#108 What is holistic medicine, is there a connection between inflammatory foods and Hashimoto’s disease, and is there a natural supplement for weight loss? With Dr. Torrie Thompson!
Welcome back to another episode of the Waist Away podcast! Today’s guest is Dr. Torrie Thompson! She’s earned her Doctorate of Chiropractic from Southern California, has advanced studies through the Institute of Functional Medicine, and is also a health coach at Modern Holistic Health in Austin, Texas. Dr. Thompson specializes in helping people regain or optimize their health though holistic approaches, diet, exercise and lifestyle modifications. She has a deep understanding that in order for a person to get better, they need to find the root of the problem, fix it, and then rebuild health from there. Please welcome Dr. Torrie to the podcast!
Audio Version: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/108-what-is-holistic-medicine-is-there-connection-between/id1318445077?i=1000450523660
Video Version: https://youtu.be/M8VsLifAwxI
Torrie Thompson: Hi, everyone. This is Dr. Torrie here from Modern Holistic Health. Normally you guys are listening to us interview people, but today I am the one being interviewed, so enjoy the show.
Chantel Ray: Hi, guys. Welcome to this week’s episode. I’m so excited about my guest today, it’s Dr. Torrie Thompson. I met Torrie at the Mindshare Summit I attended this summer in San Diego, and she became my BFF while we were there. We had such a great time. Welcome.
Torrie Thompson: Thank you. Thank you for having me. It was so awesome to meet you and we had so much fun in San Diego, so I’m so excited to be here today.
Chantel Ray: If you don’t know Dr. Torrie, she earned her Doctorate of Chiropractic from Southern California and is also a health coach at Modern Holistic Health in Austin, Texas. How’s everything going so far since the last time we’ve seen each other?
Torrie Thompson: It’s been good, it’s been busy. We came back and hit the ground running after Mindshare. We were inspired to take some of the stuff we learned and implement it in the practice. We filmed for some documentaries while we were there. We been back to seeing all the clients that we see, and it’s been really exciting and really fun since we’ve been back. I’m very excited.
Chantel Ray: I know that you personally have struggled with Lyme disease for a while, and you didn’t even really know in the beginning all your signs and symptoms could be related to that. Tell us a little bit about your own personal health journey.
Torrie Thompson: I was sick for a long time, starting when I was early high school, late middle school I started with weird symptoms. I was really tired all the time, my arms would get weak and I would not be able to really lift them up. I was an athlete, so that was something that was an odd symptom, but doctors just told me I’m overworked and just rest.
Torrie Thompson: I started gaining weight and got really puffy, but I was not eating anything different. I was getting headaches, I was getting ringing in my ears and dizziness. I went to doctors for about 10 years looking for answers, and they diagnosed me with everything from type 1 diabetes, to you’re crazy, to probably a brain tumor and everything in between. But they really could never prove that I had any of that, but they were always very happy to give me medications. They couldn’t tell what was wrong, but they were happy to give me medications, which I never took.
Torrie Thompson: I just kept searching and searching. As I was in chiropractic school, I decided that I was going to take my health in my own hands and I actually figured out, I diagnosed myself. Based off the labs that I had, I started plugging things into the internet and was able to put together I think I had Lyme disease. Then I got tested for Lyme, which isn’t always that accurate, but I found the most accurate test I could, and sure enough it came back with Lyme disease with multiple co-infections.
Torrie Thompson: I had finally figured out, after 10 years, that was what was wrong, and then I started the slow journey to healing. It took me about a year and a half to get myself back healthy and under control, but worth every second of it.
Chantel Ray: This is a question I like to ask all my guests that come on my show to walk us through a day in the life of Torrie. What did you eat yesterday, when did you eat, are there any foods that are off limits, or that you try to avoid, and any supplements that you take or any cool routines that you have implemented that take your health to the next level?
Torrie Thompson: I am a stickler to my health. Because I was sick for so long, I haven’t let up really on my health routine since then. I eat 100% organic, I don’t eat anything genetically modified, I stay away from gluten, dairy, soy, alcohol, sugar, corn. Pretty much all the big offenders I stay away from. I eat a pretty much plant-based diet. I don’t eat a lot of meat. I eat a lot of vegetables, 50/50 raw and cooked, a lot of healthy fats, avocados, oils, nuts, and little bits of meat, no more than once a day.
Torrie Thompson: Yesterday for breakfast the first thing I do when I wake up is I have my celery juice. I drink celery juice, it helps me go to the bathroom, helps me detox, and I am always looking for ways to detox. Then I will work out, and then I’ll come home and I’ll have a smoothie for breakfast. I’ll do a plant-based protein powder. I don’t use any fruit. It’s just greens, avocado oil, fats, and then your super foods, your mushroom. I’m all about this medicinal mushrooms, and then I’ll put it in maca, spirulina and chlorella.
