Reset Your Thyroid For Optimal Health

Alan Christianson, NMD

I’m happy to be here. It’s super cool doing the summit. I’m glad to be a part of this, and yes, I’m excited to talk with you.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Awesome. Let’s get into it. What are some new things that you’re finding about thyroid disease and how could this be impacting our overall health and fertility?

Alan Christianson, NMD

Well, it’s more common than we thought, and the prevalence and rates have been on the increase. Thyroid disease, which takes a step back, we’re thinking about a couple of different facets of it. We’ve got this little gland; that regulates other hormones. That’s one big fertility tie-in and also controls how well we make energy, how well we can burn weight, and repair our skin, hair, and nails. There can be problems with it. It can make too much or too little hormone, or it can be attacked by the immune system. All these things can affect your health and have big consequences for fertility.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Yes. Let’s get into those things: hypo, hyper, and autoimmune. Those are the three things that you just laid out for us. What do they mean? I think there’s a lot of confusion, as hypo means that TSH went up. I can imagine that it’s so confusing for so many people. Let’s just break that down.

Alan Christianson, NMD

Listeners, if you get one thing from Michael Talk, this is it. The autoimmune side of thyroid disease can hurt your fertility, regardless of anything else. You can have perfectly healthy thyroid function, but if you’ve got thyroid autoimmunity, that can shut down your fertility efforts. That’s the big takeaway, and that’s the most common early finding. This can go on for a decade before there’s any other problem at all.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Yes. The autoimmune component of the immune system is overly activated and is attacking our thyroid gland.

Alan Christianson, NMD

Yes, that’s a weird thing. We’ve now come to realize that autoimmunity is a normal, healthy mechanism to some degree and in some circumstances. Each part of our body is a collection of different cells. The thyroid cells are different from the liver cells and heart cells, and each cell isn’t around all that long. several months, and it dies. New ones that are fresh and ready to take their place. Now, clearing out the old cells is done by many different mechanisms, but one of them is autoimmunity. The immune system targets old cells and kills them, making them go away. That’s great. But it can get out of control, and the body can attack cells that shouldn’t be attacked, that are healthy, and that should be sticking around ones that we need. If that’s too bad, it can damage so many cells that it can make the gland not work properly.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Yes. That sounds a little bit problematic if our cells are not working properly. Am I understanding this correctly? If the immune system is clearing out these dead cells, if they don’t get cleared out, then what happens?

Alan Christianson, NMD

Well, if you couldn’t destroy the old cells, you wouldn’t have the capacity to build new ones. Now that you use some of the same building blocks in the same location, thyroid cells form little nurseries called follicles, and they make the active hormone. If all of the dead cells remain behind, the follicles can’t function properly as a unit. Also, if they didn’t get replaced, eventually you would just have all the dead cells. You would have this atrophy of the gland. It’s a necessary response, but around a quarter or a third of the population can have some degree of measurable thyroid autoimmunity. It’s not always relevant, but if it is relevant, it can be a big driver for many facets of health, even without there being other versions of thyroid disease.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Yes. We see that many antibodies to the thyroid will show up on lab tests in people who have a completely, quote, unquote, normal lab as far as TSH T3 T4.

Alan Christianson, NMD

Yes, definitely. That’s a weird thing, but how that autoimmunity can affect health has a lot of things to do with the body besides just the thyroid. Part of it is that there are ways in which these same antibodies affect other parts of your body. The other thing is that the underlying problems that give rise to these antibodies affect your health in other ways. Both of those statements are correct. We know that when someone has thyroid autoimmunity, they’re at greater risk for infertility. If they do get pregnant, they’ve got a greater risk of autism among their children. We also know that heart disease is more prevalent, more problematic, and has greater risks for certain cancers. A long list of common symptoms can show up.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

With autoimmunity, let’s talk first about the impact of fertility. In what way is the autoimmune thyroid condition affecting what’s happening, maybe at the ovaries or the uterus level, that is going to play a role in whether or not someone gets pregnant, stays pregnant, or has a healthy baby?

