Currently Viewing Posts Tagged functional medicine

IBS—Discovering Root Causes and Natural Treatments

May 10, 2021 Dr. Tom Rofrano

Today I’m going to talk to you about IBS, which stands for irritable bowel syndrome, or in my opinion, It’s BS. And why would I say that? Because certainly millions of people have IBS. Well, I’ve been practicing for over 30 years and have seen over 100,000 patient visits, treating all sorts of conditions—pain, fatigue, brain fog, depression, anxiety, thyroid, adrenal issues, autoimmune.

But the one thing though that almost all my patients have in common is digestive issues. I’ve seen it more so lately, and it seems like almost everyone comes in with some sort of gut symptoms. Many of my patients have been to other doctors and get labeled as having IBS.

IBS Traditional Treatment

So I want to talk about what you can do to find out what’s causing it and how to correct it. So, typical scenario, you go to the doctor saying you have symptoms such as gas, bloating, abdominal pain, cramping, constipation, diarrhea. Even mucus in the stool can feel miserable.

And so you go in and your primary doctor says, all right, well why don’t you take this medication (usually acid-blocking drugs)? See if that works.

You go back, still no better. All right, well, let’s send you to the GI doctor.

So you go to the GI doctor. What’s going on?

Well, doc, I don’t know, I have some gas, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, just feel really irritable. My bowels feel irritable all the time. I don’t know what’s going on.

All right, well, let’s do some tests. We’ll do a colonoscopy.

Maybe they’ll do a colonoscopy and an endoscopy. So you get the results back and go in.

So what is it?

Oh, well you have IBS.

Oh, what’s that Doc?

That stands for irritable bowel syndrome.

Well, wait a minute isn’t that what I told you I had, irritable bowel?

Right, you have irritable bowel syndrome, exactly.

Well, what causes that?

Well, no one really knows what causes it.

What can I do about it?

Well, you can get this medication for it. We have acid-blocking drugs.

That’s the one that didn’t work.

Okay, we can do muscle relaxers or anti-anxiety pills, or you can do these pain meds or even anti-depressants. These are all common medications used for IBS.

And that’s why I say It’s BS because IBS is not a condition, it’s simply a description of what’s going on. It would be like going to the orthopedist and you say,

Doc, my neck hurts, it’s been really hurting a lot lately.

They do some x-rays, maybe an MRI.

Okay, well, you have something very serious. It’s called HNS.

HNS, what’s that?

Hurt neck syndrome.

What do you mean?

You have HNS.

Well, I know, my neck hurts.

But this is an actual condition. Look it up online.

You go online, HNS, there are support groups. There are all kinds of blogs, websites all over the place. I’m making this up, by the way, maybe I’m not, maybe it does exist. But this is how it works. Anyway, that’s why I say it’s BS.

Root Cause of IBS

However, IBS does exist. I know, I had it years ago, even as a kid I had all these symptoms. I was miserable. And as I got older, it even got worse. So I went through all this. I was able to get it cleared up and basically what it comes down to is finding out the root causes of IBS.

Number one is pathogens (infections)—bacteria, yeast, parasites. And why don’t they ever test for this? It’s so rare that you can even get your doctor to order a stool test. I like to order these comprehensive stool tests, not just to check for parasites, but also yeast, bacteria, digestive enzymes, different markers of inflammation, immune health. So it gives a clear picture.

So parasites, for instance, in one study I read almost half of the IBS patients had this parasite called Blastocystis hominis. I did other videos on that if you want to check that out. But 46% had blasto. and all the symptoms of IBS can be from this blastocystis and other parasites, the gas, bloating, cramping, diarrhea, constipation.

Yeast overgrowth is also a common cause of IBS symptoms, and bacterial overgrowth (dysbiosis) as well. And when I tested myself, these are just some of approximately 20 stool test parasite pictures and everything that I did years ago when I had these issues. I wanted to get to the underlying root cause. And it took me a while to figure out and get it cleared up. But you should do a comprehensive stool test if you want to find out and figure out what’s causing your gut symptoms.

So infections, pathogens are one. And what do you do about that? Well, depending on what it is, for parasites, there’s certain natural formulas we use and sometimes you need a prescription medication. For me, I use a series of products that I found really worked, and this was after I tried a few different prescription drugs for the parasites which did not work.

Natural Treatment for IBS

If it’s yeast, there are certain protocols for that. I use a product called Yeast Defeat™. If it’s a bacterial overgrowth, I use Microb-Balance™. There are probiotics that I use that are effective and powerful called ProbioSupreme™SB or other of our probiotics depending on the findings. So, eliminating the cause of the infection is one thing.

Second, are deficiencies—nutrient and digestive enzyme deficiencies, so that has to be addressed and they are different types of enzyme supplements, such as GastricZyme™ or PanAbsorb™ that can be a huge help.

Third, are food allergies/sensitivities. Gluten is the most common one I see. There are other foods that are highly reactive as well. You have to find out which foods you are sensitive to. That’s a major cause of digestive issues. Two ways to do this are, you can test, there is a comprehensive gluten celiac test, food allergy and sensitivity tests. You can check upwards of 100 or more foods.

So the typical tests doctors run for gluten, if you can get them to do that, is for just 2-3 markers for gluten sensitivity and celiac. But meanwhile, there is a particular lab test I use to check more than 20 different antibodies, which is a very comprehensive approach to find out if gluten is an issue.

Testing Options for IBS

So another option besides testing for gluten are testing for others. A food allergy test if you can get your doctor to order that. Some of the major labs offer panels of 10 or 15 foods, and those are true allergies. Most people have sensitivities more so than allergies, so I like to test both in panels of about 100 foods or more.

So aside from food testing, another option I came up with is a diet I call the FreeDiet® because it’s not only free of gluten but gluten, grains, sugar, yeast, dairy, eggs, soy, legumes, nightshades, and processed foods. And you go through that, phase one is typically four weeks where you are eliminating these potentially reactive foods. And most patients, usually within the first couple of weeks are doing so much better.

And then as everything clears up, we go onto phase two, we start adding foods back one at a time. So, this is what worked for me. Because I tested positive for gluten sensitivity, and I went gluten-free but was eating all the gluten-free grains, millet, rice, corn, gluten-free pasta and bagels, everything.