Torrie Thompson: It’s a black concoction, but I love it. It’s a great morning routine. It helps me feel energized and full for a really long time. When I’m working with clients all day, I don’t really have time to snack, so it’ll hold me over until 1:00 or 2:00 when I eat lunch, which is usually vegetables and meat, nothing too exciting, but it’s veggies and meat. Then [inaudible 00:05:12] is always pretty much plant-based, so it’s going to be heavy on vegetables and fats. I don’t do meat at dinner. It’s a pretty vegetable-based plan for me.
Chantel Ray: Explain that when you said you don’t eat … You like to eat meat once a day in the lunch time. How come you don’t eat the meat at night?
Torrie Thompson: I just noticed with myself that I get my bloating, I’ll feel a little bloated and heavy if I eat meat at night. I’m one of those people, when I was sick, I would play with food. I would figure out what made me feel better and what made me feel worse. That’s what I encourage people to do. No one diet is perfect for everyone. What I do and what you do might be completely different, but they work for both of us.
Torrie Thompson: For me, I played with protein and animal protein just didn’t really work for me, especially late at night. I just cut it to lunch and that’s how I feel the best. I wake up, my stomach doesn’t feel bloated or heavy. It feels good to me, and I have enough energy, and I can sustain my whole day off that.
Chantel Ray: That’s awesome. Well I want to talk about poop for just a second. I know when we were at the Mindshare, we talked about that. I talked to you about the fact that I am one of those people that is almost always constipated. If you had somebody that just had IBS, or just constipation, or just alternating constipation with diarrhea, what is your suggestion for them? What’s going to be their next step for that? I want you to talk about parasites for just a little bit.
Torrie Thompson: Yeah. I love poop and parasites, that’s my thing. I love it because it shows you so much about people’s health. When someone has irritable bowel syndrome, or chronic constipation, or chronic diarrhea, I always want to look at their gut. You want to see what’s going on. Do they have infections? Do they have gut dysbiosis, which is an imbalance of good and bad bacteria? I want to know what’s going on.
Torrie Thompson: A lot of people have this misconception that we don’t have parasites in America, and that nobody gets these gut infection. That’s very not true. It’s inaccurate. We do have lots of parasites and it’s actually estimated about 50% of Americans have parasites. I think it’s a little bit higher, but that’s what the studies say.
Torrie Thompson: Parasites are fairly common. You’re getting it from having your dog lick your face. The dogs pick up stuff at dog parks, or even having your dog sleep with you, dirty vegetables. Lettuces and celery are really dirty, really parasite heavy vegetables, so always wash your fruits and veggies. That’s where people are getting parasites. We’re seeing it a lot from contaminated soil. You can even get it from having a kid play in the dirt, and they get dirty soil under their nails, and then they bite their nails. Or even adults we see bite their nails, they pick up parasites.
Torrie Thompson: It’s really not that hard to get. You can drink water that has it, you can go in a lake that has parasites. Very, very common. Some of the symptoms that stand out that are interesting are the nocturnal symptoms. Parasites are nocturnal, they’re metabolically active at night. With parasites, we see a lot of people, wake up in the middle of the night, they say, “I wake up 3:00 a.m. every day. I don’t know why,” or, “I wake up, and I am super hungry at 3:00 a.m. and I crave sugar,” or, “I have restless leg syndrome,” or, “I have a hard time falling asleep.” That’s generally a good sign that’s there’s some [inaudible 00:09:03] going on in the gut.
Chantel Ray: Explain the restless leg syndrome. How come parasites are connected to restless leg syndrome?
Torrie Thompson: They’re connected in a few ways. [inaudible 00:09:18] take some of minerals that will agitate. We know magnesium is a big player, for restless leg syndrome. Parasites will take all your minerals, they take all your vitamins. They will definitely absorb what you need.
Torrie Thompson: A lot of it too is just your body. The parasites are metabolically active at night, and so there’s a sense of unease in your body. That comes into your body is trying to move. You have literal creatures inside of you, and so your body is trying to move and get comfortable, and it’s rough [inaudible 00:09:50] with these parasites, especially when someone has a big infection.
Chantel Ray: Awesome. Okay, well let’s jump right into … Oh, okay. I know one more question, because I would love to do some of these tests. I will tell you one time I had gone to an internist doctor here and I said, “I’d like you to check my gut, I’d like to check for parasites.” She had me take a stool sample. When I tell you the stool sample was maybe not even a quarter of a tenth of an inch, the smallest amount, and then I got tested and she said, “You don’t have anything.”