Alan Christianson, NMD

Well, yes, that’s how it happens. If it happens and there are theories about what goes on at a molecular level, we think it may involve activity, antibodies, the whole implantation process, the uterine lining, and receptivity. That’s not definitive. But we do know from so many big studies that if you look at groups of women that have elevated thyroid antibodies, the risks of early miscarriage or inability to conceive are just much higher than those who don’t have that.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Yes. Is it I what? I don’t want to say normal, but is it important? That’s a better phrase. It is important for anyone who is trying to get pregnant to have these tests as a preliminary baseline, even if they were told that it’s normal.

Alan Christianson, NMD

 It’s a cool thing that there are so many facets to health that often don’t get looked at, and that’s why doctors themselves have a place where those who have already tried things can have very real problems that many of the doctors haven’t thought of. This is one of many things that you cover and that you’ll talk about at this conference. But yes, this is one topic in which someone can seem perfectly healthy, but it’s a real problem, and it can shut down fertility.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

What are some of the underlying things that happen when people have thyroid disease or autoimmune thyroid disease? What’s going on under the surface?

Alan Christianson, NMD

Yes. thyroid disease. I talked about the autoimmune side. That’s the inflammatory response. Then there’s how much hormone is being made, and there could be too little or too much. The amount of thyroid hormone we need is just, exactly. I did some math one time. If you think about an Olympic-sized pool and you were to drop a teaspoon of vanilla extract in an Olympic-sized pool, that’s about the concentration of thyroid hormones in the human bloodstream. Now, if you had half a teaspoon or a tablespoon, that could be lethal in the Olympic pool.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Yes. 

Alan Christianson, NMD

It’s super well controlled, and there are many, many ways to regulate it. Therefore, there are a lot of opportunities that can go wrong. Ultimately, this is a genetic disease, so it’s something that can show up in families. A brief aside, genetics doesn’t always mean your family has it. Half of our genes come from our parents. The other half is random. Things can be genetic, even if they’re not present among their family members. But that’s largely a genetic disease. But it impacts genes that regulate iodine metabolism. Our thyroid needs a certain amount of it to be healthy—not too little, not too much. We never get the exact amount. We have ways to buffer that, to hold on to it if we’re not getting a lot, or to get rid of it if we’re getting too little. Some people don’t buffer as well as others. That’s mostly based on these genetic differences. If they can’t keep that number right, it gets out. That’s the biggest single-controllable driver.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Okay. Iodine is one of the main drivers, which is what I’m hearing.

Alan Christianson, NMD

Yes. Genetics, which encompasses gender and gender, go together and then age. These are things that are big known factors: the longer we live, the more likely this is to happen. But they’re not controllable factors. They’re not things we can turn, flip, or turn the switch the other way again. But I don’t think it’s cool because it’s a well-known driver, but it’s also a controllable factor. We can flip the switch back, and that can be useful. 

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Okay. I love that. In your opinion, is it possible to reverse thyroid disease, or do we have it?

Alan Christianson, NMD

On most forms of it? For most people, the clear evidence is, yes, that the vast majority, if they can get into a certain window of iodine, let things heal. Most can see it radically improved, and many can see it completely reversed. This is talking about the autoimmune side of the disease, which generally precedes the change in function. For many, it also talks about the gland functioning normally again.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

How do we know if we’re in the right range of iodine?

Alan Christianson, NMD

Well, if you’re getting thyroid disease, you’re probably not. This is a tricky thing. If we were in a perfectly logical, simple world, you could just measure it out, and it’s not a matter of how much you can consume as compared to everyone else. It’s how your body responds to what you’re consuming. Yes, some amounts could be too high or too low for anyone; but that’s not as common. It’s more common that people have individual intolerances to where they’re getting amounts that are not that unusual, but they don’t tolerate it. The strongest signs of that are the development of autoimmune thyroid disease and its consequences. If someone does have that, that’s a reasonable thing to suppose.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Interesting. In what you’ve found and how you’ve worked with thousands of people, your experience is that when people have autoimmune conditions, it’s their body saying that they’re not tolerating the iodine that they’re consuming in whatever way. I know we’re going to get into which ways we’re consuming.

