At what age were you when you noticed that something was not
functioning as it? Started really young and I did
not know that it could be related to thyroid.
No amount of exercise and dieting is working.
I mean, I have tried every diet out there and you know, they
work temporarily and then, you know, I just gained all the
weight back and I didn't really understand Physiology.
I didn't understand how the thyroid impacted all of that.
Just kind of give us a deep dive on the thyroid and its function
as a whole. So if the thyroid function is
low, many women experience the inability to lose weight.
Upwards of 98% of women who have low thyroid actually have an
underlying autoimmune condition. That's why they have a low
thyroid. Their thyroid just didn't stop
working. That's why this is not like a
menopausal thing. This is more of an autoimmune
issue. And we are live.
Doctor Heather Stone, how are you today?
I'm good, thank you. How are you?
I'm doing wonderful. I'm excited to be chatting with
you because I get so many questions about thyroid health,
hormone health. I mean, I've had several guests
on lately talking about HRT, TRT as it pertains to improving
longevity, improving performance, just optimizing
health overall. But it seems as though there's a
void in the communication around thyroid health specifically.
So I'm excited to see what I can learn from you today.
Before we start though, I mean, what, what even got you
interested in this line of work? Like what was the the catalyst
for you going down the path of optimizing thyroid function?
Yeah. So I think with, like, a lot of
healthcare practitioners, it starts with a personal story.
And, you know, for me, I was having all the typical thyroid
symptoms. I couldn't lose weight.
I had, you know, hormonal imbalances.
I was tired. I just did not feel like myself.
And, you know, I went down this path where doctors continue to
tell me that nothing was wrong and I'm like, something is
definitely wrong. And they would also tell me
that, oh, by the way, you know, your hormones are out of
balance, but you'll just need fertility treatment when you're
ready to have kids. And I thought, oh, my gosh, this
is not the path I'm going down. So I had to figure out, you
know, what I needed to do to change this because I was not
going to live like that. And so once I figured it out for
myself, I was like, oh, my gosh, there are millions of women who
are struggling with low thyroid. And even though they're on
medication and they have a diagnosis, they're still
struggling with all these symptoms.
And it really just isn't necessary.
So that's kind of what I dedicated my life to do and and
really to the mission is to change the face of healthcare.
At what age were you when you noticed that something was not
functioning as it should? Like, was there like a a pretty
stark line in the sand of like, OK, this is not right, this is
not how it's supposed to be like?
What were the telltale signs for you personally?
Well, I think it started really young and I did not know that it
could be related to thyroid. But even in my teenage years the
my hormones were always a mess and I was struggling with weight
gain about 18/19/20 years old. And then that's when I started
probably 2021 is when I started to go to a doctor because I was
like no amount of exercise and dieting is working.
I mean, I have tried every diet out there and you know, they
work temporarily early and then, you know, I just gained all the
weight back and I didn't really understand Physiology.
I didn't understand how the thyroid impacted all of that.
So it started for me very young, but I did not realize that it
was all connected, our hormones, our thyroid function, our
metabolism until I really started to understand what to do
to fix the issues. But at the end of the day, you
know, you always have to get down to the root cause of the
underlying imbalance because a lot of people think like the, a
lot of people think when we're looking at our health that
everything works in a vacuum or everything works separately.
Like the thyroid does not work separate or by itself.
It doesn't work. It works together with your
immune system and your insulin and other hormone production and
your liver and your gut. So everything works together.
And I think it's really important that because we get
stuck in this model where everything is blamed on the
thyroid, that's why people struggle so much is because
they're only looking at the thyroid or like you said
earlier, they look at other hormones, but they're not
looking at the whole picture. Yeah, totally, 100%.
What was the messaging like from the doctors initially when you
were going in to see what the issue was when you're trying to
get some advice like what was their general messaging?
Was it totally generic and related to the calories and
calories out model of what were they pointing to think about so?
And I am grateful for this experience because this is what
made me realize that what they were telling me was not true.
But I went in and they said, OK, your thyroid is totally fine.
There's nothing wrong with your thyroid.
And I think that your menstrual, you don't have a menstrual cycle
because you exercise too much. And I was like what?
Like I knew because you know that back then that was pre
Google. So we didn't have doctor Google
that we could go consult. But I was in pre Med, I was
reading textbooks and I knew that when a women woman's body
fat goes below 10% that she will lose her menstrual cycle.
I was 50 lbs overweight. So I knew that what he was
telling me was absolutely not the reasoning that he gave me
was not right at all. And he did not address the whole
weight loss issue. And then and he said, Oh, by the
way, when you're ready to have babies, come back and I'll,
we'll give you fertility treatment.
And I'm like, this is the craziest advice I've ever seen.
And I just paid him for that advice.
And I was like, and I, but I am grateful because because of what
he said, I knew it wasn't true. And so I said, all right, I have
to figure this out because I am not going to go down this path.
And what? What age were you then?
Do you remember? I was about 19 or 2021,
somewhere around that age. Wow, so they were suggesting at
that point your lack of a regular cycle was because you
were exercising too much and they were already recommending
IVF or something crazy like that and.
Let me tell you, I was not exercising too much like I was
the I would walk and I would do like, you know, cardio for an
hour like three to four times a week.
I wasn't some professional athlete.
So what they were saying just did not make sense whatsoever.
And you know, when I was younger, when my hormone cycles
were, they just put me on birth control.
And so, and that is typically what happens.
So they don't look to see why your hormones are out of
balance, like what's causing this issue.
Instead, they override the Physiology and put you on
hormone replacement essentially with birth control.
And that should just fix the problem until you're ready to
have kids. And then you're supposed to get
off of it and expect the body to function in and be fertile.
Yeah, it's funny you mentioned I had a podcast, I guess about a
week now, we were talking about just my frustrations with the
birth control model because you go in there and they don't they
don't talk anything about the lasting effects of that hormone.
I mean, which is totally foreign to the body from that level of
input. Depending on the type of
contraceptive, if it's like an IUD, that's a foreign object in
the body. They'll talk about this stuff.
They just say, yeah, put this in and then as soon as you're ready
to have kids, take it out and you'll be golden.
But just total, I mean, there was somebody that was getting a
birth control pill prescribed after they had gotten through
menopausal years just to simply help with some of the symptoms.
And it's just like that's common.
That's that's not, that's not a Horror Story.
That's, you know, I mean, it just happens so frequently and
people don't recognize it. Yeah.
And I think it's important to understand, I mean, we could
literally talk an hour about birth control and and how we are
really mismanaging and misunderstanding hormone health
across the board. But they don't tell you that
you're at risk for ovarian cancer and uterine cancer and
breast cancer. And that doesn't go away when
you get off of the pill. Like, you would think that your
risk for those cancers goes away when you get off, but it
actually doesn't. But I don't recall ever hearing
that when I was being prescribed birth control pills.
And I think that, you know, most, most women are never told
that and don't even understand that.
And it we really are just overriding the body's underlying
imbalances and Physiology to try to make those hormones somewhat
imbalance. But in the big, big scheme of
things, it doesn't really work that way.