Chantel Ray: I was thinking to myself, “This amount of stool that you’re asking for, there’s no way that you could actually see if I have parasites or anything with this smallest amount of stool samples.” Talk about your favorite test, and what you do for patients, and can you see them all over the country. Talk about that for a second.
Torrie Thompson: Yeah. We see clients all over the country because we’re fully virtual, so everything is done over Zoom. We’ll send kits over to our house, and then we’ll you for bloodwork in your local area.
Torrie Thompson: Parasites are notoriously hard to catch. What [inaudible 00:11:13], is we’ll look for a pattern in blood. We’ll see that certain immune markers in your blood will be off, and so that’s our first indication that we have infections in the gut. We’re going to be looking eosinophils, monocytes, lymphocytes, neutrophils and basophils. Really good indicator of gut infection. That’s your 30,000 foot view of the gut.
Torrie Thompson: From there, what we’ll do is Organic Acids Testing, which is a urine test, and that will look for candida, fungus, and as well as Clostridia, which is a bacteria. Then we’ll do a stool test. Stools testing for parasites is not that accurate because they’re tricky little creatures, and so they hide themselves in what’s called biofilm, and biofilms is the slime that basically protects them from your immune system. It glues them to your intestines.
Torrie Thompson: These parasites are covered by this biofilm and they don’t really release into the stool unless they’re dead or dying. Most of the time parasites, if you’re not actively killing them, aren’t going to be dead or dying, so they’re not going to be released. You also have the fact that when parasites die, they shrivel up, and they’re really good at dissolving themselves. A stool test is not the most accurate way to get a parasite [inaudible 00:12:29], but it will show you a lot of bacteria. It’s going to show you if you have gut inflammation, it’s going to show you when your good flora versus bad flora. It’s really good to see.
Torrie Thompson: When we do a stool test, we like to do a stool test … For you, we’ll basically get stool from multiple different areas in the actual stool. You’ll get samples from all these different areas. You’ll fill it probably about three or four inches of stool into a vial. It’s a good amount of stool. You’re pulling from different areas, and that’s our best shot at getting different things in the stool. That’s what we’ll do, but it’s the combination of the test that really gives the full picture of what’s going gon in the gut.
Chantel Ray: Okay, awesome. Now what is your opinion on actually, and this will sound gross, but literally taking a napkin, and putting it under your butt when you poop, and literally looking at your stool to see are you going to … Is there anything by looking at your stool, can you say, “Hey here are some things,” this is a good idea, and what should someone be looking for?
Torrie Thompson: I wish I couldn’t say this, but I have done that many, many times. I am a big fan of looking through stool. But you’re at probably going to see stuff unless you start actively going after infections.
Torrie Thompson: A normal person, you’re not going to see things. Yeah, you can look for undigested food, and you can look for color, and you can look for consistency, just as an overall gut health test, but when you start digging through, if you’ve started taking some herbs to go after infections, that’s when you’re going to start to see biofilm, you’re going to start to see maybe parasites, candida looks like string cheese when you start killing it, so that’s when you’ll start to see these. Sometimes you don’t even have to dig. When it hits the toilet water, it’ll break up and you’ll see it.
Torrie Thompson: It’s definitely something you can do. I’m a big fan of going through your own stool and finding what’s in there.
Chantel Ray: Let’s talk about undigested food for just a second. If you do see undigested food, I would say a lot of people would see things like corn, or they say peas, or stuff like that. Talk about what your poop should look like, and what you should be looking for. How would you be able to tell that you’ve got undigested food and what does that mean for someone?
Torrie Thompson: A lot of undigested food isn’t an issue. If it’s things that have that hard exterior, so that’s going to be corn, it’s going to be peas, it’s mushrooms, some of the leafy greens, the really fibrous things are really hard to break through, so that’s okay. Don’t want to see is basically what you just ate go through you. [inaudible 00:15:23], we don’t want to see carbs or whatever it is you don’t want to see that. You don’t want to see your meal in the toilet. That’s when it can be an issue. It can just be that you didn’t have enough stomach acid. Sometimes in not enough stomach won’t break down the food properly, and then other times it can be more serious things like some gallbladder issues.
Torrie Thompson: But for the most part, most people’s undigested food is not going to be not an issue. If you’re seeing, I know kale for me is a big one, I always see kale in the toilet, corn, mushrooms, those are going to be okay. You want your stool to be a brown color, you don’t want it to be green, you don’t want it to be white, you don’t want it to be yellow. You want it to be some form of brown, and you want it to be formed like a banana. You don’t want it to be hard and pebbly. That’s going to be definitely be some constipation, that’s dehydration, and you don’t want it to be runny and loose. You want it to be that formed banana like, pretty much one formed … and that’s a great stool.
