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

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.