Yeah, yeah, totally agree. Everything that we're looking at
is not, you can't view it through the lens of it being in
a vacuum. Like especially with hormones,
like you pull one lever and 10 other levers get pulled by
default exactly as it pertains to the thyroid.
Can you just do like a deep dive on we'll, we'll just go super
basic and then we'll get deeper and deeper.
But what is the thyroid? What is its primary function in
the body? How does it manipulates
metabolism? Like just kind of give us a deep
dive on the thyroid and its function as a whole.
Yes, perfect. So the thyroid is a butterfly
shaped gland that kind of sits at the base of your neck.
All right, So the thyroid mostly makes T4 hormone and then the
body has to convert that T4 hormone into T3 hormone, which
is the active form of thyroid hormone.
That's what your body can use. Now, the thyroid hormone in
general is responsible for regulating your metabolic rate,
right? Or your metabolism, right?
So how fast your metabolism works or how slow your
metabolism works is usually regulated by thyroid hormones,
specifically T3. Now the thyroid is pretty cool
or the thyroid hormones, and they are so important.
There is a receptor site on every single cell in the body
from your head to your toe to receive thyroid hormone.
And that's why when our thyroid hormones go down that we can
have a whole host of symptoms. So if the thyroid function is
low, many women experience the inability to lose weight or
weight gain. They have trouble sleeping,
whether it's falling asleep or staying asleep.
They may have issues with depression and anxiety both at
the same time, which sometimes it's hard to understand how
someone can be depressed and anxious, but it happens.
They have issues with their hair falling out, their nails being
thin, their skin being dry, extremely low energy and brain
fog. And so it's like how can one
tiny gland or 1 hormone have all of those effects?
It's because it truly effects from your head to your toe and
it's really at the reason it's is because it regulates your
metabolic rate. And I think one of the things in
the biggest fallacies that we have with understanding thyroid
health is that most thyroid hormone Physiology happens
outside of the thyroid because your body makes mostly T4.
And women who've been diagnosed with low thyroid, they're
looking at one marker only. Now, we can go into all of these
little things and go deeper, but when they're looking at one
marker only, they're typically only looking at TSH and that
stands for thyroid stimulating hormone.
And that's actually not even made by the thyroid, it's made
by the pituitary. So your pituitary, a small gland
inside of your brain, tells the thyroid when and how much
thyroid hormone to make. And so most of the time they're
just looking at the TSH and prescribing medication based on
if that's high or low, and they're not looking at all of
the other thyroid Physiology that goes outside of the
thyroid, thyroid gland. And there's more than 22
different patterns of thyroid Physiology imbalances that we
can see. And most of the time, women who
are diagnosed with low thyroid are really just prescribed AT4
hormone and kind of shushed out the door.
Now, men do have thyroid issues as well, but it's just much more
common in women. But men can have low thyroid.
In a perfectly healthy individual that's natural, not
taking any thyroid medication or you know, HRT of any form.
What can one expect thyroid function to look like as time
goes on? Like how is thyroid function
impacted in a healthy individual without, you know, all the
external factors naturally? What would what would one expect
to see there? Well, are you asking me like,
what does it look like if somebody is functioning with a
great healthy thyroid? Because you should maintain
thyroid health all the way through life.
Like it's not normal that the thyroid moves into hypothyroid
or low thyroid function, but you should easily be able to
maintain your Physiology, right? You should maintain your, your
body composition. Weight should not be a struggle
all the time, so that and you should have good energy, you
should sleep well, you should have regulated hormones.
That's what it should look like whenever you have a healthy
thyroid metabolism and function. So thyroid function should
operate at normal capacity, healthy capacity, independent of
menopausal years, for instance. Like it's not like testosterone,
whereas when you go through menopause that drops off a Cliff
for females. Yeah, that's exactly right.
So it we don't have these big fluctuations and transitions
through different stages in our lives, right.
So thyroid function should be maintained all the way through
the entire lifespan. What is the difference between
thyroid function between male and female?
Is there significant shift there?
Is that pretty even keel throughout both?
It's pretty much even killed throughout both.
There really isn't a lot of differences between male and
female thyroid Physiology. Now there's a lot of different
Physiology that goes on between men and women, which makes it,
you know, it impacts thyroid function in women differently
than men, for example. So the most common cause of low
thyroid is an autoimmune condition called Hashimoto's,
and this is where your immune system makes antibodies to tag
the thyroid tissue for destruction.
So about 90, upwards of 98% of women who have low thyroid
actually have an underlying autoimmune condition.
That's why they have a low thyroid.
Their thyroid just didn't stop working.
That's why this is not like a menopausal thing.
This is more of an autoimmune issue.
Now, these autoimmune diseases typically turn on with big
hormonal fluctuations. All right, So we see Hashimoto's
turn on when women go through puberty.
We see it especially at the highest rate after women have
babies. And then again, you see either
it turn on or an exacerbation of symptoms as women go through
menopause. So you do see different, you do
see like different thyroid Physiology as we go through
these phases and the thyroid is impacted by our other hormonal
fluctuations. And mostly it's because the
immune system is impacted by estrogen and testosterone
surges. So women are going to be at a
higher risk for developing Hashimoto's and therefore
there's going to be a higher occurrence of low thyroid in
women. But men also do get low thyroid
and they can have Hashimoto's. And the most common times that I
see this turn on in men is after they've gone through a major
stressful event, right? So, you know, I, I've treated
many male patients, but it's after like a death or a
bankruptcy or some major life event where it really tips the
scales and the immune system starts to attack the thyroid.
Gotcha. So are there many issues in
which case the thyroid itself is the primary driver for these
conditions, or is it more so the thyroid is what is negatively
impacted, the result of these underlying root causes and then
it's just manifesting itself in metabolic disruption?
Yeah. So the first thing that happens
is the immune system starts attacking the thyroid.
That's the first thing that happens.
So most of the time it is not a primary thyroid issue.
It is an autoimmune disease. And this autoimmune condition
turns on and it can be there for weeks, months, years before you
ever get diagnosed with low thyroid.
And this is one of the frustrations with many people is
that they have every symptom of low thyroid, but they go to the
doctor and the doctor keeps telling them that their thyroid
hormones look fine, like there's nothing wrong, but they're like,
I have every thyroid symptom in the book.
And so they just wait until the immune system has attacked the
thyroid enough to where they actually have low thyroid
hormone and then they give them thyroid medication.
All right, so this is a primary autoimmune issue.
And then secondarily, we develop hypothyroid.
This is in most cases. Now, certainly there are some
people who have primary hypothyroid, but for the most
part, that is a small percentage.
Most people who have Hashimoto have low, low thyroid, actually
have Hashimoto's. So then if you take the, we got
to look for the solution, like why is this a problem?
What do you do to fix it? So Hashimoto's is kind of at the
top. It's the highest priority.
So it's an autoimmune condition. So now you have to ask a deeper
question. What's causing the immune system
to attack the thyroid? Now this is very important
question because when you have one autoimmune disease, you're
at risk for developing multiple autoimmune diseases.