Torrie Thompson: You should go to the bathroom every day. I can’t stress that enough. You have to go to the bathroom every day. It is not normal to not go to the bathroom. If you aren’t going to the bathroom every day, I highly recommend finding what the cause is. Is it just you’re not drinking enough water, or you’re not eating enough fiber? It is that you have some infections going on? We need to figure that out.
Torrie Thompson: But if you don’t go to the bathroom every day, you’re holding toxins in. Your bowel movements and your stool are basically a way for your body to rid you of toxins. If you’re not passing it, those toxins are sitting inside you. I can’t stress enough go to the bathroom every single day.
Chantel Ray: Talk about if your poop is like a light colored brown, or like a light colored gray, what kind of signs … Is that a sign of inflection, inflammation, blockage in your bile duct? Talk about the lighter brown and the gray colors of what those could represent.
Torrie Thompson: Any form of brown is okay. If it’s super light, more like a cream color, that means that you’re not really getting bilirubin, which is actually turns it brown. If it’s that grayish or it’s that creamy color, that means that you probably have something going on with your bile duct, something in your gallbladder that definitely needs to go be checked out. That’s something that is more serious. You definitely don’t want that.
Torrie Thompson: If it’s gray, you have to think of … With any color stool, you have to think of what you ate. If it’s red and you just had beets, it’s okay, it’s not blood. If it’s gray and you just had activated charcoal as a supplement, that’s okay. You have to think back and make sure that you didn’t just eat something that was that color.
Torrie Thompson: If it’s a gray color, it depends on the color gray. If it’s a dark gray, more towards the black side, that could be a lower GI bleed. That’s [inaudible 00:18:37] something is definitely more serious. We want to make sure that if your stools are not brown, or close to it, that you go get it checked out because it definitely can be a more serious issue.
Chantel Ray: All right, and one more question I’m going to talk to you about salt water flush. We had a guest on the show that really said that she loves doing salt water flushes if she’s chronically constipated, or experiencing irregular bowel movements, where you take four cups of water with two teaspoons of non iodized salt. We’ve had different guests have different opinions on them. Talk to us about a salt water flush. Have you ever done them, what’s your thoughts on them, and do you like them or recommend them?
Torrie Thompson: I have never done a salt water flush. I’m more of a coffee enema person, that’s my jam, is I’ll do a coffee enema if I know I need to detox or if I’m having issues going to the bathroom. But I don’t generally recommend them. I haven’t done enough research on them myself to really say anything good or bad about them, I’m just more of find the root cause of why you’re constipated and go from there, because usually there’s something underlying. Your body doesn’t want to hold onto toxins, so there’s something underlying. But as far as the salt water flush, I haven’t done enough research or really played around with them. I always will experiment on myself before I recommend it to any client, so I haven’t done it one myself enough to …
Chantel Ray: Maybe you should do one. Maybe you should do it and we can talk about it on our Part 2.
Torrie Thompson: Oh, yeah. I’ll do it, I’ll try it. We can talk about it next time.
Chantel Ray: Talk real quick about the coffee enema more in detail. How often do you do them? Try to in as much in detail describe to the listeners what you personally do for that coffee enema.
Torrie Thompson: I think coffee enemas were probably the biggest turnaround in my healing journey. They’re a wonderful detox. It basically will get the liver to dump the toxins, and then it gets your intestines to go into hyperperistalsis, which means it moves faster. That biofilm I was talking about earlier, that will release. Some of the parasites are going to release. It’s great for that and it’s great for just cleaning you out.
Torrie Thompson: I do coffee enemas, now as maintenance, I do about once a month. When I was really, really sick, I did them sometimes every day, two or three times a week, [inaudible 00:21:08] a lot of them because I was so toxic and needed to get stuff out of me. But for a normal person, once a month, once every other month is plenty.
Torrie Thompson: I recommend that you get a coffee enema kit. You can buy them on Amazon, and you just want to make sure that it’s organic and therapeutic coffee. It’s not your regular coffee. It’s a different, it’s a medium roast coffee, and they pull a lot of the chemicals out, so it’s a very different coffee, you can’t drink it.
Torrie Thompson: You’ll brew it. I do about five cups of water to three tablespoons of this coffee. You basically boil it uncovered for three minutes, and then simmer it for 15, and then let it cool. You’ll then put it into the enema bucket. Then you’ll take it into the bathroom, and then you’ll insert the enema and then let it drain into you. Then as soon as you get [inaudible 00:22:01], then you’ll go the bathroom, and then it will all come out of you. You’ll see this toxin flush. I’ve seen everything from parasites, to black tar looking stuff come out, and everything in between.
