 Welcome to Ancestral Health Today. Evolutionary insights into modern health. Welcome to Ancestral Health Today. I'm Todd Becker. We're talking today with El Rusts. El is a writer, podcaster, speaker, health and life coach, and a leading advocate for thyroid health. She's been a prominent voice within the Ancestral Health Movement for many years, including a log partnership with Mark Sisson and his popular Primal Blueprint blog and Primal Kitchen podcast. Her 2016 book, The Paleothyroid Solution, reached number one in Amazon's thyroid health category. She wrote the book starting with her own experience consulting with over two dozen specialists who failed to uncover or address her underlying thyroid disease and her success in researching and finding answers that restored her health through hormone replacement and diet. The book has inspired hundreds to better understand and address a number of misdiagnosed health issues. So we'll hear a lot about El's health journey and solutions in this episode. But before we do that, El, I'd like to start by getting a short primer on the role of the thyroid in our health. And one of the main takeaways in your best-selling book, Paleothyroid Solution, is that thyroid disease underlies a wide range of symptoms but is often missed or underdiagnosed. So can you tell us a little bit about how the thyroid connects to some of these conditions that might surprise people? Sure. What are some of the surprising conditions? Sure. Well, thank you for that intro. I do want to make one correction. I have helped thousands of people all over the world in 20-plus countries, not hundreds, but maybe you're reading something right as it came out. All right, so here's the story about the thyroid gland. It's the master gland of the human body, not because I say so, because it is. Why? What does the master gland mean? Well, it is in the control and the production and regulation of your sex hormones. So right there, your output as a man is testosterone, all of your sex hormones, it is in charge of the production and regulation of those. All right. So if your thyroid goes down, those are going to go out. It's also in control of your heart rate and your body temperature. Let's just talk about that. So as humans, we are like Goldilocks, not too hot, not too cold. A lizard might have its own set of what temperature regulation it has on a rock in the desert. We as humans are usually 98.6 degrees in the afternoon. In the morning, there's a range of a basal temperature. It's an average, but we are like that story of Goldilocks because too hot is hyperthyroidism, is hypermetabolic, and it can give you a heart attack because it's in charge of your heart rate. So if you're hyperthyroid, you have too much. Oh my God, your heart rate is really, really high. You could wake up and have like 120 heart rate. And it's much rarer, but you could die. Okay, now let's go to the hypo low, slow, underactive. Well, in that case too, you've got low blood pressure, really low, super low pulse. Like, Oh my gosh, are you even alive kind of thing? And like, you're not an athlete, you know what I mean? Like, you're already exhausted. You have a million symptoms and your heart rates 40, like it just that shouldn't be the case. So it's in charge of the heart rate. It's in charge of the production or regulation of your sex hormones and it is in charge of your brain development. So a perfect example is this is very rare, but like one in a gazillion, I don't know the statistic, but it's very rare when a child is born without a thyroid gland. But when that happens, if they don't catch it almost immediately, mental disability will set in and all and or death. Now one time I was talking about this and someone did reach out to me and they're like, actually, I was one of the rare cases of a baby born and they caught it right away. And I said, it's good thing they did because you would not have enough mental wherewithal to even email me because you would literally have major mental issues. So given just those things, if you can't live without a thyroid gland, or the hormones that it produces, then what is life going to be like when you have low levels or high levels? I already told you, you can get a hard tag with high levels. Low levels is a slow death. It is accelerated aging, it's accelerated glycation. It affects you in other ways. So heart rate, blood pressure, and also now you are sort of headed towards insulin resistance. And here's why, because the thyroid produces the only hormone in the human body that like literally burns fat. It's called T3. And when you don't have any levels of it, you can burn fat. So not only do you do thyroid patients usually have a weight gain issue, but now you are going to become insulin resistant. So now you're type two, you go to your doctor and they're like, stop eating and you're like, I'm not doing anything. Next next problem. Oh, your cholesterol labs are terrible. We need to put you on a statin. Or do you just need to text the, check the thyroid? Because if you don't have enough of the fat burning T3, then your cholesterol labs are going to look terrible. Same with this. Oh, hey, here you need blood pressure medication. Do you? You know, oh, here your hormones are off, you need hormones. Do you or are you all just trying to patch the symptoms not looking at the root? So you always have to check the master gland. For example, depression. Depression is a symptom of hypothyroidism, untreated hypothyroidism. Okay, once you fix hypothyroidism, all the symptoms go away. Okay, but it really is, it's brutal because we have more receptors in our brain for that biologically active hormone T3 than anywhere else. So now you're depressed and your uninformed doctor has no idea how to fix your hypothyroidism. So you keep going in, they give you Prozac or some SSRI and then it will maybe help for a few months and then it won't work. Right. So you've pointed out something really key, which is the thyroid is upstream of a lot of these issues. Within paleo ancestral people know about insulin, they know about leptin, they know about these hormones and they're important. But what you're saying is thyroid can be the master hormone that's driving all of this and it's often unchecked. So why is it that we pay attention to insulin resistance, leptin resistance, but so many people are uninformed about thyroid. Well, I'll tell you the reason why 99.9% of doctors and health practitioners are uninformed about the thyroid, they are steeped in 50 year old outdated protocols from 1973. The year I was born. Okay. So they were taught one thing. It's the same thing as everyone in the ancestral health space knows, which is the government food pyramid is absolutely a diabetes making diet. Okay, you take anyone and you give them six to 11 servings of grains every day plus two to four servings of fruit, plus canola oil and everything else they'd recommend, you're going to get diabetes. So you you and I all know this. But do doctors know it? No, if I went to my doctor today, I mean, my standard doctor, not like my functional doctor, but if I just went to my insurance doctor today, they're not going to ask me when I'm eating, they're not gonna, it's a pill or surgery. And that's what that care is for. So if you want to get more in depth with someone, you're going to have to go to