And in particular with Hashimoto's, you're at risk for
developing thyroid cancer. So it's really important to get
the immune system stable and to handle what's causing the immune
system to attack the thyroid so that you don't start to get all
these other autoimmune diseases or thyroid cancer.
Now, when we're looking to understand what's causing the
thyroid, there's the immune attack on the thyroid.
There's some pretty standard underlying triggers that many of
us are dealing with. Now, we're not usually dealing
with all of them, but we are dealing with a few of them.
So one is insulin resistance. Every time we have an insulin
surge, it will cause the immune system to attack the thyroid.
So that's when we eat bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, cookies,
cakes, candy, soda, or if we don't eat enough or we're
fasting for too long, that will cause an insulin surge.
So not only does it make the immune system attack the
thyroid, but when we have insulin surges, that's the one
of the only hormones that is for fat storage.
All right, so it's kind of we get stuck in these bi
directional feed forward pathways where it's like we're
trying to focus on the thyroid, but we're ignoring insulin
resistance and our blood sugar. And the crazy thing is insulin
resistance has the almost the exact same symptoms as low
thyroid. So you have to handle both of
them. You have to handle both of them.
Otherwise you're going to feel like you're chasing your tail
and you're not going to get anywhere.
And, and this is one of the reasons when people take thyroid
medication and they don't fix these underlying issues,
especially insulin resistance, they don't get anywhere.
Like they may feel good for a short period of time, but
because they didn't fix the insulin resistance, they still
have all the same symptoms. And then they feel like, you
know, nothing ever works and they don't really understand
what's going. Going on with the root cause,
yeah, now I can go through some more of those triggers, go
ahead. But we you can interject here.
Yeah, no, definitely. Let's go through all the
triggers for sure. But if we're trying to avoid the
unnecessary insulin spikes and improve insulin sensitivity and
not be chronically dieting, it sounds like a pretty good
argument for following relatively low carb approach at
a maintenance or slight surplus intake from time to time, as
opposed to just eating a bunch of carbs and eating too little
far too often. Exactly.
You're, you're right on. And, and for me personally and
even for my patients, we kind of shift between more of a Paleo
into a keto and with some circadian fasting and then kind
of back and forth so that you're not always in ketosis, you're
not always in, you know, a deficit, But when you kind of
fluctuate back, back and forth and you have to make that a
lifestyle. But in order to stop this
vicious cycle, we have to pay attention to our blood sugar and
our insulin. And it has been really eye
opening to me. I started using continuous
glucose monitors with my patients and myself.
And it is amazing to see how the body is actually responding and
how much some of these foods impact your blood sugar.
Like, I have been doing this for, you know, two more than two
decades, almost 2 1/2 decades. And I know that when you eat
corn and you drink a Margarita, your blood Sugar's going to go
up. But I had a continuous glucose
monitor on, and I just wanted to see, like, what it would do.
And my blood sugar went over 200.
And I couldn't believe it. I'm not diabetic.
I my blood sugar is good. But I was like, Oh my God, I
knew it was going to go up, but I thought maybe 160, maybe 170,
but I had no earthly idea that it was going to go over 200.
And for me, I was like, wow, the, the, the book knowledge is
important, the clinical experience is important.
But seeing that on a glucometer for myself personally, I'm like,
wow, that Margarita was terrible.
It wasn't even that good. It is definitely not worth it.
So that was pretty eye opening. And I, I don't think it's been
eye opening for patients because when you can see what it's
actually doing to your Physiology, it's pretty crazy.
Yeah, I'm a big fan of the CGMS. I mean, I'm not diabetic either,
but I've worn one on multiple occasions and I feel like I'm
really in tune with my body through the different preps that
I've done. So I, I know how certain things
are going to affect me and I've been keto for forever.
So my, my CGM data is pretty boring.
But a lot of people that are not familiar with track and macros
or they're not in tune with their body having something
tangible to look at and see how a food that they would
previously think would be a non issue massively causes a blood
sugar spike. I think that makes it real for
them and I feel like it empowers them.
So I think I'm a, I'm a huge fan of it.
There's been some doctors that, you know, you know, naysay
against CGMS if you're not diabetic, but I think, you know,
the more data people have, the more empowered they'll feel.
For sure, and you know, it was eye opening for me because I
knew drinking a Margarita wasn't good, but I didn't realize the
impact that that had. And I think we get stuck in OA
little bit is OK and we get stuck in O on the weekends.
I'm not going to be as strict as I am during the weekday.
And it's like you blow your whole week because you on the
weekends you cheat, but you don't realize the impact that
those things are having. So it makes it much easier.
And I think that, you know, doctors that may not like CGMS,
unless you're diabetic, I feel like they don't understand the
impact of insulin resistance and the lead up to the actual
diabetes. But this is there may be a
different approach to reverse that and to optimize Physiology
versus you'll deal with it when you have a problem.
Totally agree. Totally agree.
I got another question that's maybe taking us down a tangent
here, but I'm curious. So when you're doing Paleo and
then transitioning your patients to keto as it pertains to their
circadian rhythms, are you having them in more of a deficit
during their keto phase or are you having them at a surplus
while keto as well? Well, I'll say this.
When I take patients, usually I go through the Paleo phase in
the beginning because it's an easier transition.
So like if you take people who are used to eating McDonald's
and Taco Bell and you know, they just have a terrible diet,
moving them into Paleo is going to put them in a deficit because
it is really hard to overeat proteins and vegetables.
I mean, you could certainly do it, but from where the typical
patient is coming from, they're going to be in a, a bigger
deficit than where they started. So then and getting them used to
cooking this way and making different choices and, and
getting them used to consuming Whole Foods and changing their
mindset is a much easier transition than going straight
keto. And so I like to start there.
And many patients do exceptional and some of them I don't even
have to really move into ketosis.
But the ones who really struggle with their weight and maybe they
came to me and they were already eating low carb or they tried
low carb and they didn't get, you know, a lot of traction
there. We start to work on all their
underlying Physiology and working on moving into insulin,
working on their blood sugar and then moving into ketosis.
And when I'm in, when I have them go into ketosis, in the
beginning, I really, we're not counting calories that much
because you know, from where they came from and if you're
eating mostly animal protein and green vegetables, it's really
hard to be in a surplus. I mean, it is really hard now.
You could certainly overdo it. The other day I was eating
macadamia nuts and I looked at the bag and there's 2000
calories in a bag of macadamia nuts.
And I don't even know to tell you how much fat is in there.
And I'm not really worried about the fat and I wasn't too much
worried about calories. But when you can eat half a bag
of macadamia nuts sitting here as you're sitting all day in
between patients, I was like, huh, this is crazy.
So, you know, trying to pay attention to what you are eating
because you can certainly go over if you're, if you're not
looking at things appropriately. But moving people that are
really struggling with weight and insulin resistance, moving
them into ketosis. And then maybe doing circadian
fasting where we start with no eating 3 hours before bed and
then moving into maybe skipping dinner a couple of times a week.
And then seeing how their blood sugar responds and seeing how
they're doing with their goals. Yeah, no, I can totally respect
all of that. I feel like a lot of people, you
got to make it easy for them from where they're coming from.
