Have you ever felt so bloated in your abdomen that people thought you were pregnant? A patient with ulcerative colitis recently told me she was asked this question. I’m Dr. Tom Rofrano from The Natural Medicine Clinic in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. I’m going to help you understand more about what causes ulcerative colitis and natural treatment options for how to treat it.
Ulcerative Colitis Symptoms
A 51-year-old female patient was complaining about bloating and the other usual symptoms of abdominal cramps, diarrhea, indigestion, insomnia, skin issues, and anxiety. She was feeling terrible.
For over 20 years, she had ulcerative colitis, visited many doctors, and took the usual medications. While she was on the medications, she was still feeling terrible. When you’re not feeling well, it’s hard and affects your entire body. She wanted to know what was causing her ulcerative colitis. And she wanted to know if there were any ulcerative colitis natural cures available that would work for her.
Root Causes of Ulcerative Colitis
Before looking into how to treat ulcerative colitis naturally, our office believes that finding the root cause is the first step. We did an evaluation and some comprehensive testing to look for underlying root causes. Typically, I check for deficiencies, toxins, infections, food reactions, and hormones.
My patient had multiple nutrient deficiencies: vitamin D, folate, B12, and other nutrients. Those are the most common deficiencies I see. If your vitamin D is low, that can significantly affect your immune function, inflammation, and the whole cascade of events.
One thing that came up under toxins was that she had above-optimal mercury levels in her body.
She also had what many ulcerative colitis and IBS patients have which is bacteria and yeast overgrowth.
Ulcerative Colitis, Food Allergies, and Gluten Sensitivity
Another common root cause for ulcerative colitis and other chronic gut issues is gluten sensitivity. My patient had a very strong gluten sensitivity, other food allergies and sensitivities, and leaky gut.
All these imbalances typically affect your hormones, which was the case with her.
She had below optimal levels of the adrenal hormones, cortisol and DHEA, as well as testosterone and estrogen. If you think about it, if you’re having chronic digestive issues for over 20 years, you’re going to have deficiencies. They can affect your hormone levels and your entire body.
Ulcerative Colitis Treatment
I developed a diet called the FreeDiet® which is free of gluten, grains, sugar, yeast, dairy, eggs, soy, legumes, nightshades, and processed foods. Free of those foods that are commonly responsible for inflammation, autoimmune, gut, thyroid, and other chronic health.
Many people will try to avoid gluten for a while but don’t feel that much of a difference. That’s because there’s a lot more to it than that. I find that by avoiding all these foods initially you can make a lot of progress like my patient did. This doesn’t mean that this diet is a natural cure for colitis. We like to view it more as a natural medicine for ulcerative colitis. Focusing on what you ingest, and what’s in the food you ingest, can work wonders on all of us, even those with ulcerative colitis.
Curcumin supports healthy inflammation and immune function. We add other supplements based on your specific deficiencies. This patient required MethylFolate, B12 Supreme™, and DHEA, and we added Adrenal Vibrance™ also to address the five areas of underlying root causes.
After a month, she came in feeling so much better. She didn’t feel pregnant anymore, and her bloating and gut symptoms were substantially improved.She lost 10 pounds the first month and was very excited about that.
Continued Improvement
She continued to improve, and three months later, we did some follow-up testing. Her stool test showed that her bacterial overgrowth had cleared up.
Her mercury levels were down to optimal levels. Her DHEA and adrenal function improved, and her inflammatory markers were normal.
Another thing that improved was her ANA, an autoimmune marker. It was very high when she first came in, and three months later her ANA was completely normal.
She was free of all gut symptoms, and she had more energy. All her other symptoms were either resolved or considered a lot better. She was feeling great and was working out regularly.
Get to the Root Cause
When you have these chronic gut, thyroid, or other autoimmune issues, you need to find out what the underlying root causes are, and I believe that most can get better when they are provided with the proper solutions. Understanding the root cause can then help you look into treatment options for ulcerative colitis, such as the natural remedies discussed here.
If you are struggling with health issues, call us at 561-627-5800 or email us at info@nmcwellness.com. We enjoy helping our clients achieve vibrant health and feel the best they have in years!
Hi, my name is Dr. Tom Rofrano from the Natural Medicine Clinic in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Today I’m going to talk to you about a patient I was able to help with hyperthyroidism and getting her issues resolved without drugs or surgery.
This was a twenty-nine-year-old woman who came in to see me. Six years prior to seeing me, she had been diagnosed with hyperthyroidism, or Graves’ disease, and she had been prescribed medicine, which she took for three years. She started weaning herself off and was doing okay, but then, last year, her symptoms came back.
She went back to her endocrinologist, and the doctor said there are only two options: surgery to get the thyroid removed, or radioactive iodine. At the time she was breastfeeding her infant, which she would no longer be able to do with radioactive iodine, and she didn’t want to get surgery. She asked the doctor if there were any other options and he said no, this was it—radioactive iodine to destroy the thyroid because it’s overactive, or surgery to take it out and be on thyroid medication the rest of her life.