someone who's really experienced. And so it is. It's a level of where healthcare is at functional medicine doctors or people that aren't taking under the umbrella of insurance are going to spend an hour and a half two hours with you. They're not worried about what insurance company is saying test this or don't test this. I'll give you a great example that happened recently. I have a friend who was suffering for two months with horrible gastrointestinal issues. IBS like symptoms, all sorts of stuff. They were they're they're pretty healthy to begin with. They don't need any gluten whatsoever. They went to their Kaiser doctor and they took every test imaginable from stool tests tested for all the things. And at the end of all of that, all they said was, well, we can give you a colonoscopy or a CT scan. No one said, hey, what are you eating until I came along and I said, what are you eating? And I said, this kind of sounds like a histamine issue. You should look at this list, adopt a no histamine diet immediately. They did their vertigo went away in three days. The stomach started to repair. They'd had leaky gut. No one at Kaiser because they don't care that they are not worried about this. Like, do we have a test or a surgery for that? So you have to understand when you're walking into these places, it's not that they're not valuable. If I fall off a cliff tomorrow, I'm going to want a hospital, right? But if you're looking for optimal anti aging and health, they only took an hour in medical school on nutrition. And that hour was all about how glucose should be the primary fuel for the human body. And you and I both know that that's not a good move. So that's kind of why they're just uninformed and steeped outdated protocols. No different than the doctor who's still worried about an LDL at 120 or 130 without looking at all of the other markers. But you and people in the ancestral health space, we knew how to evaluate those cholesterol labs before the rest of the world picked up on it. Now I see that my local insurance does the ratio. But that was a long time coming, wasn't it? We've been talking about that 10, 15 years ago. So people do diagnose thyroid disease. There's Hashimoto's, there's Grave disease. These are extreme cases, right? But there's all this under diagnosed thyroid. And so what you talked about with the thyroid being the master regulator, you talked about the extremes, the, you know, high accelerator and the high brakes, right? Those we can detect. But these more modest subtle forms go under diagnosed. So what are some examples of something that might be a thyroid condition that people might not suspect you. So you mentioned the testing incorrectly. The answer is they're testing incorrectly correctly. Okay. And or they're testing correctly, not assessing correctly, or they're testing correctly, they're assessing correctly, they're not treating correctly, or everything's wrong from their out. So the biggest problem is this, they're not testing correctly at all. So they're taking uninformed 1973 tests, they're treating people, and then they're hurting them, they're either making their situation worse, or the person is like, I don't feel better, I don't feel better. And the doctor goes must be in your head. Because your thyroid's fine, because they are not taking the correct tests. This is the biggest problem. Okay, talk about talk about the tests. Sure. By the way, I have an entire free thyroid masterclass with free thyroid guide, you can get all of these tests in there. But there's four main tests. Well, there's really six. But let's just talk about the six tests. TSH, free T3, free T4, and reverse T3. Okay, those are the four main must have. And if any doctor says, I don't test reverse T3, or we don't do that, then they are an uninformed doctor, hear me when I say this. Any doctor that does understand reverse T3, which is of the four, the one that most doctors do not understand, that's why I say that. But most doctors only test two of those four. Now we've also you mentioned Grave's disease and you mentioned Hashimoto's. Those are autoimmune forms of hypothyroid condition, or of thyroid conditions. And those have, well, at least Hashimoto's has two tests. Now most uninformed doctors only know about one of the tests, but you can be positive for one and not the other or both. So you have to get both tested. And those are called TPO antibody stands for thyroid proxidase antibody. And then there's another one called TG antibody. And that stands for thyroglobulin antibody. So do I or do I not have a thyroid issue? What's happening? You get TSH free T3, free T4, reverse T3. And then you rule out whether or not you have Hashimoto's, you must rule out there is a completely different protocol and options for that. So you must rule it out. And then, of course, there's peripheral tests and things like that. But that is the do I have a problem? And you always get tested within two to three hours after waking up, black coffee, water, tea, don't take thyroid hormone, don't take any medication, just go get the test. Those will be the most accurate thyroid tests. From there, we can go. That tells me everything. That tells me everything. All right. Now explain for our listeners. I mean, you know a lot about this, your book has got a great primer on it. Can you give us the basics of T4, T3, reverse T3, how the cascade here, how this gets, how these signals get into your body? So I'm going to describe the whole feedback loop of how these hormones work. I will say, though, that it's something that usually people are going to need to rehear. I also go way more into depth on this in my free thyroid masterclass if you want to like see an image and watch me do this, but I'll go through it briefly, which is here's how it works. It's a very elegant feedback loop. Let's say your body is low in thyroid hormones, which it might be because maybe you wake up, you fast and then went to the gym. Okay. At that time, your brain, the pituitary at the base of the brain acts like a sensor. And it's sensing how much thyroid hormone you have. And when you're low, it shoots out a wake up call. It shoots out a signal to the thyroid gland to do its job. That signal is called the TSH. That stands for thyroid stimulating hormone. This is very important because if anyone listening out here is still suffering, go back and look at your labs. I'll bet you a million dollars. Your doctor only tested your TSH or they only tested your TSH and T4. And I'll explain that in a second. So the signal sent to the thyroid. Now, I'm what I'm describing to you is when it works perfectly. Okay. This is someone who's got no thyroid problems. Everything's great. This is like how it works for a Marxism. Okay. So, um, so they sense when his body's low in thyroid hormones, the signal is sent to the thyroid to wake up. The thyroid's job when it wakes up, it pumps out about 80% of something called T4 and about 20% of something called T3. Okay. I'm going to stop right there. The most important thing for anyone to grab is T4 and T3. What are they? They are the only two hormones really relevant. They are the only two thyroid hormones for dosing and some of the most important for testing. Our bodies pump out a lot of this thing called T4 and a little of this thing called T3. However, T3 is the only biologically active