Episode #11 Understanding and Advocating for Your Thyroid Health with Dr. Kate Masterson

Summary

Dr. Kate shares her personal experience with thyroid issues and how she discovered the root causes of her condition. She explains the symptoms of thyroid issues, including weight gain, brain fog, fatigue, and more. The importance of a full thyroid panel is emphasized, including tests for TSH, free and total T3, and antibodies. Optimal ranges for these tests are discussed. Treatment options for hypo and hyperthyroidism are explored, including medication and lifestyle strategies. Dr. Kate provides diet and lifestyle recommendations for optimizing thyroid function. The causes of thyroid issues, including physical, emotional, and chemical stressors, are explained. The conversation concludes with a reminder to advocate for your health and seek personalized solutions for thyroid issues.

Takeaways

  • Thyroid issues can cause a range of symptoms, including weight gain, brain fog, fatigue, and more.
  • A full thyroid panel, including tests for TSH, free and total T3, and antibodies, is important for accurate diagnosis and treatment.
  • Treatment options for thyroid conditions include medication, diet, lifestyle changes, and addressing underlying stressors.
  • Diet and lifestyle strategies for thyroid health include avoiding inflammatory foods, prioritizing whole foods, and optimizing mineral intake.
  • Thyroid issues can be caused by physical, emotional, and chemical stressors, and it is important to address these root causes for long-term health.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Personal Experience with Thyroid Issues

03:10 Symptoms of Thyroid Issues

06:35 Importance of Full Thyroid Panel

09:29 Free T3 vs Total T3

10:48 Recommended Lab Tests for Thyroid

11:17 Optimal Ranges for TSH and Free T3

13:58 Treatment Options for Hypo and Hyperthyroidism

20:46 Understanding Hashimoto’s and Graves’ Disease

22:20 Medication and Thyroid Conditions

27:48 Causes of Thyroid Issues

32:04 Takeaways and Conclusion

Sponsors

This episode is sponsored by Toxic Roots.  The optimal resource for online health coaching for optimizing performance and removing toxins. Click on the link below to get started on finding your toxic roots. 

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People

Peak Performance 

Dr. K 

Coach Kyle 

Our guest today, Dr.M

Kyle Hulbert (00:00)

Welcome to the Peak Performance Podcast, where your host, Coach Kyle and Dr. K, share the number one health hacks and facts to optimize your life.

Kyle Hulbert (00:10)

Hey guys, before we jump into today’s episode, I just want to mention that Dr. K is not going to be with us today. He is on his honeymoon riding horseback in Africa. I think we’ve talked about it a few times on here, so it’s a great chance for him to get to enjoy some time with his new bride. So, you know.

It’s just me guys and you’re gonna have to deal with that. But in the meantime, please enjoy the podcast and our guest, Dr. Kate.

Kyle Hulbert (00:37)

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Peak Performance podcast. I’m honored to have a special guest on today, Dr. Kate. She is a doctor of chiropractic and we are here to talk all things thyroid. So Dr. Kate, nice to meet you.

Masterson (00:52)

Hi, how’s it going? Happy to be here.

Kyle Hulbert (00:55)

Yeah, we’re glad to have you on. So, you know, I think you have had a personal history with, thyroid and how it’s affected your life. Do you think we should start there and kind of talk about how thyroid has affected your life or your health journey?

Masterson (01:10)

Yeah, absolutely. This is exactly how I got into functional medicine. So since high school, I have struggled with thyroid issues. So started off with getting just my annual blood drawn and noticing that my TSH was really high and basically just kind of monitored it. I tried the typical functional medicine route and it was all about just supporting the thyroid, right? So doing nutrients like selenium, making sure that the thyroid wasn’t overly stimulated, making sure that I was eating really clean, but it never really got any deeper than that. So for a while, I was just on this routine protocol to try and protect my thyroid from further damage. And with Hashimoto’s, which is the autoimmune condition of hypothyroidism, there are a lot of symptoms that come with that, brain fog and weight gain, a lot of metabolic issues. So a lot of that I’ve struggled with and never really knew how to fix it, right? I kind of was just told, hey, you have Hashimoto’s and that was kind of it. And it wasn’t until I got into chiropractic school and kind of started getting into these niche techniques that I really started to broaden my horizons in terms of what questions you should be asking the body, right? An organ doesn’t just randomly fail. Your immune system doesn’t just randomly start attacking itself. So as soon as I kind of started learning more

about your gut and infections and a toxic lifestyle, heavy metals, right? All of those things. I really started to peel back the layers of what my toxic load looked like. And for me personally, a lot of it was medications. I was on birth control for seven years. That took a huge toll on my health. It was a stagnant liver, gallbladder, and bile flow, which is your detoxification pathway. So that was super backed up.

It also was my overall stress levels, right? So adrenal glands, that plays a huge role in your thyroid and we can talk a little bit later about the different types of stress, but it was so much there that caused my body to have this autoimmune reaction that as soon as I started healing my gut and working on all of those things, my antibodies started to get lower, my TSH started to get into normal range and the thyroid started to do its normal job. 

A lot of it was mold and parasites and gut work, which is what I’m really passionate about because I’ve experienced all those things.

Kyle Hulbert (03:46)

Well, thanks for sharing that. Do you mind, you mentioned some of the symptoms, but do you mind kind of diving in? You said you were diagnosed with thyroid issues. Do you mind diving into kind of how that lives out, how you experienced that? What kind of struggles on like a day-to-day basis? What was the mental battle that went with that?

Masterson (04:06)

Yeah, so the thyroid controls so much because it controls your metabolism, right? So metabolism of lipids and carbohydrates and your sugars and everything. And so it can control a lot of things and therefore give you a lot of symptoms. The main thing that you want to think about is with the thyroid, you can have hypothyroidism. So it’s sluggish, it’s struggling to produce. And then you can have hyper, which means it’s overactive and it’s doing too much. So you kind of just want

your metabolic rate. So a lot of times with hypothyroidism, everything just slows down. So constipation, sluggish bile flow, so you can have some gallbladder or liver pain, which would be pain in that upper right quadrant. You can have a lot of weight gain because again, your metabolism is lowered, so you are holding on to a lot of calories. Brain fog and memory issues are also a big one. And then fatigue, right? Again, everything is slowing down. You’re not going to have any energy, you’re going to feel like you need to rely on caffeine. Another big one is dry skin. This isn’t always necessarily thyroid, but it also could be your gallbladder. Again, those two are so connected. The reason that with hypothyroidism, you can get that dry skin is because your sweat glands will actually decrease. You can find yourself struggling to sweat. I know a lot of people will say, oh, I’m struggling to sweat if I go in the sauna, right?

Working out, I’m not sweating. If you’re not sweating there’s some underlying metabolic issue that definitely could be your thyroid. Another big one is being cold all the time so I know a lot of women struggle with this, you definitely could check your iron and things like that. That could also play a role, but being cold all the time is a big one. Depression, slow heart rate. Another big one that I see often is high lipid panel. So if you’re having a lot of high triglycerides, high cholesterol, and you’re like, I’m eating great, everything looks good, a sluggish thyroid will drive all those numbers up. And then the other thing you want to look for is

Thinning of the eyebrows that can definitely play a role and also cycles. So for a lot of females, if you’re having irregular cycles, the thyroid can play a big role in that. The role with progesterone is really, really huge. So if you’re struggling with infertility or miscarriages or things like that, definitely run a full thyroid panel because your thyroid hormones will actually sensitize your cells to progesterone. 

Your hormones look great, but if your thyroid’s struggling, your cells would actually be responding to progesterone. This can throw off your cycle, cause some issues. I know there’s a lot of things there, but again, I feel like the most common ones that people think of are being cold, constipation, weight gain, and then also thinning hair and brittle nails. Those are some other ones that I clinically see.

Kyle Hulbert (07:11)

Yeah, thank you. That’s enlightening. For me, because I’ve had thyroid issues too, weight gain was a huge part of it. Weight gain and inflammation. I gained 60 pounds in 60 days because my thyroid was not where it needed to be. And when I got on thyroid medication, and we can talk about this a little later.

Masterson (07:22)

Wow, yeah.