Alan Christianson, NMD

I’m sure in the context of the modern world and adults and autoimmune thyroid disease. That’s almost always the case. The antibodies we think about are two things. There are thyroid peroxidase antibodies against that. That’s an enzyme. That enzyme is oxidizing iodine. It’s activating inactive iodide into more active iodine. When it does that, that active iodine attaches to a carrier protein called thyroid globulin. When that gets too full of iodine, it creates free radical damage. We then attack it. The other main antibody is anti-thyroid globulin. These are the main elements of iodine metabolism. If we have too many items, a big source of free radicals, hydrogen peroxide, and bleach, it’s a sanitizer. That’s why it kills things on contact. But too much is in the wrong places. It also creates oxidative stress there and initiates the immune response.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

That makes a lot of sense. Iodine is then a big factor. What about. I’ve heard this theory: other than halide, bromide, or fluoride, all the ide that can displace iodine off of these molecules are compounds that are taking the plates and making these hormones nonfunctional. What’s your sense of that, and how much of that does it play, how much of a role, or how much of a concern is this for people who are struggling with thyroid disease?

Alan Christianson, NMD

Yes. There’s a mechanistic idea about what you just illustrated, and there’s a point where anything can become toxic. Too much of anything is a bad thing. But I guess the question is: how common is this in the everyday world and in the routine amounts of exposure to these compounds? How often is that a driver of thyroid disease? Fluoride first, we have fluoride added to municipal water in many areas. We have that in dental-type products. In the distant past, we didn’t have medications to slow the thyroid when it was overactive. Historically, high-dose fluoride has been used to slow the thyroid, and high amounts of it can do that. That’s somewhere above 30 to 50 milligrams per day. 

We’ve seen big data sets in populations that have fluoridated municipal water compared to those that don’t. In that context, the amounts there don’t correlate with changes in thyroid disease. There are some areas rarely where the naturally occurring water supply geologically has massive amounts of fluoride, much higher than what is added to water and much higher than what is naturally occurring in foods, which subtly causes a measurable increase in thyroid disease. We know that fluoride occurs in tons of natural foods. It’s in dental care, toothpaste, and whatnot. Barring eating about a tube of toothpaste per day, the amounts exposed aren’t enough to be a big factor.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Other not even over time though.

Alan Christianson, NMD

No chlorine. The chlorine gas is toxic when we’re void, which is otherwise not a big known factor. We know that it can also be an irritant to the lungs, not a noticeable driver of thyroid disease. Bromides, there’s an amount that’s high enough to be a problem, but that’s also fluoride above the typical range. Yes, they can be toxic, and the FDA is considering banning brominated vegetable oils from foods we still have. That is a flavor enhancer in a few types of soft drinks. But there was a study done in which bromide in ranges above what’s found in foods was given in supplemental forms to those with thyroid disease that was closely tracked. They did varying dosages up to 10 milligrams per day, and the highest doses had no adverse effects on thyroid antibodies. Thyroid scores. This is a funny thing, but we now know that bromine is an essential mineral. It’s been recently recategorized. Our body requires it for certain functions. Yes, these are things that are in our environment. Whopping amounts can be bad, but they’re just not common drivers of thyroid disease in the amounts we’re used to being exposed to.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Well, bromine is an

Alan Christianson, NMD

An essential element.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Essential element. I am still processing that.

Alan Christianson, NMD

That’s the basement membrane metabolism our bodies require. It is so common in food supplies that deficiencies do not occur. But we now know that the bodies require it.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

That’s fascinating. I always learn something, especially when I talk to you. I love that. In terms of iodine, since we talked about all the other possibilities, it sounds like iodine in the right dose is good. Medicine in the wrong dose is not so good. How do we determine this? I think you said that different people may have different responses if you’ve got some level of thyroid disease or dysfunction. The level of iodine that you’re getting is probably not good for your body. Is that correct?