thyroid hormone, meaning that's the thing that corresponds with how you feel. That's the thing that makes your brain work, that makes you not cold, that makes you on fire, having metabolism, be on hypothyroid. That's the thing we need is T3. T4 is just the precursor. Yeah, it converts to T3. That's what I'm getting into. So it pumps out a lot of this thing. Now why? Now people go, because people put so much importance on T4. I have had no T4 in my body for 10 years. It's useless unless it converts into the thing that matters. So here's what happens. Your body's low in thyroid hormones, the signal's sent to the thyroid. Thyroid does its job. 80% T4, 20% T3 throughout the day. As you need the T3, the T4 will kind of convert. Whatever excess has not been converted will just get fleshed out through a natural process called reverse T3. Why? Why, Todd? If all we need is T3, what is this T4 doing and like converting for us? T3 is fast acting. Might as well be throwing gasoline on a fire. Right? It's quick. It peaks and dissipates quickly. T4 has a much longer half-life and it's kind of like a slow release mechanism because this T3 is so powerful that your body wants to kind of dish it out and have a way to hold it back. Reverse T3 is the emergency break. Let me give you an example. Sally is out in the world. She's starving whether she's eating, she's eating a low fat, low carb diet. Let's put that way and she's over exercising. Okay. And so the body, this primal body and I know I'm going to personify it but this is sort of how it works. When a situation like that, oh, she's starving. The feedback loop starts to go, no, no, no, we are not converting anymore. This T4 you pumped out. Sally's starving. We can't afford for her to burn any more fat. Furthermore, dial back all the sex hormones because she is in no position to have a baby. This thyroid feedback loop, just as you know with insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes, when you get fat because you have eaten too much sugar, that's a good thing. Your body is trying to save your life by pushing you want that versus being skinny fat. Right. And so the same thing kind of goes here. If Sally is, you know, in danger, the body is trying to save your life just as it's trying to save your life by pushing all the excess glucose into the right, it's trying to save your life. So the messages we send to our body, the thyroid is going to go, uh oh, here's another time it could happen. Let's just say Sally gets into a horrible accident. She's got limbs that are mangled. There's tons of inflammation. That might be another time she gets COVID. She gets cancer might be another time that the body is like, uh oh, inflammation. We don't want to pour any more hyper metabolic gasoline on this fire. Let's dial it back. We're not sure if they're out of the woods yet. Are they okay? Okay. So that's what it's there for. So the T4 converts into the T3, whatever's you not used gets fleshed out. Let me tell you about the problems that can happen. I just told you how it worked. Here are the problems that can happen. Maybe the signals not sent. Okay. Well, that's a little less of a concern. It's very rare, but sometimes people have a pituitary tumor, but that's very rare. Um, but it happens. Okay. So that could happen, but let's say the signal is not being sent for whatever reason. Okay. But let's say the signal is being sent perfectly. Then it's sent to the thyroid. The thyroid, let's say doesn't do its job. So that's another problem. It's not pumping out the levels of hormones it needs to. But let's say it's working. The TSH signal is great. The thyroid does its job perfectly and pumps out the right amount of hormones. Now we got another potential problem, but the T4 must convert or you're going to be hypo. So what can happen here is not only can the T4 just, it doesn't convert into enough to get you the stuff you need, but then you can have what I had, which is a reverse T3 problem, which means it never converts into T3. It keeps over converting, assuming you're in danger. It keeps over converting into reverse T3. There are a lot of reasons as to why things won't convert and will. It could be a genetic enzyme thing. It can be selenium deficiency. That's like a conversation for another day. But what's most important is the following. If your doctor is not testing, free T3, they're not testing to see whether you get the package. I don't order something from Amazon, not get the package and keep ordering it. You keep testing the TSH and the T4. This is why people remain sick. Doctors can give patients a hyperfibrary problem happened with a client of mine the other day. So the big problem in this whole picture is that doctors are only testing TSH and T4. They're just testing the signal, which fluctuates all the time. And then they're just testing the prohormone. They're not testing. Did she get the package and then also let's double check reverse T3. And I'll tell you why it's so critical to test reverse T3 because you could completely hurt a patient if you don't. And here's why. I had a horrible reverse T3 problem. T4 is the only thing that converts into reverse T3. So if a patient has a reverse T3 problem and you give them the thyroid hormone T4, it just keeps driving the reverse T3. So I hope this makes sense to you, Todd. And if not, please let me clarify. I want everyone in this audience to understand how f up that is. Now that I've just described that you don't even need to know anything about the thyroid to get that they are not looking at this entire picture. And if you don't, you're hurting people or you're keeping them sick. Okay. So just to make sure I understand. So your T4 can look normal. But your TSH can look normal. TSH that can look normal. But then not enough of it is converting to the T3 or it's going to reverse T3. And so just measuring the T4, you'll miss that. Now, before we get into a real good example of exactly that, my labs from 2005 when I was seriously hypothyroid. Now back then really nobody knew about reverse T3. So we didn't test that. But if you looked at my TSH, great. You look at my free T4. Great. My free T3 was below the range. That doctor who didn't test the free T3 kept hitting my gym shoes and telling me I just need to work out more. So you get you get shamed for like all the weight gain and all the symptoms must be in your head. It's not your thyroid. I'm looking at your T4 and TSH. It's fine. So we never I would never ever you never assess treat a patient at all unless you have checked these four. And I want to say one more thing about reverse T3. It's something my doctor checks all the time. And the perfect example of this is I had a client in Hawaii. I said you need to get your reverse T3 tested. They go to the doctor. The doctor said no. I said go back and push for it. The doctor came back and said, well, we only test that when you're like in the ICU. Okay, so Todd, like being in the ICU worst worst worst day of any human's life intensive care unit. You're you're you're probably frickin dying. Right. So why would they test that thyroid test when people are in the ICU? Because reverse T3 is a measure and a marker of unwellness and wellness in any human body. And it says a lot, including headed towards potential heart failure. So how about we test it before we go to ICU? But isn't that