Start With the Symptoms
She didn’t want to do either one of those, and somehow she found her way into our office. I did a thorough evaluation with extensive lab work to really find out what was causing her symptoms. At one point she was normal, and this hyperthyroidism didn’t just come out of nowhere. My job is to find the underlying root cause.
The symptoms she was having included anxiety, racing heart, nervousness, heart palpitations, insomnia, hot flashes, itchy rashes, acne, digestive issues, difficulty gaining wait, excessive perspiration, brain fog, and concentration issues. She was feeling really terrible.
Autoimmune Conditions – Getting to the Root
When we’re looking at autoimmune conditions like Hashimoto’s (underactive thyroid) and Graves’ disease (overactive thyroid), we isolate the cause by looking at three major stressors:
Physical
Chemical
Mental
We can break down Chemical Stress into four individual elements:
Deficiencies
In her case, this patient had very low levels of iron and B12, and she was anemic. She was low on magnesium and vitamin D, which is really vital and important for thyroid function and the immune system in general.
She was also deficient in iodine, and in fact had one of the lowest levels of iodine I’d ever seen. This was interesting, because giving someone with Grave’s disease iodine is a big no-no. So even though she was deficient, I had to decide whether I should give her iodine or not. (More on this later)
Toxins
After looking at deficiencies, we look at toxins, and this patient had very high levels of fluoride in her system, which can interfere with thyroid function.
Pathogens & Infections
She had dysbiosis, or bacterial imbalances, in her gut—too much of the bad bacteria and not enough of the good flora- probiotics.
Food Allergies
She had food allergies to gluten and wheat, eggs, almonds, and more. Almost every patient that walks in with an autoimmune condition has a gluten sensitivity, so that was a major finding. All of this was causing leaky gut, which is tied in with autoimmune conditions as well.
An Alternative Option – Choose Health
So what’s the answer for resolving this condition? Well, once we identify the root causes, we then work on correcting them—the natural way.
The first thing we prescribe is the FreeDiet™, which you can download a sample of here. I came up with the FreeDiet™ over the years, and it’s free of not only gluten, but also grains, sugar, yeast, dairy, legumes, and soy—all the foods that are most commonly responsible for inflammation, auto-immune, chronic digestive, and other health issues.
Besides the FreeDiet™, I put her on our Natural Medicine Formulas, which is composed of specific nutrients to correct her deficiencies. I put her on the basic five, which is:
Multivitamin
Fish oil
Magnesium
Probiotic
Vitamin D w K2
She was low on B12 and iron as well, so we added those nutrients in. To address the leaky gut, we used our product GI Mend, along with curcumin, vitamin C with bioflavonoids. We also added Acetyl-L-Carnitine, which can be really helpful for hyperthyroidism.
I then prescribed selenium and iodine—and yes, a rather large dose, because she was so deficient. Again, I don’t recommend you just go out and take iodine without being tested, just like I wouldn’t recommend you go take iron without being tested. Too much of either one can be toxic, but the right amount can be helpful.
Long-term Results
She came back in after four weeks and we re-checked her lab work. Her hypothyroidism had cleared up and was showing normal on her labs. After two months, her numbers were even better. There was no more hyperthyroidism, which is amazing, and all of her symptoms cleared up. Now she’s just feeling great.
I wanted to share this patient’s success story with you so that you know there are two ways to treat these autoimmune and chronic health issues. You can choose the traditional route of medications, surgery, and procedures, or you can choose health and really get to the underlying root cause of your condition. Then and only then can you be provided with long-term, permanent solutions so you can get better. I do believe that most everyone can get better if they are provided with the right solutions.
Thank you for joining me today. If you like this video, feel free to give us a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel on YouTube. In case you missed it, here is the link to the FreeDiet-Phase 1, so please feel free to download that and check it out.
Hi, my name is Dr. Tom Rofrano from the Natural Medicine Clinic in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Today I’m going to talk to you about how to get to the underlying root cause of your autoimmune condition. In particular, I’m going to talk about ulcerative colitis, and in turn, once you find the root cause, how to then find solutions to help you get better.
I’ve been practicing for over thirty years in functional medicine and nutrition, and I’ve seen over one hundred thousand patient visits. Like many of our patients, we had a sixty-two-year-old man come in with typical symptoms we see a lot of: fatigue, depression, anxiety, insomnia, and digestive issues ranging from pain, bloating, gas, and diarrhea.
On top of that, he was obese and had a very hard time losing weight. He also had gout, so he had a lot of joint pain, and high blood pressure, too. He was just feeling completely miserable.
Two Approaches
There are two approaches to any autoimmune condition, whether it’s thyroid, like we see so much of, digestive issues, or any health condition, really.
This patient had been dealing with his condition for over forty years, had gone to different doctors, and was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory bowel disease that causes ulcerations, inflammation, bloody diarrhea, cramping, and pain.
Option 1: Dysfunctional Medicine
When you choose medicine, the treatment is medicine, procedures, and surgery. In this case, he was treated with the steroid Prednisone, and biologic’s which have similar side effects to chemotherapy.