Alan Christianson, NMD

Yes. The thing with it too is that it’s in all foods; we can’t get none. In rare cases too, where populations have a very limited food supply, they have one or two foods from which almost all their calories come, and those foods are only grown in the same soils that are lacking in iodine. Those are cases that did set the stage for iodine deficiency. Those who have been there are now no nations on earth that are categorized as severely iodine deficient. We have a handful categorized as moderately deficient, but those cases have lower rates of adult thyroid disease. They have higher rates of some versions of pediatric goiter. But even there, there’s a lower rate of adult thyroid disease. Yes, so too little is not a big concern for people. We’ve had seven documented cases of deficiency in the United States since 1980. very rare and unusual. With thyroid disease, the main thing is that the main risk is just too much. The trick is to eat a lot of healthy foods that are good and have a low amount of iodine but avoid the ones that have extremely high amounts.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

What are the sources of the high or excess amounts of iodine?

Alan Christianson, NMD

It’s interesting. Two categories have changed the most in the last several decades, and that’s processed grains and dairy foods. things that don’t have it naturally occurring but have it added in throughout the whole food manufacturing process. The amount of those foods has roughly doubled or tripled in the last several decades. Those are foods people eat more of now, too. for a couple of reasons; they’re the thing that pushes it up over there the most. When someone’s out to reverse thyroid disease, they want to get to a lower, narrower window. When someone is simply seeking to prevent it, they’ve got a broader leeway. When someone wants to reverse it, they want to think about avoiding processed grains and dairy foods during that reversal process. Other sources that can have moderate amounts that can be problematic during that stage would include egg yolks, some types of ocean-based seafood, seaweed, and salt that has added or naturally occurring iodine. Those are the prime sources.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

In terms of general health, the ones to be careful with—I didn’t hear you say avoid particularly—but to be careful with are processed grains and dairy.

Alan Christianson, NMD

Yes. During a time of trying to reverse thyroid disease, you want to avoid those. If your thyroid function is stable or you’ve reversed it before, then you’ve got a tolerance of about a serving or two per day of moderate iodine foods.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

This may seem a very basic question but in my mind, how do I know if my grains have iodine now?

Alan Christianson, NMD

Grains; to be precise, if you’re buying a bag of brown rice, they don’t; we’re talking a bag of flour. You can cook it at home. It doesn’t. But things you buy pre-made at the store. That’s a good question. Some people will say, This has an iodide conditioner that’s somewhere on the ingredient list. Some of the researchers who look at this topic have bought products that you arrive at the store and then categorized them by those that are labeled with iodide conditioners and those that are not. It’s not a predictor of their iodine status. It’s something I’ve come to realize: we think about reading ingredient lists. How do we process foods? Everything there is not on the ingredient list. that’s not a secret anymore. A lot of things are not even listed. that this is one of them.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

That’s it. I mean, it’s a little concerning when it comes to our food if it’s not on the label.

Alan Christianson, NMD

Super brief aside for a while, a long time ago, my dad worked in a plant that received grain processed it out, and made it into flour. It was a large mill on the very border between Minnesota and Canada, and the people that work there. This was back in the 70s. They weren’t granola people who were fussy about what they ate. They wouldn’t eat commercial bread products. They knew the number of chemicals and toxic compounds that they exposed grains to as they were being made into flour that never made it onto labeling. There are a lot of reasons to avoid processed food; even some of the labels are enough. But there are more pieces of that.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Yes. It sounds like even in the processing process, there are things that are being added in that don’t even have to get on the label because they’re part of the processing.

Alan Christianson, NMD

Grains are soaked in formaldehyde before they get into flour.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

What?

Alan Christianson, NMD

Yes.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

I did not know that. 

Alan Christianson, NMD

That’s not even part of the baking process. It’s not on the label.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Yes. Essentially, if we’re trying to stay away from these, then we need to buy the whole-grain form of whatever it is. If you want rice or brown rice, buy brown rice and turn it into flour yourself.

