Alternative Ways to Regulate Your Thyroid Levels
Could you be missing T4 receptors? What diet changes could help facilitate thyroid regulation? Bringing the answer is today’s Waist Away podcast guest, Dr. Stephanie Gray, registered nurse practitioner and BioTe Certified provider!
So many of my patients come to me on thyroid medication, they’re taking something like Synthroid or Levothyroxine, which is only T4 and no one’s ever told them in their doctor may not even realize that they don’t have T4 receptors in their body. You only have T3 receptors.
So it’s really important that that T4 gets converted over to our most important thyroid hormone, which is T3 in some patients and the stressed patients that T4 can convert to reverse T3. And the way I like to describe this to patients is T3 is the gas pedal on your metabolism. You want that gas pedal on hard reverse, T3 is your brake pedal. You don’t want your brake pedal on. And when you’re stressed, that brake pedal is going to be on, not the gas. So patients in many times can’t lose weight. So many patients can’t convert the T4 to T3 and we can assess that on testing. And if that’s what we find, yes, we need to work with stress reduction.
But there are a lot of nutrients that exist that can help facilitate that conversion. Like selenium is really important. Diet changes can help also. I’m a big advocate for gluten free eating because many of my patients have the auto immune thyroid component. And then also medications exist. So if patients are only on T4 and we can’t get their T3 up, they need to take T3. So natural more natural options exist. I use a lot of desiccated porcine and my practice uses drugs like Nature Throid, NP Thyroid, WP or even Armour, that will provide patients the T3 that they need. Not everybody needs it, but many patients do. And there are also some synthetic options that exist like Liothyronine or Cytomel, which is T3, not the T4. So it’s really important that we check all thyroid hormone levels and in our patients to help them have the best chance for losing weight.
Find the full Podcast episode here: