz 14:44
Yeah, because we have thyroid hormone receptors in every cell of our body. And so the symptoms can be very nonspecific, and some people might feel it differently than others. I'll tell you that a lot of the women that come to me will say, "I'm losing my hair. I'm gaining more weight than I want, and I feel tired." And that'll be usually their chief three complaints. Sometimes they'll also say, like, "I have brain fog. I walk into a room. I forget things." These are really the big distressful things. For men, they'll say, "I can't grow a beard." Or, "My libido is off," or, "I'm having a harder time putting on muscle. I've been going to the gym, and I'm just not as muscular as I used to be." And so it's kind of interesting because things can express differently in different individuals. I've even s- had some clients that will have, um... They'll be underweight, and they have hypothyroidism, but they might have more of, like, that really big fatigue and brain fog expression. And then others might be having excess weight, but they'll have... They'll say, "My energy's just fine and my hair's just fine. It's just the weight that is a problem." So it can express a bit differently in different individuals.
Andy Smith 15:53
Yeah, okay. And the link to PMF, again, is we always say about PMF therapy fixing the root cause. So we don't want to manage the symptoms of, you know, what, what we want to use PMF therapy for or, you know. So I've heard you saying about getting to the root cause a lot of the time, which is, you know, the key component in a lot of things. Do we know whether thyroid issues are genetic, or is it mainly lifestyle or, you know, and how can we get to the root cause?
Dr Izabella Wentz 16:22
There's definitely a genetic predisposition, but in a purely genetic condition, you would have, um, 100% concordance rate in identical twins. So one twin has a thyroid issue, that means 100% of the time the other twin would too. Whereas the studies are showing more it's about 50%. So yes, you're gonna have that genetic component, but there's also that environmental component. So genetics loads the gun and the environment pulls the trigger. So there are various environmental exposures that can lead to a person ex- experiencing an autoimmune thyroid condition. I grew up on the border of Ukraine and Poland, and I was downwind from Chernobyl, which is probably where some of my issues started when I was a young child. And what the studies that have been done have been super, super interesting because they would take Ukrainian children who are exposed to Chernobyl, like, kind of like in that direction where the wind took all the radioactive, um, toxins, and they looked at children on the other side that were away from you know, that, that exposure. And the rates of thyroid nodules, thyroid cancer, and thyroid antibodies, which indicate future for autoimmune thyroid disease, hypothyroid, or overactive thyroid, these rates were so much higher in the Chernobyl exposed population. And they were all Ukrainian children, right? So you could argue that they were all genetically very similar. It wasn't, like, different ethnicities, right? So there are these environmental exposures that can be quite significant on whether we develop a thyroid condition or not.
Andy Smith 18:10
Mm-hmm. Okay. And- I wanna touch on gut health because there seems to be some link between thyroid and gut health, and a lot of people that have thyroid conditions get diagnosed with IBS or different gut symptoms and that sort of thing. So why do you think there's a link, and why do you think that these two go hand in hand?
Dr Izabella Wentz 18:31
It was really interesting. When I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's, a few years before that, I actually had that g- very fun IBS diagnosis when I was going through pharmacy school, and I wasn't sure if the two were connected. And it was just made sense to me that, okay, there's, this is something going on within my body. These, this is broken. Now this is broken. How does it all connect? And I came across the research of Dr. Alessio Fasano, who talked about the three-legged stool of autoimmunity. So in order for an autoimmune condition to manifest, and 90 to 97% of the time if you have a thyroid disorder, it's gonna be autoimmune, um, three things need to be present. You need to have the genetic predisposition. You need to have some kind of a trigger, so Chernobyl, potential trigger. Other toxins could be triggers. And then you need to have intestinal permeability or that leaky gut. Um, and all three of these three, all three of these need to be present for the condition to manifest. If we were to take away one of these, then we can get the condition into remission. So in this day and age, we can't change our genes. Maybe sometime in the future. We can't always figure out the trigger. Like, I've been exposed to Chernobyl. I can't unexpose myself necessarily right? Um, sometimes you can do some detox to get things out of your body, but not always that straightforward. And so the third piece is that intestinal permeability component. We can always figure out how to make our guts healthier and stronger and less permeable, and that's gonna help us get into remission. And so in my work, I've discovered various causes for that gut dysfunction, and that's been a place that I've targeted with my clients in an effort to get them into remission.