Alan Christianson, NMD

Honestly. I love whole grains over processed grains for 25 other reasons or more. But in this case, I mean, even if you’re buying flour products, that’s different. The flour used in commercial baking is not the same as the flour used in home baking. There’s a big difference that way.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Okay. So many things. I had a feeling that you were going to say seaweed, which was on your list of high-iodine foods. If during that phase you’re trying to heal and come back from thyroid disease, I’m curious if there are parts of the world that eat lots of seaweed as part of their culture. Is there any difference from other parts of the world where we’re not used to it or we’re not meant to be eating so much of these products?

Alan Christianson, NMD

Yes. They have higher rates of thyroid disease and thyroid cancer. There’s a strong correlation there. 

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Okay. So they do.

Alan Christianson, NMD

Hashimoto’s disease was discovered by a Japanese doctor. 

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Okay. Fair enough. I just don’t, and that’s very interesting because it’s my own bias. I can see that now. But generally speaking, you don’t see a lot of hypothyroidism in the ethnic bodies of Japanese people. They’re generally petite and skinny, and their skin or balding is acute, but autoimmune looks very different than hypothyroidism.

Alan Christianson, NMD

Well, hypothyroidism doesn’t always mean we can do that. That’s very culturally correct.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Yes.

Alan Christianson, NMD

Yes. There are a lot of symptoms and risks that it causes. Same thing with thyroid cancer. They had the highest rates of thyroid cancer they have had for quite some time. But, yes, that weight gain is not always a variable.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Are there any tests that we could be doing for iodine? Because that’s always a question about testing.

Alan Christianson, NMD

We can be doing tests, but with a test, the question is what question tends to be answered. If the question to answer is, is this the cause of thyroid disease for me? There’s no good test for that because it’s not just a total amount in your body; it’s how your body responds to it. Now. The one useful time and useful way to test is if someone has gone low on iodine and they’ve failed to see a helpful response. In that case, there’s a therapeutic window. It’s not that you get to a certain point that causes disease; you’ve got to get to a certain level to have a chance of reversing the disease. If you’re still excreting a lot of iodine, you wouldn’t be in a place where a low-iodine diet might help you. If you’re already on a low-tide diet, you still have a high amount of iodine you’re excreting, either because you’ve not avoided all the obvious sources or because you need more time because there is so much in your system. After all, if someone’s not improving, that’s time. It can be useful.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

They’re urine tests of how much iodine you’re excreting. Even if you’ve limited your intake, if you’re still excreting, that means your body isn’t in the optimal range where healing is going to happen for your thyroid.

Alan Christianson, NMD

Yes. Blood levels of iodine mean nothing. I won’t spend a lot of time on that, but they just mean nothing. Skin levels mean nothing. Urinary levels can be skewed by how active your kidneys are at that moment. What is precise is the test called urinary iodine-to-creatinine ratio and the therapeutic window’s below 100 micrograms of iodine per gram of creatinine. If someone says something happened to my butt in the last three months, I’ve been doing this thyroid reset diet. I’ve not got any better tool. True. You check your urinary iodine-to-creatinine ratio. 

If you’re above 100, there are some sources you missed or your body needs more time, and some people who are taking iodine supplements or high amounts in their diet might need a fair amount of time. I just talked to someone last week who was consuming iodine supplements for some time, developed hyperthyroidism, and was hospitalized for it. Now we’re about, I think, three months after she stopped, she’s been on a high iodine diet, and her thyroid function is just about stable. She’s feeling fine, but her iodine output is still ten times above the target. Okay, cool. You’ve got to keep that. That’s, you’re not feeling better. That’s great. But your body has so much that it’s not yet rid of that backlog. That’s the context in which it’s helpful.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

It sounds like it could potentially take a long time to excrete the stores of iodine that the body creates.