I was not feeling any better because you must eliminate the bacteria, yeast, parasites, all of those things. All of those live on, they love sugar, grains, yeast, starches. So this diet, the FreeDiet® is free of all of those.

It really helps your gut calm down. If you want a complimentary copy of the FreeDiet® phase 1 food chart, feel free to click here to check that out. So the FreeDiet® gives your gut a rest, calms down the inflammation, allows it to heal. If you have infections, pathogens, it also is the diet you would follow for that. So it’s all-encompassing as far as to help clear up gut issues and that’s what worked for me after I finally figured it out over many years of testing and tweaking and for many of my patients since then.

Contact Us

If you need help with your health, feel free to contact us and feel free to share this with someone you know, who is having gut or thyroid issues. We would be happy to help.

High Blood Pressure Natural Treatment

April 15, 2019 Dr. Tom Rofrano

Hi, my name is Dr. Tom Rofrano from the Natural Medicine Clinic in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Today, I’m going to talk about natural solutions for high blood pressure.

Over the thirty years I’ve been in practice, I’ve seen countless patients in their 40s, 50s, and beyond with high blood pressure. One thing they seem to have in common is that they’re all on blood pressure medication.

So when I check their blood pressure and it’s high, and they tell me that yes, they’re on blood pressure medication, I ask them why—if they have hypertension and they’re on medication for it—do they still have high blood pressure? This is very puzzling.

Once you’re on one medication for hypertension, your body begins to adapt to it, and before you know it you’re on a second medication. You’re body is continually adapting because you’re not getting to the root cause of the hypertension. Instead, you’re just covering it up with medication and trying to force the blood pressure down.

We’re going to talk about getting to the root cause of hypertension and some simple solutions for lowering it.

Hypertension Is up in the U.S.

Almost 50% of Americans have high blood pressure, and just recently they came up with a new guideline. Prior to 2017, hypertension was classified as a blood pressure (BP) reading of 140/90 mm Hg or higher, but the new guideline classifies it as 130/80 mm Hg or higher.

So if you’re 130/80, that’s stage one hypertension (140/90 is stage two), which means that millions more Americans now qualify to be put on medication for hypertension. The usual recommendations—eating a healthy diet, maintaining a healthy weight, getting enough physical activity, not smoking, limited alcohol use—if those worked, then more than 100 million U.S. adults wouldn’t have hypertension.

Instead of the usual recommendations, we’re going to talk about a few solutions that can really help.

The Right Diet for You

I’ve talked about the FreeDiet™, which is free of the most common food allergens—those foods most responsible for inflammation, digestive, and other chronic health issues. You can download a copy of Phase 1 of the FreeDiet ™ right now and get a list of these foods. Inflammation is behind so many chronic diseases, like heart disease, cancer, hypertension, fatigue, and on and on.

To illustrate, I had one case where a fifty-four-year-old patient came in with a blood pressure reading of 182/108. He’d followed the guidelines to prevent hypertension—didn’t smoke, didn’t really drink, wasn’t overweight, exercised regularly, and had a pretty healthy diet—but it wasn’t working. He went to his primary doctor and his cardiologist and they told him he needed to go on high blood pressure medication and cholesterol medication. They told him that it runs in the family, and there’s no way to fix it with diet, so he’d spend the rest of his life on this medication.

This patient didn’t accept that, because like I said, he was a healthy guy, and at the age of fifty-four, he didn’t want to be on medication the rest of his life.

I did an evaluation, ran some lab tests, which revealed some nutritional deficiencies and food allergies, both of which can be common causes of inflammation and hypertension.

Based on the patient’s results, I put him on the FreeDiet™, along with natural supplements to treat his specific deficiencies, and four weeks into treatment his readings were down to 111/71. He dropped 71 points in four weeks! He was down to normal blood pressure, and he also dropped seven pounds, even though he wasn’t really overweight. In addition, his cholesterol went down 34 points, and the other deficiencies that showed up in his lab work, like Vitamin D, Magnesium, and B12, improved.

The best part was that he was off all of his medication!

So diet is important, and so are supplements, but both should be specific and catered to the individual.

Reducing Physical Stress

Besides a proper diet and maintaining healthy nutrition, maintaining a healthy structure can also prevent hypertension. Stress to the neck, upper back, and shoulders especially can cause a lot of tension, which can lead to high blood pressure, difficulty sleeping, an inability to relax, and headaches.

I had another patient, a twenty-four-year-old male, come in with high blood pressure. He worked out regularly, wasn’t overweight, didn’t drink very much, and had been improving his diet. A couple months earlier, he started having these episodes of anxiety and high blood pressure. He ended up in the emergency room with his blood pressure over 200 points. He also complained of indigestion, cold hands and feet, insomnia, panic attacks, and headaches.

An evaluation and lab work revealed what was going on, and I put him on the FreeDiet™ and natural supplements, including the foundational ones, like vitamin D, magnesium, fish oil, a multi , probiotic, plus other supplements based on his specific lab work. This patient also complained about neck and low back pain, which we treated with muscle work and therapy.

After four weeks of treatment, his blood pressure dropped 39 points and he was down to normal. Since then, it has continued to go down even more, and almost all of his symptoms have cleared up and improved.

Natural Solutions Work

Whether it’s hypertension, fatigue, anxiety, or whatever chronic health issues you’re having, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be on medication to cover up the symptoms and not fix it.

If you’re the type of person who wants to get to the root cause and really understand what’s going on and find specific solutions to get better, know that it is possible. Almost every health problem has a solution; it’s just a matter of digging and getting to the root cause. You can find solutions and clear these things up. Remain hopeful—it can be done.

If you have any questions, feel free to comment or contact us. Download Phase 1 of the FreeDiet™, and stay tuned until next week. Thanks very much!

Natural Treatment for Autoimmune Hyperthyroid- Graves’ Disease

April 8, 2019 Dr. Tom Rofrano

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.

Natural Treatment for Ulcerative Colitis & Autoimmune Conditions

March 22, 2019 Dr. Tom Rofrano

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.

Healing Leaky Gut and Autoimmune/Thyroid Conditions

March 16, 2019 Dr. Tom Rofrano

Today I’m going to talk to you about leaky gut, what it is, and give you some tips on how to clear it up.