Andy Smith 20:14
And chronic inflammation is something I've heard you've mention before about how that affects, and can that be an influencing factor towards the, the, the thyroid?
Dr Izabella Wentz 20:23
Yeah, absolutely. So Hashimoto's thyroiditis. So it is chronic inflammation of the thyroid gland, and most autoimmune conditions have that inflammation component. And so the question is, where is that inflammation coming from? Is it your omega-3 index, right? Are you... Do you have too many seed oils or omega-6s and you don't have enough of these omega-3s, potentially from the Western diet or potentially you're not eating enough seafood? Could it be from some kind of a gut infection that's causing inflammation in your body? Could be some kind of a nutrient deficiency or a food sensitivity. Could it be your toxic lifestyle that's causing you to have inflammation? Could it be stress in your life or maybe some toxic relationships? And so figuring out what the source of inflammation is oftentimes the work done by functional medicine to try to get a person feeling better by eliminating the root cause, right?
Andy Smith 21:17
Yeah, okay. And we talked about some red flags in terms of thyroid health, but what are the kinda key red flags that people should look at in terms of symptoms when it comes to gut health?
Dr Izabella Wentz 21:29
So abdominal pain, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, acid reflux, these are some things to look out for. They can be an indication that you have intestinal permeability. You may or may not have an IBS diagnosis, um, with those symptoms, but chances are, if you've been diagnosed with that, there's a good chance you have intestinal permeability, and your gut is a place that needs some support. I find a lot of people don't realize how off their digestive function is until they learn about what its normal digestion should look like. So we're not supposed to be in pain after we eat. We're not supposed to be bloated after we eat. We're supposed to have bowel movements once or twice a day. They should be easy to pass. Some people will say, like, "For normal for me is if I poop every two weeks." That is maybe common, but that's definitely not normal. So we're meant to eliminate on a regular basis.
Andy Smith 22:30
And food sensitivities are talked about a lot, and you mentioned, like, gluten intolerance and that sort of thing. What are your thoughts on the food sensitivities and thyroid gut health?
Dr Izabella Wentz 22:41
There's a big cross-reactivity between the gluten molecule, specifically gliadin, and a part of the thyroid anatomy that can cross-react. So if the immune system has recognized gluten as a foreign invader, then there's a chance that every time you eat that, it's going to attack the gluten molecule, and then it's also going to attack the thyroid gland. And so about 80 to 88% of the people that I've worked with feel significantly better on a gluten-free diet. Some people have gone completely into remission, where they no longer need thyroid meds. They're no longer testing positive for thyroid disease. They don't have any symptoms, just by eliminating gluten out of their diet. So that can be a really, really big game changer, whether they have celiac disease or not. There's also gonna be a higher rate of celiac disease in people with thyroid disease. When you have one autoimmune condition, you're more likely to have others too.
Andy Smith 23:33
Mm-hmm. And dairy comes up quite a lot in your work in terms of dairy and soy, uh, eliminating those from your diet, dare I say, 'cause I love dairy. But why might these be problematic for people? Like...
Dr Izabella Wentz 23:48
Um, about 80% of people, in my experience, are gonna be sensitive to dairy, and about 60% are gonna be sensitive to soy. And one is their molecules are a bit challenging to break down. Two, they require certain co-factors that people might be deficient in to break do- to help ourselves break them down. They're protein foods, and a lot of times people with thyroid dysfunction have low levels of stomach acid, and so they're more predisposed to food sensitivities. And then also, they're very common staples in the Western diet. It's not necessarily that these foods are evil. It's chances are that you've become very sensitized to them because that's what you've been eating all the time, and now your immune system has seen them so many times, and you haven't digested them properly for many, many years. And so you end up becoming sensitive to them. So there is a path to restoring your ability to digest a whole bunch of different foods. However, for many people, it starts with eliminating them for a period of time before you can reintroduce them.
