 Hello, and welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast. The topic of today's podcast actually affects 35 million Americans, so this is something that you actually might have and might not even know it. It's an autoimmune disease that attacks your thyroid, and it plagues you often with painful, frustrating, even debilitating symptoms, many of which are actually invisible to you and people who see you. So I'm talking about Hashimoto's disease, and one of my followers, Kelly Clarkson, made it very famous last year when she actually cured herself of Hashimoto's by following the plant paradox. But we've got a real expert joining us today who is Isabella Wentz. She's a pharmacist and author of Hashimoto's Food Pharmacology. And she was diagnosed with Hashimoto's disease at age 27, and Isabella began studying its root causes. And Isabella, welcome to the program, I'm so happy to have you on. I've been following your work for years. So tell me, I love personal stories. Tell me how this started with you and take it from there. Thank you so much for having me. I'm a huge fan of your work as well. So in full disclosure, I was never really interested in thyroid disease during pharmacy school. It was pretty straightforward in what we learned at the time. It was if you had an overactive thyroid, you suppressed thyroid function with certain kinds of medications. If you had an underactive thyroid, you gave more thyroid hormones. I really thought there was all there was to it, maybe some brand name, generic names and not converting between the two different types of medications. And it really wasn't until I was diagnosed myself with Hashimoto's after graduating from pharmacy school when I realized the complexity of the condition and when I realized that while medications could be helpful, they weren't the be all end all for most people with thyroid issues. I started having some strange symptoms during my first year in undergrad. I started having fatigue after a viral infection that just never seemed to really get better. Then I ended up with just not feeling like myself for pretty much the first year or two with apathy and mood changes and just that constant fatigue. Eventually I learned how to deal with it and ended up getting good enough grades to get into pharmacy school. I don't know how I did that, but during pharmacy school, it was one thing after another. I started having more and more symptoms. I started with irritable bowel syndrome, then it was panic attacks. Then after graduation, I ended up with acid reflux and carpal tunnel in both arms and hair loss and allergies. And I just felt like my body was breaking itself apart. I would go to different practitioners and I would, you know, I was a good girl. I was eating whole wheat and low-fat dairy, right? And I was exercising, trying to do the right thing. I would go to my doctor and say, hey, I'm just not feeling right. I'm tired. I'm forgetful. I'm gaining weight. Can you tell me what's going on? And the things that I heard, we could just do a whole podcast on that. One of the doctors said I was just getting older, so I was 25. 25, yeah. Time to slow down. Yeah, pretty much a geriatric at that age, right? And so I ended up eventually asking more questions and getting, pursuing additional testing. And I learned that I had Hashimoto's, which is an autoimmune attack on the thyroid gland. And at that point, part of me was really happy and relieved. I know that sounds strange, but at least I had an answer, right? I was like, okay, great. I'm going to take thyroid hormone medications and everything's going to be fixed, right? Because that's what I learned in pharmacy school. That's what I do, right? Take thyroid medications. Excellent. And then, of course, the part of me was sad because I thought, okay, there's this condition I have and there's nothing that can be done about it. My thyroid gland is going to be attacked, and maybe I'll have other types of autoimmune conditions in the future, but at least I could take medications for that. And unfortunately, the medications, they were helpful. I went from sleeping like 12 hours a night to 11 hours a night, which, of course, was great to have that extra hour. But I was still having a ton of symptoms, and I really wanted to figure out if there was anything I could do to make myself feel better and potentially reverse the condition. And so that's how I became Mahashimoto's expert slash human guinea pig, was just really trying to get my own health back. Yeah, and I think that's very true. Certainly, in my case, I thought I was doing everything right, eating whole grains and beans and low fat and running and going to the gym. And there I was a big fat beast guy with high cholesterol and arthritis. And everybody says, wow, it's your genes. Get over it. Your dad was the same way. So who did you, and I think this is really important, particularly for all of our female viewers, and I wrote about this on Women's Day last week. We, as a medical profession, don't take particularly women's complaints seriously. And I've been on a south box that when you do not feel right, somebody, you have to find someone who will actually