I’ve been practicing over thirty years now and have seen over one hundred thousand patient visits. We saw a typical patient recently, a young woman in her twenties, complaining of headaches, brain fog, anxiety, depression, digestive issues, gas, bloating, diarrhea, joint pain, fatigue, insomnia, chronic sinus issues, and the list goes on and on. She was feeling really miserable, going from doctor to doctor, not really getting answers other than another prescription for this and another prescription for that.

We started with an initial evaluation and lab testing to find some underlying root causes, and a whole lot of things came up, one of which was leaky gut.

What is Leaky Gut?

Within the inner membrane of your small intestine are what they call tight junctions, with small pores in between them that allow for the absorption of nutrients such as amino acids and essential fats into your bloodstream for nourishment. These pores are about the size of a hole made in a piece of paper by an acupuncture needle, and that’s normal permeability. Leaky gut is increased permeability, where those pores are increased to the size of a hole made by a nail.

How Does Leaky Gut Harm My Body?

Instead of just nutrients getting into the bloodstream, whole proteins, toxins, bacteria, and yeast can leak out of that protective barrier into the bloodstream and trigger a whole host of things, like food sensitivities and allergies. Leaky gut can also trigger autoimmune conditions, because these whole proteins, toxins, etc., which aren’t supposed to be in circulation, are then identified as foreign invaders, and your body starts to attack them. Over time, it can start attacking certain parts of your body, like your thyroid (Hashimoto’s Disease, goiter, nodules, hypothyroidism, Graves disease), your joints (Rheumatoid arthritis), your nervous system (MS), and your intestine (celiac disease).

Is There Research to Support Leaky Gut?

When I was going over the findings with this patient, she said that she thought she might have leaky gut, but her father is in the medical field and doesn’t really buy into all this natural stuff. She asked if there was anything she could tell him or show him to prove leaky gut exists.

So I searched leaky gut on PubMed, where they publish peer-reviewed medical studies, and some interesting things came right up. For instance, I found an article from 2017 from the journal, Frontiers in Immunology, titled “Leaky Gut As a Danger Signal for Autoimmune Diseases,” describing this whole condition I just went over. I found another article from 2011 talking about Zonulin and its regulation of intestinal barrier function: the biological door to inflammation, autoimmunity, and cancer, and more articles beyond those. So there’s plenty of research out there that points to leaky gut, even though it’s not really recognized by modern medicine as of yet.

What Causes Leaky Gut?

The three underlying, basic causes of leaky gut are physical, chemical, and mental stressors, and you can break chemical stressors down into four interrelated categories:

Deficiencies: Deficiencies in zinc, vitamin C, and vitamin D can lead to deterioration in the intestinal wall.
Toxins: Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like Advil, Ibuprofen, and Aspirin have been shown to cause leaky gut. Antibiotics, too, can be a major contributor.
Infections/Parasites: This is where yeast, bacterial overgrowth, and parasites come into play. Antibiotics can wipe out the healthy bacteria in your gut and allow unhealthy bacteria, or pathogenic bacteria, to take over and damage the intestinal walls. It’s the same thing with yeast overgrowth.
Food Sensitivities: Gluten is a very common, well-researched cause of leaky gut and can damage the intestinal lining. Other food sensitivities are can be involved with this condition as well.

How Can I treat Leaky Gut?

As far as treatment goes, you have two options. You can go the route of traditional medicine, which treats symptoms with particular medications, or you can choose health and functional medicine, which is our approach.

The FreeDiet™

The diet that works best for leaky gut is what I call The FreeDiet™ (download a complimentary copy here), which is free of not only gluten, but also grains, corn, sugar, yeast, soy, legumes, eggs, dairy, and GMOs. These are the foods most commonly responsible for inflammation and digestive issues, and we remove all of them in Phase 1 of the FreeDiet™.

The FreeDiet™ allows your gut a chance to heal by calming down inflammation and removing those foods that promote inflammatory reactions.

Natural Medicine Formulas®

Which specific nutritional supplements we use depends on testing for each individual patient, but the most common supplements we recommend for the healing of leaky gut are zinc, fish oil, L-glutamine, vitamin D, bioflavonoids, curcumin, and ginger.

ProbioExtreme 350: Probiotics are vitally important to healing leaky gut. We start with a very powerful probiotic, ProbioExtreme 350 for short-term use, and then we graduate into a lower level one after that.
Paleo Protein: We use the collagen-based protein, Paleo Protein, because collagen can help with leaky gut. Bone broth is another excellent source of natural collagen.
Gut Immune Repair and GI-Mend : Two other product we use to treat leaky gut as it contains ingredients to help support the intestinal lining.

Stick With the Treatment

We had two patients not too long ago who had similar symptoms of massive digestive complaints, fatigue, joint pain, headaches, dizziness, skin issues—again, whole body issues—and they both tested positive for autoimmune conditions. The patient that followed our recommendations with the FreeDiet™ and supplements was able, after three months, to lower her ANA antibodies from 1:640 to less than 1:40, which is normal.

The other patient only somewhat followed our recommendations, but cheated some and went on and off the diet. She was feeling better, and she lost a bunch of weight, but was still going back and forth with a number of cheat days per week. When I reached out to her after two and a half months, her antibody levels hadn’t moved at all. Even though she was feeling better, her immune system was still being fired up.

If you have these chronic health issues and you want to get them cleared up, you really need to find the underlying root causes and stick with the plan. I believe that most all conditions, once you get to the underlying cause, can be addressed and cleared up, because your body has an incredible ability to heal itself.

Don’t forget to grab your complimentary copy of Phase 1 of the Free Diet™, and subscribe to my channel for early notifications of new videos.

Thanks for joining me again, and I look forward to seeing you next time.

Healing Thyroid Nodules and Goiter

March 2, 2019 Dr. Tom Rofrano

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 that came in with a very, very, very, large thyroid nodule—goiter—and how we were able to help her shrink that by 30% in the first three months— and that’s just for starters.

Thyroid Nodules & Goiter: A Case Study

I’ve been practicing for over 30 years—chiropractic, nutrition, functional medicine—and I’ve seen over one hundred thousand patient visits. Lately it seems like more and more patients are coming in with autoimmune conditions, especially thyroid, a lot of nodules. This is just rampant, and we have a lot of these patients.