Torrie Thompson: You can get a really good idea what’s going on in your body based off this coffee enema, but there’s some amazing resources out there to find information on coffee enemas that you can look up. The Gerson institute, they have great information on coffee enemas. Pretty much you can Google coffee enema, and the Gerson Institute going to come up, Dr. Jay Davidson’s going to come up. Those are some of the people that have really great information on coffee enemas, the background of them, how they started and what they’re used for.
Chantel Ray: Awesome, well let’s ump right into the listener questions. This is from Bailey in Wyoming. I’m a very firm believer in holistic healing. I don’t think you should take any pain killers or medicine for every little ache or pain you have. When I was younger, I used to always get the worst cramps when I was ever on my period, but I’ve overcome that and now they don’t bother me. My question is, should I stick to this mentality when I start having kids? Is there any natural remedies I could use? Bailey in Wyoming.
Torrie Thompson: Hi, yeah. Bailey, there are tons of natural remedies. It’s a little bit harder with kids because as you probably know, some of the natural remedies don’t taste as good as taking a children’s Advil, but I’m a huge fan of holistic everything. I don’t really take medication unless I absolutely have to. There are definitely things you could do holistically [inaudible 00:23:44] our kid. You just have to know, sometimes you have to make the call, do I need to go to a doctor and have it checked out?
Torrie Thompson: If your kid has a tooth ache, you probably should take them to a dentist to have it checked it out, but in the meantime what you can do is put on some garlic, smash up some garlic and put it on their tooth, and have them rinse out after a few minutes. Or you can use peppermint and clove oil on a cotton ball, essential oils, and rub it right on the tooth. That will help. It has antimicrobial properties, it also has a slight pain killing effect. You can also, if the kid will do tea, you can put thyme leaves in water. Then you can basically heat up the water, put them I for a few minutes, let them steep, and then pull the leaves out, let the water cool, and then give the child some of the water that has the thyme in it. It has a painkilling effect.
Torrie Thompson: Those are amazing things you can do. There’s amazing blogs out there that you can find for people that have kids that have found what works and what doesn’t. I don’t have any kids, so whenever I give suggestions for people, I don’t have the first-hand knowledge of doing it on my own child, but I’ve sent it done on a lot of client’s and family member’s children. You just have to find what works for your child, that what they can tolerate. Then if it’s something more serious, definitely go have a doctor look at it, but holistic care is definitely an option for children and adults.
Chantel Ray: If you had somebody who was an adult, we get questions about neck pain, back pain and menstrual cramps, natural remedies, those are the three biggest questions we get on would be as far as neck, back and menstrual cramps. What would you suggest for someone if they have chronic areas of pain in those area instead of taking Advil every single day?
Chantel Ray: I just played tennis with this guy, and he said to me, he literally had this huge bottle of Advil. I said something like, “Oh, my knee was bothering me.” He’s like, “Oh, you want some Advil.” I was like, “No thank you,” because I don’t take Advil or anything unless I’m dying. Maybe a couple times a year. I have to be dying, dying. He’s like, “Oh,” he’s like, “I take five or six every single day.” I was like, “Oh my goodness.” What would you suggest for someone? He’s like, “Yeah, I’ve got chronic pain every day.” What would you say to them?
Torrie Thompson: I would say for chronic neck and back pain, my first thing I always recommend is go to a chiropractor. Go get your spin checked. It’s the easiest thing you can do, it’s safe, and basically they can align your spine and see if there’s any interference going on there, and see if [inaudible 00:26:37].
Torrie Thompson: Then there’s supplements like magnesium. Magnesium is probably my favorite pain killer there is. It’s a natural muscle relaxer, so anytime I have menstrual cramps, a headache, anything like that my go-to is magnesium glycinate. I take that and it will calm the muscles down. It works very, very well. For menstrual cramps, I would say that.
Torrie Thompson: Another thing that I’ve noticed works fairly well for menstrual cramps is was cutting back on your meat intake right before your period, that helps a lot. I’ve seen that work time and time again, so if you cut back on your meat intake before your period comes, that should help. Then if you do get any cramps, you can do some magnesium, and then a little bit stronger would be some CBD oil.
Chantel Ray: Awesome. I’m glad you talked about the different … There is magnesium glycinate, magnesium citrate. I want you to talk about the different magnesiums, and what they’re for and what you should use them for.