listen to you. You guys have a gut feeling that, unfortunately, men are not good at. And this, as you know, is all coming from your gut. And it is so frustrating to meet now thousands of people, particularly women, who have gone from doctor to doctor to nurse practitioner to PAs to other nutritionists. And they're not taken seriously. Is that what you found in your journey? Unfortunately, that's the case. And being a pharmacist, if I used my credentials, I might get a little bit more attention there. But for the average woman, I mean, there are so many different statistics out there. A woman that presents with cardiac symptoms is going to be taken less seriously at an emergency room. A woman that presents with pain symptoms is going to be taken less seriously. And part of that is definitely cultural, right? So we know that men, if my husband, he would have to feel pretty bad to go to the doctor, right? And women are just not necessarily taken seriously because they are considered to be more emotional or unstable or potentially, oh, well, they're just hormonal. And their menstrual cycles make them crazy. And we've got this kind of social cultural stigma that this wades us from listening to women. And when we look at the history of various types of conditions, especially looking at thyroid conditions, which are more common in women in general for every man diagnosed, there may be anywhere from three to six women that are diagnosed with the condition. And a lot of times the initial presenting symptoms are going to be anxiety and maybe some weight gain and maybe some fatigue. And oftentimes, unfortunately, they're written off as hypochondria. And generally, women are the ones that suffer with that label, not necessarily men. And I think this is quite unfortunate in our society. And I wish I could say that I'd love for it to change. And I don't think it's going to change anytime soon. I think what's really important for women is to advocate for their own health. It's quite amazing when I connect with clients and they tell me everything that they've been dealing with. A lot of times it's almost like they don't believe themselves because people have tried to talk them out of their symptoms for so long. Oh, well, you're just getting older and it's normal to be tired. Everybody's stomach hurts, blah, blah, blah, to the point where they almost, when they're telling me these things, they almost hesitate. And I've had so many women just cry when I say, you know, this is not in your head. What you're going through, this makes perfect sense to me. I've seen so many people with thyroid disease with your similar labs, with your similar symptoms. And guess what? We can make this better. Yeah, that's so important. My practice is over 50% of my practice is now autoimmune disease. And usually, they are people who have been multiple centers. I just had a woman fly in from Toronto yesterday who has a textbook of people she's seen trying to get to the bottom of her autoimmune disease. And she said, you know, everybody calls me crazy and that it's all in my head and I'm a mullinger. And yet, you know, when we look, she had four autoimmune diseases including Hashimoto's Thyroid Diabetes, but she had markers for lupus. She had markers for mixed connective tissue disease, etc. And the first thing I did is, you know, I gave her a big hug and I said, the good news is you're not crazy. And, you know, she just burst out crying because, you know, you're right. Women are basically told that, you know, this is, you know, it's mental or you're right, hormonal. It's that time of year. And one of the things that's interesting, particularly in women, is many women will develop Hashimoto's following a pregnancy. And what happens, and maybe you're a great example, you know, you're going to be tired having a baby or having a little kid you're chasing around. And so it's very hard when you come in to tell a doctor, I'm exhausted. And, you know, and they look at you and you've got a one-year-old, and we'll go, well, of course, you're exhausted. You know, why wouldn't you be exhausted? So is that your experience that many times we can't sort out this the exhaustion of being a young mother and being exhausted from hypothyroidism or Hashimoto's? Yeah. And I actually think it all goes together because we know that, you know, I'm a young mother myself, too. So I have an 11-month-old and I, you know, looking back at some of my clients, I'm like, I understand why they had postpartum thyroid issues now, right? So because children don't sleep at night, and one of the fastest ways to crash our adrenals, which are connected to thyroid and autoimmune function, is going to be through sleep deprivation. And we see these young mothers, new mothers, with a lot of these sleep deprivation issues. And, of course, you're going to be tired. But at what point is this going to be Hashimoto's? And what point is this going to be just a normal part of motherhood? I really, I'm a big advocate of testing thyroid function, not just looking at the TSH, the markers of advanced disease, but also looking at the markers of early disease, like the thyroid antibodies in women who are of childbearing