We have this one woman in particular, a 60-year-old woman, that came in. She happened to see a YouTube video I did with my wife last year where I was able to help my wife shrink her thyroid nodule by over 50% fairly quickly, and how we did that. She saw this and came in, driving quite a distance to get here.

She had this huge thyroid nodule that was over 9 cm. To give you an idea, my neck is about 13 cm wide, so that’s how big it was. This had been going on for about ten years, and she was just feeling miserable.

You have two ways to go with this. There’s the traditional medical route, which, for some people, that’s fine, they do surgery to remove the thyroid, then you’d be on medication for the rest of your life. She didn’t want to do that. She wanted to see if we could help her treat it naturally.

Whole-Body Analysis

The first thing we do in what we call our Functional & Free Program (a seven step program to identify your underlying root cause and provide long term permanent solutions) is Step 1, a whole-body analysis to determine what tests need to be ordered to figure out what is causing this, because you don’t just get a nodule or goiter for no reason, it’s coming from somewhere. So we do the evaluation to figure out the history and what tests to order to get to some underlying root causes.

As far as this patient’s complaints, besides this goiter, she was completely exhausted, with headaches, brain fog, depression, anxiety, couldn’t lose weight, and she was very bloated and swollen. She had neck, back, and joint pain, insomnia, sinus congestion, the whole gamut of digestive issues, and a lot of skin issues as well. She was just, from head to toe, really struggling.

Determining Root Causes

Basically we look for areas of physical, chemical, and mental stress. Under chemical stress, we test for three things:

Deficiencies

In her case, she had multiple nutrient deficiencies—nine, to be exact. Vitamins and minerals, plus an iodine deficiency.

Iodine is one of those things that can be very controversial because there are so many experts saying that iodine is terrible if you have thyroid issues or the thyroid autoimmune condition Hashimoto’s Disease, which she has. So, a lot of people say you shouldn’t take iodine at all and avoid it like the plague. People try to find iodine-free multiple vitamins because they’re afraid of it.

On the other hand, if you test for iodine, which we did with her, and it’s low, if someone is deficient (and she was really deficient), then it can be really helpful. As a matter of fact, iodine deficiency is and can be a primary cause of goiter.

So, she was deficient in nine nutrients, plus iodine (one of the lowest levels I’ve seen in iodine, by the way). So that’s one area, deficiencies. Two, we look at toxins.

Toxins

In her case, she tested high for five heavy metals, including mercury and led. Whereas many thyroid Hashimoto’s patients are iron deficient and anemic, she was the opposite. She had too much iron in her system. Too much iron is very toxic, like any other metal. Extremely toxic and can damage organs and every other part of your body. So her ferritin level, which represents stored iron in your body, was very high.

The third area we look at besides deficiencies and toxins is infections.

Infections, viruses, bacteria, yeast & parasites

Before she came to me, she’d been to a number of different doctors. She brought in 94 pages of labs and medical records from before she came to see me.

She was positive for many different viruses, including Epstein-Barr, very common with Hashimoto’s and nodules. When I did additional testing, we do comprehensive stool testing, she had bacterial overgrowth in her intestines and she also had yeast overgrowth. I often see yeast overgrowth and Hashimoto’s/nodules together, I mean almost every Hashimoto’s patient we have has yeast overgrowth. That went on with her chronic sinus issues and her skin issues.

Besides deficiencies, toxins, and infections, as if that wasn’t enough—because you don’t want to just find one thing, when someone comes in with an over 9 cm nodule, there’s going to be a lot of things going on—then we look at a fourth category, food sensitivities.

Food sensitivities/allergies

She was sensitive to ten different foods, plus gluten. She had a very significant gluten sensitivity. She also tested positive for leaky gut.

With these gut infections going on and eating gluten, that can cause leaky gut, which then in turn makes you much more sensitive to all foods, and can cause autoimmune conditions like Hashimoto’s.

In addition to that, she was sensitive to a number of chemicals, including one that she was exposed to on a daily basis working in the cosmetics industry. It was over twelve different specific things we found.

Treating Root Causes

So what do we do from there?

The FreeDiet™

Basically, I put her on a diet. We call it the FreeDiet because it’s not only gluten free, but it’s free of gluten, grains, sugar, yeast, corn, dairy, soy, legumes, eggs and GMO’s. It’s a diet to help reduce those foods most commonly responsible for inflammation and gut issues and really allow your body to heal.

If you’d like a complimentary copy of the FreeDiet™ – Phase 1, click here.

Natural Medicine Formulas

I put her on a number of different supplements to help with these deficiencies she was having. Iodine as well, yes, relatively high doses of iodine. Again, don’t run out and take iodine. You need to test first to figure out if you need it and how much.

So I have her taking that, as well as different herbal remedies to address the yeast overgrowth and very powerful probiotics for bacterial overgrowth. Also, as a supplement to address the elevated heavy metals and iron, I had her start doing infrared sauna to help sweat out these toxins. I also advised she start avoiding exposure to chemicals at work.

She also had adrenal fatigue, adrenal stress, her numbers were really off there, on top of everything there. And her hormones were off—her estrogen and progesterone ratios were way off. I prescribed adrenal adaptogenic herbs to help balance out her adrenals.

Lifestyle Changes

I recommended some stress-relieving lifestyle changes as well.

The Results

So we put all that together, followed her along, and retested to make sure that things were improving. Just this week, I had her 3-month ultrasound report back, since we’d ordered one initially, and I’m happy to say this over 9 cm nodule/goiter shrunk by 30%. She had three other nodules that all shrank an average of 30%. So overall, the size of the goiter and the nodules averaged 30% reduction in three months, so we’re both thrilled about that.

And this is just the start. I’m planning on continuing on this path, and reaching out, and continuing to see it shrink. She’s obviously thrilled, because number one, all of her symptoms have cleared up, you know, fatigue, aches and pains, headaches, and the 50 other things she came in with. Also, this huge mass on her thyroid that changed her voice, made it difficult to swallow, and, understandably, made her very self-conscious was visibly shrinking, so she’s very happy about that, and I am as well, and all of us here at the Natural Medicine Clinic.