You got to meet them where they're at.
So totally agree with everything you just said.
There's been a few people that I'd say that keto long term is
it causes implications with thyroid health.
But I feel like in that context, it's always been from people
that are just chronically in a deficit.
I feel like if you ate at a higher intake from time to time,
that would revolt. You know, that would remove any
issues for thyroid misfunction following a strict ketogenic
approach. I think people just diet far too
long far too frequently and that's what causes the issues.
Yeah, I agree. And one of the, and I think that
they do it sometimes in the wrong times of day.
So there's a lot of, and I'm guilty of this too.
I was intermittent fasting kind of when that first started kind
of coming out and intermittent fasting in the morning.
And when you don't eat in the morning, it really impacts your
thyroid health, your cortisol levels and your blood sugar.
For me personally, when I was intermittent fasting, I loved it
because I didn't have to eat. I am, I could, I could fast a
lot, which is not great because that means your metabolism isn't
necessarily where you want it. But I check my numbers all the
time, right? I get my blood work done.
I'm looking at my A1C and my thyroid and all of that.
And I was doing really hard intermittent fasting and I was
in about ketosis. My ketones were probably
anywhere from 2:00 to 3:00, which is pretty high, but it
wasn't terrible. After about 3 months of that
solid I went and got my labs and my A1C was pre diabetic and I
was like what in the world is happening?
And so this was before continuous glucose monitor.
So I was checking my blood sugar every 30 minutes in the morning
and I noticed that my blood sugar was fine when I woke up at
you know under 100 and then by 10:00 it was at like 110 and
then by 11:00 it was at 1:20 and by 1:00 it was over 120.
And so my body couldn't handle that type of intermittent
fasting. For me it was not good and I did
not see that it was great for my patients.
So if you shift it to mimic your circadian rhythm, because when
you wake up in the morning, your court, you're going to get a
cortisol spike. And if you're not eating, you're
going to get an insulin surge as well.
And it's really hard on the body because that's when the body
needs most of its energy is first thing in the morning.
And then cortisol starts to go down when you're trying to sleep
at night and everything is moving into a different
direction. So I found it's much easier on
the body and we get better results when we do more fasting
at night versus first thing in the morning.
Yeah, so now you got to switch from late night margaritas to
mid morning mimosas, right? Something like that or no
margaritas would be better. But I am finding.
That when I go out to dinner with my husband, I'm like, can
we what time do they open? 5:00, OK, we'll go 5:00 and then
that way I can eat early. So we're eating like with with
all the old people, but that's OK.
Yeah, it is crazy how there you go, there you go.
I mean, parasympathetic sympathetic state has a massive
impact on hormone function, thyroid health as well.
And like, I just get so frustrated seeing people real.
I mean, fasting can be great. It can certainly be a tool,
intermittent fasting and extended fasting as well.
But when it got really popular, I guess probably like 20/20/21,
I feel like it just blew up and you had so many people just
taking it to the extreme with, you know, more days not eating
than eating throughout the course of a week.
And that's not necessarily natural in our current day and
age either. I mean, you can make an argument
from an ancestral standpoint that, you know, they were
definitely periods of time where we were doing extended fasting,
but, you know, people can certainly overdo it and that's
going to wreak havoc hormonally speaking.
So yeah, I, I think you got, there's a yin Yang to
everything. Like there's, there's a benefit
to eating and feasting. If you're going to have a fast,
you have to also feast. And people just seem to forget
that feasting component of it. Yeah, and then other people
forget the fasting. I will say this, having a
continuous glucose monitor has really helped me because I now
can do a 72 hour fast and feel amazing and my blood sugar is
very stable. So it's more of an extended
fast. I haven't really had patients do
this yet. I mean, because if as long as
they're doing well with what we're doing and it's not like an
extended fast and I'm going to let them continue to do that,
but there's some patients that certainly you could do that.
But I've, I've learned that a 72 hour fast like once a month for
me is great. And then, you know, as long as I
will continue you to be in kind of in and out of ketosis, that's
where my body functions the best, I feel the best and it
seems to work physiologically. Yeah, totally.
So what are some other primary drivers?
So we got the Hashimoto's. What are some other triggers
that you see people dealing with from an autoimmune standpoint
that are then wreaking havoc on the thyroid downstream?
Yeah, so blood sugars #1 #2 is what you were talking about,
your adrenal glands and, and stress levels.
And so we get stuck in sympathetic OverDrive where the
body is always feeling like it's under threat, it's always under
stress. And so that is going to, first
of all, drive the immune system to attack the thyroid.
Secondly, you, because you don't go into Paris sympathetic where
your body rests, digest and heals.
So then you've got sleeping issues.
Your circadian rhythm is dysregulated.
Circadian rhythm, for those that don't know, is that this is your
sleep and wake cycle and it is regulated by your adrenal glands
and the production of cortisol. It's also regulated by melatonin
and serotonin. But an oversimplification is
that your adrenal glands produce cortisol in the morning and that
should be your highest peak in the day.
That's when you should wake up, pretty much when the sun comes
up, you should feel great, you should have energy.
And then cortisol slowly decreases throughout the day so
that it's preparing you for sleep at night.
And then it should stay low throughout the night and then
peak again in the morning. But a lot of times, because
we're in OverDrive, we have high cortisol levels, which makes us
gain weight around the midsection.
And no amount of exercise is going to fix that.
Cortisol is also impacted by insulin and your blood sugar.
And so many people don't sleep at night because their blood
sugar crashes and then the adrenal glands secrete cortisol
and then you're awake and then you can't go to sleep for
another two hours. And so when our sleep and wake
cycles are disrupted, we, we decrease the amount of time that
we're healing, our digestion gets slowed down, so we get
constipated. And your adrenal glands are
really important for, for really your brain health as well.
So adrenal function is important.
And also it's also important for people to know that it's normal
to have a cortisol spike in the morning and then it comes down
at night. And sometimes people have such
along high cortisol that eventually the adrenal glands
can no longer respond to stress in the way that it should.
And this is when we start to get all these chronic degenerative
diseases. And it's highly tied to your
blood sugar. So if you have a blood sugar
issue, like especially pre diabetes, you know you're going
to have an adrenal issue because your adrenal glands help balance
blood sugar. And then you look at estrogen
surges, testosterone surges, those will also trigger the
immune system to attack the thyroid along with low thyroid
hormones. So if you have low T3 or T4,
that can be a trigger for the immune system to attack the
thyroid. So a lot of women get frustrated
that they've been prescribed these thyroid medications and
they're not working, meaning like they don't feel any
different. So they just stop taking the
thyroid medication, which actually just keeps this vicious
cycle going. So one of the the biggest
fallacies is that women think that when they take their
thyroid hormones, all is going to be well.
And the reason they think that is because that's what they're
told. And so they take the thyroid
medication or the thyroid hormone and they don't lose
weight and they don't have any extra energy and they still have
the symptoms. And that's because some of these
other underlying issues haven't been addressed.
