Your thyroid is a small butterfly-shaped gland located in the lower part of your neck, and it has an important job. This gland plays a very critical role in the endocrine system and produces hormones that are essential to your body's ability to produce energy and regulate your basal metabolic rate.
Did you know that every cell in your body has a thyroid hormone receptor site!?
That means that every tissue, muscle and organ must have adequate thyroid hormone in order to function optimally.
When this process runs smoothly, you feel great. When it doesn't oh boy... it can get messy!
Any imbalance in your thyroid can cause a cascade effect throughout the body, impacting the health of your brain, heart, joints, reproductive system, gut, and much more!
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AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION
(00:01):
This is episode 35 thyroid 1 0 1. Welcome back to the thriving thyroid podcast, where we choose to become empowered patients and take our health into our own hands. Hi, I'm Shannon Hansen, a Christian entrepreneur, a mom of three. And after dealing with my own health mysteries, I made it my mission to learn everything I could about the thyroid. I soon became certified as a holistic wellness practitioner, a functional nutrition practitioner and a functional diagnostic practitioner. And so much more. After that, I founded the revolutionary re program, the handsome method as a health professional and a mom. I fully understand the importance of having a fun, simple, and sustainable plan for achieving a responsive Throid. So I share actionable and practical strategies for developing a responsive Throid so that the ambitious moms and women can gain freedom from fatigue and lose the thyroid weight once. And for all each week, I will be here for you along with my guest experts, we will be sharing simple and tangible tips that work for not only your thyroid, your hormones, your family, and your mindset, so that you can get back to living the life that you envision for yourself.
(01:22):
Welcome to the thriving thyroid podcast. Okay, welcome back. You guys. I'm so excited to be having this conversation with you because in our free Facebook group, thriving thyroid balance community on Facebook, I have a lot of private messages with people who are part of that community and our goal and our purpose for having those conversations is to help give you the right resources for your thyroid, because guess what, you guys can Google, you can research. You can talk to a friend. You can talk to your doctor, but my goal in having this business and giving all of this free information to help you find information that is good at credible information, but also giving you action plans and action steps. So with that being said, I want to dive into this thyroid 1 0 1, where we're explaining the process of your thyroid. We're helping you better understand whether you are new diagnosed and you have no idea what a thyroid is or you've been diagnosed, but you still have no thyroid, no idea what a thyroid is and what its job does and how much it's impacting you.
(02:36):
I want to cover all of that today in today's episode. So with that being said, let's dive in your thyroid is a small butterfly shaped gland that is located at the lower part of your neck. And it really has an important job. This gland plays a very critical role in your endocrine system and produces hormones that are essential for your body's ability to produce energy and to regulate your metabolic rate for your body. Every cell in your body has thyroid receptor sites. What that means is that every tissue, every muscle, every organ must have adequate thyroid hormone in order to function properly or optimally, right? The, when this process runs smoothly, you feel great when it doesn't, oh my gosh, it can get very, very messy. Okay? Any imbalance in your thyroid function will have this cascade effect throughout your body, impacting the health of your brain, your heart, your joints, your reproductive system, your gut, and so much more experts believe that around 200, I'm sorry, 20 million Americans have some form of thyroid disorders and nearly 60% are underwear.
(04:03):
This is staggering. You guys, this is huge. This is also why I think so many women have these classic thyroid symptoms, but are also like me where we don't have a diagnosis. Now, if I go into my, my endocrinologist and they look at my thyroid, especially the first time I went in, they said, oh my gosh, we can see that you have antibodies present, meaning there's damage done to my thyroid. However, all of my labs have come back normal. Now I've had many conversations with other friends and practitioners and, and one of my good friends slash practitioner that I've been seeing for over 10 years. He knows me very well. He knows all of my kids, my kids go to him. He told me he strongly feels that all of the work and all of the effort that I have done in my book to take care of my body, all of the actions that I do every single day have contributed to all of my Le levels and labs being really good which is kind of discouraging, but also a reminder that the actions that we take every single day really do impact how we feel.
(05:22):
So let's keep going. There are many different facets to the thyroid dysfunction and imbalances. So to be clear, a healthy thyroid means a healthy you, okay? It is imperative that you guys work with an experienced doctor or physician or practitioner. If you suspect that you, you are suffering from a thyroid imbalance, okay, you guys have to be an educated patient and advocate for yourself. Again, this is why I put out so much free information and do this podcast because I wish I would've had some of this information early on in my journey. Some people require medication to balance their thyroid while others are able to bring your, their thyroid back into balance, by supportive measures, daily actions, food, nutrition sleep, rest, exercise, water, all of those things impact our thyroid. When you choose, be sure to communicate with your doctor or physician to have your thyroid levels checked at least twice a year.