interesting? That that's what she said. But it's interesting. She also didn't make the logical conclusion like what's weird and heavy that they're testing that in the ICU. Maybe I should look into this, but they don't. So L what could be some of the health reasons that would prevent T4 from adequately converting to T3 as an example? Sure. So lack of selenium. So selenium helps with conversion of T4 to T3 could just be lack of selenium, which is not as prevalent in our soil as it used to be, as you know. Often people think that they can just eat a couple brazil nuts to get that. And when you're in this kind of situation, you need to take two to 400 micrograms of selenium every day. You could have heavy metal toxicity. I mean, listen, that affects mitochondrial function. It also can cause a reverse T3 problem. There's certainly lots of underlying situations. Living in a house with black mold can give you Hashimoto's. I mean, you can get rid of it. But I'm just saying there are things in this world that can ignite this, right? Starving oneself and overexercising, we call that you thyroid six syndrome. That's where the TSH free T3 free T4 all going to be low. That was me. I was overexercising and I was eating a low fat, low carb paradigm because I didn't know any better, Todd. And I was doing the whole zone. I was doing all that stuff. I didn't know better. So I was a hangry, sugar burning nightmare. And I didn't know there was another way. So let's go into your story because I think it's interesting how you how you came to this realization. Well, what was your health story? What were you doing that led you down this path? I was completely fine doing well. I was in worked out every day and I thought I was on the right paradigm. Clearly, I wasn't. Were you eating a paleo diet yet? Did that I was not? No, no, no. This was right before I got my hypothyroid issue. I was probably somewhat starting myself without knowing it. Like I was just on the wrong paradigm. I thought this is what you had to do to be fit. And I did. I mean, I looked the part. I was struggling in here, though. I was obsessed with food and hangry a lot hypoglycemic and stuff. And then and then one day I just I like got my period early. I was 30 and I thought this is weird. I kept bleeding every two weeks. I went to the doctor. Instead of them going, that's where she's 30. She's never had a problem. Why is she bleeding? But he just tested the TSH. She said it's not your thyroid. So then they kept giving me the birth control pill, which by the way, Rob's you have your thyroid. Anyway, but they kept giving me the birth control pill. Again, let's patch the symptom, not ask why is this really f'd up thing happening that shouldn't happen to a 30 year olds, right? So I bled through like four birth control pills. Meanwhile, exploded, got nowhere. Everything got worse and worse. I went to over two dozen endocrinologists hormone experts in LA. I had the best insurance. I had a PPO. I spent money I didn't have at the time to try to find all these experts. They either hurt me. I was also misdiagnosed and I want to talk about this. I was before weekend. Were there any other symptoms besides the menstrual? Oh, yeah, I had 40. I have like 30 to 40 of them and they're all listed on my website in my book. I'll talk about it. So as examples, sure, sure, sure. So I'm five feet, two inches tall. I was 115 pounds. I went from 115 to 160 while working out two hours a day and trying to restrict calories. Okay, so the symptom of insidious weight gain, no matter what you do, what you try, you keep exploding. My hair was falling out by the handfuls. That's a very common one. I was freezing all the time. Told you it affects body temperature. So I live in California, Southern California. I was not I never got above 96 degrees even in the afternoon and summer. Okay, so we're supposed to be 98.6. I never got above 96 degrees freezing all the time constipated. No amount of colonics, no amount of laxatives, solve it. Dry cracked skin. There's something called migzodema. It's horrible. It's skin thickening. Right now I can just like you could most people can just take like in their inner arm and like just pinch a little bit like pinch a little bit of skin. When you have skin thickening, you can only grab like a huge amount and it's awful. It feels like every time you bend a leg, you just ate like you just drank a bottle of MSG like the level. You get depression. I told you that you become a klutz. I'm an extremely coordinated athlete. You end up bumping things like why am I knocking over my water all like you're klutzy. You have messy handwriting because brain to hand dexterity is off. You can't express yourself properly, meaning you look I'm a fast talker. I'm bound to like jumble a word here and there. But this is the kind of thing where you are speaking almost like a dyslexic. The words are coming out backwards or your slurring words and you're not drinking or you can't find the words. You can't you read a paragraph and you have to read it five times like you can't retain it. So I bring this up because one of the scariest symptoms is that you feel you're getting done. You feel you're getting dumber and this is one that people don't express like they might the dry cracked skin or the hair falling out right. But when I talk about it, that's the one that hits home because it is technically affecting your brain. And so you it starts off with a general malaise where you start to kind of go that your passions things you cared about in life. You're like, I don't even carry more. You know, and then it kind of gets deeper. It becomes so lonely and sad and it's a weird thing where you know you need to motivate to help yourself. But then like weeks are going by and you're like nothing's happening and you're you're you almost can't even help yourself sometimes it's a really, really tough place to be the mental stuff's the worst. I mean you become a party pooper. You often get adrenal fatigue when you have untreated hypothyroidism for a while. So now you're sensitive to light, to sound, to smells. You definitely most people have like border line eating disorder because of what you know, your body is craving energy because you don't have any T3. So your, you know, adrenals are overreacting and now you're craving sugar and now you feel like a crazy overeaters anonymous. And this is where people will like try paleo in this state and they'll go I couldn't get fat adapted. I'm like, yeah, you can't get fat adapted when you're hypo. You also can't get into keto when you're hypo or hyper, by the way. So it's there's lots of what happens with people is they're searching for these modalities or they come to paleo or keto or carnivore because of the weight gain and nothing's working. But they don't realize that what they're doing is they're trying to put a fat burning modality onto a body that has no ability to burn fat. So you become like an insane person, Todd, because you you want to get ahead of this weight gain and in your mind you go, well, I got to work out because if I don't I'm gonna keep getting fatter. But yet when you do that you keep driving the adrenals into further disrepair and you've taken six steps backwards. So that's that's some of what happens. Yeah. So, El, I want to go back though before you understood that this was a thyroid