Kyle Hulbert (07:30)

That changed drastically. So it massively improved that for me. So you mentioned a full thyroid panel is something people should look into. Can you talk about a bit what that is? I know we’ve discussed it on the podcast before, but I’d like to reiterate what this full panel is, as opposed to what most conventional doctors would pull.

Masterson (07:35)

Yeah.

Absolutely, and this is good information for you guys to have because you can really advocate for your health because like Kyle said a lot of times doctors are just running TSH and T4 and that’s it and in reality there’s a lot of other components that you should run. So first off TSH So that’s going to be your thyroid stimulating hormone. That is a hormone from your brain to your thyroid telling your thyroid to work You want to run free and total T4

So T4 is going to be the main hormone that your thyroid produces. However, this isn’t actually the active thyroid hormone. So it does produce a little bit of T3, but the main production of T3 is going to be T4 to T3 conversion, which is a really big deal. So you definitely want to run free and total T3. You also want to look at T3 uptake. So this is going to say, hey, of my cells, are they actually communicating properly with T3?

Reverse T3 is a great one to run because this is going to look at the stress level of your body and of your thyroid. And then also looking at antibodies, so TPO antibodies and then TGA antibodies. And then if you are suspecting more of a Graves, which is an autoimmune condition where it’s a hyper situation, TSI can be very helpful. And I think it’s really important to run the antibodies, especially if you’ve never done a full thyroid panel. I’ve seen a lot of patients

who their thyroid numbers look great, but they still have antibodies. Right. And that just means that your thyroid is doing its job, but it’s doing its job with a 50 pound weighted backpack on it. Right. So it’s still under a lot of stress.

Kyle Hulbert (09:37)

Yeah, that’s quite a few tests there. And I think this is a good point to tell our audience that I’m not a doctor and you are a doctor, but this is not medical advice. So please talk to your practitioner if you want a panel or you want to look into these things or you’re considering medication or anything like that, talk to your own doctor. This is not medical advice. So you mentioned antibodies reverse T3. Did you mention free T3? Yeah.

Masterson (09:46)

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Yes, free in total T3, yes.

Kyle Hulbert (10:05)

So I found that the free matters quite a bit. And what’s your opinion on the free versus the total?

like, you know, in terms of what they show you.

Masterson (10:15)

Yeah, absolutely. And it’s a really good… Yeah, so the difference between the total and the free. So with the total, this is bound and unbound hormone. So when a hormone is bound up, it can’t do its job. It’s like it has a little chaperone. So total, your total could look great, but if you have a lot of bound up T3 or T4, it’s not going to be able to go do its job. So definitely that free T3 is such a huge component because that’s the hormone that is able to go and talk to your cells, lock into the receptor, and then turn on the genes that are needed for metabolism and all things that the thyroid does.

Kyle Hulbert (10:59)

Yeah, that’s very important for testosterone too. The free testosterone is a key indicator to look for, not just your total number. So, you know, you mentioned TSH, which is the thing that most doctors pull. And so if I boiled it down to like, hey, I can only get two tests, what two lab tests would you recommend for me to check my thyroid?

Masterson (11:06)

Yeah, I would do TSH in free T3 because again, that is that the T3 is the one that’s talking to your cells. So that is if you just run the T4 and the TSH, your thyroid could be doing great, but if you’re not converting, which 80% of that happens in the liver, then you’re gonna feel all of those hypothyroid symptoms, but you’re gonna get brushed off like, oh yeah, your thyroid’s fine. So yeah, if you were to pick two, I would do TSH and then that free T3.

Kyle Hulbert (11:53)

So for the TSH and for the T3, free T3, when people get their results back, what are they looking for? What’s optimal, what’s not good? What kind of ranges are there?

Masterson (12:04)

Yeah, so for me clinically and again every practitioner is going to be a little bit different. This is just what I personally use when I am looking over blood work. For TSH I like it between 0.5 and 2.5 ish. I will take some patients who have like 2.7, 2.8. It really all depends on the person, their symptoms, what other underlying issues they have going on. And then for the free T3 I like it around a 3.

