The Root Cause of Thyroid Problems Most Doctors Miss

Opening on Root Causes of Disease 0:00

One of two things cause the vast majority of most all disease, deficiency or toxicity. I'm taking the same amount of meds, but I have all the symptoms. Still not losing weight, I still am constipated, still depressed or still have anxiety. Things aren't shifting anymore. Never run a toxin panel on anybody that came back clean. Not one. Diabetic doesn't just stop creating hormone, it stops creating hormones when it doesn�t have the ingredients to create it. Are you checking for amino acid? Are they checking your tyrosine levels or iodine level?

What is causing your adrenals to not function? Two things, deficiency or toxicity. If you don't believe it, run the test. I'll bet you dollars of donuts that you're going to see the deficiency and you'll see some toxins. You have to take responsibility and do the research. All of us doctors should have go back to training to look at these diagrams. A medical doctor who's done zero research on how the thyroid actually works. They look and go, oh, your labs are normal. So they wrote you a prescription.

And this is where their eyes would get big. Hi, I'm Dr. Jess Petros, and on my podcast, Dr Justin Filtered, we uncover the real root cause of most misunderstood symptoms with help from top experts and real patients who heal themselves. Hey guys, welcome to the Dr. Jess Unfiltered podcast, and I think this may resonate with some of you guys today as far as your health goes. You know, everyone seems to be chasing hormones and detoxes and protocols, but is it really the thyroid or that endocrine gland you think all along anyways?

So today, to figure the answer out, we sat down with my good friend, my business partner, A little introduction to Von here. Dr. Von is actually a trained chiropractor by trade, but he has turned into a specialist as a functional medicine doctor, and he is going to answer all our questions about the thyroid, especially when it's concerning autoimmune conditions or predispositions. And he also is an author now. He wrote a book called Foundational Wellness. So we'll talk about that as well. Thanks for being here, Dr Von.

Excited to be here. Yes. Ready to go down the rabbit hole. Let's do it, right? This is the unfiltered podcast, so we have to keep it at that name, Right? So, you know, first question for you. You know really everyone here is being diagnosed with hypothyroidism. It's like an epidemic. Yeah. Kind of crazy. Oh, but are we blaming the thyroid when there's actually maybe a metabolism or deeper issue, maybe a mineral issue. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this because there's so much controversy with this one.

So this goes right back. Actually, I'm just going to bring the book into it right now. Let's do it. This brings the whole concept of foundational wellness, which my belief is that the vast majority of all disease, one of two things cause that. deficiency, you can't complete the pathway, or toxicity. There's something preventing that organ from doing its job, right? And so with the thyroid, if you look at it, it's like, well, what is the thyroid producing?

Podcast Introduction and Guest Background 2:51

It's producing T3 and T4. About 93% of what it produces is actually T4, so very little that it produced is T3. So you have to convert from T-4 to T 3 so that your body can use it. That's the active form. 60% percent of that happens in the liver, 20% in gut, and the other 20%, in other tissues, right? But the vast majority conversion happens is in liver. So if your liver is stuck or you've got liver flukes, parasites, or if you have toxicity from heavy metals or pesticides or whatever, that liver can't do its job well and it's not going to convert well.

But from there, you even have to back it up first. And the very first thing I ask is, Well, if you're minerally depleted or amino acid, right? Because what is T4 made of? Two tyrosines, which is amino acids, and then the four tells you how many iodine molecules. Four iodide molecules, so if if don't have enough tyroxine or iodines then you can't make the hormone no matter what. It doesn't matter, what your organs are doing. You have to have that mineral and that amino-acid in order to even make it.

And how people in the US are iodined-efficient? But they put that in table salt. And when I take iodine, my Hashimoto's goes crazy. This is what I hear. I don't know about you. Yeah. Well, and it can. Because what it does is you look at on immunity, Hashimoto's, the marker you're checking is that TPO antibody. And iodine does increase TPO. They're connected, right? It causes that Tpo interaction to start creating hormones. So you can create a thyroid or autoimmune reaction by taking iodide. But it doesn't mean that you can't take iodine if you have Hashimoto's.