So when you start to fix the hormones and your blood sugar
and your cortisol, and you also have to look at underlying
infections, whether it's bacterial, yeast, fungus, viral,
parasitic infections will be a trigger for the immune system.
You have food sensitivities that also trigger the immune system.
And then you have to look at gut health as well.
So those are pretty much all the triggers.
Now, nobody has just one. Most people don't have all of
them, but many people have. I would say probably like 4-4 or
five of them. Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of
moving targets. People got to get dialed in.
How do you recommend people take action and figure out what their
body specifically needs? Like if they've got, you know, a
healthy amount of stress that they're actually prioritizing
sleep, getting good quality sleep if they're not drinking
energy drinks all day long over caffeinating, if they're eating
good quality foods. I'm assuming the best path for
people to take is to actually get some labs drawn, see what
their markers are looking like, see where they have
deficiencies, and then adjust from there.
Yeah, exactly. So I have a thyroid
transformation blueprint. And the first pillar is that we
have to have goals, right? We have to have a constant
pursuit of our goals. So what is our health goals?
What is it that we're willing to do?
What are we trying to do? And make sure that those goals
are solid and that you have motivations for why you want to
achieve those goals. So that's what helps keep you
moving forward. And I think a lot of people
think that health is always on an upward trajectory, but it's
kind of like up and down. As long as we're moving in the
right direction and we're heading towards health, you
know, that's the that's the progress that you should expect.
Now the next thing is you have to have comprehensive testing.
So as it pertains to thyroid, when you go to your doctor and
you say I have all of these symptoms and I think I have low
thyroid because now we have doctor Google he's, he or she
will say, OK, let's run your let's check your thyroid.
And most of the time they just check ATSH.
If they're lucky, they may do AT4, maybe a, a thyroid panel
which includes AT4AT3 uptake and an FTI.
Now there are actually 12 different markers that make up a
full thyroid panel and the, and you have to, you can't just look
at the thyroid. You've got to look at your blood
sugar and you've got to look at infections and you've got to
look at your gut and you've got to look at inflammatory markers.
Like all those things that we talked about.
That is what comprehensive testing looks like.
A lot of people, if they've heard me talk or they've done
checked with doctor Google, there's many different markers
outside of just that TSH and they think that that's
comprehensive testing. Well, that's looking at the
thyroid in a more comprehensive way.
But remember, the thyroid doesn't work in a vacuum.
So you have to truly test all of those different underlying
triggers to figure out, OK, which ones am I dealing with?
Which ones are the most priority?
And that's what I'm going to start working on.
It's, you know, we when we take thyroid supplements and or
thyroid medication and we don't feel great, we stopped taking
that. And then we say, OK, maybe it's
a blood sugar issue and then we start working on that.
But we're not working on what's causing blood sugar issues
because most of us think that what causes us to have a blood
sugar issue is our food. And food does impact it.
But if you have an underlying infection, it's going to raise
your blood sugar. If you have a high toxic load,
it's going to impact your blood sugar.
They're actually toxins that are called diabetogens that sit on
top of insulin receptor sites. And if you're dealing with a
high toxic load, you can have the most perfect diet and your
weight's not going to move. And you wonder why.
Why is this not working for me? It's because there's other
things that are causing your blood sugar issue or other
things that are causing the symptoms that you're dealing
with. So you have to have full
comprehensive testing. And then the next pillar is that
you have to have a comprehensive analysis and diagnosis.
So I just got off the a call with someone right before this
podcast. He was a spouse of a patient and
he said, I'm, I'm totally healthy.
I'm doing really great. I just need to lose weight.
I'm like, oh, he's like, I've looked at my labs and my iron
was high, so I'm gonna go donate blood, but everything else looks
good. I'm like, oh, that's
interesting. So I go through his labs and his
insulin is outside of the lab range.
His cholesterol is high, his triglycerides are high.
He's got a UTI, he's got an underlying viral pattern.
He's like, yeah, I took it to my doctor and he said everything is
looking great. And I said, OK, you're on
metformin, you're on a statin, you're on a Zep bound, which is,
you know, a GLP, one agonist. I'm like, OK, so the difference
of health, what you're thinking of is healthy and you're just
saying that you're not sick. That doesn't mean that you're
not over, you're over here in optimal health.
And I think that that's really important because most of the
time in traditional medicine, when they're looking at your
labs, they're looking to diagnose a disease that they can
give you a medication for. They're not looking, are you
functioning in an optimal way? Are you in complete optimal
health? And most of the time, if we have
a symptom, that's not the case because the way your body
communicates, indicates with you is that if there's an underlying
imbalance that it can't overcome, then it's going to
give you a symptom. And it's our job to figure out,
okay, where is that symptom coming from?
What is this underlying imbalance that's creating this
issue? And once you resolve that
underlying imbalance, then the symptom goes away because it no
longer has a purpose. And so really getting someone
who understands what goals you have, are your goals to reach
optimal health or are your goals just to suppress symptoms and
slow down the progression of a disease?
So if your goals are to achieve optimal health and truly get
down to the root cause, you have to have someone who's trained
and understands how to look at things like that, not just to
diagnose disease and give you a medication.
So that is really important. And then from there, only from
there can you customize treatment plans because I think
a lot of people they go from symptom to treatment and when
you go from symptom to treatment, you're guessing.
And that's when we go into our health food stores and we say, I
really think I've got an adrenal issue so give me an adrenal
supplement. I think I must have a liver
issue. So let me take a detox, detox
supplements and maybe it's a blood sugar thing.
So they take cinnamon. But if if you're not getting
down to the root cause, the of you resolving the underlying
symptom is is small and and you may be lucky, but you're not
going to. It's really not directed in true
science and customized based on your underlying imbalances.
Yeah, it's unfortunate because so many of these tests that
people are getting, you know, they've got their healthy
parameter range on the, you know, desired window there, but
that that parameter is based off an average population that's not
a healthy population to begin with.
So it's probably the furthest thing from optimal.
And do you know of any like good graphs that show what optimal is
that people can measure against that as opposed to just the
print out they get from their their LabCorp request diagnostic
center? Well, I don't necessarily know
of a graph. I know the research that I've
done and all the years of experience.
I have memorized all of the optimal ranges and I actually
have a, a print out or a downloadable PDF of all of the
thyroid. Like the, I tell you that
there's 12 markers that make up a complete thyroid panel.
And I also have the optimal ranges with that, which I can
certainly make available to your viewers.
But I don't know of any kind of other resource that has it all
put together that I'm aware of that gives you all the optimal
ranges. But I think it's important too,
to understand that the, you have to know which test to order to,
to kind of put everything together and understand
patterns. So it's not just about like for
example, many people with low thyroid and who have insulin
resistance issues have a fatty liver pattern and that means
that their liver cells are dying off and they're turning into
fat. Now you can diagnose that by
looking at the laboratory ranges.
If they're outside of the laboratory ranges.
But there's a pattern like AST and ALT are those liver enzymes
and they should be between 10 and 19 and the lab range is like
zero to 44. But the pattern is if those
liver enzymes are above 19 and triglycerides are above 100,
that's the beginning signs of this fatty liver pattern.