age and definitely in women who are postpartum. Because we know that thyroid conditions can develop specifically related to around the times of hormonal changes, and that can be pregnancy, puberty, and even perimenopause. So there's a lot of different reasons why women are more likely to have thyroid issues, and definitely hormonal shifts are going to be a part of that. And so a lot of times people get women, unfortunately, get shoved aside, right? I could go on a tangent about this whole thing, but we know that with pregnancy care, a lot of times we really, the OBs see women once a week at a certain point to make sure that the pregnancy is progressing. And then after that, it's like you get the baby out, and then women are just sort of left off on their own. There was one article I read that said that the modern care for women postpartum is you can compare it to how we treat a candy and a wrapper. So during the time that the child is in the womb, the wrapper is the mother that she's cared for, but as soon as we get the candy out of the wrapper, the wrapper's almost tossed aside. And just seeing that firsthand, this is really what happens. And women get this six-week appointment, and a lot of times the appointments may be delayed and doesn't even happen. And I feel like they should be offered thyroid screening at that appointment and every four weeks throughout just to make sure that they're doing well. Their thyroid is still working properly because that can impact so much from postpartum depression to even postpartum psychosis and milk production and just feeling human again, right? Yeah, that's a good point. So what you're saying, and I agree with this, it's not sufficient to get a TSH, thyroid-stimulating hormone. And if that's in the normal range to tell a woman you don't have a thyroid problem, is that a good starting point where that isn't what you should get? Absolutely. So what's really kind of backwards, I believe, is that when you go in to see most practitioners, most conventional docs, you'll say that I think I have a thyroid condition, I want to get tested, so on and so forth. Most of them will just test the TSH. Now, this test is excellent for advanced cases of thyroid disease, but there are five stages to Hashimoto's and the TSH is not going to be affected until maybe stage three, but generally not until stage four. And we've got stage two and three where we have these elevated thyroid antibodies in many cases and people are symptomatic, they're anxious, they're having panic attacks, they're gaining weight, they're tired, they can be having fertility challenges. And if they go to their doctor, they might have a lot of thyroid symptoms and their doctors will just test the TSH and send them away and say, there's nothing wrong with you, maybe go see a psychiatrist. And really at the stage two or three is when we can make the best interventions to prevent lifelong issues, we can prevent damage to the thyroid gland so a person may never need thyroid hormone medications and a person may never progress to other types of autoimmune conditions. I talked about the five stages of Hashimoto's. Stage two is when we start seeing the antibodies, stage four is when we start seeing this drop in TSH when the thyroid gland can no longer compensate for all the damage that that's been occurring. And stage five is progression to other autoimmune conditions. And wouldn't it be wonderful if we could pick up on these early signs and symptoms of Hashimoto's in stage two and recommend your type of diet and my type of diet and whatever the person needs to get rid of those symptoms and prevent further damage? Yeah, that's great. And that's why you wrote Hashimoto's Food Pharmacology. Because as you know and I know that the diet is really the way to fix this. So what made you consider food as the possible treatment option? I mean a pharmacologist thinking about food, that's as dumb as a heart surgeon thinking about food. I know, I was such a heretic, right? It was really crazy because we hardly learned anything about lifestyle changes in pharmacy school for thyroid. There was nothing, it was like you got a thyroid issue, here's the pill for that. Good news. Yeah, great. And other conditions we at least for high blood pressure, they at least mentioned a few things. Maybe they weren't fully aware of the lifestyle changes that are possible through functional medicine. But at least we were trying, right? With thyroid there was nothing. And at the time when I was working as a pharmacist, I was a consultant pharmacist for people with rare conditions that didn't really have standard of care approaches. So I was spending a lot of time in PubMed and patient forums and parent forums and the associations of rare disease trying to figure out what to do for my clients. And a lot of times we would see their primary care doctors weren't always, you know, up to speed on everything. And no disrespect to them, but you know these people had complicated needs. And I thought to myself, okay, so maybe my average primary care doctor doesn't know everything about Hashimoto's that's out there in the research. So I started looking into potential