Kyle Hulbert (12:29)

Nice, okay, so for me personally, myself and a lot of different integrative practitioners, usually like you said, optimal people tend to agree that TSH is like just below one. And you kind of gave the window 0.5 to 2.5. I’ve encountered a lot of people who have symptoms at 2.5 myself included. So, you know, optimal generally you want to be right around one or sub one is what I see in the work I do.

Kyle Hulbert (12:59)

And then free T3, you said three. Now does this, does this vary, between person to person and, and how that plays out, cause some people might feel better on a higher level, um, and their T, their TSH might not tank.

Masterson (13:14)

Yeah, and this is where it’s important to take the person and the symptoms into consideration. With the thyroid, there are so many factors that you need to look at with stomach acid, with your liver, with how your gut’s doing your adrenal glands. So I muscle test, and so some people need definitely to be on a thyroid support, but sometimes if you clean up the liver and the gallbladder, that TSH, that free T3 goes right back into range.

So when it comes to lab values, and  a lot of people panic about lab values and I say labs are super important but you also have to consider the person and their symptoms and their history with that.

Kyle Hulbert (13:53)

Yeah, so I might be a really strange case here, but for me, I actually feel optimal. I’ve experimented with all kinds of dosages with my doctor. I feel optimal like north of five in free T3. And it’s probably because I’ve overtaxed my adrenals, that’s my working theory. And so I need that higher free T3 just to get that energy and get up and moving. So say someone comes in and they do these tests and it’s showing.

Kyle Hulbert (14:23)

you know, hypo or hyper, what are their options? Like, what are they looking at? Are they looking at medications? Are they looking at minerals? Are they looking at diet and lifestyle, all of the above? Or how do you tackle that? In what order?

Masterson (14:34)

Yeah, so first thing would be if you are in a range where you need medication, talking to a doctor about that because I’m a chiropractor, I don’t deal with medication. So if you are at a level where you definitely need medication, that would be the first thing to tackle, especially in specific cases, you do need that kind of band-aid. The second thing is definitely diet and lifestyle and sleep. If you can never out supplement a poor lifestyle, right?

So if you are one of those people where you are type A, you’re a perfectionist, you are fasting, you’re going to the gym hardcore seven days a week, you know, you’re burning yourself to the ground, right? That is so much stress on your body that is going to tax your thyroid.

So definitely you want to make sure that with diet you’re eating whole foods, organic diet. I personally like a more meat based or animal based diet. This is, I know not for everyone and I get a lot of questions about diet and at the end of the day, do what you feel is best. I’ve done a lot of diets. I’ve done vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, carnivore. So I’ve definitely experimented myself, but whole foods, organic, you want to prioritize protein.

And you also, especially if you’re female and you’re fasting, you definitely want to look at that. I find that if you are chronically sick as a female, fasting isn’t necessarily your best friend. So looking at that, the other thing is with diet. So if you have a lot of antibodies, if you have TPO, TGA antibodies, you want to avoid gluten, dairy, and potentially soy depending on the level. The reason is of molecular mimicry.

So the molecules in those foods look a lot like your thyroid. And so if your immune system is freaked out, your immune system is, you know, shoot first, ask later, and you eat inflammatory foods for your body, you are launching more attack on the thyroid. So I definitely would do gluten-free, dairy-free, and then potentially soy-free depending on the level of antibody for your diet. And then I would do further testing.

So doing some blood work, doing a CBC with differential can give you a ton of information on how your immune system is actually operating. Doing an O test, right? The urine sample to see how is my gut looking. A total tox test, which is going to look at mycotoxins, environmental toxins, heavy metals, right? Heavy metals love the thyroid and we are inundated with heavy metals in our water and in our food supply and our self-care products. So doing further testing to see what is actually stressing your body out.

Why is my thyroid not working optimally is where you want to go. So working with a practitioner that you feel comfortable with to get those test done, to get them interpreted and then come up with a game plan to get those infections out of the system.

Kyle Hulbert (17:36)

I like that. I like that approach. I think, I think a lifestyle approaches should always come before medication if possible. Sometimes it’s not possible. Sometimes you need to fix the problem immediately and then work on the lifestyle on the back end, like you mentioned, but I do like those. So moving on. So say you’ve got the diet, you know, whole foods, organic, we’re avoiding dairy and gluten and maybe soy, like you said.