And the crazy thing is you can even see that in ultrasound
before we can see that pattern on blood.
But most of the time it doesn't get diagnosed until those liver
enzymes are above 40 and 50 in the outside of the lab ranges.
So you have to be able to look at patterns.
It's not just looking at like liver enzymes, but you got to be
able to correlate different patterns.
So it goes far beyond just getting your generic annual
physical and then looking for any red markers on your print
out. Yeah, exactly.
What is the typical demographic? Like the patients that you're
working with, what are they typically dealing with?
What what are they coming to you specifically for?
When do they honestly know that there is an issue to begin with?
Like who is your general avatar? Patient demographic I guess.
Yeah, my patient demographic is typically somewhere between 50
and 65. Now certainly we have, we have
women on the outsides of that for sure.
But I think 50 and 65 is typical.
And they've all been dealing with low thyroid issues for
decades. And I think they've tried every
diet, just like I tried every diet.
They have a diagnosis. They've been told that the
reason they feel like they feel is because of their age.
They say, oh, it's because of menopause.
And when you get told that when it's age or menopause, what are
you going to do about that? Nothing like there's nothing we
can do about our age and there's nothing you can do about the
phase of life that you're in. So I think that most of these
women are frustrated. They've been dealing with it for
a long time. They haven't found anything
that's worked. And so, you know, that is when
they stumble upon me and you know, all of the women that I've
I've worked with, that's when they start to get excited and
they start to have hope again with.
The popularity that has arose arisen from, you know, HRT,
bioidentical hormones. I mean, it seems like I haven't
got a conversation around that almost on a daily basis these
days, whereas you didn't really hear that at all 5-10 years ago
it seems. What's, I mean, it's kind of
like the Wild West in certain regards.
And I feel like a lot of these doctors are prescribing HRT
without a comprehensive view of what downstream effects are.
So when you are a menopausal woman that's going on HRT, what
can they expect that to do to thyroid health and function if
that conversation is not had and just tested for at the onset?
OK, so you're right. Hormone replacement therapy
right now is the wild, Wild West.
There are no solid guidelines and doctors are really just
trying to figure out where they start and how they manipulate
this. And my biggest beef with women
going on hormone replacement therapy is that they're not
tested. They are not tested thoroughly
to understand what is like urine, blood and saliva, to
understand free fraction form, what's at the tissue level,
what's floating in the blood and how is the body metabolizing
those hormones. So understanding full thyroid
Physiology is extremely important.
And then once women get put on these hormone replacement
therapies, are we testing to make sure that they're not
metabolizing this down the wrong pathway, increasing their risk
for estrogen dominant cancers? So yes, even though it's
bioidentical, if they are pushing this down the four
hydroxy or 16 hydroxy pathway, they're increasing their risk
for estrogen dominant cancers. The other thing that's really
important is, you know, understanding that women who
have an autoimmune disease, they get triggered when they have
these big estrogen surges or testosterone surges.
It can be a trigger for autoimmunity.
So we have to look at the person in front of us, understand the
full aspects of their health history and where they're at,
and then continuing to test them to make sure that they're on the
right dosage, that they're metabolizing this properly.
If they're not, how do we support them in that way is
going to be very, very important and not just sticking them on
these hormones for eternity. And I see people, women who have
hormones as high, higher than a menstruating female.
I'm like, I don't think estrogen is supposed to be like 2 times
higher than when we are menstruating.
And then they wonder why they have a hard time losing weight.
So I think that there's benefits to using hormone replacement
therapy. I think that we don't have
enough guidelines and understanding of how these
hormones are working in the body.
I always look at it like Plinko, you know, the game Plinko, you
might be too young, like on the Price is Right.
So they just drop it at the top and then it kind of goes and you
have no control over what the body is doing with that hormone.
It's like we are going to hope for the best, but we have no
idea how it's metabolizing it, how it's going to stay in the
body, what it's going to do. And so it's literally just
guessing and hoping for the best.
And the other thing that's important is that hormones, in
my opinion, are at the bottom, at the end of a metabolic
pathway. So for me, I'm not saying that
hormones are all bad, but what I'm saying is why do we have low
hormones in the 1st place? Because postmenopausal women are
supposed to have a certain amount and a healthy amount of
estrogen, progesterone and testosterone.
If they're below a pre a postmenopausal range, we need to
ask the question why? Right.
So if we have low estrogen and testosterone, well, what does
DHEA look like? Okay, DHEA is low.
Well, why is DHEA low? Well, because the adrenal glands
are not functioning well. So what else is going on at the
adrenal level? Are they in constant fight or
fly and have high cortisol? So all of the resources are
being pushed into cortisol and not into estrogen or DHEA so
that it can go into estrogen and testosterone.
So understanding like why we have low hormones, because if
you're over supplementing with estrogen, you're going to push
DHEA down, right? Like it all, there's so many
other impacts. Hormones affect, you know, the
whole body and they don't just affect like it doesn't just
affect estrogen, it affects DHEA and adrenal function and
testosterone and everything is impacted by these hormones.
So really having a better understanding of how hormones
work. And also if we can keep asking
the question, why, why are these hormones so low?
And can we work at a root cause level?
I think that that's a a better approach.
Yeah. No, I totally agree.
It seems that the general consensus has just moved to them
being a pro, you know, through and through without much thought
given towards any repercussions downstream, which has been
frustrating for me because I'd like to take a more holistic,
comprehensive approach. So of the, you know, 50 to 65
year demographic that you're typically working with over the
past five years, is there any idea, general thought as to what
percentage of those patients have been prescribed HRT before
coming to you? You know, if I was just to
guess, I would probably say 50% of them have.
And I think that the reason that they're coming to me is that
they may be same thing with thyroid hormones, right?
So they felt good for a little bit and then they went back to
not feeling good and then they got on HRT and they felt good
for a little bit, but now they don't feel so good or they got
on HRT and they all fell apart. When they fall apart after
getting on HRT, I know it's just they had an immune response,
right? So that that doctor didn't
understand that estrogen and testosterone surges can cause an
immune attack on the body. So I would say a good percentage
of them have been on hormone replacement.
And then from what I do is just do the testing.
Do they do well on hormone replacement it are they
metabolizing it properly? You know, what are their adrenal
glands looking like and making sure that they're good.
Some of them are doing great. Others I'm like, Oh my God, they
have you on like, you know, a 16 year old dose of estrogen when
you are 65, you probably don't need that much estrogen and your
estrogen dominant, your progesterone's all out of
balance with your estrogen. So it's, it's really trying to,
you know, give see the patient for where they're at and then
make the appropriate changes based on how they're doing and
their Physiology. Totally agree.
What about, I forget the name of
it, but there's that popular, you know, pig thyroid medication
that's supposed to improve are you know, natural up regulation
of thyroid function. Do you have a thought towards
that at all? Yeah.
So that is Armor thyroid and Armor thyroid is a natural like
desiccated pig thyroid and it has T4 and T3 in it.
And I would say this, I don't necessarily have any major
preference to what thyroid medication a patient is on.