PubMed studies about remissions and reversals and thyroid antibodies, anything that I could really produce. And I came across the gluten celiac and Hashimoto's connection where people who had both celiac disease and Hashimoto's were able to get Hashimoto's into remission when they removed gluten from their diet. And I was like, holy cow. So I'm like, okay, let's get tested for celiac disease. Now I didn't have it. Darn. Right. So I was like, okay, back to the drawing board, right? And I was sort of in this paralysis by analysis for quite some time, as I'm sure many of us brainy people can get trying to figure out what my triggers could be. And then eventually I decided why not just give this gluten-free and dairy-free diet a try. And within three days, my acid reflux that I had for three years was gone. I was like on Tums, proton pump inhibitors, H2 blockers, like I was chugging my lantha, right? And still did not have my acid reflux resolved. And I was all of a sudden, wow, where did it go? Really? Like, is this really working? I was so skeptical about diet. I was like, I'll just try this and I'll prove all these crazy people wrong, right? I'll just go back to my diet. And then irritable bowel syndrome that had been with me for many, many years within three days gone. All of a sudden I had abs. I was like, where did these come from? And then within time, my carpal tunnel that I had in both arms, that started getting better within a few weeks. And I actually had to wear arm braces on both arms during work and at night because of the pain. And I actually left a job I really loved because I couldn't type on the computer. And now I write books and I drink coffee and do all the things that people with acid reflux aren't supposed to do. And furthermore, as I started to track my thyroid markers, those improved. So I had thyroid antibodies that were in the 2000 range. And I was able to, yeah, pretty good, right? I was able to lower them by more than 90% just with nutritional interventions. And I had to do some more functional medicine stuff as well. But really the nutrition should be the first step to taking back your health because you just don't know how many of these symptoms can disappear. Like I didn't know that I was meant to have abs. I didn't know that these things could be a part of who I was. And I thought I was meant to be anxious. And I thought I was meant to be really tired. And all those things got so much better. And getting rid of those foods revealed the person I was really meant to be. Yeah, I've been fascinating in the research. So everyone who's probably watching this hopefully knows that gluten is a lectin. And these are plant proteins that protect the plant from being eaten. And there is a lectin-like molecule in most dairy, which is casein A1. And I know you are against soy, which is one of the best lectin-containing foods I know of. And so we're all in agreement of that. What's fascinating to me from the research since you brought up anxiety is that you can take rats and inject plant lectins in their belly, in their perineum. And they will get so anxious that they will cower in the corner of their cage and will not come out and look for food. And I actually respect plants a great deal. They are sentient beings and they were here a long time before we were. And if you think about it as a plant defense system, making someone anxious is a great defense against you going out looking for food. And as I write about in the plant paradox, you may remember that cows normally don't eat corn and soybeans. And they get such heartburn from the lectins and corn and soybeans that they actually stop eating. Because think about it from a plant standpoint, if it hurts you to eat something, a smart animal would stop eating that. But you and I traveled with big jars of Tums and I was just constantly chewing Tums because I had horrible heartburn. And half the world supply of Tums, calcium carbonate is mixed into cattle food so that they will keep eating corn and soybeans. And so you're right. When I took lectins out of my diet, all of a sudden a day later there was no heartburn. And you go, what's with that? I've always had heartburn. And it's like the plant's trying to get our attention. It's like, why didn't I listen? So yeah, so I think food and certain foods are real triggers just like you found out. And I found out and luckily my patients have been guinea pigs to let me look at their data. In fact, speaking of Hashimoto's, I saw a 50-year-old woman recently who my PA had seen six months earlier. And it was my first meeting with her and we were talking about it. She says, well, you know, I have Hashimoto's and of course that's why I'm here. But since I saw your office last, my physician, my PCP has dropped my thyroid dose in half because he said I'm on too much thyroid. And I go, that's interesting. And she said, well, you know, but I have Hashimoto's and I'm looking at her antithyroid antibodies and her antithyroglobulin antibodies. And six months ago, she was very positive. And when I saw her, she was negative. And I said, you don't have Hashimoto's. And she said, well, of course I have. That's why I'm here. And I