issue. You were going to specialists. What were you hearing? What were they suggesting might be the problem before you came on to this answer? They thought I might have a hormonal issue. So I was bleeding all the time. Like I said that eventually I went in and they did an ultrasound and they diagnosed me with polycystic ovarian syndrome and they wanted to put me on metformin. Now, let me just be very clear here. If you and I and 15 doctors looked at my uterine ultrasound, we all would have concluded that it was textbook polycystic ovarian syndrome. But again, no one asked the question. Why? Why? So instead they're like, well, let's patch this thing. I never had polycystic ovarian syndrome. I've never had a problem of since I had hypothyroidism induced polycystic ovarian syndrome. Again, I'm saying, so you're going to get a disease you otherwise would not have gotten because of this domino effect. Perfect example of a guy. I had a 25 year old come to me, a male exhausted all the hypothyroid symptoms. But a lot of those symptoms are exhaustion where a male doctor who would look at a male patient would test the TSH. It was normal. So they discounted that. They tested his testosterone. It was low because of the thyroid problem. OK, but they go like me. Oh, well, we'll patch it. We'll just get here's the problem. Low testosterone. They didn't say, why does a 25 year old male have low testosterone? It should be at the top of the range. And they didn't know how to test the thyroid. So they ruled it out. So anyway, he comes to me. He had a horrible reverse T3 thyroid problem. So in this case and in most cases, what do you do? Well, they already gave him the testosterone. You get off the testosterone, you fix the thyroid, your natural levels come back. Kavya. If you're 75, will that work? Maybe not. If you're female and you're 50, like me, no amount of thyroid hormone replacement is going to keep you bleeding forever and ever, right? It's going to end. You're going to need to replace some hormones. So if you're 45 and under as a woman or you're under, you know, 60 as a male, you fix your thyroid. These other things come back. So people are mistreated all the time because again, they're going in there for the symptom and the doctors testing the thyroid wrong. So they rule it out and then are patching it. But it never works because they eventually another thing pops up and now you're treating that. Oh, now you got blood pressure. Here's a statin. Here's an SSRI. Here's some Prozac. And you're just a mess. And it's, it's, it's so depressing because you're gaslit by doctors. You go to 100 people. I had a client go to the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic. They spent 10 years. $200,000. They sent me the Mayo Clinic's lab results. They tested her for Hashimoto's full blown antibodies. They tested her free T3 and free T4 because I asked them to. And they were all at the bottom of the range and nobody said anything about it. Nobody, nobody. And I'm going, uh, she's at the Mayo Clinic complaining of symptoms because she has horribly high antibodies. She's positive for both and she's got no T4 and T3. She died not too long ago. She couldn't get fixed soon enough. She had was, I mean, literally it was, it was like 30 years of her life. And the only reason I found out about and she sort of became my client, it was my best friend from high school's mother. And I had no idea all these years until he goes, you know, I heard my mom's on thyroid hormone replacement and I remember her being sick and in and out of places forever. And I said, we need to get these results. So when people are suffering for 10, 20 years, and this is what I really want to say. And I say it all the time. And they go, I don't have hope. I talked to a woman the other day. I've been doing, I keep going to doctors. I don't have any hope. Like, is it really true? And I asked, I would just ask anyone this question. There's only two reasons why anyone is still suffering from thyroid problems. Literally two reasons. One, you have an uninformed doctor who doesn't know how to test you and assess you and treat you. Okay. Number two, you don't know anything enough to help your doctor help you. That was my problem, Todd, and I hate it. I wish these experts knew their shit, but they don't. So what did I do? I put my health into the hands of the doctor like everyone else did until they all screwed me. I lost seven years of my 30s and I said, no, no. Did my own research. I treated myself. So when people are out there and they're like, I don't know, is there any hope? I keep, I ask them, have you learned it? Because that's what I'm here for. I'm here to empower you to do that. So, Elle, you were getting no help. You were getting symptomatic kind of patches, as you said. What was the insight? What was the moment at which you were able to uncover this insight into thyroid? What led you down that path? There were no podcasts and no nothing at the time. I was online looking at forums and patient forums like Yahoo groups and I was able to get natural-desiccated thyroid and I dosed myself back to health and I would use doctors for their blood work and then not listen to them. And then the second time I was sort of alone, I had a reverse T3 problem. And I knew I was really gonna be left in the dust because definitely like 99, I mean, no one knows, like really rarely any doctor knows how to do this at least back then. And so I was on my own twice in 10 years solving my own thyroid issue. I had to literally doctor and dose myself back to health and I don't wish that upon anyone. It was scary. However, I trusted myself. I trusted my own abilities to understand information that I was reading, talking to fellow patients and the best-selling thyroid books are written by patients because we know how this feels. I've been hyper, I've been hypo, you know? I've had a reverse T3 problem. I've had different combinations of dosages over the years. So it was really just my deep dive into this. And then I accidentally came up with the paleo connection because after my second bout of hypothyroidism, I fixed myself with the thyroid hormones and my labs were good, but I couldn't burn the excess fat I had gained. And I was doing hot yoga two, three days a week and I was hauling up mountains and I was doing all the stuff. Then I started working for Mark Sisson. And I didn't even read his book at first before I started working for him. I'm like, whatever, he's some health author. Like I paged through it. I was like, yeah, yeah, whatever. I'm not quitting grains. I literally, I just discounted it. But then as I started to hang out with them more, I was like, you know, Mark and Carrie look better than me and they're like 20-something years older and they don't seem very stressed about health. Like maybe I should read his book, right? So I finally was like, okay, I gotta get into this. And it was a two-hour seminar that Mark did on the Primal Blueprint. And it just all clicked for me. And I realized, and this was the unique contribution as the combination between the two. Paleo-thyroid solution is not ogopaleo and you'll lose the weight from being fat from hypothyroid. I mean, that is part of it. That will help you get there. But paleoprimal ancestral health is the ultimate in blood glucose management and the ultimate in adrenal