You have to, one, make sure that your liver, gut, and your, you know, are really cleared out. And then secondly, what you do is you just microdose iodide and slowly move up. Instead of just going straight into taking 12 and a half milligrams. Because that can really kind of have the opposite effect. Kind of no different. I had the same conversation with a doc the other day, they called me and we're talking about a patient who has MTHFR actually taking one of our products that has methylated B's.

And you're like, yeah, I actually had like the opposite experience. Like I felt good like first couple of times they took it and then it was crashing me. Which, in my head, I always remember, oh my gosh, Jess and I had this same conversation just a couple months ago. And I'm like, well, if you take too much out of the gate, you can over-methylate and actually cause a problem. So I said, so with patients that have MTHFR, don't just go full dose. Like, start slow and then move up. It's no different with iodine.

If you're going to just straight into it, yeah, You can have that reaction. You have to start slowly and build up Okay, well that makes sense then. All right, so iodine isn't your enemy here, it's actually your friend. It's the ratios that matter is what I'm hearing. 100% your friends. I mean, because how did they used to treat, like when people would get, now we call it thyroid cancer, right? Yeah. When you get nodules. But you got the nodule because your thyroid's working over time, and so then it starts to grow.

And then you see those people with the goiters. Mm-hmm. Then how do they treat goiteers 100 years ago? They give iodide. because what's happening is the thyroid was trying to pump out hormone and it's not making enough hormone for that negative feedback loop to shut off.

Thyroid Basics and Why TSH Falls Short 6:12

So the thyroid never shuts off, and so it's just growing. It's like really pushing, pushing pushing. And a lot of those people that were having those goiters, because they didn't have the iodine, so they couldn't create enough hormone to ever shut that feedback off. So when they give iodide, suddenly their goiter starts to shrink and their thyroid would come down. Why is iodines so important for the thyroids, for those out there listening who don't understand iodides? Yeah, so like I said, when you think about your medication T3, T4, that's three iodine molecules, four iodide molecules.

Without iodines, you do not make thyroid hormone, period. Yeah. And it's also a detoxifier, right? And that the other thing, people don't understand. When you take iodides, even if you don' have like a thyroid issue, It does. It is a detoxer and you can have like almost flu-like symptoms if you take too much and You kind of feel crappy And so I always make sure like make you to take that with tyrosine and selenium and a couple other minerals Because it helps to mitigate any potential detox symptoms, but you will detox if he did guiding for sure Okay, good to know that it also helps like fiber cystic breasts and things like that, too, right?

Yeah, it depends on how much of a rabbit you want to go. I know women that completely 100% treated their breast cancer with just iodine. That's all they treated was with Lugol's iodide, and they did nothing else. and they did all the mammography, or not that, what's it called? The thermography. And they could literally see, in the thermograph, her fillings leaching into the breast tissue. Like you could see it from the teeth, like the amalgam fillins, you can see the lines going straight from her molars into her breast, which is kind of interesting.

But yeah, I know people, they use AIDA and use it for breast cancer. That's amazing. For sure. It definitely detoxes a lot of these nodules and cysts and things out of the body. You know, I have to ask you, or I'd be remiss without asking, what do you think about the modern conventional medications for thyroids? Like for the thyroid, do think that, you know T3, T4 is helpful? What about synthroid or some of those other medications? I like a medication as, um, to use, like I'm that anti-medication.

I am medication for like, hey, if we're trying to stabilize you while we are trying fix things, then yeah, we want to make sure you're stable. Yeah. But it doesn't, at the end of the day, why is your body not creating teeth? Your body does not just stop creating thyroid hormone. Let's just put it that way. Thyroid just doesn�t stop And you don't have to now go on that unless the only reason that happens is if your thyroid gets removed. Then you are going to have be on thyroid medication going forward.