So just know that for any chronic health issue, whether you have thyroid nodules or goiter or Hashimoto’s, or other autoimmune conditions or other chronic health condition, you have a choice. You can choose to live with it, or maybe take medications for this and that, or surgeries, and that’s one choice. Or you can choose health, you can choose to really look into what the underlying causes are, address those, and then be provided solutions to have you get better.

Thanks for joining me today and feel free to subscribe to my YouTube channel if you want notifications of new videos. And if you click on the link to the FreeDiet™ – Phase 1, we’ll send that right over to you. I look forward to giving you further updates. See you next time. Take care.

Candida Curse – Is Yeast Ruining Your Life and What You Can Do

July 16, 2018 Dr. Tom Rofrano

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.

Are Food Allergies Making You Fat and Tired?

June 30, 2018 Dr. Tom Rofrano

Hi, everyone. My name is Dr. Tom Rofrano from the Natural Medicine Clinic in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida and today, I’m talking to you about food allergies, food sensitivities, and how do you know if you have them. So these can cause all sorts of health problems.

Health Issues and Food Allergies

Everything from- starting from the head down, headaches, brain fog, lack of focus and concentration, fatigue, throat- sore throats, canker sores, sinus congestion, ear infections, digestive issues, constipation, diarrhea, IBS. Food sensitivities and allergies can also cause skin reactions, itchiness, eczema, psoriasis, acne. I mean, there are just- at almost any health issue you can think of, food sensitivities or food allergies can be involved.

Even in the heart- heart palpitations, fast heartbeat, lung congestion, asthma- I think one of the most common causes for asthma is food allergies- bronchitis, and muscle- overall body aches and pains, inflammation- rheumatoid arthritis is linked to food reactions and sensitivities, food allergies. In overall, fatigue, sluggishness, even hyperactivity related to food sensitivities. And weight gain is a huge issue with food sensitivities- inability to lose weight.

Patient with Food Allergies and The FreeDiet™

I had a patient recently. She was 35 years old, and she came in for a host of health issues but one was that she was unable to lose weight and she even- she went on a number of different diets- even the ketogenic diet which, as you know, is really popular right now. So she did that for an entire month and lost- she said, lost like two or three pounds at the most in a month’s time. And once we figured it out, we put her on the FreeDiet™ which I’ll talk to you about in a little while and also provide you a free copy of phase one of the FreeDiet™. But anyway, she went on that and in the first two weeks, dropped ten pounds. But weight gain and losing weight, it’s not all about the calories per se, but food sensitivities are a huge part of inability to lose weight.

True Food Allergies

And we’ll talk about the basic types of food allergy. So one is a true food allergy- acute immediate reaction and this is something like for instance, if a child eats peanuts they’re allergic to, they can get- I don’t- you know, swelling, difficulty breathing, anaphylactic shock or you know, even cause death. That’s a true food allergy and there are different levels of it, from mild to severe.

Skin reaction types and breathing issues are the most common but also vomiting- vomiting and diarrhea- the digestive issues as well. But those are true food allergies and how do you know if you have them? Most people know because they have an immediate reaction that’s very easy to see. And also, there are skin testing- skin test for that, testing a number of different foods or environmental allergies. And secondly, blood test, you can do a panel of- a number of different foods to see if you have a true allergy.

Food Sensitivities

Much more common than that is food sensitivities. Those are very common and probably, almost every patient that comes into the natural medicine clinic- and I’ve been practicing over thirty years now- and I would say almost every person that comes in with health issues has food sensitivities. And these are delayed reactions. You don’t necessarily notice something right away. It could take an hour or two, even the next day or two- two or three days later. Gluten is a common one where if someone eats gluten, they’re not necessarily gonna have very quick reaction, necessarily. But you know, within an hour or two or in the next day or day after, it’s a sense of food sensitivity, not necessarily a true allergy.

Finding Out if You Have Food Sensitivities

So how do you know if you have sensitivities? So this is two ways- for this also, there are food sensitivity tests you can do and there are a number of different labs that do food sensitivity test. I’ve used quite- I use quite a few different ones over the years and I found one recently that I like the best because it has a multitude of different factors, not just, say IgG or like IgG, IgA, IgM and two other separate distinct pathways. So that’s you know, very comprehensive blood test where you can check 150, 200 or more foods and even chemicals and preservatives, things like that- molds.

An Elimination Diet

So that’s one way to find out and another way is to do an elimination diet which- the elimination diet but like- typically, what that means is you eliminate one or more foods and see how you do and then you bring it back in and see if your symptoms clear up but that is very difficult. I’ve done it- again, followed with different ones over the years but I came up with a better option which I call the free diet because it’s free of not only gluten- gluten but also the most common- actually, the most common allergens and sensitivities- gluten, grains, yeast, soy, corn, legume, eggs, sugar, GMOs. So ten different main categories of foods and again, we’ll provide a link there for a complete copy of phase one. So typically, what happens, you follow the free diet for- phase one is four weeks. It takes about three weeks for your antibody levels for these particular foods to go down.

Clearing Up Health Issues

So phase one is typically four weeks and usually within that time, a lot of these health issues will start to clear up and then when we get into phase two, we start adding foods back one at a time to see if there is- to see what kind of reaction is and then we can gauge the certain way we add and back, you know, once- so many days, you know, one new food so you can really pinpoint what it is. So that’s a great way- an alternative to say, lab testing where you can identify what you’re sensitive to.

Gluten-Free Experience

And we just saw an example that- I have a patient who’s 25 who ate- she actually had some- she was giving some gluten free cookies. She has a real strong sensitivity to gluten. You know, it caused a lot of health issues for her and she was doing great. And so she had these what she thought were gluten free gingerbread cookies for the holidays and then turns- come to find out, they weren’t though. So what happened is after she started eating, easily within an hour, she started getting headaches, nausea, and indigestion.

She’s just wondering what was going on. So she then looked at the package, at the ingredients and she’s like, oh my gosh, the first ingredient was wheat. So she just didn’t realize it. Not only that, this lasted for the next day and that leaded into other- like more long-term digestive issues for a couple weeks. Because like I said, your antibody levels can- it takes a few weeks for them to go down, when you eat a food that you’re sensitive to. So that’d be an example of a delayed sensitivity.