(06:31):
You guys, if you suspect that you are really having those thyroid issues, if you do, you have a thyroid imbalance it is not something to take lightly for your health, for your vitality, for your longevity. It is imperative that you do the best that you can to support this very important gland. So if your thyroid, well, let me say it this way, your thyroid impacts many different aspects of your life. It impacts how you feel, your anxiety, your depression, your mood, okay. It also impacts your outlook on life. Again. How happy, how sad, how hopeful, how inspired you feel, how much energy you have to engage with, to your family, your friends, it is your job to feel good so that you can say yes to your friends, yes. To your family, yes. To your social life. And dare I say yes to your spouse in the evening, right?
(07:32):
Our libido is very, very important. And I truly believe that being intimate and connected with our spouse has helps improve our relationship. So if your desire is not there, what is that doing? And how is that impacting your relationship with your spouse? Okay. It's also how you focus on your life, how you work, how you perform. I have many clients when they started working with us, they would go out to their car and take a nap on their lunch break. Instead of hanging out in the teacher's lounge or in the cafeteria, or, you know, the break room or whatever you call it, where you're at and engaging and developing relationships with where we work. Again, relationships help us feel like we are part of a community at it helps our support system. It helps us feel connected. All of us want to have connection to the outside world.
(08:29):
We want friends, we wanna be able to go out and your thyroid gland is also how you maintain a healthy weight. So if you are struggling with yoyo dieting, if you are to lose weight or maintain the weight that you have lost, we really need to be looking at those thyroid levels. Okay? LA not last taking measures to support your thyroid health can have a direct impact on all of these areas. And more you guys, I'm not just referring to taking medication, which is something that is sometimes necessary slowly and diligently implementing shifts and changes that I share with you guys here in the podcast, in the Facebook that will help you need less and less medication. Okay. How awesome is that? We've had some, a lot of our clients are in the process of reducing medication. We've had clients, half their medication. We've had clients, you know, fourth, their medication.
(09:33):
We've had some clients go off, you know, some prescription medication completely because we have been able to balance and shift the body over a period of time, their work, their energy, their effort is paying off. And guess what? It's saving them money because they're not having to pay these copays for medication or whatever it may be. Right. So it is very important that you always work with your doctor, with your physician on the medication and getting the proper dosage, because we should not be taking this into our own hands. Okay. I have one client, she's a nurse. She works in a family practice and she was so excited. It that all of her medication is being cut down, cut down. She's like, yes, like she went off certain types of medication, which is very exciting for someone who is on, you know, quite a bit of medication.
(10:28):
Well, she got a little overzealous, I think. And what ended up happening is she started this new protocol hair started falling off, she's gaining weight. And she's like, oh my gosh, what is happening right now? Well, as we kind of dove into it we looked at just what was going on. And her T3 medication was not enough for her body. So she went back into her doctor. She spoke with her physician and, and they did agree to look at her T3 levels and ultimately decided to increase those T3 levels. Well guess what, when that medication was balanced out, the hair loss stopped. She was able to go back to losing the weight and all of the things that were really matching up with her individual goals. So again, this is something that we can't just take into our own hands. It needs to be done with the help of your doctor and your physician and me, my team, our success coaches, we can help provide feedback, support information for you guys.
(11:32):
And sometimes when we're on the outside, we can see things a little bit different. Okay. All right. So let's dive into the different types of thyroid imbalances. So here we go. Hypothyroidism is the most common form of thyroid imbalance. And this occurs when the thyroid is underactive and not producing adequate thyroid hormones. So some signs and symptoms of this include fatigue or exhaustion, brain fog, difficulty concentrating depression and or moodiness, right? You may be more moody around your menstrual cycle or you come home and you're just snapping at your family, wait gain, or an inability to lose weight, lower body temperature, meaning you're like, why is it so cold in here? You're grabbing jackets. You're turning up the air sensitivity to cold joint or muscle pain or tenderness, constipation, heavy cycles low libido, high cholesterol, unexplained, infertility, or reoccurring miscarriages hair loss or hair.
(12:42):
Texture becomes very coarse thinning of the outer eyebrows, where we're having to pencil those in hoarseness of your voice, dry skin britle or the nails puffiness around your face, your eyes, your arms, your hands, your legs, ankles, and numbness, and tingling in your feet and hands. I remember when I was struggling, I would wake up in the middle of the night and my arm would be asleep, which was so frustrating because that was just one more thing that was disrupting my sleep. So the next one we're gonna talk about is Hashimoto thyroiditis. Now this is an autoimmune condition which develops this, this affects your immune system, right? It develops antibodies against your thyroid, and it attacks it as if it were a foreign invader something like a bacteria or a virus or something that is, or would be present in the thyroid area causing.