Andy Smith 24:56
Mm-hmm. And what are the biggest mistakes we see when people are trying to eat healthy for thyroid issues?
Dr Izabella Wentz 25:03
So going on the gluten-free diet they might go on the gluten-free junk food diet. And I know I made that mistake myself, where I was like, "Oh, I need to be gluten-free, so I'm just gonna eat a whole bunch of cookies that are gluten-free," right? And that can actually make things worse when you have a thyroid issue, 'cause that can put you on a blood sugar rollercoaster. A lot of the gluten-free junk foods are actually higher in sugar, and some of these, um, rice flours, corn flours, so on and so forth, they're actually have a bigger glycemic impact than actual, like, wheat flour does. And so people can end up making s- themselves feel worse by just switching to a junk food diet that's gluten-free. So a big transformation that can help with so many symptoms, not just with thyroid symptoms, is, like, eating real food. And, like, not eating packaged food, not eating food out of boxes. So you're eating high quality proteins, and you're eating meat, you're eating vegetables, you're eating fruit. Generally, things that don't come in a box, right?
Andy Smith 26:08
Yeah. Okay, and we also see people go into the, like, restrictive diets in terms of, like, carnivore diet and the veganism. You know, a good friend of mine went vegan and was getting sicker and sicker because he was just eating chips most of the time, because it was just restricted him too much. Um, where do we see these becoming harmful for people when they're really restricting their diet to, to compensate for a thyroid issue, say, for example?
Dr Izabella Wentz 26:34
I will say that sometimes elimination diets, so the autoimmune paleo diet, the carnivore diet, these can be helpful in healing when utilized short-term as part of a protocol. Even the vegan diet can be helpful for detoxification purposes and alkalizing your body, if done correctly. The issues that I find is when people get into this state where they're just restricting too many foods and they lose that intuitive connection with, with food and how they're eating. Um, orthorexia is kind of a newly discovered eating disorder where you just try to eat the perfect diet, and you feel like different foods are evil, right? And so you can become very unhealthy, but you're eating a perfect diet when you're orthorexic. I think people assume that it's all about food, and if you're eating a crappy diet, if you're eating McDonald's all the time, yes, changing your diet to a real food diet can be a really big game changer. But it can be quite a slippery slope where you're like, "Okay, well, I'm still not 100% better, so I'm just gonna keep eliminating more foods, eliminating more foods." So oftentimes, if you need to do that, if you're already eating, like, a relatively clean diet, you're eating organic, maybe you're gluten-free already, and you haven't fully healed in 90 days, there's something else going on. Could be a nutrient deficiency. So you can't get every single nutrient from food. You cannot get enough magnesium no matter how many green leafy vegetables you eat. Thiamine, um, is also something that's gonna be deficient in foods, and this is oftentimes really, really important for energy production. And then in many cases, I see people have chronic infections. So they might have H. pylori or a protozoal infection or SIBO, and these are just messing with their enzyme production and messing with their whole digestive tract. And so they become sensitive to everything. And then, of course, eliminating more foods isn't going to help. What you need to do is you need to treat that infection and clear out the infection so that your digestive system starts working properly. And I feel like that's a really big miss, where people are like, "Okay, I'm just gonna eliminate more foods." And for the carnivores, I'm like, "Why are you not digesting fiber and oxalates? Could it be that you have a mold colonization or a candida colonization or some dysbiosis in your large intestine?" For the vegans, I'm like, "What's up with your stomach acid? Why can't you tolerate pro- high protein foods? Could it be that you have an H. pylori infection or low stomach acid?" And for people who are, like, on a low fat diet, I'm like, "Have we looked at your pancreatic enzymes? How are you... You know, how's your bile production?" And so again, it's like figuring out what part of the body needs support, um, because I feel like we should be able to eat most foods. Like, you and I were in France and I was able to eat, uh, croissants in France, and I was able to have alcohol without feeling like death the next day. And that's my goal for most people, is that they feel their best, they're thriving, and they don't have to be on a super restrictive diet. Yes, maybe part of it might be a few months, couple of weeks when you need to eliminate certain things. But ideally, we want to support all the different systems in your body so that you can be thriving and feeling your best.