Another Patient’s Experience

Another example- well, speaking of the holidays, so you know, we just got through with Christmas. And so I had patients come in, just tell me different things. So one patient, she’s a 29 year old woman, and she gained five pounds over the holidays not from eating a ton of food but just eating foods that she was sent to. She had already gone through phase one of the free diet, lost a bunch of weight but with her was mainly sugar and gluten- those are the two big ones. And she gained five pounds within you know, over the holidays and another patient who actually- 49 years old- and she lost three pounds over the holidays because she’s stuck with- she was in phase one so and she’s stuck with it because she’s doing so well that she didn’t want to screw it up.

And actually, she’s actually into it for three months now and she has lost 28 pounds over three months. So she didn’t want to get off track which- so it is possible to yes, even during the holidays, to stick with something if you’re motivated enough and really encouraged about how great you’re feeling compared to how you used to feel.

An Extreme Case

I did have one extreme case where a patient was very sensitive to gluten, yeast, and sugar and she had a slice of a cookie cake and by the next morning, she said she was seven pounds heavier- after one slice. Now, it’s not the calories. It’s not the amount of food but when you eat a food you’re sensitive to, it can cause inflammation, watery tension, bloating, and you can really just get all swollen just literally overnight.

So on the plus side, you can also get phenomenal results if you identify what foods you’re sensitive to and then eliminate those. When you’re testing the FreeDiet™, you can really clear up a lot of health issues whether it’s energy. You know, literally having fatigue, or skin problems, or brain fog, anxiety, you know, lack of focus, you know, again, digestive aches and pains- just a whole- a whole lot of issues that we mentioned earlier can be cleared up when you eliminate foods you’re sensitive to. So if you have any questions or comments or have an experience you want to tell us about, you know, feel free to comment below. And if you want a copy of phase one of the FreeDiet™, just click on the link. And thanks for joining me today and look forward to seeing you next week. Take care.

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Thyroid Hashimoto’s – The Worst Case I Ever Saw and How She Got Better

June 15, 2018 Dr. Tom Rofrano

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 thyroid Hashimoto’s- the worst case I ever saw. You see, I’ve been practicing for over 30 years now with chiropractic, functional medicine, and nutrition. And a lot of patients come in with thyroid issues, autoimmune, nodules- it’s one of the more common things that patients come in with. It may have something to do with the fact I also had Hashimoto’s over ten years ago, and after a lot of investigation, I was able to figure out what was causing it and actually heal myself. If I’m near you, I’d love to be the Hashimoto’s disease specialist and functional medicine practitioner that also helps heal you!

A Multitude of Symptoms

This one particular patient came in over ten years ago, and she had the craziest symptoms pointing to an autoimmune condition. She had stinging… all these stinging, numbing, shooting pain (like pin prick pains) all over her body that woke her up at night, fatigue, brain fog, and digestive issues. She had constipation. and I mean severe constipation, thinning hair, dry skin, aches, and pains, and she had high cholesterol. Her doctors wanted to put her on statin drugs – and actually, low thyroid hormone levels can cause all of these things, including high cholesterol, insomnia, and anxiety. With all this going on, she wasn’t sleeping. She couldn’t even think straight.

Different Doctors

So, she had been to a number of different doctors. They finally diagnosed her with peripheral neuropathy. They had no idea what caused it and prescribed her this powerful nerve drug. She took it once and ended up in the emergency room. Then she came in as a new patient, and I did a complete initial evaluation and found out she had Hashimoto’s disease, an autoimmune condition, and thyroid disease.

Her thyroglobulin antibodies were over 5000, normal is below 100. Her TPO antibodies were almost 300, and, depending on the lab, normal is less than 50. I then sent her to an endocrinologist at the time, and she prescribed Synthroid and said her thyroid will continue to get worse. She said that her thyroid gland will continue to deteriorate, maybe go higher and maybe lower, and that she will develop nodules and possibly even goiter. And didn’t paint a very rosy picture. She was really frustrated and feeling miserable.

Right After My Diagnosis

Around this time, I also coincidentally found out I had Hashimoto’s disease. I was doing a lot of research and investigating and figuring out what caused it. I couldn’t take for an answer what the endocrinologist told me, “There’s nothing you can do about it except take Synthroid for the rest of your life.” So in the process, I realized that chronic health conditions, whether you have an autoimmune condition, whether it’s Hashimoto’s disease – which is autoimmune thyroid- really any chronic health condition is caused by three main things: physical, mental, and chemical stress.

Autoimmune Conditions

As far as physical stress goes, she did have a lot of neck issues that we were helping her with. As far as mental stress, after testing, she did have adrenal dysfunction/adrenal fatigue. Chemical stress- after doing lab work and figuring out what was going on, it breaks down into four main parts. Under chemical stress, the first is deficiencies.

Deficiencies

With autoimmune conditions, there’s an underlying theme, whether you have rheumatoid arthritis, MS, diabetes type 1, Lupus, or Hashimoto’s disease… your body is attacking itself.

So why is your body attacking itself? I don’t take it that it’s just a deficiency of these other drugs they want to just keep giving you and not giving you an answer. So it’s finding out what it is that the body is fighting off. If you’re deficient in certain things, then your body isn’t functioning properly.

For instance, this patient was deficient in vitamin D, magnesium, B12, iron, and iodine. If you’re deficient in iodine, then that affects your thyroid hormone. You need iodine to make thyroid hormone, and if you’re deficient in iodine, that can cause nodules on your thyroid gland and goiter. And you shouldn’t just go and take iodine if you haven’t tested for it because it can also be too high. That can cause more harm than good, but in her case, she was deficient in that- again, along with Vitamin D, iron, B12, and magnesium. So all these things are very important in getting your body to function at a normal level because that’s really what’s going on with autoimmune. Your immune system is going haywire. So that’s number one of the deficiencies.

Toxins

She was high in lead and mercury, both of which are actually nerve toxins. They affect your brain, nervous system, and immune system, among many other things. The peripheral neuropathy that she was having was affected by this, in addition to the other deficiencies.

Pathogens

Pathogens are extremely important and, from my experience, almost always involved with autoimmune conditions, such as Hashimoto’s disease and other immune system-fighting diseases. She had really high levels of yeast. She had multiple parasites. And she had bacterial overgrowth. Now all of this can cause a leaky gut, which then increases the number of food reactions. This leads to the fourth thing under chemical stress.