Kyle Hulbert (18:02)

Going from there, how do people support their thyroid further? Are there minerals or things they can take, supplements or things that can help them in that aspect?

Masterson (18:11)

Yeah, that’s a great question. And again, this isn’t medical advice. You should always talk to someone about your particular case, but there are a lot of nutrients that the thyroid needs. If you want specific mineral testing, doing an HTMA, which is a hair tissue mineral analysis, is a great way to look at that. But in terms of basic nutrients, selenium, iodine, potassium, zinc, B vitamins, magnesium, those are six right there that if you don’t have enough of them,

operate properly. Potassium is a big one that gets missed, and this is actually really important for letting the thyroid hormone into the cell. That is a big one, and your adrenal glands burn through potassium if you are stressed. The more stressed your system, the more you will burn through minerals. The other thing with iodine is that you do want to be careful with this one, especially if you do have any sort of Hashimoto’s situation.

can actually increase or upregulate your TPO antibodies, right? So can kind of make them a little bit more angry, leading to further attack on the thyroid. But I definitely would look at those, especially if you are on birth control. So birth control, that’s like a whole ‘nother podcast, but from me being on it for so long, it really depletes a lot of your nutrients, like all those ones that I mentioned. It can affect your gut, it can affect your liver.

look at doing like a multivitamin, I a lot of the times will use circutonic or Inspirocell from Vervita. Those are good just nutrients. Brazil nuts is great for selenium. For iodine there’s a lot of different options out there. Kelp is like a good source of iodine. In terms of thyroid supplements, I use a lot from

There’s a lot of different options within those two companies because they’re supporting different pathways. Does your thyroid itself need support? Does your thyroid need help making the T4? Does it need help converting? There’s a couple of different options there, which is where I would look to a practitioner to figure out which one, but if you want to start basics, look at your minerals and see which ones you’re depleted in.

Kyle Hulbert (20:39)

Okay. Yeah, no, I think it’s a great approach and there’s a lot of benefit that minerals can do for our thyroid and our hormones overall. In fact, I think a lot of people might not be dealing with just on its face hormonal dysregulation. It might be mineral depletion given the state of our food and our soil nowadays.

Masterson (20:56)

Yeah.

Oh yeah, I know it’s so depleted and yeah, exactly what you said.

Kyle Hulbert (21:06)

Yeah. So you’ve mentioned Hashimoto’s a few times, but could you just give us a quick synopsis of that and maybe Graves, I think, would be a good topic for the audience to kind of understand the two ends of the spectrum, if you will.

Masterson (21:22)

Yeah, absolutely. So you have your thyroid function and then you have hypothyroidism, which is going to be a sluggish thyroid. And then you have the added antibodies. So you have an autoimmune component and that would be Hashimoto’s. So if you have TPO antibodies, TGA antibodies, those are going to be the antibodies attacking the thyroid. So that would be Hashimoto’s. You I have seen practitioners where they will not accept Hashimoto’s unless you have

both a high TSH and the antibodies. I clinically think that if you have antibodies, you have Hashimoto’s, but again, that can sometimes differ practitioner to practitioner. Then on the other side of things, you can have hyperthyroidism, so you’re producing too much thyroid hormone. And then with the added antibody component to that, that would be Graves’ disease, in which case you’re looking for TSI,

stimulating antibody. So it actually binds to the receptor and the receptor is like, oh, someone’s here. I should keep making thyroid hormone. So Graves’ disease is a little bit more complex to work with than Hashimoto’s. You want to be careful with Graves’ disease as to not send them into a thyroid storm, which is basically a lot of thyroid hormone and you can get into some tricky water there. So with Graves’ disease, I would definitely

because you don’t want to ever get into that situation.

Kyle Hulbert (22:56)

Yeah, so to summarize, basically you have optimal, it’s kind of a spectrum, you have optimal thyroid function. You know, on the low side you have hypo, and then if it’s an autoimmune condition, you have Hashimoto’s. And then on the high side you have hyper, and if it’s an autoimmune condition, it’s Graves. And I think it’s important to keep in mind that you could have a non-well-functioning thyroid in either direction without an autoimmune component.