management. And this is directly related to how the thyroid works and also how the thyroid hormones get metabolized get to where they need to go. Furthermore, Hashimoto's and Graves disease particularly Hashimoto's, but for sure we know, we know. Gluten ignites the antibodies because it starts a molecular mimicry process. So you can just see when someone has Hashimoto's antibodies and they quit gluten, antibodies go down. I mean, it's amazing. So that is another part of paleo because paleo is clearly gluten-free because it's grain-free. The other part of it is when you're hypothyrate and you've been hypo for a while and untreated, most people. So now a bunch of things have showed up. You have compromised digestion. You've got nutrient deficiencies. You've got to heal the gut. And as you know, the paleoprimal lifestyle is the ultimate for all of that. So before we get into solutions, I want to back up a little bit. What can somebody who suspects they might have a connection with thyroid do if their family doctor is not bringing up these ideas or even open to them? Can you find a practitioner or can you do your own tests through the mail? What's the approach? In the United States, there are certain states that allow you to test your blood without a doctor. California is one of them. New York is not. So it really depends on where you live. But actually I have a hormone panel that anyone can get in the United States without a doctor, without insurance. You just pay for it yourself and get it so that you have the answers and you don't have to fight with the doctor to get tests. And that's all on my website and all on my free masterclass. Anyone can just click on it and go get the test that I suggest. It's more than the six tests. There's a few other things that are involved in that. The first thing, go paleo. People have literally fixed this problem, just doing that. Classic examples would be especially women who have just had a baby. The hormones are fluctuating. You can go hyper or sometimes hypo. So after that, that's a good time. If you've noticed, like I'm feeling crappy, then I would ask you, have you been eating gluten? Like have you been eating? And so try paleo. Try a strict paleo diet for 30 days. At the very minimum, the very minimum removing all the crappy oils and at least all the gluten. But still I would do a strict paleo diet for 30 days and see what happens. And I guarantee there's gonna be some changes. Now it doesn't always work. But part of the paleo thyroid solution is, hey, try this natural approach. Optimize nutrients, right? Maybe get a good multi with selenium. Make sure you're vitamin D. Checking with your iron, is it subpar? Great, take some iron pills, eat some lip. Get all this stuff done. Okay, great. Did the labs change after eight to 12 weeks? No? Okay, but then at least you've primed your body to sort of receive thyroid hormones if that's what you have to do. And now you've set up the perfect primal, like sort of baseline for all of this stuff to work better. So between diet and thyroid hormone supplementation, you would try diet first. Is that what you're saying? Or do both at the same time? It depends on the situation. It really does. Like if someone's been suffering for four years, was hypothyroid symptoms and their labs were absolutely horrible. I wouldn't tell you exactly what that would be. It's horrible. I would tell them to run to go get thyroid hormone immediately, right? It just depends on the person's situation. It depends on how long they've suffered. How bad are their labs? Do they have a deficiency? Like, oh, do they just have a baby? So everybody's individual and what someone will require in terms of what kind of thyroid hormone replacement or what type or the dosage, all individual you can never guess. You can kind of take a, I think maybe, but you don't know because once someone takes thyroid hormones, we just don't know how they're going to affect that person and someone could have a minimum effective dose awesomeness and someone could be like, I have to take a shitload of thyroid hormones for them to work, right? Like some people need really high amounts and it's not bad or good. It's just what it is. So it sounds like this could be complex. Where can you find a doctor or a functional medicine practitioner who would understand these things? Good luck. My doctor on the book, Dr. Gary Forsman, I don't know any others other than the doctors who take my thyroid course. So I created the ultimate thyroid course. It's 30 hours. That's a semester in college. It's over 11 hours of tutorials with me, four hours of tutorials with my doctor, doctor on my book, Dr. Forsman, he's a functional integrative MD, an hour with Brad Kearns, New York Times bestselling author, co-author with Mark Sisson, success stories and all of that because I need to teach the patients how to understand this because you need to be out there in the world. Like I said, go find a doctor. Good luck. I haven't seen it happen. That's why thousands of people have come to me. So thankfully there's some doctors in my course and that's fantastic. Look, I look for, if you're going to look for someone who knows what they're talking about, I can't guarantee it, but I would be going to a functional medicine doctor or a DO, a doctor of osteopathic medicine, a true integrative physician or an anti-aging doctor. Maybe look up paleo doctors. That's what I did back in the day to find Dr. Forsman. He's a paleo doctor, meaning that's really primarily what he suggests to his patients and he believes and understands that that's a major baseline of health. Although of course he's got patients who are still eating bagels and whatever, that's fine, but he's a paleo doctor. Because you can find a good thyroid doctor but then they'll tell you to go vegan because that's their thing and then now you're going to have another problem. So the best advice is not to go find a doctor. It's to learn this yourself so you can help your doctor practice medicine with you and get fixed quickly because they're not going to fix you quickly if they're uninformed. But if you're informed and this is what I see when people get informed and they go to the doctor and they're like, hey, I'm reading this, I'm doing this, the doctor is more inclined to practice medicine with you when you are on it and you are persevering. They may not read the same book that you give them and suggest them to read but they are more inclined to go, okay, fine, we'll try it versus not. So let's say you find that you do the tests and you're low on T3 or you have too much reverse T3. How do you go about deciding how to supplement? Isn't it dangerous to try to do this on your own or do you think? Well, I did it on my own so I did it on my own twice in 10 years. Here's the thing, would I ever recommend that? Absolutely not, absolutely not. I would never recommend that anyone do what I did but I had no choice or I would have died. So I had to take care of my health anyway. Knowing what you know now, what could you advise to somebody who does find out these results? Learn all that you can so that you understand how to fix it either naturally and do that first sort of like push to go, okay, let's try to turn this all around naturally. I mean, that is the idea. Let's get this thing kicked back into gear, right? Diet, nutrient