But if you still have a thyroid, your that doesn't just stop creating hormone. It stops creating a hormone when it doesn' have the ingredients to create it. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. The building blocks. Yeah. What do you think about, can you name some like commonalities between some of the people and patients you see who get diagnosed with autoimmune thyroid conditions? Do they have like a common bucket of symptoms? Oh gosh, yeah. Or characteristics? Yeah and I'll say mostly Hashimoto's because the vast majority of auto-immune-thyroid is the, you know, hypothyroidism Hashimoto's.

Yeah, if your hair's thinning, the edges of your eyebrows are thinned, constipated, your stress, anxiety, depression, you're cold all the time, dry skin, all these little things. But the irony is, most of those symptoms are actually not... I mean, we put them as thyroid symptoms. Most of the symptoms were actually serotonin deficiency symptoms, Really? And if you look at it, what are most of those symptoms actually coming from? The gut, right? Depression and anxiety controlled by the gut. That's where neurotransmitters are made, your constipation.

Clearly, the guts not functioning the way it needs to. I mean, you can get into a lot of skin issues. Once again, if you're constipating, you are not clearing, that means you aren't clearing toxins. Which means it sits in the colon, which means if it's sitting there long enough, it will reabsorb back into the bloodstream. And so now those toxins are flowing again. So just about every single When you really go dig into the symptoms, a lot of those are actually serotonin deficiency symptoms. And then when you go look, you look at the pathway, there is like an inverse relationship between like TSH and seratonin.

There is a correlation there. Oh my gosh, that's really interesting because serotonin controls so much body. That's very interesting. Okay. Well you know, you brought up TSH. So what do you think about this as a marker? You know even in my days in conventional medicine, as the hospitalist and outpatient doc, I would see every doctor, every endocrinologist would just start with a T SH. And if that wasn't flagged as normal, mean I don't care if it was at the upper end of four, if was labeled in the green, there was no other thyroid panel to be done.

I mean, what do you think about all that for people? most useless marker that you could possibly run. It tells you absolutely nothing other than is your thyroid currently overacting or underacting. And it's no different than glucose. If you were to sit here and we were gonna take your blood sugar level, your glucose levels right now, and did it every 30 minutes, you're number would be different every thirty minutes. Yes. So would TSH. Oh. In it shifts and it changed. and so it is a completely useless market on its own.

And then you have to look, it's like, well, what are the main things that cause thyroid dysfunction? Okay, so autoimmunity is a big one. Conversion, like not converting from T4 to T3, which that's usually gonna be liver, gut, or combination. And so as you go through each one of those, are we checking these markers for the most common reasons why the thyroid's not working? Are they checking for amino acid? They're checking your tyrosine levels or iodine level, you know?

Iodine, Hashimoto's, and Thyroid Support 12:18

That makes a lot of sense. So in your opinion, first of all, you've reversed things like Hashimoto's and hypothyroidism before in you're career, right? Oh, I would venture to say, if not 100%, 98%, 99% reversing. Hashimoto's is easy to reverse. I'd say four to six months, very easy reverse Because there are MDs out here telling their patients that it's impossible to revert this autoimmune condition once you have it. It's a done deal. You'll be on this medication the rest of your life. But I'm sure it's probably the same thing the drug rep tells the medical doctor who's done zero research on how the thyroid actually works.

So here's a perfect example. Every single one of my patients that would come into my office, I was not their first choice. Matter of fact, was their last choice, unlike you're going to a functional medicine chiropractor who specializes in thyroid and Hashimoto's, right? I'm not the first guy. I usually like the last hope. Usually the guy that your friend said, hey, go see this guy because you've gone everywhere else. And they're like, well, might as well. This is the one to go to see because nobody else is changing anything.

Here's the story. For those women that are listening to this, How many of you, this is you. And a lot of them, This is You. They'd sit down, I'd look at their intake paperwork and they'd answer all these questions. My intake paper was like 24 pages to include, you know, assessment forms and all that stuff. Then they sit and go through it and I look their markers and the markers tell the story. So, for example, if you have high TSH and you abnormal T4 and low T3, well, the important marker that's telling me is you abnormally T-4, which means your thyroid's doing its job.