Food Sensitivities

Food sensitivities, food reactions, and food allergies, in her case, she was sensitive to gluten, yeast, sugar, legumes, dairy, eggs, and some others. Now if you’re eating foods you’re reacting to, gluten, for instance, and that’s an issue, then your body’s immune system is fighting this off and attacking it. Your immune system sees it as a foreign invader and then, in the case of Hashimoto’s disease, can actually start attacking the thyroid gland while it’s attacking its gluten molecules. So I almost always find that gluten and yeast are involved with Hashimoto’s disease. After testing, that is what we saw with her and it was very similar to my case.

Beyond Gluten – The FreeDiet™

So what I did for my for myself and many other patients since is that I realized gluten-free diets just didn’t work because you’re eating all these other gluten-free products with rice, rice flour, corn, corn flour, and all these others. Eating gluten-free donuts and gluten-free cakes and cookies – it just doesn’t work. So what I came up with is a diet that did work.

It is a diet that’s not only free of gluten but free of gluten grains, sugar, yeast, dairy, eggs, soy, legumes, nightshades, and processed foods. And for phase one, because you’re eliminating these foods that are most responsible for digestive and other chronic health issues, this allows your body to heal, calm the inflammation, and actually get better. And it’s called the FreeDiet™- that’s what I followed and what I put this patient on.

Functional and Free Program

So after doing all this testing and putting her through our treatment plan, which has since evolved- I call our Functional and Free program because it really is designed to discover your underlying root causes and provide long-term permanent solutions. Over time following this, it was an involved process because, in addition to the food reactions, we had deficiencies, pathogens- yeast, multiple parasites, bacterial overgrowth- and heavy metals. Over time, she started to get better. and her symptoms were subsiding. At one point, she had constipation so badly that she did not have a bowel movement for two weeks- like none, zero for two weeks. Like, where is this stuff going?

And then, I was doing different things with her and it was helping a lot, but her endocrinologist refused to give her anything but Synthroid. So I said to ask her again to get her on a thyroid hormone which is natural T4 with T3 because a lot of people can’t convert and that can cause a lot of symptoms like constipation, etc. So she finally did, and that was it. As far as constipation goes, that cleared up. She goes every day, which is so important.

If you need medication, then get on the right one. Speaking of deficiencies, in her case, the T3 was still really low. So after all of this began to die, the supplements, you know, go to our seven-stuff process. You know, the antibody started to come down. In about 2 years, they came down almost 1000 points to 4400.

Getting to Normal

And then we started putting everything together, and in the next two years’ time after doing all of this, it went from 4400 to 114. You know, from over 4000 to around 100- so normal levels in two years. It was amazing to see that transformation, and she was feeling great. Her thyroid hormone deficiency symptoms had cleared up. All her labs along with her symptoms- stinging, all that stuff, aches, and pains. The cholesterol went down to normal. All of our issues had cleared up, and it’s just so encouraging.

Even in a very severe case like this or whatever is going on with you, in most cases, you can get better. It’s just a matter of really committing, getting in there, and finding out, what’s causing this. Get to the root cause of your symptoms, such as brain fog, and then be provided with some long-term, permanent solutions so that you can get better.

So I wanted to share that story with you today, and thanks so much for joining me. If you would like a copy of the Free Diet, just click on the link. If you know anyone that would benefit from this, or anyone looking for a Hashimoto’s specialist near them, feel free to share it again. I appreciate you spending time with me today, and we will see you next time.

How to Shrink Thyroid Nodules II [Video]

April 16, 2018 Dr. Tom Rofrano

Hi everyone, my name is Dr. Tom Rofrano from the Natural Medicine Clinic in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida and today I’m going to be talking to you about how to shrink thyroid nodules in two weeks. And this is a follow up to an earlier video I did a couple of months ago on a patient, a very important patient, a VIP, who I saw, who happened to be my wife.

She woke up one morning with this huge nodule in her neck, she could see it in the mirror and it wasn’t there the day before. So, she was really understandably upset about this. You can refer to this video, it’s definitely a great story. If you go to our YouTube channel in early December 2017 you’ll see it so, we talked about it at length. And I wanted to do a follow-up video because we’ve gotten so many questions, so many emails, so many comments on our YouTube. So, we just don’t have the time to answer them all individually, so I thought I would do this video to answer some of the common questions and then clarify some things.

Thyroid Conditions

Over the last 30 years – more than 30 years now I’ve been practicing, and I’ve seen over 100,000 patients. One of the most common things patients come in with is thyroid conditions. Mostly, hypothyroid, Hashimoto’s and thyroid nodules are very common. So, there’s a specific protocol that we use, I built a 7-step protocol called Functional & Free™ where we determine the underlying root cause of someone’s health condition and then provide long-term permanent solutions. And part of this, one part of this is process is a proprietary diet I call The FreeDiet™.

Health Conditions and The FreeDiet

The FreeDiet™ is a diet that is free of the most common allergens, things that are most responsible for inflammation, pain, digestive and other chronic health conditions. So, we went over that in the earlier video and I’ll recap that today and then clarify some things that a lot of people had questions about. You have to understand there are some basic underlying causes for things like thyroid nodules and really almost all chronic health conditions. So it comes down to physical, chemical and mental stress.

As far as the chemical stress component, which we’re going to focus on today, that would be things like nutritional deficiencies, or toxins or pathogens; bacteria, viruses, parasites, and yeast. And I have to tell you almost all of my female patients that come in, and some male patients, have a chronic yeast overgrowth and this can really wreak havoc on your immune system and your entire body.

Phase I of The FreeDiet™

So, basically as far as some of the common questions people had, so first to give you a recap of Phase I of The FreeDiet™, which we’ll put a link here that you can go on and download a complimentary copy of that. So Phase I is the most important part because that’s where you’re eliminating those foods most commonly responsible for inflammation and a lot of these… inflammation is the underlying cause of say, thyroid nodules and lots of other health issues. If you’re in Phase I, the diet is free of not just gluten, but it’s free of gluten, grains, sugar, yeast, dairy, eggs, soy, legumes, nightshades , and processed foods. Basically 10 classes of foods it’s free of, and people will say well what can I eat? Just to summarize it and one of the common questions is, where do I start?