The patient’s side effects were so severe that he ended up hospitalized for three months, and he almost died. He got an infection in the hospital, which had him readmitted soon after he left.
After all of this, they decided on surgery, so they actually took out his colon.
The thing is, all of this didn’t fix anything. So, even though that’s the treatment, he’s coming to see me forty years later complaining about the same symptoms.
I call this approach dysfunctional medicine, which is basically doing things that actually impair the normal function of your body. The patient went through all these medications, procedures, and surgery—almost died—and wasn’t left with any solutions. Still, on top of that, they had him taking a lot of other medications for depression and anxiety, blood pressure, gout, etc., but none of that helped either.
If it made him feel good, then it might be worth it. But I call it dysfunctional medicine because even after all of that he was still feeling terrible, actually even worse, and there’s something wrong with that picture.
It’s like having a dysfunctional person in your life. We had a dysfunctional person in our office awhile back. When you have an extra staff member in your office, they’re supposed to be helpful and kind of take the load off, but a dysfunctional person or behavior actually creates more work. Even though we had an extra person, it created so much more work to clean up this person’s messes and the drama and everything else that it was just a mess.
Option 2: Functional Medicine
This is where you actually get to the underlying root causes, and then you can provide long term permanent solutions.
Even though the patient came in with no colon, numerous symptoms, and was feeling miserable, four weeks later:
He had lost twenty-two pounds.
His digestive symptoms cleared up.
He was sleeping through the night.
He drastically lowered his blood pressure and went off medication.
He was able to get off most of his medications.
His pain cleared up.
So he’s doing phenomenally well. What really inspired me to even talk about this is the fact that he went to his primary doctor this week, and he thought he’d be really proud of him. He lost twenty-two pounds, he’s eating really healthy and taking supplements, he’s off his blood pressure and gout medication, and he cut down some of his other medications from another doctor as well.
Bu this doctor wasn’t very happy about. He actually seemed kind of ticked off that he was able to get off his medications, as if he thought, “Well, I guess you have no use for me.”
Choose Health
When you go to a medical doctor, their job is to manage medications. And that’s fine—there is certainly a need for that if you’re the type of person who wants to go that route and take medications for this condition or that condition. Let’s say you have high blood pressure or high cholesterol, and you just want to take the medication and eat what you want and not exercise and you don’t really care. Well, then, that’s fine.
However, if you’re the person that would rather choose health and get to the underlying root cause, and then be provided long term permanent solutions, which is the functional medicine approach—that root cause approach—that we practice, then that’s really choosing health. Because you want to actually get better.
Identify Root Causes
So let’s look at some of the causes for this patient’s ulcerative colitis. The first step is a complete evaluation and whole body health analysis.
The three categories of what cause autoimmune or other chronic health conditions, including thyroid issues like Hashimoto’s disease, nodules, etc. are:
Physical Stress
Mental Stress
Chemical Stress
In the chemical stress area, we look at four separate areas:
Deficiencies
The patient was low on vitamin D, some B vitamins, B12—he actually had B12 anemia—and omega 3s. His DHEA was really low, so he had adrenal fatigue, and his cortisol was low as well. This alone could cause exhaustion, insomnia, depression, and anxiety.
Toxins
Taking too many medications, in his case six different ones for depression, bi-polar, anxiety, etc., can have a very toxic reaction. High levels of uric acid and triglycerides, too, can cause inflammation of the joints.
Infections & Pathogens
Yeast overgrowth and bacterial overgrowth were both going on. One of the primary causes of colitis is infection, so he had this chronic ongoing infection—probably for forty years—of yeast and bacteria causing a leaky gut, which can in turn lead to increased food sensitivities.
Food Sensitivities
He had a gluten sensitivity as well as sensitivity to other foods. Just gluten in itself can cause all of the symptoms he was having, including his digestive symptoms and his anxiety, depression, and bipolar symptoms.
The patient had all of these things going on at the same time. When that happens, when you have so many things wrong and you address all of them at the same time, you can get phenomenal results.
That’s how he was able to drop his blood pressure by over forty points in two weeks and lose twenty-two pounds in a month, even though he wasn’t able to lose weight before. His digestive symptoms cleared up, he was able to sleep through the night, and he was feeling really great. It was really rough going through it, but by the fourth week, he was feeling like a new person. And that’s how you’re able to do it.
The FreeDiet™
The diet we put him on is the FreeDiet™, and you can grab a complimentary copy of the FreeDiet™-Phase 1 right here. The FreeDiet is another important component of the treatment plan, because it’s not only free of gluten, but also grains, corn, sugar, yeast, eggs, dairy, soy, legumes, and GMO’s. These are the ten major categories of foods most commonly responsible for inflammation, chronic digestive issues, and fatigue. So we allow the gut to heal by removing these foods.
Besides the FreeDiet™, we replenished a lot of his nutritional deficiencies with our Natural Medicine Formulas, probiotics, and vitamins and minerals. So that, along with manual treatment for different joint issues he was having, is how we were able to get him doing so well in just four weeks’ time.
