Video summarized in article below.
So, now we’re going to be talking about the thyroid gland.
This small gland sits right here on your neck and it functions on the brain, the heart, and the muscles. They all rely on the thyroid hormone and its metabolism.
The thyroid controls the basal metabolic rate. It’s like the idling of a car. If you’re idling fast, you’re going to be burning more gasoline or electricity. If you’re idling low, you’re more comfortable. If you’re idling too low, then you’re going to be tired all the time. The car cannot get going. So, proper tuning is critical.
What is the thyroid hormone made out of? It is made by combining iodine, got through food, with tyrosine, an amino acid in the synthesis of proteins. The thyroid pathway starts with your hypothalamus that releases the thyrotropin-releasing hormone, also called TRH.
TRH then goes to your pituitary gland to stimulate to release TSH, thyroid-stimulating hormone. Then the TSH goes to your thyroid to produce T3 and T4 hormones.
T3 and T4 have a negative feedback loop to the pituitary. So, when it says, “We have enough hormones. We’re going to tell the pituitary, you don’t need to put out more TSH.” So then, your amount of TSH decreases.
T4 is actually a prohormone, meaning it gets converted into T3, which is the active form of thyroid hormone. The T3 is four times stronger than the T4, but you have a lot more T4 being produced than the T3. The body contains receptors for T3 because that’s the active form.
There’s one big category of people that have normal labs based on thyroid function testing by a doctor, and they still have low thyroid function. So, it’s not necessarily true that it will 100 percent possible to go by lab results. You have to look at the person, the whole person, and look at all the pieces together.
That is very important because, in adrenal fatigue, we see a lot of people with low thyroid function, but their thyroid numbers are perfect. In fact, they’ve been on thyroid replacement, and after a while they find that it’s not even working, because if you don’t have a strong adrenal function, then no matter how good your thyroid replacement is, it has a limited response.
When you have a primary failure of the thyroid gland itself, such as because of an autoimmune disease, then you have primary hypothyroidism. That is what the majority of the conventional world deals with.
If you have a low adrenal function, the body tends to slow down, and the body finds the best way to slow down is by reducing the speed of metabolism. So, the body tells the thyroid glands, “Hey, let’s slow down to conserve energy.” Therefore, you’re automatically going to feel tired. It’s not something wrong with your body. It’s your body’s way of whispering to you, “Hey, that is really time to rest.”
On top of that, the thyroid will also convert some of the T4 into reverse T3, which is a breaking mechanism instead of T3. From T4, it goes to T3 normally. But if you have a tired body that wants to slow down, the T4 will go to reverse T3 instead of the T3.
The body is very smart. It does its own thing. You don’t worry about the body, but if you try to say, “Well, we want to have more T3. We want to have more energy. We don’t care,” and then you just give the body more and more thyroid... that sometimes can be very problematic.
Reverse T3 can also be affected by cortisol. When cortisol levels are high, when the body is under stress, it inhibits the conversion of T4 to T3, and therefore tells the body to convert to T4 into reverse T3. The reverse T3 is the one that’s breaking, opposing the function of normal T3.
Imagine a car, it drives itself. You have a brake. You have the gasoline pedal. The body automatically moves either way. It’s just when these two are imbalanced, that’s when you get into trouble.
Now, all this may sound very convoluted to you, and indeed it is because the body has so many pathways, but it is perfectly designed, and it works perfectly if you leave it alone. So, be very careful.
When you look at the symptoms is it really a broken gland? Or is it really the body’s way of telling you, warning you to pay attention more? It’s really not broken. It’s just ringing the alarm bell. You may not like the alarm bell, but it does not mean that the body is broken. It’s just a way of bodies talking to you.
The common supplements include zinc. You can do selenium. You can do glandulars like thyroid glands. You can do probiotics. You can do iodine which is very common.
All of these have their place, but you have to be very careful because if you supplement wrongly, either with too much or too little, you can get into real trouble, even with iodine. If you take too much, you can put yourself into a hyperthyroid situation, which is not good.
In the case especially when you have concurrent adrenal fatigue, if you try to help but do it too aggressively or do it wrongly and the body doesn’t like it, you can actually trigger what we call adrenal crashes, because your body’s already in a sympathetic mode.
It’s almost like a baby that needs her milk and needs water to get better, but instead of milk and water, you throw in some coca-cola. You throw in some coffee, and then the baby may get better, but you're going to have a hyperactive baby. So, you don’t want to do that.
You want to give the body the tools to help it that are nurturing. So, it’s not about thyroid supplements. It’s about what you understand, how the body’s state is at every point in time, to match what it needs. So, that’s why you have to always be very careful. It’s easy to take these supplements, and it’s easy to think that you’re doing the right thing, but you may not be and not even know it.
© Copyright 2021 Michael Lam, M.D. All Rights Reserved.