optimization, right? Look at the levels of your iron comprehensive panel. How is that? How's your B12, vitamin D? Okay, good, we're good. Great, and then go from there. If you are like, oh my God, I've been suffering for a while and I just got these tests and it's clear and you know you need to go on thyroid hormone replacement. What was your question? What do you do or? Well, okay, let's suppose you do need to go on thyroid hormone replacement. Talk about that. What are we talking about in terms of thyroid hormones, the different natural sources, what you recommend there? Yes. So this is a really long discussion. So I'll just gloss over it cause it's too in depth. But basically there are only three types. You either take T4 only, you take a T4, T3 combination or you take T3 only, the last resort choice. The best choice is usually T4, T3, Y. I just described to you. Our own thyroids never rely on the sole conversion of T4 to T3. Our thyroids pump out a bit of T3. And the T4, T3 combinations that we usually do with thyroid hormone replacement are often in those ratios, but they can be in very different ones. And depending on the person's blood work, they might need, for example, I take a very little bit of T4 and mostly T3. Most doctors would look at my blood work and jump off cliff. They would have no idea what to do with it. They would be like, oh my God, they literally their heads would explode, okay? So my treatment would be so wrong for someone else and it would completely hurt them. But based on my labs and my situation, that was my only choice. So it's just, I can't go through all the scenarios because you'd have to show me a bunch of blood work. But that's what I do in my course. I go through 25 plus examples of ages, genders, different stuff, all their blood work. So you start to know, what do you do with that person? How do you dose that? And I've got hours worth of dosing protocols for those hormones because people think, oh, I'll just, first of all, most of the doctors are just gonna give you T4. The uninformed doctors are just gonna give you T4. And I've already told you why that's kind of a fail. And it often fails people because it's not endocrine mimicry. So a T4, T3 combo is best and there's no right or wrong. You could use natural desiccated thyroid, which comes from pigs, but what if you're a Jew or a Muslim or a vegan? Well, then in that case, you might not want to. And so then you would use synthetic T4 and T3, right? Again, I said the last resort choice is T3 only, but T4, T3 combinations are great. And it just really is what's cheaper. There's also compounded T4, T3. The only difference between that and synthetic is that it takes away all the fillers that they would put in regular prescriptions. So that's usually reserved for people who are highly sensitive and allergic to stuff. And then they would go get compounded thyroid. The other advantage to compounded thyroid, which would not be used often would be if someone can tell the difference between like a microgram or two, the compounding pharmacist can co-chure it down to the microgram. You can't do that with a pill of T4 and T3 in it. You can't take a five microgram of T3 and try to pull out and be like impossible, right? So that's what compounding pharmacists do. So that's the quote, cleanest, but it's not necessarily the best. It would just be reserved for those people who really sensitive and allergic. And again, maybe because they're immune systems. But you can get natural desiccated thyroid without a prescription, right? No, you cannot. We cannot. Sorry, sorry. You can on the interwebs, okay, but you can't in real life out there. You have to order from another country or over the internet, you cannot. So I do wanna make this caveat here. In our space, there are people who sell ancestral supplements, right? And we say like, oh, chopped up beef liver and thyroid. When you're looking at people confused, natural desiccated thyroid with like a product you get off the shelf that's like desiccated beef thyroid gland, it has no thyroid hormones in it. And these companies say things like, oh, the five pills equals this much of, no, no, no. Those five pills do not equal this much of this prescription because this prescription has exactly this much T4, this much T3. And they do not sell thyroid hormones in that desiccated stuff. So one of the questions I get all the time is like, hey, how about this desiccated beef thyroid gland? And I'm like, that's not thyroid hormone replacement. Anyone who told you, I'm not to say go try it, but it's not thyroid hormone replacement. So people have this impression like they're getting hormones when they're not. So find a paleo doctor who can give you the prescription. That's the most certain way to go forward here, right? Any doctor who can give you the prescription. Any doctor, okay. But what you would need to know is what are you gonna tell them you'd like to try? Because if you leave the decision in their hands, it may not be the best decision and it could cost you months, if not years worth of problems. That is why you have to know the stuff, yeah. Great, so let's turn to diet. You found that a paleo diet was very helpful. Two questions, why? Why does a paleo diet help normalize thyroid? And two, paleo, primal, keto, carnivore, there's all these variations. Is there a specific kind of paleo diet that you would go for or is it just the general cut out grains, refined sugars and anti-nutrients? I would always suggest a strict paleo diet. However, for the people have autoimmune issues, it's twofold. One, they would want to look into something called the paleo AIP, paleo autoimmune protocol because that food list has more restrictions on it. Like foods high in histamines often affect people with autoimmune disorders, nightshades, things like that. So, eliminate eggs. So there's a little bit of a further process but if you don't have Hashimoto's, a standard paleo would be great. If you have Hashimoto's, you might wanna try paleo first and if not, you go to paleo AIP, just a little bit stricter. But I have clients who have to be carnivore. There are certain people that have autoimmune disorders and they eat one macadamia nut and there's well, it's all over their body. One piece of romaine, their Crohn's is back. It's rarer in my client base but I do have a couple of people where they have other autoimmune disorders even that affect this. And so, again, a lot of people when they're struggling with this because of the weight gain, they wanna go to the most extreme so they go keto or carnivore and it's not necessarily the move you have to make. I mean, you can but it's very restrictive so you don't necessarily have to. So with a paleo diet, we all know about two things you get. One is you improve insulin sensitivity, right? So the whole, all of the metabolic syndrome issues and it's non-inflammatory and also it's helpful in moderating autoimmune, those things. But why specifically does a paleo diet help with hypothyroidism? So what's the connection? Well, I'm sure like I mentioned with paleo primal is the ultimate in blood glucose management and adrenal management. And how much cortisol or how low cortisol you have has everything to do with thyroid getting into your cells and doing what you need to do. So if you wanna keep this whole system running chill. So I