hold up her lab sheet and I said, well, you don't have it anymore. And she said, it is true. You can cure this. You can go into remission. I said, yes, absolutely true. And so here's a 50-year-old woman and she doesn't have it anymore. And so that's why you do what you do. And that's why I do what I do. And we just have to empower particularly women to ask questions, to get these tests done. Also, talk to me about early stages of Hashimoto's can fool people because you can actually become hyperthyroid in the early stages as your gland is being attacked. And so talk me through that. Yeah, absolutely. So this can be known as Hashitoxicosis when in the early stages what's basically happening is the immune system starts to attack the thyroid gland and then there's a breakdown of thyroid tissue and some of the stored thyroid hormone can get into our blood stream. And if you were to take a lab test that day when this was happening, you may find on test results that the person will look as though they have too much thyroid hormone on board because so much is getting dumped at once. And a lot of times we'll see, and I'm sure you can appreciate that with my clients in the early stages of Hashimoto's, they'll have palpitations and they'll have a lot of these symptoms that may be more traditionally considered Graves disease or hyperthyroid symptoms where they'll say, I'm anxious, I may be shivering, I may be losing weight, my hair is a lot, I'm losing my hair and I can't sleep. But then they also might have symptoms from the hypothyroid spectrum as well where they'll say, oh, but I'm cold all the time or they might have hot flashes. And it's really quite interesting because when I was in pharmacy school, we had this picture of a woman that was cut in half and it was like, this is hypothyroid, this is hyperthyroid. And these are these symptoms and these are those symptoms. And what I've seen with my clients and even with myself is when you have Hashimoto's, you can have symptoms from both sides, especially in the early stages or when we have very high antibodies when there's a lot of that thyroid tissue breakdown happening. And so that makes you crazy. You know, unfortunately, I've seen people, I've seen people misdiagnosed with depression, anxiety, panic attacks, borderline disorder, let's say bipolar disorder. And I've also seen people who were hospitalized with psychosis. And they were, you know, placed on multiple medications. And these are heavy duty medications to anti-psychotic meds as a pharmacist, some of the my least favorite meds out there, right? And in fact, it was Hashimoto's that was causing all of this. And in many cases, we can sometimes use thyroid hormones, but definitely the lifestyle changes. And you can get rid of psychiatric diagnoses. It's quite amazing where the person is no longer quote unquote crazy once you figure out that it was their thyroid that was causing them to be all over the place. I definitely see this with bipolar disorder is in the early stages of Hashimoto's where they're like, oh, you have energy one day, and then the next day you don't, and then you're anxious, and then you're depressed. You have bipolar disorder. It's like, no, actually, it's your it's your thyroid. Okay, so you've got someone who now you're convinced or luckily lab test show that you've got Hashimoto's, you know, asking people to give up some of their favorite foods is challenging. Tell me how you work this out with someone? It can be very hard at first. And I know for me, this was very, very challenging. And I'm from Poland originally, and I grew up eating pierogi and all kinds of, you know, gluten and dairy foods pretty much that was the staple 90% of my diet, right? So I know it can be very hard to change your lifestyle. But the way that I like to think about it is, it's not going to be something that you have to do forever if it doesn't work. And if it does work, then think of all of the different things you can do in your life. I generally ask people to just commit 30 days. And if you feel better, then you get to decide if you want to keep eating that way. If you don't feel better, then you're, you're just fine going back to your old diet. And through, you know, my, my latest book, Food Pharmacology, I really just try to make it easy for people. So I've got some dietary templates, we've got meal plans, we've got recipes, we've got like what to say to waiters when you're eating out and how to get your family on board. Because sometimes, you know, we can be on board, but then we sort of have all these other things in our life that we have to work out. So kind of get our systems systems aligned and whether that's eating at work or going on, going when we're traveling or just convincing family members. And there are different ways to work through that. I made a lot of mistakes when I was first starting off. I ended up eating a lot of junk food because it was gluten free. And I was like, this is great stuff. And so now I really want to make it easy for people. And a part of it is just getting prepared and getting, you know, knowing which foods are going to serve you, which foods you want to back off of and give