(13:46):
So then your immune system sends those antibodies there to fight them off. Now, one of the interesting connections that I have made with a lot of my, my is that they had chronic strep throat at some point in their life. Maybe they had their tonsils removed or whatever. And that's really been kind of an interesting connection because that was me. It was like every six months I was developing strep throat. I was constantly on antibiotics and things for it. And it wasn't uncommon to see like white. I don't have a better word pus pockets in the back of my throat, especially when my husband and I were first married. And I went into my primary care and I was like, what is happening here? And she's like, oh yeah, that's totally normal looking back. I'm like, I feel that was a sign of something.
(14:39):
Right? So there's that. I want you guys to look at your own. Let's just say history and see if there's any connections to viruses or bacteria that may have been in your throat, thyroid area. This process can actually cause hypothyroidism. Okay. So it is estimated that 90% of hypothyroid patients also have Hashimotos. Unfortunately, many of these can go undiagnosed. As many doctors are not testing for antibodies. Again, this is why I'm a huge advocate for getting a full thyroid panel. I have a guide in the show notes where you guys can go down, you can, you can download it and you can find and ask your doctor for these specific tests. And you can learn or read more about that in episode number four, where we talk about getting the right thyroid test ran for your thyroid. Okay. Moving on. People who suffer with Hashimotos may actually experience symptoms of both hyper and hypothyroidism.
(15:53):
It is also very common to experience GI issues things like bloating or diarrhea, constipation acid, reflex, IBS symptoms, and so many more hyperthyroidism occurs when the thyroid is producing too much hormone, right? It's in excess, which is often a result of autoimmune condition called graves disease. Some symptoms of hyperthyroidism includes unexplained, weight, loss, irritability, and nervousness, muscle weakness, and pain, disturbed sleep. You're waking up feeling tired, hired sensitivity to heat, fine, or britle hair, hair trimmers, bulging eyes. We call this thyroid eyes vision problems and eye irritability, rapid heartbeat, infertility scarcity of the menstrual cycle. So if you are skipping your menstrual cycle could be a sign of that as well. Sweating unnaturally, where you're in a room, it's totally a normal temperature and you are dropping sweat, warm, moist palms, right? Those clammy type hands soft nails, frequent bowel movements, where you have very loose stool.
(17:13):
You're running to the bathroom after you eat 20 minutes after you eat something like that. Again, looking a little bit further as to why we're having those GI issues. Okay. We'll have to have another episode on that. Graves disease is the common version of hyperthyroidism, and that is affect nearly 1% of the population. So not as much as homos or hypothyroidism, but it definitely is an issue goers, which occur when the thyroid become inflamed and enlarged due to either hypo or hyperthyroidism. Okay. And then thyroid nodules, thyroid nodule, nodules are lumps that grow in your thyroid that can lead to again, either hyper or hypothyroidism. I feel like we should at least mention here to thyroid cancer. Thyroid cancer is something that, I mean, they're gonna go in and they're basically gonna remove your full thyroid. They will do that for things like goiters and nodules as well.
(18:21):
And then you are completely dependent upon thyroid medication. Now, when it comes to thyroid cancer, really, that's probably gonna be one of the better options is to go ahead and have it fully removed. But for some of these other conditions, again, depending on the size of location it may or may not be the best option now for the summer. It's starting to be summer here in Arizona, a time of recording. We are gearing up for vacations and traveling and tips and tricks and all of these different things. And so I'm starting this new series of episodes where we're gonna be talking about a lot about food. So we're gonna be talking about the best foods for your thyroid. We're gonna be talking about goer gen foods that can be compromising foods for the thyroid, but we're also gonna talk about how you can and should be eating those foods. We're gonna be talking about going out to eat and staying on track. We're gonna be talking about traveling. So stay tuned for all of the amazing episodes that are gonna be coming up, because I feel like this is very, very timely for summer when our schedules kind of go to heck and we need just a little bit more help when it comes to dining out and you know, food and nutrition and things like that. So with that being said, thank you guys so much for joining me. I will see you in the next,
(19:49):
Before you go, I want to make an offer to you guys. Now there's no pressure here, but if you are like me and you just wanna get to the root of the issue and you want help and you want guidance and you just wanna know what to do, and you are an action taker and you are highly ambitious. We have several spots that are open for the Hansen method. Our schedule fills up very quickly. So if you are interested in getting in, filling out an application and joining us, please take the time to visit the show notes and schedule your thyroid breakthrough call. We will talking to you about what is holding you back, where do you wanna go? How do you wanna feel? And then give you our personal and professional recommendations on the next step for you so that you can get out of this thyroid chaos once and for all.
(20:50):
Wait, wait, before you go, please subscribe. If you found value in today's episode, leave us a review and share on Instagram and please tag us. We love yours,
(21:04):
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