Alan Christianson, NMD

Well, in most cases, when someone is responding badly to usual amounts, say they had a few hundred micrograms more than they tolerated. They can usually clear that in just a few weeks of being in a low range, but some people were exposed to amounts that were so high. This is a tragic thing. There’s iodine in supplements, and this can be a huge problem for those prone to thyroid disease. The amounts in supplements can commonly be thousands of times above what’s safe; no exaggeration. If they’re doing that daily for months on end, yes, they might need a year or more to clear everything up.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Yes. I think I’ve heard you say before that iodine is one of these things that is sometimes in supplements in higher quantities than even what’s on the label.

Alan Christianson, NMD

Yes, that’s a problem too. It’s a hard thing to keep stable chemically, and the amounts are never what they say labeled, sometimes quite a bit more. Even with that, some things are labeled, saying that just the label amount is already horrible.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

I’m curious: what is the optimal level of a supplement? Let’s say you take a multivitamin. What is an acceptable amount of iodine in a multivitamin? That is for a person who’s not dealing with thyroid disease.

Alan Christianson, NMD

Well, so here’s the thing. We think about average intake, and the average intake in America is about 180 micrograms per day. Now, averages can be very deceiving. You people could be quite a bit above or below that. We think about the requirements, and the range in which people who are genetically prone to thyroid disease are the least likely to get problems is between about 50 and 200 micrograms. If the average intake is about 180, most of the population at the upper end is about average. Now if you’re adding anything on top of that, you’re above that window. Having any supplements can be a problem for those prone to thyroid disease.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

The best way to predict it. Or at least be aware of it if one of my parents has thyroid disease or my aunt has thyroid disease. Is that enough to just put it on people’s radars of, Hey, this applies to you potentially?

Alan Christianson, NMD

Well, I guess they’re saying, You have a problem, and you might have a problem. I don’t have a family history of thyroid disease. I don’t have it. But I’m not going to push it. I don’t want to find out that, now I’ve got diabetes. Now I just, because that’s definitely what’s sure. I’d rather play it safe and not go outside.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

What is your range, and where do you think you feel comfortable having your iodine intake?

Alan Christianson, NMD

Well, it’s a tough thing to measure. But I avoid the high sources. In my thyroid research, I made it simple. I broke foods down into green light, yellow light, and red light. Green light foods are rarely going to be much above ten micrograms per serving, which is pretty safe for all people with unlimited amounts. Yellow light foods are 10 to 50 micrograms, and if someone’s stable enough, they can do fine on a serving or two of those things per day. Red light foods are often way above 50 micrograms, and for someone with thyroid disease, those could be a problem. I don’t eat those red-light foods often. I’ll do a couple of electrodes a day here and there most days, but I wouldn’t do a lot of them on a given day.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Okay, so you’re pretty diligent about staying on top of it, but that being said, I’m curious what you’re going to say about this. and it’s okay if you’re, I don’t know. The recommendation for pregnant women for iodine is 190 micrograms per day. Is this a good idea or a bad idea? If you were making your prenatal, would you put that level into a prenatal knowing that the general population believes that this is still true? In terms of not accommodating all the foods that already have iodide?

Alan Christianson, NMD

That’s the thing. The Cochrane Medical Review Board did a review in the last couple of years about the rule of 18 supplements in pregnancy. Conclusively, they stated that there’s no benefit to a mother’s health. There’s no benefit to a baby’s health in terms of general health or thyroid disease in either case. There is a higher rate of morning sickness, and there is a higher rate of elevated thyroid antibodies in mom, but there’s no net benefit.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Wow.

Alan Christianson, NMD

Yes, that’s been pretty conclusively stated.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

I’m going to have to look up the study. I’m curious because it’s not normal, but it’s super common for women to develop antibodies to their thyroid during pregnancy.

Alan Christianson, NMD

The more I don’t consume, the more of a risk there is for them.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Yes. Is that it’s the driver that’s causing all of these women to potentially have Hashimoto’s?

