Hypothyroidism & Hashimoto’s

There are many reasons that your thyroid could be malfunctioning, it is an increasingly common health concern that has huge impact on your quality of life. One reason for a decrease in thyroid function that is not often talked about is estrogen and progesterone imbalances. Both high estrogen levels and low progesterone increase levels of “thyroid binding globulin”, which means that circulating thyroid hormones decrease and hypothyroid symptoms appear. Research has also shown that increasing progesterone levels helps assimilate thyroid hormones into cells.

Naturopathic Doctors are the ideal practitioners to evaluate and treat your dysfunctional thyroid. We will do a complete blood test that looks at much more than your standard TSH (which misses a great deal of thyroid problems) and offer treatment that will actually help relieve your symptoms.

Testing…Looking beyond TSH

A complete evaluation of your thyroid function needs to look beyond TSH levels. If you experience at least 3-4 of the common thyroid symptoms above and/or you have a strong family history of thyroid disease, you need to have a full thyroid panel run. We commonly run the thyroid panel from Life Labs (which includes a TSH, free T4, free T3 and Anti-TPO antibody levels) on any patient that we suspect may have a sub-optimal thyroid, or anyone already diagnosed with hypothyroidism that is not responding well to their synthroid. In some cases, we may even require testing of other thyroid antibodies, or Reverse T3.

TSH is a stimulating hormone, which triggers the release of T4 (synthroid is bio-identical to T4), but T4 needs to be converted to T3 to be come active in your body. This process requires a number or reactions and co-factors to happen effectively, and it can be blocked by stress, which is why many people on Synthroid have perfect labs but are not feeling great! T3 is hard to make, and it’s really what does the work if the thyroid in the body.

Treatment Options

Once we have your baseline levels we will begin treating you in a holistic way. We will look at your diet and lifestyle, and make suggestions for nutritional and herbal medicines that can have a significant impact on rebalancing your thyroid. There are some great thyroid conversion supports available that can help your body make more T3 from the available T4.

You may require medication to support your thyroid properly, we often prescribe natural desiccated thyroid, which contains a mix of T4 and T3 and sometimes use a custom compounded mix of Synthroid and Cytomel to get you feeling better.

Some Supplements we may consider recommending:

• Selenium
• Zinc
• Iron
• Vitamin D
• Iodine
• Tyrosine
• Guggle
• Ashwaghandha
• Black cumin

Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis

Hashimoto’s is the most common cause of hypothyroidism, and it is also one of the most common autoimmune diseases. Defining what type of hypothyroidism you have is not always a priority in conventional medicine, because Synthroid is really the only option for treatment. However, in Naturopathic Medicine, we can look at this both as a thyroid AND auto-immune disease. Not only will we offer thyroid support, but also treatment to help calm your immune system.

For example, studies show that a gluten free diet can be helpful in reducing antibody levels in patients with Hashimoto’s – we can help support your transition to a gluten free diet, while monitoring your antibody levels.