Masterson (23:08)

Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hulbert (23:24)

or it could be the autoimmune that’s causing it. So it could kind of be this chicken and the egg thing. So I know you don’t prescribe, but you can just say pounds hand if you want, but do you mind talking a bit about medication and what people normally get put on and whether, just your opinion, your non-medical opinion on whether you think that’s a good idea or not? Yeah.

Masterson (23:30)

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Yeah, so there’s a couple different options with medication. You can do just T4, like levothyroxine, right? Which is, I think, like the number three or number four most prescribed medication in the United States. You can have just T3, like Triostat, and then you can have Armour, which is like a mix of T4 and T3. So there’s kind of a wide variety, and a lot of times people, or their practitioner, might kind of experiment on which ones you feel better on. Again, I’m not a medical professional,

Kyle Hulbert (24:01)

Thanks.

Masterson (24:20)

tell you what to do with your medication that is totally up to you and your prescribing doctor. Medication can be needed in certain situations, but in my philosophy and how I view the body, I view most medication as a band-aid. So again, it can be helpful, but my job and our body’s job really is to get to the reason of why is it not functioning properly. So it’s this bigger picture of what’s stressing my body out that is causing my thyroid…

to not work optimally. So again, medication can be needed, but you really want to ask some deeper questions, do some further testing to figure out what your individual stressor is. A lot of times people ask me, oh, what do I need to do for Hashimoto’s or what do I need to do for X, Y, and Z? And unfortunately, I wish I had a magic pill to give you, but it’s going to be different for everyone. Everyone’s life experiences has different emotional stressors, physical stressors, chemical stressors

and you get a different recipe. So definitely you want to do some further testing like the ones we mentioned earlier.

Kyle Hulbert (25:26)

Yeah, and to that point, you know, a lot of conventional doctors will give these, you know, like straight T4. And if your problem is converting T4 to T3, that often will not make you feel much better. And so that’s, I think, if you’re having that issue from a medication standpoint, that’s where you would explore something like armor or MP thyroid, which is what I personally take. I take MP thyroid.

Um, and I’ve been able to scale back my dose through all my lifestyle and detox things over time. Um, which is, which has been nice. Um, so, so are there in your opinion, I mean, medications that like, you would advise that like you yourself, you wouldn’t want to take for a thyroid condition because I you’ve been through thyroid conditions, and I think you said you was hypo, right?

Masterson (26:00)

That’s awesome. Yeah, that’s great.

Kyle Hulbert (26:23)

Hypothyroidism, Hashimoto’s

Masterson (26:23)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, so I personally have never been on medication I should have been my TSH was like a 10 something and my antibodies were in like the three and four hundred So should have been on medication. I never was though. So for me personally, I don’t like being on any medication I think that if you are in medication a good thing to look into is you can Google what Your medication is depleting you up

you have certain nutrients, like if you’re on a statin, for example, most practitioners will say, hey, you should take CoQ10 with that because a statin will deplete that. So if you are on any type of medication and you need to be on it, you could look at what nutrients they are depleting and then supplement as needed or as your doctor says.

Kyle Hulbert (27:12)

Yeah, this is a great example of two different schools of thought. So, Dr. Kate is more a holistic practitioner and I am more a true biohacker. So I can go the route of let’s experiment, see what works, let’s try all the things, let’s do the research, and then I’ll find what I feel great on. And then over time, I’ll use lifestyle and diet strategies, supplements and things to peel those medications back over time. That’s kind of my approach.

But I’m much more progressive than many people. And I do work with a lot of clients that are much like your view of things where, you know, if we can avoid prescriptions and medications for the rest of our life, let’s go ahead and do that. And I’m going to take this a minute to shout out Stephanie. She put a question on our podcast, Instagram, asking about diet and lifestyle, non-prescription things that we can do to increase our thyroid.

production and specifically Hashimoto’s. So if you were to encapsulate it as simple as you can, how would you go about maybe in three, four or five sentences giving people just some basic advice on how to optimize their thyroid function without using medication?