It all depends on how their body is absorbing it and processing
it. So you will find some doctors
who are like I only use Armor Thyroid, but some patients don't
do well on Armor thyroid like they need more T4.
So I just look at it like, OK, how is a patient doing?
They already mostly come on prescription thyroid medication.
Sometimes they have issues with Armor thyroid.
They may have issues with Thinthroid or levothyroxine.
They have an under conversion issue maybe from T4 to T3, so
they're not converting it properly.
So it's just looking and evaluating where the person is
and not getting too hung up on a specific thyroid medication
because again, it's important that we have enough thyroid
hormones. But most of the issue that
they're having is from all the other underlying triggers that
haven't been addressed. Now there's other better, in my
opinion, T4 hormones, which is tyrosine because it's super
clean, like the Levothyroid toxin and Synthroid have
cornstarch in it and some dairy in it.
And you know, I've looked at it, but there's some rumors that it
has gluten in it, but I couldn't be super clear about that.
So some people just do not do well on that medication.
And then tyrosin is super clean. I think it's a MCT oil with T4
and a gel cap. So if somebody needs AT 4,
that's a really good option. And then other people do really
well on Armor and some don't. So it's not necessarily about
the thyroid medication. Sometimes it is, but not always,
and usually it's the underlying triggers that are the biggest
issue. Totally.
How often should someone get these comprehensive panels?
It's going to be kind of case dependent based off of what
manipulations you're making, but as a general of them, how
frequently should someone get these comprehensive lab panels
drawn to see to give it enough time to actually see measurable
change but not wait too long between testing?
Yeah, like I just saw a patient this morning.
Her doctor sees her once a year and she lowered her medication
because she was in way over medicated.
She lowered her medication and I'm like, when are you going to
go back to see her? Cuz this isn't, this is
definitely not low enough because you're still in
hyperthyroid. She's like, oh, I'm not going
to, I'm not due to see her for another six months.
I'm like, Oh my gosh. So definitely not a year, but
that is typical. So most people get their, their
thyroid checked once a year, regardless if they're changing
or not. My patients, when I have them in
care, I do their labs every 45 to 60 days because when you're
treating the underlying root cause, the body heals pretty
quickly. And so I should expect to see
pretty significant changes within 45 to 60 days.
And then we continue that pattern until you know someone
has reached balance and and they're doing really well.
And then? And then after that, I would say
like every six months it would be appropriate.
That's about what I do. Every six months I do a a full
big blood panel. And you probably don't want to
make drastic shifts into your thyroid medication based off of
how you're feeling on a given day.
Like you kind of want to get it dialed in, hold a steady
baseline and then let that data come in 4560 days later and then
make a shift as necessary, not just, you know, change based off
of how you're feeling that day. Because I have had some patients
or some clients that have done that and I'm not their thyroid,
you know, doctor. So I'm, you know, not
prescribing them anything. But I'm like, if you're messing
with anything hormone related or thyroid related, you probably
don't want to shift on a regular recurring basis like that.
Yeah, I had a patient just the other day doing that and I said,
does your doctor know that you're doing this?
Like one day you take this and the next day if you don't feel
like it, you don't take that. She goes, yeah, she told me to
self medicate because my symptoms are so up and down.
So it is better to have consistent amount of thyroid
hormone in the body so that your your body is maintaining the
metabolic rate. And I will almost, it's almost
always that if you're having these big fluctuations in the
way that you feel, it's probably your blood sugar and not your
thyroid. And so then they're increasing
and decreasing, increasing their thyroid medication.
And that really isn't. That's not how the body
typically works. Yeah, cuz there's like a lag
time to everything. And if you don't give your body
the adequate time to acclimate to whatever changes you're
making, then you're making feedback that's based off of
inputs that were taking place, you know, weeks or months prior,
which is just, it's like shooting in the dark.
It's not gonna really work out well for you.
That's right. The only thing that you know
changes pretty quickly is your blood sugar, right?
Like your blood sugar can go up and down pretty quickly.
But like when you're dealing with Hashimoto's, I can tell I
have Hashimoto's. I can tell when I kind of am
over where I should because my heart rate will speed up or I'll
have like a heart palpitation. So to me, that means the immune
system just attacked the thyroid.
And I just got a little shot of, you know, thyroid hormones
because those thyroid cells died.
So I'd take a step back and I say, OK, how's my blood sugar?
How's my stress level? Do I feel like I have some kind
of infection? Like, where am I at?
And then a lot of people take that as like, oh, I need to
decrease my meds right now, but that it already happened, Like,
and it's not because they're usually over medicated.
It's because they just, you know, ate something.
Or did you get into gluten or dairy or some kind of food
sensitivity or some trigger that caused your immune system to
attack the thyroid And you're going to feel like you're you're
over medicated. But it shouldn't last that long.
And you should go back and look at the underlying trigger.
What? What do you do for stress?
Would you consider yourself a stressed person in general?
I don't have the personality of being stressed, but I will tell
you I am running a business. I've got two kids, I've got a
marriage, I have a farm, a regenerative farm.
I I'm always doing something, writing a book, developing an
app. I have I always over commit.
So do I stress my body out? Absolutely.
So but you. You have to balance that so that
you don't really, you're not stuck in this sympathetic
OverDrive. So for me, I'm always out with
my animals whenever I can. That will, that actually will
put you more into a parasympathetic state.
I'm always walking in nature. I meditate almost every single
day for at least an hour. I get into the sauna and I eat
really well. So I try to manage that stress
and I can always tell like when my when I'm tipping into that
distress instead of being in eustress, I always just take a
break and I have everybody around me to support me in that
way. So I've created that
environment. So when I need a break, I'm
like, I'm out. I am just taking a few hours off
or a day off and I just need to recuperate.
I prioritize sleep. I was just telling my husband he
woke up today and he's like, God, I really slept well last
night said me too. I'm like, I've been sleeping for
9 hours a night, which is very unusual.
And he goes, you're, you're recovering.
It's OK. I'm like, OK, you're right,
you're right. I that's OK for me to sleep for
9 hours a night. So I'd really try to manage the
stress that I pile on and what am I going to do to kind of
counterbalance that so that I'm also supporting parasympathetic.
Yeah, it's, it's a fine dance to make for sure, because I'm, I'm
in the same boat. Like I've got some my nutritions
dialed in, my training's optimized, but I just bring so
much to my plate. I mean, I own multiple
businesses, I've got clients. It's just like I love everything
I do too. And that makes it even trickier
because when you love everything you do, you just keep adding to
it. I'm burning my candle.
It all ends without a doubt. But I don't know that that
that's my Achilles heel for sure.
It's just being stressed. It's always a good stressed
mentally but like physiologically it probably
still wears on me just the same. Yeah, I think it's, you know,
for me, I have a huge mission, which is to truly change the
face of healthcare. And I really emphasize Women's
Health because I think women have the biggest circle of
influence. And so when you have that huge
mission, probably like you too, there's so many opportunities.
There's so many ways that people can be helped.
And so in order to do that at maximum productivity, your
health has to be your number one priority.
