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.