Where do you start is it’s very simple, lunch and dinner are very easy, it’s just protein with plenty of vegetables, salad, plenty of healthy fats; olive oil, and avocados. And breakfast is even easier, we usually recommend a smoothie for breakfast because the Phase I is free of gluten, grains, eggs is one of them. So you’re not really able to eat these breakfast foods, and a smoothie is a great option. We have a specific recipe. And if you refer to another video I have on our YouTube channel it’s my three-minute super smoothie recipe. It’s not the smoothie that’s high-end protein, essential fats, fiber and fruits & vegetables that are a great way to really start your day. Very nourishing, very cleansing.

Phase II and Phase III

So that’s basically Phase I, you know a two-minute summary and the sheet outlines the hundreds of different things you’re allowed and foods to avoid. And then a common question is what about Phase II & III? And how long do you stay in Phase I is another. I received an email from someone in Phase I and she already noticed 50% reduction in her thyroid nodule. So what about Phase II & III? If you’re getting great results and you’re seeing improvement, I would say that you want to stay in Phase I until that time where you’re at a point where a lot of chronic health issues are cleared up. And then with Donna, what we did was an ultrasound initially and her nodule was over 2 cms. And then she noticed within two weeks that it wasn’t visible at all anymore. This is two-weeks of being on The FreeDiet™. And then at 7 weeks, she was still in Phase I, we referred her out for another ultrasound and learned that it shrunk by over 50%. So it went from 2.1cm to 1cm, and that was in 7 weeks. And the other nodules she had all shrunk dramatically as well.

Staying in Phase I

So, basically you want to, if it’s working really well for you, you want to stay in Phase I. And it’s important to know you should deal with a doctor, you should follow-up, you should have lab works, ultrasounds. If you’re local and you want my help with it, feel free to reach out. We even have patients in other parts of the country, or even out of the United States that we do phone and Skype consultations with. But anyway, you definitely need to be under a doctor’s care for this and preferably someone who isn’t medicine minded. There’s functional medicine, nutrition, so they can kind of help you in these areas.

Adding Foods Back

Getting to Phase II, that’s when you start adding foods back one at a time every few days to see if you have any reactions. And we start with the foods that are least problematic. I’ll give you an example like there are different categories of proteins, vegetables. And what you’ll see in The FreeDiet™ is the different categories. So, for instance just to give you an example in Phase II, we bring back eggs, and you see if there’s a reaction. Some people might have no reaction whatsoever and others, it’s typically it’s their sinuses, digestive issues, brain fog, fatigue, sometimes itchy skin.

That’s all listed in Phase II as well, so those are common reactions that you would get. And then there’s a number of other foods we add back one at a time in the second Phase. And this way you can figure out, see what foods might be causing inflammation and your health issues and which aren’t. That takes typically about a month to get through every three days.

Adding More Challenging and Problematic Foods

So at the end of that period, you have a whole lot of other foods you can eat. And then with Phase III, we go to the more challenging things, the more problematic foods. Like, if you’re so inclined you can bring back in grains, say like rice, for instance, quinoa and other types of grains. And the last one – the most problematic – the last you’d bring back would be things like gluten, glutenous strains.

But most people, almost everyone that we deal with, most of our patients can’t handle gluten at all. We do a lot of testing and they’re sensitive to gluten still. I don’t really recommend that for almost everybody. I really just don’t recommend that at all, unless someone is the exception and it’s certainly possible.

Supplements

But anyway, that’s the basic rundown and we will be getting a complete resource on how to go through this very easily, Phase I, II & III, we’re getting our resources together. We’re getting a book going and we’ll have a group coaching program going to help you along the way. But to some other questions, people ask about supplements as well.

So that really depends on testing as well, the basic guidelines and the basic foundation is we have our Natural Medicine Formulas line of supplements that are free of all the common allergens and are pharmaceutical grade. So, the basic foundation is multivitamin, fish oil, magnesium, vitamin D, and probiotics. Then we have extra ones depending on your needs. Some might have adrenal issues. A lot of women are low on iron, B12, and need adrenal support. These are all extra things beyond the basics, and then iodine is a big part of the question, do you take it or not?

What About Iodine?

So, iodine is one of those things that can be really problematic. Taking iodine if you have knowledge of thyroid issues, can be really helpful. So how do you know? Well, there’s a specific iodine urine test, it’s a 24-hour urine test that can be done with a challenge. We usually do it before and after an iodine low. Now that’s what I find is the most accurate way to determine and with Dawn for instance, she was very low on iodine and supplemented her with rather high doses of iodine.

And in her case she needed it, and as you can see after 7 weeks her nodules shrunk by over 50% so obviously, it certainly wasn’t hurting like everywhere. You know, all these places you read online and it’s like ‘iodine is the devil if you have thyroid issues.’ Well, it’s not necessarily the case. Don’t just go on a ride and buy iodine because you’re assuming you need it. You should really be specific, that’s why I suggest that you be under a doctor’s care for this.

Fluctuation

So, one woman was asking, she’s hyperthyroid and has nodules and she’s taking this medication and now she’s becoming low thyroid and her doctors aren’t really doing anything about it. An answer to that, you really want to, again, be under the guidance of your doctors. The ones you work with should be really open and receptive to your needs. And really, seek out someone who’s more, there’s more focused on functional medicine that can really help you, guide you in that way.

What About Rice?

One last thing, a woman from the Philippines was asking ‘Rice is our mainstay but it’s not on The FreeDiet™. What are we going to do, is there a substitution? Well, and rice, the reason we avoid that, well grains can be pro-inflammatory, rice, in particular, is very high in arsenic. Most all rice that they found very high in arsenic, so that’s very toxic. That’s why you need to avoid that. One option is cauliflower rice, it’s widely available in the U.S, I’m not sure about other countries but, it tastes like rice and it’s made from cauliflower.

So that covered some of the questions and if you have any others just feel free to comment below. And typically on Fridays, we have Facebook live, you can like us there, I just want to get noticed when we’re on the Facebook live, and we’ll get to ask questions. Also, if you like this video, click like or a thumbs up below. Share it with someone you know who you think may benefit from it. Feel free to download The FreeDiet™ and we definitely look forward to seeing you next time, thanks very much for joining me today.

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