Torrie Thompson: The different magnesiums is basically just looking at how it’s absorbed by the body. My two favorite magnesiums are magnesium citrate and magnesium glys … Both of them are going to have the same muscle relaxing effects, but magnesium citrate, I’m going to use for somebody, that’s my go-to if someone’s constipated and it’s a fluke constipation thing, I say, “Go take some magnesium citrate. That will help get you to go to the bathroom.” Citrate, you can take basically and it will [inaudible 00:28:11] loosen your bowels.
Torrie Thompson: Magnesium glycinate is the most absorbable by the body. That’s what we’re going to use. You can use it in higher doses, it’s not going to give you diarrhea, it’s not going to loosen your bowels at all. It really doesn’t affect that, but what it’s going to do is have those muscle relaxing effects that we’re looking for that the citrate does, but you can’t take as much of it because it’s going to cause the bowels to loosen.
Chantel Ray: Good. Then there’s two other kinds of magnesium, magnesium oxide and magnesium malate. Those two have been known for people suffering from fatigue and fibromyalgia. Do you recommend those two at all, or played around with those two?
Torrie Thompson: Not really. Everyone once in a while I’ll put someone on a supplement, like we’ll do a calcium magnesium supplement for someone that has high oxalates, and that’s going to be multiple forms of magnesium, and that’s because you’re using it essentially to break down oxalate crystals. But generally we use magnesium glycinate and citrate.
Torrie Thompson: But we don’t use magnesium really as any sort of long-term protocol. I use it. A lot of people do really well with magnesium with Lyme because you become magnesium deficient due to the infection, so they’ll be on magnesium. But really what we do is figure out what the root causes are. If they have fiber fibromyalgia, I’m more concerned with why they have it than putting them on a magnesium supplement. I’ll figure out what’s going on and what supplements they need to get to the root cause. Sometimes that includes magnesium, other times it doesn’t. It looks at more getting rid of toxins and stuff.
Chantel Ray: Okay, this is from Kelly in Montana. I was diagnosed with Lyme disease about six years ago after I got back from a camping trip with some girl friends. I’ve heard that you can still have traces of it, even if you’re treated for it. Is that true? I just got married and I’m worried that when I get pregnant, I might pass this onto my children. Should I even be worried about this? Kelly in Montana.
Torrie Thompson: Hi, Kelly. I’m sorry to hear that you have a Lyme diagnosis. It’s not the greatest one, and I can definitely feel for you on this one. With Lyme, it’s a little bit tricky. You can get rid of it to an extent, but you have this crutch, you are always going to be carrying it.
Torrie Thompson: Basically what it means is your immune system has it under control and it’s okay. This is similar to people that carry other viruses around. You don’t ever get rid of them, but you have them but they don’t cause symptoms. It sounds like that’s what you have going on, and it’s going to be really vital for you to keep your immune system really healthy because stressors like a stressful situation at work, or a family thing, those can cause the Lyme to come back because your immune system is weakened. You’re going to always want to make sure that you’re staying on top of your eating and really clean, and using clean product, and not letting your toxin load build up to keep the Lyme at bay. That’s part one to your question.
Torrie Thompson: The second part about it being transferred over to a fetus is a little bit tricky because there isn’t really scientific proof on that, especially more so we see this with people with chronic Lyme, people like me that didn’t catch it for a really long time, that’s going to be more of the case for them. We always say, “Be careful,” but there isn’t really proof either way. It’s a controversial topic. It depends on who you talk to. I honestly don’t really have a solid scientifically proven answer to that, unfortunately.
Chantel Ray: All right, this is from Frances in Virginia. I take 125 milligrams of levothyroxine for my thyroid. I’m actually interested in getting off that medicine. I’ve been on it for so long. I don’t want to just stop cold turkey, though I’m afraid that might make my symptoms worse. I know I don’t need to be dependent on this medicine. How can I wean myself off this? Do I need to cut back slowly on my dose and then eventually stop taking it? Any help would be great.
Torrie Thompson: Yeah, that’s something we hear all the time, “I want to get off my thyroid medication.” It’s something that we’ve seen time and time again, but it has to be done very, very carefully. Definitely do not do this on your own, don’t try to cut back your dosages because you have to … I feel like I say this all the time, but we have to find the root cause of your thyroid issue. Is there a gut issue?
Torrie Thompson: We know the huge correlation between the gut and the thyroid. A lot of your thyroid conversion happens in your gut, so is there an issue there? Are we looking at just you don’t have what you need to make it, do you not have selenium, iodine, zinc, all of the different things you need for thyroid conversion? Are you methylating? The methylation genes, you need to be methylating for your thyroid to convert. There’s a lot of things that need to be looked at.
