Currently Viewing Posts Tagged hyperthyroidism

Natural Treatment for Autoimmune Hyperthyroid- Graves’ Disease

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:

  1. Physical
  2. Chemical
  3. 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.

3 Reasons You Feel Terrible Even If Your Thyroid Tests Are Normal [Video]

thyroid tests normal

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 why gluten-free diets don’t work.

Many Patients Experience the Symptoms

Today, I’m going to talk to you about three reasons you feel terrible even if your thyroid tests are normal. For three decades, I’ve practiced functional medicine, chiropractic, and nutrition in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. One of the more common things I see in patients is thyroid conditions, hypothyroidism typically, which is most commonly caused by Hashimoto’s. And one of the things patients repeatedly come in and say is that they had a thyroid test done and their doctor said everything was fine.

Some Common Thyroid Symptoms

Let’s review some of the symptoms of thyroid dysfunction; which is very common in the United States as over 20 million Americans have it. (That’s more than 12% of the population). Some of the common brain symptoms of thyroid conditions include poor memory and concentration, brain fog, depression, anxiety, and moodiness. Then you have the full-body symptoms like fatigue, exhaustion, difficulty getting up in the morning, aches and pains. Constipation is a very common symptom of low thyroid function, as well as hair loss, difficulty losing weight, infertility, and miscarriages.

Another common symptom of low thyroid function is high cholesterol. A lot of times your doctor will test high cholesterol and want to throw you on statins automatically. Well, that can also be caused by low thyroid function, but I’ll tell you a story about that later.

And then there’s nerve compression. Carpal tunnel syndrome is a symptom of hypothyroidism which is something that I dealt with some years ago; to the point I was unable to treat patients for a while.

All told, thyroid issues can present many, many different symptoms. If it goes untreated, low thyroid can even lead to heart disease and heart failure. Every square inch of your body, every gland, every function of your body is affected by low thyroid function: Cold hands and feet, dry skin… just on and on.

The Wrong Test and Still Feel Terrible

The number one reason why you can still feel terrible after your thyroid tests come back normal is that your doctor ordered the wrong test. Typically, doctors will order a TSH and possibly a T4. TSH (Thyroid Stimulating Hormone) is actually a pituitary hormone, not a thyroid hormone, but they use that to tell how your thyroids look. But in actuality, it just presents a very incomplete picture. You can have a completely normal TSH and T4 and still have a thyroid issue.

When patients come to me, I order a full round of the thyroid test. This includes TSH, Free T4, Free T3, Thyroglobulin antibodies, and TPO antibodies. That the only definitive way to diagnose Hashimoto’s, which is an autoimmune condition that causes the immune system to go haywire and attack your thyroid. Those two antibodies are crucial for that, and I’ll often do a reverse T3 as well. So those six tests are crucial for determining what’s going on with your thyroid. If you’re not doing those, you can oftentimes miss the real issues.

My Condition

Looking back at my own condition years ago, I had an elevated TSH, and for over 20 years doctors wanted me to go on centaury but I didn’t want to. I took some thyroid glandular and some other things and was okay. About 12 years ago, when I started developing more symptoms, including carpal tunnel syndrome, triple neuropathy, and almost everything I listed above.

I started looking further and I ran tests on myself and determined it was Hashimoto’s after running the antibody test. I probably had it all that time and was being untreated, that’s why getting the right tests is so important. Once you do, then there’s a way to treat it and get better. Even with my case, after finding out exactly what was going on, and as far as tests, I don’t suggest just doing thyroid. Just those six thyroid tests are not enough.

Complete Health Screen

Patients need a complete health screen, with a female or male panel, to assess what else is going on. In my case, I had 12 deficiencies including vitamin D and magnesium. Those are the main ones but I also had digestive issues which in fairness may have been caused by the fact I had parasites, yeast overgrowth, and heavy metal toxicity.