yourself some time to get there. Let's talk about eating in a restaurant because certainly my patients often have real challenges in restaurants. And I often find even someone, so I take care of a lot of people with celiac. And even someone who will swear on a stack of Bibles that they are gluten free when I do the advanced testing on them because they still have some symptoms. They still have a leaky gut and gluten is getting in them. And they go, that is impossible. And then we start talking about their restaurant experiences. And a lot of these of those patients tend to eat out quite a bit. And so teach me what are the tricks that you tell people about eating out besides sounding crazy that, oh, I'm gluten free and, you know, there can't be a crumb of gluten anywhere. Yeah. And I think that's such a great question because a lot of people who are normally very outgoing and I would say maybe some people pleasers kind of don't like to make a fuss when they go out to eat because then they feel bad, right? They're like, well, I don't want to bother the waiter or the waiter. He's, he's busy enough and I don't want to bother him with my little problems and whatnot. And I really ask people to reframe when you go to restaurants, especially, especially decent ones, really the chefs, this is their artists. This is their passion. And they actually enjoy being creative in the kitchen and creating some of these challenges when you have to make something without an ingredient. It's actually a lot of fun for chefs. And for the waiters, waiters, most of them I would say, are out there because they like helping people. They're in the service industry. They want to serve you. And so the way that you ask is you say, you take your waiter aside or, you know, you don't, you don't kind of like make an announcement at the big table and say, hey, hey, you just say, hey, I'm trying this new diet. My doctor wants me to try or, you know, whatever, whatever the story is, can you help me out? And I found that just asking them to help you out just changes the conversation so much and say, Hey, you know, these are some of the foods that my doctor wants me to stay off of. This is something I'm trying. Can you help me out? Because a lot of times you ask somebody to help you and they feel like they're giving you a gift and it's fulfilling to them. Go ahead. Oh, I was just going to say, I've gotten so many amazing meals just because of that little reframe where I'll be eating out with, I've been eating out with colleagues who maybe were not gluten-free, dairy-free. And they were like, wow, your food looks like the best out of the entire table. And that's just a really one little trick that you can do to kind of shift the conversation. Are there any, so you're looking, I have a very good friend, Tom Guy, who I wrote about in one of my books. And Tom used to say, the menu just tells you what the chef has in the back. And so it's always, I think, great advice. You can see what the chefs got back there. And it's great to be able to ask, you know, can I have this and this and this and this? Are there any go-to safe things in a restaurant that you tell your clients, okay, you know, this is, if you got to do it and you're in a restaurant, here's some go-to things to get that are pretty safe. Things like doing like a cob salad and asking to have the cheese removed, any croutons off to the side and any kind of dressings off to the side and using olive oil and lemon is one great starting point because gluten-dairy and so it can be hidden in the dressings. That's one thing that's kind of fancy that you can get. And a lot of times, just the really simple things, delicious steaks, delicious types of grilled meats, fish, and vegetables, these are going to be really go-tos even if you're somewhere out. And I grew up in the Midwest, but even if you're somewhere out in the Midwest that has never heard of gluten, a lot of times this is something that you can order without any issues. I used to be traveling sales rep for the pharmaceutical industry and I would have to go to a very rural parts of Illinois and I was able to eat that way so you can do it too. The one thing that you do want to ask about is you want to make sure that whatever meats you're eating are not going to be breaded. So we want to avoid any kind of breading and we want to clarify that they are not going to be deep fried in a deep fryer that potentially has other kinds of things. One, it could have soy, but two, it could be some of the other gluten ingredients. The other thing that I like to recommend is using a product called gluten dairy digest. I found in some cases it can minimize the reaction if you have some cross contamination issues. And this is an enzyme that you could take with the food if you're eating out. Definitely not something where you order a pizza and you eat one of those and then everything goes away. That's not going to happen, but it will minimize some of the reaction that you may normally have. So I think something you mentioned early on, I think it's very important for people to realize, again if you have Hashimoto's it doesn't mean you don't have other autoimmune diseases. And