But why is it high and why isn't it shutting off the TSH? And why's the t3 low? Well, one reason. It's not converting. That's it. So that's a really simple thing, right? Or it's Hashimoto's and then we gotta talk about some other things. Or hey, by the way, It's not Hashimoto's, it's no thyroid, not iodine. Are you on estrogen therapy? Wait, really? Yes, because they can bind to the same binding sites. So you're making enough and you are converting, It can't land on the cell. No different than somebody who has aluminum toxicity.

That's a telltale sign that you have iron deficiency is aluminum Toxicity. If you've taken an iron supplement and still have Iron deficiency, like where's the iron going? It is not binding anyway, right? Chances are the aluminum is taking up those spots, Right? Same thing with thyroid. And so this is the story I tell. I look right at them. This is my first time in my office. They'd say, so let me get this straight. So you're hair thinning, having a hard time losing weight, maybe you just energy sucks, a little depressed, constipated.

Like, yep, yeah. You went into your doc, and they ran a thyroid panel. By that, I mean they run TSH and T3. They're like, yep, which tells you nothing. But they ran that and they put you on a medication. They were like yeah. And you felt great for about two, three months. And then you can see their eyes. Now, mind you, they're meeting you for the first time as we're going through the panel. And you're like, OK, where are you going with this? So you went back to your doc and said, hey, doc, we felt good for a few months, but now I'm taking the same amount of meds, But I have all the symptoms.

I am still not losing weight. Is still constipated. Am still depressed or still have anxiety or whatever it is. Things aren't shifting anymore. And they go, okay, they rerun the panel and the panels comes back normal. Well, of course it came back, normal, your T3 is going to be normal because you're taking synthetic T three, no death of friend. And if you were vitamin D deficient, I put you on vitamin. D I would expect your vitamin d levels to. Yeah. So then they look and go, oh, your labs are normal.

So they wrote you a prescription for an antidepressant. And this is where their eyes would get big. I would do this with a lot of the patients, like the majority. Their eyes get really big because they knew for a fact that they didn't write that down on the intake form that were on antidespressants. Maybe it was five years ago or 10 years when that happened. But it's kind of like, how did you know they were an anti-depressant? I'm like well, it is because you're crazy. because your labs are normal, but you're saying you still have all these thyroid symptoms.

The reality is you didn't have a thyroid issue to begin with, and chances are you, based on these symptoms, as I can look at your blood work now, you actually have Hashimoto's. which is not a thyroid issue. And that's the biggest misnomer about thyroid is if you have Hashimoto's, you do not have a thyroid condition. You have an immune system issue, and what it is is your immune gets pissed off and starts punching your thyroid in the back of the head. Who can work well when you're getting punched in back the of head?

Nobody could, right? When you calm that immune down, suddenly the thyroid starts working again, like no problem at all. So you're saying Hashimoto's hypothyroidism is not a thyroid problem? I don't know. That mainstream medicine really has it a little backwards. 100%. And anybody who's ever worked with Hashimoto's and actually healed people and reversed, and I'll say it because I'm not in practice, so I have no worry of the FDA coming after me. Yes, I healed and cured or whatever you want to call it, completely reversed their Hashimoto's.

And I can show it emphatically by every single blood panel afterwards showing that their labs and their 600 TPO antibodies are now nine. Yeah. And they have no symptoms. If that's not healed, then I don't really care. They feel healed. Their labs say they're healed but they don�t have symptoms, so the medical community can call it what they want, but it is not a thyroid issue. I tell people this, if you have TPO antibodies high and you Taking thyroid medication will not help you at all. It'll help for the first month, two, three months, and then you'll go right back to feeling like shit.