If you have any comments, feel free to leave them below, and feel free to subscribe to my YouTube channel if you want early notification of new videos.
Just remember, whatever issue you have going on, whatever chronic health problem, your body has an incredible ability to heal. If you just look into finding those underlying root causes, I believe most every health problem has a solution. Once you find that underlying cause, you can find the solution.
Thanks for joining me today, and I look forward to seeing you next time! Take care.
Today I’m going to talk to you about healing autoimmunity, and specifically a case we recently had where I was able to help a patient completely resolve her elevated autoimmune antibodies in three months. I’m going to talk to you about the exact framework and protocol we used for her case, and exactly what you need to do to help yourself in the same area.
I’ve been practicing for over thirty years, and I’ve seen over 100,000 patient visits for nutrition, chiropractic, and functional medicine. One of the more common things people come in with these days is autoimmune conditions.
My Personal Experience With Autoimmunity
As a matter of fact, over ten years ago, I was busy in the practice, things were going really well, but I was feeling pretty miserable physically. I did a lot of testing, and was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease, which is an autoimmune thyroid condition. I also had elevated Rheumatoid arthritis antibodies on top of that. I went to doctors and they told me that Hashimoto’s is an autoimmune condition where antibodies attack the thyroid, and with Rheumatoid, the antibodies attack your joints, and it continues to get worse.
I asked if there was anything I could do about it, and they said yes, you can take medication that can control it, however your condition will continue to deteriorate, and that’s it. I asked them what causes it, and they said they don’t know what causes it, and there’s no cure.
For me, that was just one option, and for a lot of people, that’s okay to go down that route where they just take medication and go on with their lives. But for me it just wasn’t enough. I really had to figure out what was causing it. If it wasn’t there at one point, and now it was, there had to be some cause that was bringing it on.
After doing a whole lot of research and a whole lot of testing on myself, I figured out some things that were triggering it, and over time—it took me a little over two years—I was able to completely heal the condition and normalize my antibodies. They’ve been at normal levels for over ten years now.
Transferring My Success to My Patients
Since then, I’ve been able to continually refine the process and help many other patients with all kinds of autoimmune conditions.
We recently had a patient come in, a fifty-six-year-old woman, who was feeling awful. She had numerous symptoms, including: constant headaches; vertigo (since she was a teenager, sometimes so debilitating she couldn’t get out of bed); depression; brain fog; poor memory; fatigue; insomnia; difficulty losing weight; hair loss; dry, itchy skin; pain in every joint in her body; constipation; gas; bloating; abdominal pain; indigestion—and the list goes on. She had been diagnosed with hypothyroidism and was already on medication, but was still feeling miserable.
A Natural Approach
The first thing we do is a complete evaluation to figure out what tests need to be ordered to get to the underlying root causes.
Autoimmune conditions basically come down to three causes:
Physical stress
Mental stress
Chemical stress
When we look at the chemical stress aspect, we break it down into:
Deficiencies
She had low levels of magnesium, B12, vitamin D, zinc, iodine, iron, and selenium. All of these deficiencies affect your immune system, and remember that autoimmunity is where your immune system starts attacking different parts of your bodies.
In the case of Hashimoto’s, it’s your thyroid, and in this patient’s case, she had severely elevated ANA, or antinuclear antibodies, indicating scleroderma or connective tissue disorder, where the antibodies attack connective tissues such as skin, joints, muscle, tendons, and ligaments.
Deficiencies are a very important aspect of autoimmune conditions. Once we tested and identified deficiencies for our patient, we started working on correcting them.
Toxins
The other important aspect are toxins. We ran tests and found she was highly reactive to mercury, vinyl chloride, and other toxins. Following our protocol, we worked on cleansing or detoxifying her from those.
Pathogens and Infections
Next, we conducted comprehensive stool testing to test for any pathogens and infections that might have been causing her symptoms. She had elevated levels of yeast and bacterial growth, which can then lead to leaky gut.
When you have these types of infections going on, they ramp up your immune system. Your immune system’s antibodies are trying to fight these things off. Then it begins to attack different parts of your body, depending what kind of autoimmune condition you may have.
Then we work on identifying and elimination what is causing the bacteria and yeast, in this case, to clear it up and calm down the immune system.
Food Sensitivities
Finally, we look at food sensitivities. This patient was positive for gluten sensitivity—actually celiac disease—which is the most common sensitivity among all the autoimmune cases I see. Almost every single one is either gluten sensitive or celiac. It’s a common cause of the immune system’s seeing and attacking the gluten as a foreign invader, and then in turn attacking other various parts of your body in molecular mimicry. This response leads to all sorts of symptoms.
Along with gluten, the patient tested positive for a number of other food sensitivities. I prescribed the FreeDiet® as treatment, which is the diet I came up with over the years, initially for myself, when I had Hashimoto’s and Rheumatoid antibodies and had tested positive for gluten as well.
Back then, I found that going gluten free didn’t really help, because I was eating a lot of gluten-free products, like gluten-free breads and bagels and cookies and pasta. If you have yeast issues and bacterial overgrowth, which I did at the time, this is not the diet you want to be on, because yeast and bacteria thrive in that, and you want to starve the little critters.
The FreeDiet®, which you can grab a complimentary copy of right here, is not only free of gluten, but also grains, sugar, yeast, corn, dairy, soy, legumes, eggs, and GMO’s—all the most common inflammatory foods. The Free Diet allows your gut to heal, calms things down, and allows your immune system to then balance out.
A Healthy Patient
After going on the FreeDiet®, taking the Natural Medicine Formulas we prescribed to address her adrenal dysfunction and balance her thyroid, and regular manual therapy treatments, the patient’s antibodies began to drop considerably in just two months. After three months, they were completely normal. They’d gone from some of the highest levels I’d ever seen to normal in three months.
Not only that, but all of her symptoms cleared up. No more daily headaches, no more vertigo, she was sleeping well, she lost over twenty pounds, and she had great energy. Clearing out the underlying root causes allowed her body to heal.
In these cases, people can choose the medicine route—the drugs, the procedures and surgeries—or they can choose health. They can choose to do some discovery, find out what is causing their issues, and get them cleared up. My belief is that most every single health condition has a solution. If you discover what the root causes are, you can be provided with long term, permanent solutions.
Thanks so much for joining me today, and don’t forget to pick up your complimentary copy of the FreeDiet® .
Feel free to like and subscribe to my YouTube channel so that you get early notification of new videos. See you next time!
Hi. My name is Dr. Tom Rofrano from the Natural Medicine Clinic in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida and today, I’m going to talk to you about candida curse: is yeast ruining your health? We’re going to go over some basic symptoms of yeast overgrowth, how to find out if you have it, and then some solutions for you to help you get better.
A Patient’s Symptoms
In my 30+ years of practicing chiropractic, nutrition, and functional medicine this is a typical patient I would see. A 38-year-old woman, came in complaining of a laundry list of issues: Fatigue, abdominal pain, bloating, gas, belching, indigestion, constipation, diarrhea, nausea, eczema on most of her body, irritability, mood swings, PMS, headaches, dizziness, itchy eyes, dry skin and hair, easy bruising, chest pain, hyperactivity, sinus congestion, rashes, itching, food allergies, hair loss, frequent urination, recurring yeast infections, sugar, bread, alcohol cravings, insomnia, and brain fog. And she’s more of a typical patient that I see.
Celiac Disease and Gluten-Free
She had seen many doctors over the previous 10 to 15 years, many of them were specialists, and finally, she got her allergist to test her for Celiac disease. Sure enough, it was positive, and she went on a gluten-free diet and though she still had all her symptoms, she temporarily felt better. After a while, she still had all those other symptoms I mentioned and was back to just feeling terrible. That’s when she found our office and went through an initial evaluation and thorough testing. We found out there were several things going on, and typically, when someone has all these symptoms, it’s not just one thing.
Yeast Overgrowth – Candida and Antibiotic Use
One of the main things going on her was yeast overgrowth; Candida. Yeast is a type of fungus and candida albicans is the most popular type of yeast. We have a normal amount in our systems and in our gut, but when that gets out of balance and overgrown, that’s when you can get all these symptoms. One of the most common causes of this is antibiotic use. I mean, even a one week course of antibiotics can wipe out your healthy, good bacteria for months and months, which allows a yeast overgrowth and all the bad bacteria and yeast to overgrow and take over.
Acid-Blocking Drugs and Yeast Overgrowth
Another factor is antacids; one of the most prescribed drugs in the United States. If you look at their side effects, one of the primary ones is yeast overgrowth (candidiasis). By killing off acid in your stomach, that compromises one of the primary protective mechanisms your body has against yeast and bacteria- pathogenic bacteria. Yeast overgrowth, caused by acid-blocking drugs, birth control pills, and other drugs is a reason why women are more likely than men to have yeast overgrowth, although men have it too.
Yeast Symptoms and Autoimmune
Yeast overgrowth can affect many different areas in body and brain function, resulting in symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, headaches, dizziness, irritability, mood swings, anxiety, sinus congestion, and post nasal drip. If you ever feel like this mucous just keeps going down. Take chronic cough, for example, if you’re overly sensitive to perfumes and fragrances or car exhaust, and you’re overly sensitive to that with allergies or itchy ears. Although it’s most common in women, it’s something that I dealt with years ago. These are all symptoms that can be related to yeast.
Yeast overgrowth is also one of the more common causes of autoimmune conditions. I see so many patients over and over with Hashimoto’s and other autoimmune conditions, and yeast overgrowth is one of the primary causes. And that is actually what caused my own autoimmune conditions which I was able to clear up almost 10 years ago.
Itchy Ears
So what caused mine? Well, my father was a medical doctor. So growing up, I was on a lot of antibiotics with every little sniffle. When I was like six or seven and had chronic sinus congestion, the answer was to take antibiotics. That was just wreaking havoc on my system, and I ultimately got my tonsils removed. That set the stages for all of these yeast-related issues and a whole bunch of other things. Getting back to the sinus and the itchiness in my left ear, and for some reason, it was mostly my left, it would be triggered whenever I would have a glass of wine or have some bread or apple cider vinegar. You know, those things which were supposed to be so healthy for you, but my ear would start itching and that’s all yeast related.
Other Yeast-Related Symptoms
In addition to the itchy ear, I had abdominal pain, gas, bloating, and diarrhea. Constipation is another symptom, though I didn’t really have that. Yeast is almost always involved with gut issues like IBS, and I certainly had plenty of food sensitivities. When you have yeast overgrowth, it can cause leaky gut, which then makes you more prone to, and increases the number of food reactions you have. And I had plenty of food reactions- gluten and many other foods.
Consider Genitourinary Symptoms
When it comes to genitourinary symptoms, the traditional medical person will only recognize yeast overgrowth as vaginal yeast infections, give you the topical prescription for that, and that’s pretty much the extent of it. They don’t really believe or don’t acknowledge, that yeast can affect you systemically, except in severe cases and hospitalized patients. But it’s really not on the radar and patients tell me if they even bring it up, they’re practically laughed out of the room. Traditional medicine is kind of run like in the military, with the old policy of ‘Don’t ask. Don’t tell.’ It’s like one symptom, one drug.
Compounding Symptoms
Sometimes you get past that one symptom and then don’t hear anything from a patient. Or patients are more like the woman who had 38 different symptoms, and doctors may try to give them 38 different drugs for those. Well, that one patient did go to dozens of specialist though. But anyway, skin issues, acne, sunspots and are treatable. This is something I had when I was in college. They call them sunspots, white spots on your back, neck, and shoulders. Those are related to yeast — internal yeast overgrowth — and you can absolutely get rid of those when you get this yeast under control. Other symptoms, like fungal infections on your nails, white coating on your tongue, eczema, psoriasis, skin rashes, and itchy eyes, ears, or skin.
One of those common things with patients is itchiness all over their body, at night especially, and it’s just driving them crazy. Then we put them on the diet we’re going to talk about with some of the supplements, it clears up within a matter of a few weeks. Numbness and tingling (something I had plenty of), joint pain, muscle aches, fibromyalgia type symptoms, autoimmune conditions, and then cravings for sugar, alcohol, or bread, difficulty losing weight, PMS, and there’s even more, but those are the basic, and that’s enough for today.
What’s the Solution?
There are so many symptoms, but what’s the solution? It basically comes down to: How do you even know if you have those? With our seven-step functional free program, my step one is a thorough evaluation; a whole body health analysis that includes lab testing and testing for yeast, if we suspect that, and stool testing, which is very important because it can determine the parasites, yeast, and types of bacteria. Knowing what type can help clear it up. A thorough evaluation and symptom profile is important.
As far as treatment goes, It’s pretty straightforward. The Free Diet which is free of the most common allergens; gluten, grains, yeast, sugar, soy, legumes, dairy, etc. And within this Free Diet, is the candida diet. There’s also a bunch of other diets within this, all in one. You don’t have to do a candida diet, a gluten-free diet, or a Paleo diet; this encompasses all of that by taking the best of each and putting it into one diet.
A Quick Summary
If you want to a copy of phase one of the Free Diet, just click here. Phase one involves avoiding starches, sugar and even most fruit because you’re really cutting down the sugar intake. Starches and sugars really thrive on yeast. Instead, you’re eating plenty of healthy proteins, vegetables, and healthy fats. Take one serving of fruit a day, and its outlined in there, but the diet is intended to starve off the yeast, so skipping anything with sugar or yeast, so no wine, beer, vinegar, or mushrooms, even cutting out fermented foods.
Supplements
In addition to this diet is the nutritional supplement. The one I’ve found over the years to work the best is natural medicine formulas. A product called Yeast Defeat that has different ingredients, herbs in it and other ingredients that help kill off excess yeast. And then we have our probiotic line. ProbioSupreme™ 30– that’s so vitally important to getting the normal but healthy bacteria to increase in your gut. So between the Free Diet, the supplements and there are almost always other things involved as well besides that, because these can wreak havoc on your system.
Start With the Diet and Move Forward
We address getting these other things under control, but if you just start and follow the diet it will help you feel better. Later you can add these antifungal, supportive digestive supplements, which can help dramatically. Let me know if you have any questions or any other things you want me to cover.
I know a lot of patients that come in, and a lot of you out there, have chronic health issues and you’re feeling terrible inside and out. But really, if you can get to the underlying cause and start addressing these and come up with some permanent solutions, then you can come up with solutions to help get things cleared up. And your body does have an amazing ability to heal so you can get better.
Today, I’m going to talk to you about healing Hashimoto’s. For those of you who may not be familiar with it, Hashimoto’s is an autoimmune thyroid condition where your body produces antibodies against your own thyroid tissue. The thyroid starts to get destroyed over time causing typically low thyroid function. It is the most common cause of hypothyroidism in the United States.
Many Are Unaware
Most people aren’t even aware that they have it. Over 20 million Americans have hypothyroidism, most of which are caused by Hashimoto’s. Many are even unaware that they have that. Most people that have it are women, although some men do have it.
Usually, I’ll tell the story of certain patients I’ve treated with it. But today I’m going to talk about my own experience because I had Hashimoto’s over ten years ago. I was able to clear it up so I’m going tell you about how I was able to do that.
The Symptoms
The usual symptoms that you’ll have with this are fatigue, brain fog, difficulty getting up in the morning, aches and pains, numbness and tingling, carpal tunnel, anxiety, hair loss. These are all very common symptoms, even headaches, plantar fasciitis which is heel pain. And infertility and miscarriages are very common for low thyroid function. Chronic infections, constipation, and many more symptoms beyond that. As you can see, it can really make you feel terrible.
Why It Goes Undiagnosed
The reason why it mainly goes undiagnosed is typically when you go to a doctor and get lab work, they will check just a few different things like a chem screen CBC, lipids, and TSH. And TSH is not enough to evaluate the thyroid. That’s a pituitary hormone that indirectly measures your thyroid function, but misses most cases.
When patients come in, I’ll order typically six different thyroid values along with everything else and often a TSH will be normal but when I look at the free T3 and free T4, they’re often below optimal ranges and the thyroid antibodies are often elevated, and that’s what indicates Hashimoto’s.
You May Never Find Out Unless…
So, if you’re just getting a TSH and maybe a T4 test and you’re not checking the others and your antibodies, you may never find out. You can go on feeling tired, have hair loss, brain fog, anxiety, depression, and feeling miserable.
What’s even worse than that is if you do go to your doctor and they find it, they’ll usually prescribe synthetic thyroid medication which in my experience, many people don’t do well with. It synthetic T4, and it doesn’t address T3 which many people are low in.
If they do know that you have Hashimoto’s, if they have your antibodies tested usually by an endocrinologist, they’ll say, and this is what happened to me, when I went in back in 2005. When I went in after I tested myself and found out that I had Hashimoto’s, the endocrinologist told me, “Well, there’s no known cause and no known cure. It continues to get worse, your thyroid will continue to deteriorate over time and your antibodies may go up, they may go down, there’s no sense in even measuring them because it’s not going to get better and you will just continually need more and more Synthroid as you get older because the thyroid will continue to deteriorate. You’ll usually get more nodules and bigger nodules and that’s there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Investigation and Research
That didn’t settle well with me, and I couldn’t accept that. So, I started investigating and researching what causes Hashimoto’s, what causes autoimmune in general because at that time I also tested positive for rheumatoid arthritis antibodies. Usually, when you have one autoimmune, you have another one and one or two or more beyond that.
I thought, there’s something going on, so what can it be? I feel every health condition has a cause, every problem has a solution, so I started researching this. What I found out is it came down to the cause of most autoimmune and chronic health conditions–physical, chemical, and mental stress. So I am going to talk about the chemical stress component. So, breaking that down, I first look at deficiencies.
Nutritional Deficiencies
So, if you have nutrient deficiencies, that can cause your body and immune system to breakdown. In my case, I was low in vitamin D which is incredible because at that time I lived at the beach and was out on the beach, multiple times a week. And I was extremely low in vitamin D. So, that was a shock. When you’re low in D, that can affect your immune system and it’s been linked with autoimmune conditions. I was also low in magnesium which can cause aches and pains and contribute to numbness and tingling and a lot of other symptoms. Vitamin B12 was another one, I was deficient in and that can contribute to fatigue, brain, nerve and blood issues.
The Physical Impact of Deficiencies
So in my case at that time, I was having carpal tunnel syndrome and peripheral neuropathy. It got so bad that I wasn’t able to even work on patients for a number of years. I had to hire another chiropractor to come in and did the manual therapy while I did the evaluations and nutrition and functional medicine. So, I figured out the low B12, magnesium and vitamin D, just to name a few. I was someone who ate what I thought was a healthy diet and was taking supplements but certainly not enough and not the right ones.
Functional & Free
That’s why testing is step one in our treatment program which I call Functional & Free which is a seven-step treatment program to get to the root cause of your condition and provide long-term permanent solutions. Step one is getting an evaluation to find out what’s going on so that’s what I was doing. Another form of chemical stress besides deficiencies is toxins.
Toxins
When I tested heavy metals, I was high in arsenic and mercury which are nerve toxins. Again, the numbness, tingling, carpal tunnel, ulnar neuropathy. As far as arsenic, I was eating a healthy diet which included a lot of rice. I went to the Chinese restaurant, the next door at my office, and I would load up on it. I would get mixed vegetables with rice. I would skip the chicken and would get me extra rice instead.
I thought that was healthy. So, I was eating lots of rice multiple times a week. I was also drinking this detox shake which was rice protein. The healthy hypoallergenic detox shake was at the time made from rice protein. It turns out, it just loaded with arsenic, go figure.
Pathogens / Infections
The third form of chemical stress is pathogens, meaning infections like bacteria, viruses, parasites, and yeast. After doing a comprehensive stool testing, I had yeast overgrowth. I had a lot of antibiotic use when I was a kid. My father was a medical doctor so I was often on antibiotics for all kinds of things.