it's amazing to me the number of people who have multiple autoimmune diseases. And unfortunately we tend to put names on these things depending on the end organ. And I think you probably agree with me that all of this I think stems at one way or another from a leaky gut. And it just whatever target happens to be on you, there are other things being targeted. I just got a paper accepted for the American Heart Association in May looking at lectins as a major cause of coronary artery disease and showing when we took lectins out of people's diets that markers for attack on their blood vessels actually subsided. So these things I think are all interconnected. So one final thought, it's certainly my impression and I'll bet you it's your impression that Hashimoto's is an epidemic that we did not see 50 years ago. Thoughts on that? That's correct and a lot of times people will say well we're just doing better screening tests right now or it's a hot topic or somebody said oh it's a trending topic and it's a fancy sounding name that's why everybody wants to have it. It's glamorous, right? That's not the case. When we look at blood samples from decades ago that were frozen and we run tests on them right now, comparatively we see lower rates of Hashimoto's in those blood samples than we do in today's blood samples from similar populations and definitely it's the number one autoimmune condition and it's one of the fastest growing ones. It used to be an older woman's condition right and now we see younger people with it, men, children, women even before they've ever had children. It used to be something that was more common postpartum. There's a lot of different potential root causes and triggers and potentially environmental toxins can be contributing. We know that Chernobyl, I actually grew up in Poland pretty close to the Ukrainian border so I was exposed downstream to Chernobyl and we know that children who were closest to that disaster had higher rates of Hashimoto's antibodies, somewhere around 80% versus children of similar genetic backgrounds who lived further away and those rates were somewhere between 20 and 30%. So we definitely know that toxins play an important role but I also believe that our diet is going to be one of the key contributors to the rates of Hashimoto's that we see. Great. Well speaking of diet, you may know that my new book, The Longevity Paradox, is out and I've got a longevity question for you. So some people would say and you're a pharmacist, well it's okay, we luckily have thyroid medications and you can do just fine taking thyroid medications and you don't have to worry about having Hashimoto's. Tell me why, from a longevity standpoint, it's a really good idea to worry about Hashimoto's. When we look at Hashimoto's, it's a progressive condition and taking thyroid hormones even if they erased all of your thyroid symptoms and normalized your thyroid function, there's still that inflammation going on and autoimmune conditions are progressive so you may end up with another autoimmune condition. Unfortunately, you may end up with lupus or rheumatoid arthritis. I know in some cases thyroidectomies were recommended for Graves disease, which is another autoimmune thyroid condition. There are some doctors that are recommending them for Hashimoto's as well and they'll say, well that's the cure. The thyroid is inflamed, well that's removed the thyroid, but it doesn't work that way. I've seen numerous people who go on to have their thyroid glands removed and then they go on to have other types of autoimmune conditions down the road because that root cause of the inflammation just wasn't addressed. Whether that's the thyroid getting addressed or vessels or another part of the body, I feel like it's really, really important to get that inflammation under control to prevent other types of autoimmune conditions. Honestly, most people who do take thyroid medications, they're not going to be feeling 100%. Every now and then people will say, oh, I feel just fine on my thyroid medications. Isabella, I don't know what you're talking about, all these sick people with Hashimoto's and then I start talking to them and they're like, oh yeah, but I only go to the bathroom once a week or yeah, I am 50 pounds heavier than I was in high school or yeah, I guess my hair is falling out or yeah, I do have to wear three sweaters and a winter jacket in the summertime. I really encourage people to look at their whole body and treat their entire body well, not just look at their thyroid gland as though it wasn't a vacuum. Additionally, when we just support one system, we might have, we might sort of set other things out of balance. There is some evidence that just taking thyroid hormone may accelerate different types of cancers and I believe it's because of the underlying inflammation that's not addressed. Yeah, good point. All right, so that has been great having you on the program and as I told you when we started off camera, we always have a viewer question and so we're going to ask the audience question, this is a follower on Instagram and they wrote, what are your thoughts on the celery juice trend? Do you feel eating food is