Hashimoto's as an Immune Issue 18:30

And it's not gonna do anything because it is not a thyroid problem. Its an immune system problem, you have to heal the immune systems. So you're telling me all these women who start to go into perimenopause, menopaus, are put on thyroid medications, it not just their thyroid giving out because they're getting older. That is, no, and I don't believe any of that. You know, just as a perfect example, I turn 50 next month. And we talked a little bit about this because being a hormone expert, you know.

I ran my labs, because people would tell me, dude, do you just need to go on testosterone? You're going to feel so much better. Do I have, like, low testosterone symptoms, maybe some lack of energy sometimes? And so I finally am like you, know what? I'm not just going deal with it. And I'm glad I didn't, because when I ran the panel, my labs just came back a couple weeks ago. You know where my testosterone was at? I'll be 50 next month. 969. Like, I've run in panels on 23-year-olds and they're under 400 by now.

It's insane. And so it had nothing to do with that. There's something else going on. My SHBG was too high, apart from stress and probably from, you know, intermittent fasting for years and years. Like I intermittent fast pretty much every day in the mornings. Now as I'm looking back, trying to figure out what's causing that, my intermittent-fasting is a big cause of why the SH-B-G is high. sex hormone binding, lobulin, if it goes out there listening, birth control for women can make that go higher indefinitely as well.

Which then affect your free level. So even though I'm making the testosterone like T4, my body's making it, it's just not, like I am not using the free form. It's like active in the bloodstream, but not at the receptor cycle where it counts, right? Yeah. Yeah, so the body can't metabolize and figure out how to utilize that, Right? Exactly. Okay, So why are women as they go into their fifties, And men, I guess, too, going into menopause or andropause and having trouble with their thyroid. I personally think a lot of it is deficiency, diet deficiency.

And you look at also the correlation between iodine deficiency and endometriosis and pregnenolone steel and some other issues that women or, what's the other thing, like ovarian cysts. It's a big one. There's oftentimes the iodide deficiency correlation. I think that's a lot of what it is. And I that it's lot why as we get older, you also have friends that have gotten older and they aren't having these issues, right? So why are they not having it, but you and some other friends are? Well, years and years of buildup of toxins, organs not functioning the way they need to, and deficiency from diet, I mean, how many people are aware of the foods they eat that contain iodine?

Not many, no. I don't even know if I am all the time. So do you think, have you seen people's thyroids kind of go sideways when they go on things like bioidentical hormones? Yeah, you know what, I would say I haven't personally, but this is the reason why. Because I know that when, that is one of the things, like one the bigger reasons I saw why women could have thyroid issues is they were on bio identical hormones. So it was taking up the receptor site. While I was healing, while we were working on their thyroid, I usually would try to say, hey, let's see if we can go off those bioidenticals, because then that'll really tell the story.

And so usually, yeah, then things started working again. But most people, why I didn't have them continue on that while were were on working their thyroids. Okay, that's really interesting. I mean, well, I guess my last question about the thyroid anyway is how much is a component of autoimmunity or how many of the auto immunity is the component trauma or stress for people that you see? Oh, I think it's huge because, first of all, of the thyroid patients, in my functional medicine practice, 98% of my patients were thyroid.

And I never marketed it, but the next thing I woke up one day and just all these people with thyroid issues started calling me, right? And of those, probably 90 to 95% were Hashimoto patients. Wow. And of those, and you look at like, why are all these people that have thyroid issues, the vast majority have actually Hashimoto's? And this is where I back things up because when I first got into functional medicine, this was when like Grain Brain came out and some of these other ones talking about gluten.

And back then, I was like kind of the major outlier in the thyroid world because I didn't buy into it. I'm like no, it's not gluten and this very controversial for a lot of people. Everybody says it is gluten. It's gluten! I'm like, no. Molecularly, when gluten gets into the blood, it kind of mimics the thyroid. it looks similar to the thyroid. So the immune system attacks it. And as you continue to consume more and more gluten, then it attacks anything that looks like it, which is the thyrite. But my question was, you know, we're root cause, right?