Andy Smith 29:59
Yeah. And it may come down to the, the way those things are, are, are made. Like you say, croissants. You know, in France, they probably only have a couple of ingredients. In America, they probably have 75 ingredients. So, you know, it could come down to the quality of the, of, of those as well, like you, like you mentioned. Are you seeing that, um, autoimmune conditions are making- ... these sensitivities worse, like exacerbating things?
Dr Izabella Wentz 30:27
Yeah, definitely. So whenever somebody has an autoimmune condition, essentially their immune system is confused between what's safe and what's not safe. And so it'll start attacking parts of our own anatomy. In case of thyroid dysfunction, the thyroid gland is attacked, right? Um, and it's marked for, like, destruction, as though it was, like, a bacteria or a kind of infection. And also foods. Foods become target for our immune system. So a part of the work I do is sort of like re-educating the immune system to be less reactive against the thyroid and against these benign, poor, tasty foods that we're eating right?
Andy Smith 31:03
Okay, so on women's health again, pregnancy, postpartum, are we seeing exacerbating symptoms in thyroid and autoimmune conditions during this time?
Dr Izabella Wentz 31:14
Definitely. So most autoimmune conditions go into remission when women are pregnant, but then there's a higher risk of relapse, as well as new onset autoimmunity postpartum. And some women actually have a variant of thyroid dysfunction known as postpartum thyroiditis. The good news is it's much easier to reverse than Hashimoto's thyroiditis. The bad news is it is very, can be very problematic. So it could lead to postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis. It could also lead to, um, just feeling like complete crap postpartum, where women are just like, "I am failing at motherhood. I feel so darn tired and nothing is helping." I'm a big proponent of testing every woman of childbearing age for thyroid dysfunction, doing the screening test of TSH, includ- and as well as thyroid antibodies, and also in the postpartum checkup. The six weeks postpartum checkup is a great opportunity to ask to have your thyroid tested because if your thyroid is off, this can be a great opportunity to support yourself and get on thyroid hormones if you need to, or utilize some of the healing modalities. Some of these supplements and nutrients can be really life-changing and game-changing. Unfortunately, I've seen women, I mean, h- really, really suffer in their postpartum period and not known that they're not supposed to feel that way because their thyroid was just out of balance.
Andy Smith 32:48
So somebody listening to this who either has a diagnosed condition with their thyroid or, or is worried about their thyroid, can it be fixed? And how long can it take? Like, you know, is, is this something that could be fixed quickly?