Masterson (28:23)

Yeah, so diet, no seed oils, no inflammatory ingredients like dyes, chemicals, whole food organic as much as possible. Workout wise, no intense HIIT classes or intense cardio. I would focus on weight training and…

lifting to a capacity where it feels good, doesn’t feel like a stressor. And I would optimize your mineral intake with electrolytes, needed minerals, and a whole food organic farm-based diet.

Kyle Hulbert (29:07)

Yeah. Summed it up. I like that. That’s awesome. So we’ve talked about lab tests. We’ve talked about some medications. We’ve talked about some diet and lifestyle strategies. can we talk about how we end up with these things? How did, how did I end up with Hashimoto’s? How did I end up with, you know, hyperthyroidism? How does, how does this happen? Because you’re like, you said it doesn’t just your thyroid one day doesn’t just decide to quit.

Masterson (29:31)

Yeah, yeah, and this is going to be different for everyone. So there’s, when you look at life, there’s three types of stress. There’s physical stress, so working out way too much, not eating enough, fasting when you’re not supposed to be fasting. There’s emotional stress, which is what most people think of when they think of stress. So issues with your job, relationships, money, time. And then there’s chemical stress. And this one can be hard to conceptualize

Infections the toxins that are in our body However, all three of the of these stressors are the same to the body real or perceived stress is the same So whatever type of stress you have going on can affect you Now a lot of times these chemical stressors are gonna look like parasites bacteria Fungal overgrowth, especially if you’ve been on birth control. You are so prone to Fungal overgrowth yeast overgrowth

Heavy metals, so heavy metals have a huge affinity for the thyroid. Heavy metals and minerals compete for the same receptor site, so you’re really minerally depleted, you’re drinking water that’s filled with heavy metals, you have all these toxic self-care products, those heavy metals will now infiltrate that specific organ or gland, can’t operate quickly. Inflammation, blood sugar dysregulation, so us as a country

actually lives in a more hypoglycemic state. And the reason for this is because our blood sugar actually goes like this all day long due to our diet. It’s very carb heavy, it’s very sugary, very caffeinated. And so with that, it’s the drop that really affects our entire system, puts a huge stressor on the liver, on the pancreas, on the adrenal glands. And then medications, right? So birth control, PPIs, statins,

those definitely will block that conversion of T4 to T3. So really any chemical stressor can affect the thyroid and then also emotions. So I also practice NE T, which is neuroemotional technique and the emotional component of the thyroid is not feeling heard, not feeling like you can express yourself, right? Using your voice, that can also affect your thyroid.

or emotional stressor can cause hypothyroidism.

Kyle Hulbert (32:06)

Yeah, that’s a lot. So basically it really depends on the person. So their history, their health, their toxic burden, their emotions, their stress, and that can cause your thyroid to go off. That could be the root cause of it essentially. I like that. Well, I think we’ve covered pretty much everything we set out to talk about today. Is there anything else you want to tell the audience, educate them about, or kind of…

Masterson (32:19)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hulbert (32:35)

elucidate on more.

Masterson (32:37)

Yeah, I think my general overall takeaway from this is that if you guys are struggling with your health There is a reason for it You should not accept that your body just fails or that it’s not working properly or that auto-immunity is normal You should accept that you deserve to live a really happy amazing fulfilling life And so if you are struggling with your health really advocate for yourself advocate for your health find a practitioner That’s going to listen to you

and educate you, not just run tests and just say you’re fine. So really looking at all the stressors in your life and accepting that you can feel good because a lot of times we just accept that we’re in pain or that we’re struggling and you deserve to live a really happy, joyful, pain-free life.

Kyle Hulbert (33:26)

I love that. That’s so beautiful. Thank you. Thank you for that. And where can people find you online?

Masterson (33:33)

Yeah, so on Instagram, I am at dr.katemasterson, and that’s where all my content is. And so if you guys wanna see any videos or anything, I’ll be on there.

Kyle Hulbert (33:44)

And we’ll put her links in the show notes below so you guys can check that out. Well, signing off from the peak performance podcast, I’m Dr. No, I’m not doctor. Just kidding. Dr. K’s not here. I got it. I got to sub in. I got to make him feel like he’s still here. He’s actually in Africa. I’m coach Kyle and I’m here with Dr. Kate. Thank you for joining us today.

Masterson (33:58)

Bye guys!