Torrie Thompson: Then once you figure that out, then you can work with someone to help get your thyroid working again and then also work with the prescribing doctor to cut back. We don’t ever cut back on someone’s medication, we have them work with their prescribing doctor, and then we will work on supporting the thyroid. We will support it, and then they’ll show their bloodwork to their doctor, and their doctor will say, “Okay, we’re going to cut back. We’re going to cut back.”
Torrie Thompson: Sometimes they can come off it, sometimes they can cut way back. It just depends on what the thyroid issue is, how long it’s been going on, is there autoimmunity. There’s a lot of factors that go in, but definitely if you work with a holistic health coach or a holistic practitioner, they can definitely guide you through supporting the thyroid and then you can work with your prescribing doctor to get off our cut back on the thyroid medications.
Chantel Ray: Talk a little bit deeper about thyroid and constipation, how those two tie together hand in hand.
Torrie Thompson: The thyroid and constipation, that is probably one of the biggest things we see is sometimes people don’t even know they have thyroid issues, but they come to us with constipation. With thyroid, usually with constipation we’re seeing hypothyroidism or Hashimoto’s. That tends to slow your metabolism down. It also, you usually have your missing some minerals, and so as your metabolism slows down, and you don’t have the minerals needed, it can cause some constipation.
Torrie Thompson: Then if we look at the gut and the thyroid, a lot of it comes back to there’s some infection in the gut, there’s some dysbiosis, and the thyroid isn’t converting. T4, thyroid hormone T4 converts to T3 in your gut. If there is gut dysbiosis, which the good bacteria and the bacteria are out of balance, or there’s parasites, bacterial infections, candida, anything like that, we can basically have where thyroid hormone won’t convert properly. When you have gut dysbiosis or infections, constipation is a huge symptom. It’s a cycle of which one causes which, but we did know that the gut imbalance can cause thyroid issues, and so that having a gut imbalance causes constipation.
Chantel Ray: Like the other thing that she said is that she is on levothyroxine or Synthroid, which is just T4. So if your whole issue with your thyroid is you can’t convert T4 to T3, and then you need to be taking something like a desiccated thyroid that has T3 in it because if you’re having trouble converting T4 to T3 and all you’re taking is T4, you’re not ever fixing your thyroid issue.
Torrie Thompson: No, you’re not fixing it. All you’re doing is basically bringing one of the many, because when you look at a thyroid, we’re looking at TSH T3, T4, or reverse T3, T3 uptake. There’s a ton of things to look at. You want the whole picture to look good. You don’t want just T4 to look good. They’re all dependent on each other. If one is suffering, the others will suffer as well.
Torrie Thompson: You want to figure out what the root cause is. Then if you figure it out, then yeah, maybe a glandular supplement is better for you, or maybe you just need something with iodine, selenium and a thyroid support supplement. It’s just what’s going on and what we can do to get your thyroid working as best it can.
Chantel Ray: The topic of methylation is a common to the functional medicine community, but it’s not common to the average person. For someone who has never heard of that, talk about that in detail.
Torrie Thompson: It’s something that’s the new buzzword in functional medicine. Everybody loves to talk about methylation, and more commonly we hear people say, “I have MTHFR.” That’s probably the most common gene that everybody knows of, and so they’ll come to us and that’s their disease, “I have MTHFR.” But what it actually is, is a series of genes that basically will convert your B vitamins into the usable form. You need methylation for about 250 of your body’s processes, so you need it for thyroid conversion, detox, you need it for your hormones, you need it for all different things.
Torrie Thompson: We’ll commonly see people will come to us with blood work, and they never had a genetic test, but you can see patterns of methylation issues in bloodwork. You can see high homocysteine, you can see pernicious anemia, which is your B12 anemia, and they’ll say, “I’ve been taking a B supplement,” but what it actually means is they’re not able to use that B supplement. It’s not a methylated B vitamin, and if you have a methylation mutation, you need a methylated form of a B.
Torrie Thompson: About 80% of people have some sort of methylation issue. What we do is genetics tests, and we’ll see which of the genes there’s methylation issues in, and then get them on some sort of methyl folate supplement to help support. It’s the work around, we just give them their body what it needs, rather than giving a vitamin that you can’t use.
Chantel Ray: They’ll just get on the phone with you, and then you will send them that MTHFR test to see are you having an issue with that, is that correct?