Why is a gluten getting into blood to begin with? It can't get into the right the gut and you can only do that if you have leaky gut mm-hmm and what causes leakey gut And what's but what you know like research and this was like a number of years ago maybe research is you? know I've been out of practice for a couple years now, but Back then one of the biggest the the research things that I was reading is one Of the top causes of leaki gut, and when I wasn't when i was in school I don't think tell you the same at this but when was a school They taught us that like the tight junctions were like cells stuck together, right?

And now we know that's not true. There are like little windows or doors in there that can be open and shut. And purposely, because you're born with leaky gut on purpose, right? You want to have a leky gut as a baby. Because you take mom's breast milk, you are getting her antibodies that then will get into the bloodstream. You're getting your mom immune system that way. But as we get older, those doors close and we don't want things getting in. So what's the number one thing that causes those windows to open?

Glyphosate. And what's the most heavily sprayed food with glyphosate? Gluten. You know, foods that contain gluten are massively sprayed with Glyphsate. So for me, it was more of a, hey, we need to get you, first of all, eating clean. Two, We need the detoxes GLYPHOSATE out of you. And three, then we to like just repair that gut lining so we can close that up. Once that would happen, once you repair the gut, repair, the dysbiosis, leaky gut and you detox that out, suddenly their autoimmune numbers are down.

Because what controls 100% of the immune system? The gut. It controls so much, so it's pretty wild. So you definitely just drove the point home with the gut, I think my listeners would be mad at me if I didn't ask you. You don't have to give all the nitty gritty secret sauce here, but what are the main steps that you would say that addressed in order to reverse Hashimoto's for someone? I usually get people on a really good gut support product, and I'm not just talking about a microbiome product like a pre and probiotic.

Gut Health, Gluten, and Leaky Gut 25:48

That's very important as well because these same patients tend to have dysbiosis or SIBO. too much bad and not enough good bacteria. And so we try to rebalance that microbiome, but there's some other really good ingredients like marshmallow and some different ones that help to repair the lining. That's one element. The other one is I start with parasites. And I do that because parasites are both good and bad for us. They're mostly bad. But one thing they do, that is good is they gobble up toxins.

And so that protects your body from those toxins, but when you kill the parasites, then they release those metals and molds and things back in. So I do a detox of the gut, detoxing out parasites and heavy metal with a binder. So you're mopping up anything that it's releasing on the way. Repair the gun. I diet and lifestyle. Okay. And I make, I just like look at your plate. This is how, and I try to make things super simple. Nutrition for me is super, super simply. We can go in that if you want, but I teach them in 30 seconds how to be completely healthy without making it complicated.

Then usually if somebody does have autoimmunity, I usually tell them, just kind of moving forward, as most people take a multivitamin daily or they take some supplements daily, a staple for somebody without immunity, they should be on a really good gut product just long term. Yeah. And personally, I also have them on a binder long-term. Because if we're continually binding glyphosate out, because you can never truly, even if you're buying all your stuff at Whole Foods, you know that stuff has glyphasate in it.

So if your continually finding out the crap that causes the problem, and you continually supporting the organ that is the most important factor in the What I found is that I don't have people relapsing. And I did at first, and I had one patient call me. This is what I love about patients. If you experience something or you work something and you do something on your own and it works, tell your doc. Because this is what happened. I had a patient, I've got all these patients, they're getting better.

It was like six months and we're reversing it completely, right? And then that patient called me about three months later. They say, Doc, starting to feel symptoms again. Is it okay if I go back on this gut product? I'm like, absolutely. She calls me back two weeks later, she's like I feel good. And I think I was just gonna stay. Yeah, think you should. Because of that phone call, that was part of my protocol going forward with every patient. Hey, you have the susceptibility. Just stay on a good gut support product.