always talk about the difference when people say paleo primal, what is it? A lot of people look at a food list and they go, oh, that's paleo. I'll just eat this food list. And then they'll say it didn't work for me and I go, right, because paleo is not just a food list. It is a specific like kind of macro paradigm but it's also a lifestyle thing. So if you eat a paleo diet but you do glycolytic workouts every day, you're not paleo, you're still a sugar burner. So everyone in this world who's not paleo or not fat adapted is a sugar burner. And what is that, right? You're fueled on glucose. How do you know you're a sugar burner? You're craving carbs, right? You're hungry every two, three hours, you know? You're craving especially grains and sweets and things like this, you know? You get hangry, all that kind of stuff. Paleo primal is about moving a human into fat burning, right? Getting rid of the crack that is glucose and having our body instead be more dependent on fat as that primary source. What does that do? It smooths out the adrenals. Why? Because when you're eating in that hypoglycemic every two, three hours, keep insulin sensitivity old crappy paradigm every time that the blood sugar drops because, you know, you just ate a little bit and then three hours go by and now it's dropping. What happens? Adrenals respond, doesn't like it. So you're getting all these versus a nice, versus a nice steady versus with all of the stuff. So that's why it's the best primal sort of baseline for everything and also to receive thyroid hormones and the signal as well. Because if you're getting sunlight and rest and you're not running every day like your life depends on it, then the messages you're sending to the thyroid are ones that you're not in danger and it's good to go. So becoming a fat burner, keeping the adrenals even, will that tend to improve conversion of T4 to T3? Not necessarily, but it would improve T3 getting to where it needs to go. Where it needs to go, okay. You mentioned lifestyle. So the diet is very important here. You mentioned sunlight. What about things like intermittent fasting, cold exposure, some of these other practices within the paleosphere? Do they have any influence on thyroid? Negatively, no. If you don't have a thyroid problem and you decide to do intermittent fasting and cold exposure, enjoy yourself. Hope that's beneficial too. But if you're going through hypothyroidism, you really can't be working out a lot. So no CrossFit. And then also, yeah, I would not be doing anything like cold exposure or hermetic stuff, sprinting, absolutely not. You have nothing but your adrenals being overtaxed when you're hypothyroid. Any energy you have is from the adrenals. When you overexhaust them, what happens? You get fat around the middle. You get a bit tire around your waist, okay, because it's excess cortical. And then you get adrenal fatigue. So it's not recommended until you fix your thyroid that you do anything but a geriatric dumb walk. Do you know what I mean? Kind of thing. And it's very frustrating, but that's really the truth because again, it's the signal because hypothyroidism is a state of inflammation. So your body is already inflamed and you mentioned the anti-inflammatory effects of paleo, wonderful. You need to help this thing out as much as possible. But when you work out in a hypothyroid state too, your body's not seeing it as a wonderful thing, right? It's seeing it as like, what the hell are you doing? And it's kind of seeing it as inflammation. So you don't wanna do that. So moderate stress, things like yoga, breathing, these kinds of things. Not two, three level yoga because that's an adrenal igniter. By the way, I just wanna say this. I take thyroid hormones so that I'm unhypothyroid. I could work out 15 hours a day, it doesn't matter. I can go train for a marathon. I can go to two, three of the yoga right now and then do an hour sprint. It doesn't matter, because I am not hypothyroid and I have a normal metabolism. So it's normal. But until you are normal, until your T3 levels are good, that would not be the move to go try to like work out and do all these crazy things, yeah. All right, so we talked a lot about hypothyroidism. Let's talk just briefly about the opposite problem, hyperthyroidism. What would you advise in this situation that you... Hyperthyroidism is extremely rare, okay? But it happens. You could even get it from a tooth infection, all right? Just sort of like how Hashimoto's can be ignited by living in black mold. Graves disease is tough because first of all, the move is to go paleo for grapes period for all autoimmune conditions, that can help. But if that doesn't fix it, then what they do is they put you on a medication that sort of controls the thought, kind of tampers down the thyroid because again, your heart, you just put her out and it's very dangerous. When they can't really control it, what happens is the end sort of result of someone with graves who through diet or otherwise can't get it under control. They radioactive iodine your thyroid. So they're basically nuking your thyroid, thus making you hypo. So now you're going to need to be on thyroid hormone replacement, but it's safer to be hypo than it is to be hyper. And that's why they do that. So look, some people have had that radio RAI unnecessarily. And I'm not saying everyone has graves, goes and does it right off the bat. I'm telling you sort of the trajectory of what happens with people with graves, if they don't. So if you were diagnosed with graves, I mean, it's the ultimate to like chill, chill, chill, right? Chill, relax, you don't want that heart rate and as well, paleo, paleo, paleo, get rid of the gluten and the grains, get rid of the autoimmune igniters and see what happens. And then of course, if you have to go on the medication, but it's not a thyroid hormone and it's not a long-term solution, which is why they usually radioactive iodine the thyroid. Great. Elle, thanks so much for giving us all these insights. Your book, Paleo Thyroid Solution, I think is a must have for anybody who's interested in these issues. Where else can people look to get information that you're talking about on thyroid and more generally? I think the best resource is just go to freethyroidmasterclass.com. I have created a mini free course. It's got an hour and a half thyroid tutorial video with me. It has audio success stories of Hashimoto's thyroid cancer, reverse T3. It's got a free thyroid guide. It's got paleo recipes. It's got, you know, Eclipse from Brad Kearns. It's got so much there for you. I know what it was like to be broke and have nobody help me and not be able to have any information and I give it to you all for free. So freethyroidmasterclass.com. You can go to my website, Elle Russ. The deeper dive is to take my ultimate thyroid course. And of course I do private coaching where I work with people and we talk to their doctors, we work with them and we get them fixed. Great. A wealth of information. Again, thank you so much for talking with us today on Ancestral Health Today, Elle. Thank you so much. Thanks for joining us on this episode of Ancestral Health Today. We hope you enjoyed our discussion on how evolutionary insights can inform modern health practices. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast to catch future episodes.