If you have pathogens, toxins, and nutritional deficiencies; all those can affect your autoimmune condition thyroid. And then, we just took the steps to get all those cleared up including taking proper supplements and a diet which I now call the FreeDiet. This diet is free of the most common food allergens like gluten, grains, sugar, yeast, sweet corn, soy, dairy, legumes, GMOs, you know. After you eliminate a lot of the food reactions, you find certain supplements to replace deficiencies and focus on specific things to clean up like detoxing heavy metals.

A Second Reason to Feel Terrible with Normal Test Results

Another reason why you can still feel terrible even if your tests are normal is interpreting the test wrong. Even if your doctor orders these six tests, (you actually can get them to order these), they may often be interpreting them wrong. A lot of normal TSH might be .4 to .5 and they’re not optimal ranges, so ultimately you want to be like .3 or .25.

You can still have a lot of symptoms when your TSH is at .3, .35 and .4. A lot of doctors won’t treat thyroid issues if your TSH is less than 10, you know, even the American Thyroid Association guidelines don’t recommend treating the thyroid unless your TSH is over 10. That means a lot of people are walking around just feeling completely miserable and there’s no reason for that. You just have to interpret the tests properly and then the Free T3, Free T4 for instance, it’s best to be in the mid-range or above. If you’re at the very low end of the range but the doctor interprets that as fine, that’s actually another reason why you can still feel terrible.

My Wife’s Story

About 14 years ago, my wife Dawn had issues and was suffering from infertility. We tried to get pregnant for six years without success. All the doctors and specialists she went to said everything was fine. Finally, she let me be her doctor. I ran a complete blood work including the complete thyroid test I just mentioned. And it looked fine, everything was in range, but her T3 was really below optimal, and T3 is the active form of the thyroid.

Again, infertility is a common symptom of low thyroid function. So we got her T3 balanced out with some glandular supplements and what I now call the soda-free diet along with our seven-step functional and free treatment plan. After the first month, she said, “See? It didn’t work.” But I assured her it takes a little time, and by the second or third month, she was pregnant. Yeah, it was great and if you check our YouTube channel, Dr. Tom Rofrano, there’s a separate video on how we did that. But anyway, interpreting the test properly is crucial to getting your thyroid fixed.

A Third Reason You Feel Terrible

And the number three reason you can still feel terrible after thyroid tests are normal is the wrong treatment. Even if your doctor does the first two things right, they’ll want to typically put you on synthroid or a generic synthetic chromosome. Synthroid is only T4, synthetic T4, and what I found and holistic doctors find, is that most of their patients invest in natural desiccated thyroid like Armour, WP Thyroid, and Nature-throid because it has natural T4 along with T3, T1 and T2, and other enzymes and cofactors. Typically, patients are much better on that as opposed to the synthetic T4.

A Case Story

Recently, I had a woman 62-year old woman come in who was just feeling terrible aches and pains, fatigue, exhaustion, bloating, and there’s high blood pressure. I mean, she was just feeling miserable, and she couldn’t lose weight no matter what she did. I did an evaluation, step one of our functional entry programs which included the proper blood testing, but with no analysis, and put her on the FreeDiet, our natural medicine formula, and a treatment plan Within four weeks, her blood pressure dropped 30 points to normal. Her cholesterol dropped 40 points to normal, but that didn’t mean it was not thyroid-related. Her vitamin D came up 50 points to normal, there’d been four weeks and her TSH was 8.3. Now, she was on natural desiccated thyroid already from a naturopath but her TSH was 8.3, even on medication.

With the program I put her on, I didn’t change her medication, yet her TSH came down to one point one. Her absorption was actually gut issues that cleared up with the FreeDiet and the supplement so she was able to absorb the medication a lot better. And besides that, in the first six weeks, she lost 12 pounds and she was thrilled, saying she felt the best she had in years.

That’s what can happen when you get those three things under control, order the right tests, interpret the data properly, and do the right treatment. It’s just an example of how, no matter what’s going on with you, you absolutely can get better if you discover the root cause and get the right treatment.

Thanks for reading, I really appreciate it, and if you like us, subscribe to our YouTube channel. And if you’d like a copy of the FreeDiet, just click the link.

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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.

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