And even if you're not taking a binder every day, pick it three times a week. You're doing this, you'll be able to maintain pretty well. Yeah, and I guess for the audience, describe the binder you would keep them on long term since not all binders are created equal, right? There's some that actually bind up minerals. Yeah, you, I, and this isn't, this is just my personal preference, so don't kill the messenger if I'm not a huge charcoal and clay fan, because they binds everything. I like to find things that are more selective binders, like things like chlorella, cilantro, fulvic acid, humic acid.

Things like that, that selectively bind things. Also that cross the blood brain barrier to bind thing. And they actually provide minerals too, they're not just stripping. So that's the one thing I love about fulvic acid. Fulvac acid is probably my favorite binder of all, because it's not a binder, it is adaptogenic. It contains over 87 trace minerals in it. And what it does is it a couple things. I use the school bus analogy. he ever hears this, whether he realizes it or not. One day I told him, I was like, you know you're my mentor, right?

I'm not paying you, but I just keep calling you and you keep answering. This retired 30-year naturopath, functional medicine doc, and he really turned me into a lot of things. But Dr. Hoover, he told me the analogy and I used his analogy. It's like the school bus. Fulvic acid goes to the cell. It drops the good kids off, you know, and it picks up the bad kids and goes. So it'll come to the cell and gets down to, in folic acid goes down the cellular level. It's not just a GI binder. And what it does is it increases the electrical charge of the self membrane, which causes anything else paired with that will have a greater affinity for uptake.

At the same time, it can bind off and chelate off different heavy metals and different toxins on the cell. And so it's a selective binder in that manner. Smart binder. Right. I like that. OK. If you're not using it as a binder, It's great mineral product to just take daily, to be candid. So it does have a binding capacity, but it is a really good mineral because 87 trace minerals are nothing. Yeah, for sure. You can't beat that. So there's an energy crisis going on right now. And do you think that's from mitochondrial dysfunction or is it from mineral depletion?

Because it's everyone I see. So yes and yes, I think it's a mitochondrial. But once again, going back to my belief system, which is all disease is caused by organ dysfunction and all organ disfunction is cause by either deficiency or toxicity. What do we need to create mitochondria? Certain B vitamins, you know what I mean? To create ATP and have that mitochondrio biogenesis. There's certain minerals that we'll need. So before I ever, and this is where I used to run all these panels, all of these big panels.

I stopped doing that. And I started focusing on running with all patients. I'm going to run just my basic blood panel where CMP, CBC, all these panels that are checking your organ systems, your liver, kidneys, different things. And then a vitamin and mineral panel. Because if you do have mitochondrial or ATP deficiency, a lot of people just want to throw you on a supplement, right? which can help. But the question is, is that the cause, or is it simply because you're deficient of these certain minerals or vitamins, and if we get those in you, now suddenly your cells are able to create more mitochondria, in which case you'll create ATP.

And so I always try to go back to, what's the deficiency? What are the vitamins or minerals, because every pathway, you know you look at thyroid, like I said, need iodine, but every path way in the body, whether it's metabolic, you know, as you go back to biochemistry, you don't start and just go, ooh, I have hormone, right? What does hormone start as? Cholesterol, and then it converts to whichever hormone you need. But along the way, before it goes to these three or four steps, each step you have additions and subtractions, Right?

Yes. And so I always look at the bio-chemistry pathway and go what's required to complete this? And then I go okay, Let me check those to see if they have deficiencies in that.

Parasites, Detox, and Binders 32:48

Because if that's the case, it has low-hanging fruit. And I think the majority of people, be candid, are deficient. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you know, I don't... Or parasites. A parasite is a big one. Because they gobble up minerals. Yeah. That's a good one, iron especially. But I love these organic acids tests and some of these functional tests because they have these diagrams in them, which show you what blocks the stuff, like what toxin blocks, the metabolic stuff. And what mineral or vitamin is required to get it done.