Torrie Thompson: Yeah. It’s a cheek swab. They’ll swab their cheek and they’ll send it in. We look at all of your methylation genes, and then we’ll also look at detox genes because some people can’t detox. We have the ability to look at gluten genes to see if some people have a predisposition to having gluten-based issues, or dairy-based issues. We can look at people we can see do need to be on a probiotic, we could see how your gut genes are, we can look at your neurotransmitter genes, we can see all sorts of really, really cool genes, plus drive what supplements we put you on because everybody’s genetics are different.
Torrie Thompson: Now that we’ve been able to go one step further and see what genetically you need, has just taken functional medicine and holistic medicine one step further to being so personalized and so amazing for each person.
Chantel Ray: Awesome. Last question, can you describe to people what is the difference between someone having low iron versus low ferritin, like the difference between those? What would be some of the reasons why someone would have low iron getting down to that root cause?
Torrie Thompson: This is something we see all the time. This is actually something I have struggled with myself. Lyme disease people, it’s a very easy symptom to pick up on and sign to pick up on when you have low iron, that there’s some sort of infection.
Torrie Thompson: We know that if you have low iron and you’re eating iron, you’re eating red meat, you’re getting enough iron that your iron should be normal or close to normal and it’s low, we’re looking at infection, we’re look at Babesia, which is an infection that goes along with Lyme, we’re looking at parasites. These guys love to eat your iron. If we see iron and we can’t get it up, or they’re like, “I eat red meat all the time, I take an iron supplement and it’s not getting any better,” then we go, “Okay, definitely an infection issue.”
Torrie Thompson: Iron stored as ferritin, it’s what your body can hold onto. Sometimes we’ll see someone that has really high iron or normal iron, and very, very low ferritin. What we know is then we’ll look at the liver. That conversion happens in the liver. Do they need to detox? Do they have really high liver enzymes? Is their liver boggy?
Torrie Thompson: Some people, if they had, especially if they have methylation issues, they’re not detoxing well, or if they have genetic variations to their detox genes, their livers are toxic, so they’re not going to be able to convert iron to ferritin well. If we see that pattern, then we know, okay we need to look at the liver, we need to detox them and make sure we’re focusing on cleaning out the liver.
Torrie Thompson: If we see both of them are low, iron and ferritin, it’s usually an iron problem and so we’ll say … Usually we’ll start with … We always run tests, and so we’re always going to be look at is there an infection going on? Then if the iron, if it doesn’t get better, then we’re going to go a little bit deeper. If there wasn’t reason to believe that there was Lyme before, but it doesn’t get better, then we’ll go down the Babesia route and say, “Okay, maybe we have some Lyme going on that they’re just not showing symptoms of.”
Torrie Thompson: It’s usually infections. Parasites love red blood cells and they love your iron. That’s generally the biggest things we see. Or sometimes it’s just gut issues, if you have gut malabsorption from leaky gut, you’re not going to absorb iron as efficiently as you should. That’s usually your moderate iron, not super low, but bottomed out is usually either they don’t eat iron or they have an infection.
Chantel Ray: Awesome. Well Dr. Torrie, tell everyone, if they want to find more out about you, and find out about your work, where do they go?
Torrie Thompson: You can find us in a lot of ways. We actually are hosting a webinar on brain chemistry imbalance. If someone wants to learn about brain chemistry imbalance, depression, anxiety, they can sign up for our webinar on our website. They can visit modernholistichealth.com, sign up for our website. You will get an e-book on gut health and brain chemistry imbalance, and you’ll get an email about our webinar series. I highly recommend doing that.
Torrie Thompson: Then you can follow us on Facebook. We have a Facebook Group called Crusaders for Health where we post food that we’re eating, or articles that we found. Every week we post Facebook Lives. I talked about parasites this week, and then we talked about mold. We always are talking about cool topics. Follow us on Crusaders for Health.
Torrie Thompson: Then you can follow me on Instagram. My Instagram is drtorriethompson. I always have what I’m eating on there, interesting things I find, and you could all find a ton of information. There’s plenty of ways to find us, but we hope to hear from you, reach out to us, say hi.
Chantel Ray: Well awesome. Well I fell in love with Dr. Torrie the second I met her. After a few minutes I’m like, “Oh my gosh, here’s my new BFF right here.” I know that you’ll fall in love with her too. She takes clients all over the country, so she can send you all the packets, you can do it all via Skype. Talk about easy, so check out.
Chantel Ray: If they want to go to your website, what is your website?
Torrie Thompson: It’s www.modernholistichealth.com.
Chantel Ray: All right. Well if you have a question that you want answered, go to questions@chantelrayway.com. We’ll see you next time. Buh-bye.
***As always, this podcast is not designed to diagnose, treat, prevent or cure any condition and is for information purposes only. Please consult with your healthcare professional before making any changes to your current lifestyle.***