Alan Christianson, NMD

Or quite simply, I don’t need prenatal care, which is one of the factors behind that.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

That’s an interesting thing. It’s almost impossible to find an iodine-free prenatal; I don’t think it exists.

Alan Christianson, NMD

Yes. thyroid daily. I mean, it’s a multi that can also work as a prenatal, and that’s why there’s been a large study done about how much I don’t think pregnant women need, and they need more than non-pregnant women, but not all that much more. We now know that it’s also a narrow, sweet spot. Most nutrients are things that are just floating in your bloodstream in the amounts your body requires. However because iodine is present in such microscopic amounts, it requires special handling. You’ve got ways to pull it in and ways to block it out. Because of that, the window of tolerance is way narrower than for any other nutrient. Lots of pregnant women need a little more, but we now know that their window is not that much bigger. They still have to be cautious about getting too much.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

That’s incredible. It’s interesting. I know that nutrition science is evolving constantly, but I don’t think that it’s translated yet to the fertility and pregnancy worlds, where I feel it is relevant to think about. I think women are scared to not take iodine because of so much propaganda that has entrenched this belief that if we don’t take iodine, our child is going to have issues.

Alan Christianson, NMD

If you’re deficient, that’s true. But just there’s it in our diets. The question is, what if you’re using iodine access? That’s not a good thing either, right? The sweet spot as to where you’re getting a healthy diet with a good range of foods but not extra on top of that.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Yes. That’s awesome. I know you have some great tips on when and how to do testing appropriately for thyroid conditions. Can you share that? Because again, fertility is one of those things that I think is super important to dial in and make sure that people are testing appropriately.

Alan Christianson, NMD

The fertility world has a better job, I think, in many cases than other worlds about looking at optimal thyroid function; people are getting ranges to where they should be but have narrower targets. Sometimes it’s frustrating that levels aren’t as consistent from one test to the next. They can bounce up or down for reasons that don’t make sense. Yes, the timing is a big part of that. There are five things I’ve seen that disrupt your thyroid levels, only goof them up and make them less accurate, and are often not taken into account. A big one you asked about was just the timing of menstruation. There’s a window between somewhere around days, 10 to day 20, where the higher amount of thyroid-binding globulin can cause unusual thyroid levels.

You don’t want to test the middle portion of your period, your first 10 days, or your last week. those were great. But in the middle portion, it won’t be as accurate. If you’re testing, then it might be higher or lower than it is. That’s the first one. The next thing to think about is how they form supplements for about three days. We’ve got massive data sets showing that the supplements aren’t harming your body, but they change how your blood works based on chemical analysis. They change how your blood interacts with the chemical reagents. I can give you a few results. You want at least a three-day holiday there. The next one is fasting. if you eat a meal that changes your thyroid levels. Just because you’re looking at blood sugar and cholesterol, you want to get this done by fasting. 

Now with that, there is a circadian pattern to thyroid hormones, and we think about normal ranges being tied to our morning thyroid output. 6 to 9 in the morning—that’s when you want to measure. If you’re measuring later in the day, you get different sets of numbers. The last one is that if you’re on uncovered medication, you want to test before you’ve taken your pill for that day. If you test after your pill, you’ve partially absorbed it, but it’s impossible to predict to what extent you absorbed it. The baseline measurement of the products of the pill is at the 24-hour load level. The pills are not gone at 24 hours, but they’re at a stable level. You want to measure before you’ve taken that pill. One big reason that third levels are hard to keep stable is that people might test the first part of their cycle after a meal, and the next time they do it differently. You get different results. If you do those things consistently, the results will make a lot more sense from one meeting to the next.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for being with us today. Sharing so much of your pearls and your wisdom around thyroid health and some of the crucial pieces around how it relates to fertility and pregnancy. Yes, I very much appreciate you being here.

Alan Christianson, NMD

This is an important topic, and again, I’m glad to contribute. There are tons of good resources and people benefiting from this now.

Aumatma Simmons, ND, FABNE, MS

For those of you who are listening, thank you for being with us, and we’ll be back soon with more amazing content and training with our experts.