I had parasite also. Infectious disease specialists say that it doesn’t happen in the United States. Well, I had one. I think I picked it up in Rio de Janeiro, when I was in chiropractic college in early to mid-twenties. A friend and I went down there for spring break to Rio. I guess we thought we were going to pick up women but instead I picked up a parasite!
That wasn’t expected, and all these years I was living with chronic digestive issues, feeling terrible. So when you have yeast and you have parasites, it ramps up your immune system and you’re constantly, your immune system is trying to fight this off. And meanwhile, it can start attacking your own cells, in my case, the thyroid, and joints.
Food Sensitivities
The fourth cause of chemical stress is food sensitivities. So, getting food sensitivity testing is one option, that’s what I did. You know, in my case, I was sensitive to many different foods but gluten was a big one, dairy, yeast, legumes, among other foods. So, that can cause inflammation, leaky gut and in turn, be a trigger for autoimmunity. The immune system is fighting off these foreign invaders, these food reactions.
Mental Stress
On mental stress, I had adrenal fatigue issues that I found after testing so I was treating that. At the same time, I was taking digestive enzymes, natural remedies to clear up the parasites, the yeast, and replacing all these nutrients. Over time, I started to get better and my thyroid antibody, started to go down and down and down, and by the spring of 2009, they were completely down to normal. So, it took many months of investigating and finding all this out but I recovered and it’s been about ten years that my thyroid and rheumatoid arthritis antibodies have been in normal range.
Using Research and Experience to Help Others
Since then I’ve used this information I learned on research and figured out to help many other patients. One of the more common things patients come in with over the last many years is thyroid issues, Hashimoto’s. So and when I see that, I just go through the Functional & Free protocol. Do the evaluations to get the underlying root cause. So, besides clearing up all these sources of chemical stress like the sensitivities, the toxins, clearing those out, addressing adrenal fatigue, and, parasites, yeast overgrowth.
Benefits of The FreeDiet®
The type of diet, I ultimately figured out works best. So, I was gluten-free for a while and I found out that it did not work so I started avoiding other foods, the most common food allergens. This list I came up with that really worked well for me and ultimately helped get me better was a diet free of not only gluten but gluten, grains, sugar, yeast, dairy, eggs, soy, legumes. Those are the most common food allergens.
I call it The FreeDiet®. And that’s the diet that really helped me. Within this diet is also a candida diet for yeast overgrowth which most everyone that has Hashimoto’s, an autoimmune condition, almost every person I’ve seen is dealing with yeast overgrowth issues. Ramping up that immune system and wreaking havoc on your whole body. So if you and if you want a copy of phase one of The FreeDiet®, I’d be happy to share that with you.
Replacing the Deficiency
And the other thing is replacing deficiencies. So after testing to find out specifically what’s going on like when I was deficient in all those things. The most common recommendations of the foundational nutritional supplements typically recommend for Hashimoto’s and hyperthyroid conditions are our Natural Medicine Formulas. ActiveMulti, a fish oil supplement, magnesium, probiotics, vitamin D with K2, These are the basic foundational supplements, and there are specific ones beyond that based on testing.
Often selenium is low. Iodine, which is very controversial because so many people out there saying iodine is the devil if you have Hashimoto’s. However, when I tested myself, I was low in it and many other patients I test are low. When we give iodine and that can really help. If you’re low and you replenish that, it helps tremendously. If you don’t need iodine and you take it, it can make thyroid issues worse. So, that’s one thing really needs to be tested before you go and take it.
Lifestyle Matters
So, The FreeDiet® and supplements, are two of the biggest things that help and there’s a lot of different lifestyle issues. Addressing stress and things like that, and if you’re suffering from aches and pains, and physical issues, of course, the manual therapy, the physical aspects of treatment and functional training exercises, are all part of the whole treatment plan.
It’s important to know that if you have an autoimmune condition, Hashimoto’s or any chronic health condition you can get better if you first discover the underlying root causes. Once that is figured out, coming up with a plan to help provide permanent, long-term solutions. You find the cause then you can find solutions to getting better.
So, yes, you can get better. With everything I learned, I was able to do it with Hashimoto’s and a lot of other health issues that I had and fortunately, I’ve been blessed to be able to help so many other patients as well.
Click The FreeDiet® If you would like a copy of the FreeDiet® phase 1 food chart.
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Content on this website is based upon the opinions of Thomas Rofrano, D.C. and is not considered medical advice. It is designed to be a sharing of knowledge and information from the research and experience of Dr. Rofrano and his community. Dr. Rofrano encourages you to make your health care decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified health care professional. Dr. Rofrano is a chiropractic physician and offers physical and nutritional support and guidance to those seeking alternative or complementary care to traditional medicine. His care is not meant to replace that from your primary doctor and specialists but rather to help you on your path to achieving life-long vibrant health.
Regarding any supplements mentioned: *These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. If you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or have a medical condition, consult your physician before using this product.