Dr Izabella Wentz 33:03
In the early stages, when you just have an attack against your thyroid gland and your thyroid gland is still able to compensate, many times we can utilize, like, supportive nutrients. Selen- selenium N-acetylcysteine is probably the best studied, that can reverse thyroid dysfunction even in the early stages. So you might not need thyroid hormones, and you might just restore, rebalance your immune system, get rid of your symptoms utilizing that. Sometimes getting some vitamin D on board can be very helpful as well. I ty- I typically like to see the vitamin D ranges between 60 and 80. And yeah, if you catch it early, you can absolutely reverse it and not have issues with it long term. If you catch it late, so in the later stages, if you've had this destruction against your thyroid for many, many years, it's gonna be a little bit harder, 'cause it's, like, harder to regrow an organ than it is to prevent damage, right? And so some women may need to be on thyroid medications at that point and thyroid hormone. There are some emerging therapies, cold laser therapy over the thyroid gland. Aloe randomly can help with that. Even, um, myo-inositol can help with that or in the early stages. These can help to some degree, but not everybody. Like, I can't say, like, "I'm gonna guarantee that you're gonna come off of your thyroid meds." Sometimes you just need those thyroid meds. If your thyroid gland is, like, shrunken to oblivion because of the autoimmune attack, like, there's not much we can do to bring it back. Um, can we reverse all the symptoms? Absolutely. And depending on how long you've been on your healing journey, it might take anywhere from two weeks to 90 days. My book, Hashimoto's Protocol, is a 90-day plan where 80% of people that have gone through it feel significantly better and can get themselves into remission. And what I mean by remission is make the attack against your thyroid gland less aggressive. This could be measured by, like, thyroid antibody levels. So if they're at, like, 2,000, that's an aggressive attack. If they're at, like, 30, that's not as bad and not as progressive. And so what we can do is over the time, we can reduce those antibody numbers, so the attack is, generally speaking, gonna be less severe.
Andy Smith 35:17
Okay. So for our listeners to take away something from this episode, and just to wrap this up, what are your kind of core fundamental foundations to, to... that people can do on a regular basis to focus on thyroid health? So what should sh- people should be doing after this to just work on their thyroid health?
Dr Izabella Wentz 35:36
Um, so definitely I do recommend de-stressing. So adrenals, supporting the health of your stress response is gonna be really key and important. So whatever you can do. Sometimes if you're going through a stressful time period, taking some adaptogens, taking some B vitamins, vitamin C, taking some magnesium, maybe doing an Epsom salt bath, participating in a relaxing activity, whether that's yoga or skiing. I don't know. Different people relax different ways. Or, um, just finding that opportunity to do things that give you a lot of pleasure and bring you a lot of joy. That's gonna shift your body from that fight or flight state, where your body breaks itself down, into more of a restorative state. If you can live in that- Regenerate state for most of your time, that's gonna be incredible, incredibly helpful for your thyroid gland. Um, and then of course, I recommend everybody gets screened and do testing ideally on a regular basis. On an annual basis, you should do a TSH test, free T3, free T4, which tells us your thyroid hormone levels, and test for thyroid antibodies just to make sure that nothing is going on, um, and that you don't have those early signs of thyroid dysfunction. Because if you do have those early signs, there's so much you can do to prevent decades of symptoms and to, um, prevent illness.
Andy Smith 37:08
Mm-hmm. Thank you so much for your time today. Um, you know, I'm in your backyard this time, so I'm in Austin, USA, and I've just been on your podcast. So how can... If people wanna take this deeper, they wanna learn more about thyroid health, they wanna reach out to you, reach out to your team, how can they do that? How can they take a deeper dive into this?
Dr Izabella Wentz 37:28
Uh, definitely. And thank you so much for coming to Austin. It's been wonderful to have you here. We, um, I have a website called thyroidpharmacist.com, and I have a lot of free resources and articles. If you have thyroid fatigue, you can do a search on the website. I've probably written an article about every thyroid symptom and how to properly address it. Great place to start. I also have a book called Hashimoto's Protocol. That's probably my most popular book that I've written to date, and this goes through a 90-day plan on how to reverse your symptoms. I'm on all kinds of social media. I'm on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and I also have a podcast called Thyroid Pharmacist Healing Conversations, where I just had the most helpful and healing conversation about PEMF and red light therapy, which can be really great for, um, supporting your thyroid as well.
Andy Smith 38:22
Thank you again. Um, anybody that's listening, please like and share these because we can't get guests like Isabella to share their knowledge without, without that recognition. So thank you for what you're doing, Isabella, and thank you for your time today, and hopefully we can do this again and we'll get a part two in at some point.
Dr Izabella Wentz 38:38
Thank you so much for having me.