more beneficial than drinking it? So our guest Isabella, you want to weigh in on that? Oh, that's such a great question and I've actually been seeing a lot of that lately where people will say, hey, is celery juice the cure all? Will that cure my thyroid? And this reminds me of when I was first starting off trying to figure out helpful information for myself and it was at the time it was really high-dose iodine that was the cure all for every single condition and if you had a thyroid condition, all you had to do was take high-dose iodine. We later learned that in some cases that can actually exacerbate Hashimoto's and accelerate thyroid tissue damage and sometimes symptoms very, very quickly. And then the other thing was, hey, coconut oil, that's going to be, that's going to cure your thyroid entirely and it can be helpful. It wasn't a cure all again. And I can't say that I've placed a hundred of my clients on a celery juice cleanse and tracked outcomes or done outcomes research on this, but I'm skeptical to say that that's going to be the cure all for everything. I think drinking green juice is a fantastic idea. It can be very helpful, very beneficial. Juice cleanses, just when you just drink juice by itself. We're trending a few years back as well and they were sort of touted as a cure all for many things and unfortunately I've seen the fallout of that with certain clients getting worse. Here's the thing, there's various types of root causes and triggers that we may have, our unique biology, the kind of infections that we may have, the kind of toxins that we might have. Celery juice can be helpful for some things. Just for example, I know that with the parasite giardia, it's a protozoa that lives in our guts and that can be a root cause and trigger for some people causing leaky gut. This parasite can be eradicated with a juice cleanse. With about three to five days of a juice cleanse, we can make this parasite go bye-bye and that can cure that leaky gut. In that case, you could say the juice cleanse was a cure for that person. But another person with something like blastocystis hominis, which doesn't respond to juice, they can juice cleanse all they want and that's not going to help. I say go ahead and drink the celery juice and maybe it'll help and I love that. But at the same time, please don't stop your thyroid medications. Please don't stop your supplements that have helped when you're trying something new like that. Keep an open mind, but not so open that your brain will fall out, right? All right, good. Now my two cents on this. As you know, the best part of any vegetable, including celery, is actually not in the juice. It's actually in the whole plant. And if you want to use celery, either eat it or put it in a blender like a Blendtec or a Vitamix and homogenize it and put it in your green smoothie. In fact, if you really want to use celery properly, juice it, throw the juice away and take the pulp and then eat that or make a muffin out of it from our cookbooks and you'll get far more benefit. So that's my thought on celery juice. And so I think both of us, if you want to drink celery juice, knock your socks off, but I'd rather you get the whole plant than probably you'd agree with me on that, Isabella. I would agree with you. And I also want to, I spent some time in Italy last year or last couple of years and I grew up in Europe and then lived in Europe for a little while. And what's interesting that I don't think many Americans are aware of, but raw celery is actually a very common allergen in countries like Italy and France and Switzerland. So this is something to consider here too and the thought process is because they eat a lot of it in the raw state. Yeah, celery actually contains a compound called sorrelin that celery pickers disease is actually, they burn their hands from this compound in celery. So, you know, concentrated celery to me is not a great idea. So glad you brought that up. It's very true. Just some food for thought. Yeah, food for thought. That's what we're here for. So Isabella, where can people find you? Where can they find your book? People can find me on, yeah, I've got three of them now. thyroidpharmacist.com is my website and I have articles on some of the most helpful interventions for Hashimoto's, whether that's supplements or nutrition protocols or just lifestyle changes in general, how to deal with people, right? All those things. And then my books can be found anywhere that books are sold. Amazon has all three of them. The latest one is Hashimoto's Food Pharmacology and you could see that right here. So it's all about helping people become their own nutrition gurus and make that connection within their own bodies to figure out which foods work for them and which foods don't work for them. All right, well keep up the good work. Keep getting the word out to empower women. And thanks again for being on the program. So that's it for another episode of the Dr. Gundry podcast. Tune in next week. We've got more exciting guests. Look for my new book, The Longevity Paradox. I wrote it because as you know, I am Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you. See you next week.