And I find that business owners and moms, a lot of times we
aren't prioritizing our health. And so all of our efforts and
our productivity and our brain function really suffers.
And so I made a commitment a long time ago that my health was
always going to be my number one priority.
And so that is, you know, how I can prioritize eating, working
out. I don't start my day until
10:00. I said nobody talk business to
me until after 10:00. Why?
Because I write my goals in the morning.
I have a good breakfast, I work out, I go talk to my animals, I
go harvest stuff in the garden. And then at 10:00, I'm ready to
go. And then I'm usually done by
7:00 PM, which I also go walk outside and do all of those
things. But you have to set your
boundaries and you have to set your priorities.
And I know for sure that if your health isn't your number one
priority, whatever it is that you do, whether you're an
entrepreneur and you're crazy like us or you're a crazy like
us mom or or whatever it is that you do, if your health isn't
your number one priority, everything else suffers.
Yeah. No, I completely agree,
Completely agree. I got another question for you.
This one's definitely a tangent, but what type of regenerative
farm you operate in there? Well, we decided in 2021 that we
were going to start a regenerative farm.
My husband really just wanted to be on land.
And then I was like, OK, let's go.
And so, you know, for us understanding and knowing that
there's a saying you are what you eat, but it goes way deeper
because you are what you eat eats.
And so the more that we are understanding what they're doing
to the animals that we're eating.
And I, I just remember in COVID, like reading something, seeing
an article or some post on Facebook or Instagram where the
slaughterhouses, no, the, the feedlots were killing hundreds
of cows. And I'm like, that's weird.
Why would they kill all of those cows?
Why don't they just wait a couple months and then process
them when when the processors open again?
Like that made no sense to me. But the more that I dug into
that story is that these cows are diabetic.
They literally would not have lived that long and they would
have these cows like dying and they wouldn't have any control
over that. So they went ahead and just
killed all of those cows. And I was like, I knew that cows
that ate grains were not great and I knew it was better if it
was grass fed because of the the omegas, right?
The Omega threes, nines, sixes that balance.
But I didn't realize that those cows were diabetic.
And if you're eating cows that are diabetic, it cannot be good
for you. You eating like sick animals
with chronic degenerative disease and then learning more
about all the pesticides and all the things that they put.
So I'm like, OK, if we're gonna move to land, great.
I'm gonna start a regenerative farm.
And my husband's like, Oh my God, what are we gonna do?
So I have cows. All of our animals are heritage
breeds, so they take longer to grow.
And they have been less genetically modified.
They're not really genetically modified, but less hybridized.
And when you learn that the the turkeys that we are eating can't
even procreate and they're artificially inseminated because
it makes a bigger breast and there's more meat, you're like,
Oh my gosh, that's crazy. So we have heritage turkeys,
heritage chickens, Highland cows.
We have sheep and pigs and, and a huge garden.
So we have all of that. I'm in the process of maybe
doing bees and goats, but I got to hire a a ranch manager to
help me because I can't do all of that.
No, this is this is super cool because we have we have
chickens, we raised lamb and I'm doing it all rotational grazing
as well. So like this is we're speaking
the same language here. I had a little hair sometime for
another. Hour.
Go ahead. Yeah, totally, totally.
I had Will Harris on the podcast.
I went and did a seminar at his ranch in in Georgia.
That was awesome. But yeah, I mean, we got bees.
Like I'm just going super deep in this as well.
We actually had a guy over this morning.
I'm probably going to buy some pigs from him to raise the pigs.
So yeah, this, I mean, we could definitely talk about this for
another hour because I love this.
What kind of pigs are you raising?
We haven't gotten him yet, so he's got a couple different
strains. I'm kind of leaning towards like
the Cooney Cooney's or something.
But I've you mentioned Highland cows.
How much land are y'all on that you're raising the cows on?
60 acres. So I don't have a lot of cows.
I have, yeah, I have like 6 or 7 cows.
We probably can't handle much more.
What I've learned, like the sheep and the goats, you can
have 10 sheep or 10 goats to one cow.
So, you know, it's, it's more efficient on smaller amounts of
land to have sheep and goats versus cows.
So we can't handle that much more cows than what we have by
and, and letting the grass rest for at least 60 days in between
when they graze. So we're we're trying to manage
that. But I have Cooney Cooney's also
and they are so great. I had old spots too, but we are
getting rid of the old spots. They're just not as friendly and
I don't know, I just, I feel like they would knock me over
and eat me if I fell in the paddock with them.
But the coonies, they get on your lap when they're babies and
they are just the most precious things.
Then we're actually processing our first kind of round of them.
But you know, I haven't ever had their meat, but I heard the
meat's great. But they're amazing, almost like
dogs. They're so amazing.
Yeah, and they're, they're, I mean, I've only heard good
things about that that breed as well.
I've heard really good things about the Highland cows.
There's like super Hardy from what I've read up on, like I've
never raised the cows. My uncle did way back in the
day. So I'm excited to get back into
it. But the lamb that we raised were
super easy. I mean, they were the easiest by
far. And we we, we kept them for an
additional year. So they kind of were more so
mutton than than than lamb, but they had more fat on them.
That was delicious. It was just super breezy.
And I feel like the more significance and importance you
put on the foods you eat, the more by default you care about
what that animal consumed. And it just makes sense that you
raise them if possible. I mean, I do a lot of hunting
too, but knowing your local rancher, if you're not raising
them yourself, just like becoming more connected with the
foods you eat so that circle of life is more complete and
transparent, I think is just incredibly important.
It is. And I think from an energetic
perspective, these animals are, you know, treated with love
every single day and they have great, amazing food and they're
in a no stress whatsoever environment.
I think that that also really infiltrates the food that we're
eating. 100% what state are you located in?
Texas Oh, and so Highlands, they told me Texas Highlands don't do
that great with the heat, but mine do really well.
But they do have access to water and they literally sit in the
pond all day long whenever it's hot.
But they they do, they do really well.
Well, I'm in Arkansas, so I mean pretty similar climate to Texas.
So yeah, I'm kind of leaning towards Highlands as our
accounts for sure. They're so sweet.
They let me brush them and they're really friendly.
I have one that's kind of bitchy, but all the other ones
are are super sweet. And we have a bull who is like,
oh, you could go sit on him and he would not care.
So they're all very docile, pretty sweet animals.
Love it, love it. Well, we could probably, like I
said, talk forever on homesteading.
We'll have to do a round two podcast dedicated to to
homesteading, raising your own meat.
But Doctor Heather Stone, I truly appreciate the time and
all the expertise on thyroid function.
If there's everything I can do to help you in any way, you just
let me know. What can people go to find out
more about you, dive deeper into your work, all that good stuff?
Yeah, they can go to my Facebook group called Happy, Healthy and
Lean. Every month I do a master class
there and that's how people would be available to get
testing or even to enter into care.
So that's it really the only place that they can go to get
more access. Now I do have a book that's out
on Amazon called the Thyroid Transformation Blueprint, so
they can always get more information there.
Awesome, well I'll link out. Make it easy people to find you
for sure. OK.
Thanks for having me on. It was great.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Take care.