I feel like all of us doctors should have to go back to training to look at these diagram. That's it. It's really the basic. I think most conditions, I'm not going to say all, but I thing most condition are as simple as that. Going back to biochemistry, what's the problem? Let me look at the pathway. What toxins prevent these from completing and what minerals or vitamins are required to complete it? Because what's really interesting if you're really astute and you know that like minerals and heavy metals have similar charges so they can like kind of fool the body, like a Trojan horse, because, oh, this looks like this mineral, we need to complete this, but it's actually this insidious heavy metal, right?

And so what I'll show you is like the heavy medal that will block the reaction is often very similar in molecular chemistry to the mineral that it is looking for. So it's really interesting to make that connection because people don't realize these toxins can actually block pathways, like cause a traffic jam in your body. You said the right word. There's a lot of that where you have mimicry, kind of like gluten. Thyroid mimicery fools the immune system to think that it needs to go attack the thyroid.

Or like you said, some of these minerals. It's fooling the body to this, we need this. And then it actually a disruptor. The metals, yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So, you know, that brings the next question, I guess, why do some people like, they need these minerals, like magnesium or electrolytes, but then they take it and they feel worse? That's a good question. I guess it kind of depends. Like I said, it depends on the mineral. And I don't profess to know everything about everything. So I try to stick with what I'm good at and what have I had an actual real life experience in.

A lot I've seen it with iron. In my opinion, the two biggest causes of that iron deficiency is either aluminum binding on this site. or parasites that are gobbling up the iron and so it's never getting to the cell. So I've seen that and I can see how certain things like if you're giving somebody iodine that could push that TPO up even higher and cause those problems. So really, it comes down to me. It comes right back down the dysfunction. You're dealing with dysfunction, and if you're doing with disfunction, there's certain vitamins and minerals that if put back in at a normal level, It can crash you, like the MTHFR, which by the way, that I actually learned from you about somebody Mthfr, they can't just take a whole, but like it can actually have the opposite effect.

which made total sense to me because I'm like, well, that's exactly what happens with iodine with the thyroid. And so I think you can put that across the board in a number of different cases with these vitamins or minerals that you take and you're like oh my gosh, or even me. I don't have TPO antibodies, but if I just took a bunch of iodide right now, I guarantee you I'll have detox symptoms. Because if haven't prepared my body for detox, guess what? I am telling my buddy I detoxing now and probably not going to feel great.

Right, that makes sense, absolutely. Okay, so do you think along the lines of like these minerals and diagnoses that doctors come up with, do think that adrenal fatigue, the problem with cortisol just flatlining out, is that actually a real condition or is it driven by mineral depletion we're talking about? People are going to hate me. We do not go unfiltered, Dr. Vaughn. So I'm going to come to that, but I want to back up because I was, like I said, the whole gluten thing, I never was on board with that because there's something more to go further back.

And then even with SIBO, what I did is I would just overrun the SIBo with good bacteria. Interesting. Instead of trying to just kill it. I've never taken that approach. That's interesting. Just overrun it with good bacteria, good pre and probiotics and postbiotics. Yeah. And most people are like, oh my gosh, you have to kill the first. Well, guess what? I do just great with this and I never had a problem. Be harmonized. So then coming back to this, it's kind of a similar thing. You know, I think a lot of it is mineral deficiency.

Yeah. I've never treated cortisol. That's saying, I even stopped early on I would run cortisol panels, and then I stopped running it. Because for me, there's nothing wrong with your adrenals. What is causing your adrenal to not function? And when I say two things, deficiency or toxicity. When I talk about toxicity, not even tell patients, oh, i'm going to get woo woo on you now, okay? Emotional toxicity is a toxin. Yes. And what is the emotional toxin that we know, which is not woo-woo, that causes your adrenals to not function?

Stress. Stress is an emotional toxins which will then cause your adrenal to function properly and then you pair that with deficiency. So for me, it all came back to that. What's the tox in, potential tox, and what's mineral or vitamin deficiency? And so, yes, I'm 100% in it. I never treated cortisol levels with anything other than Let's do some things that we can calm your nervous system down to kind of get you out of that stress mode, that fire flight. And then let's make sure that the minerals that you need for your adrenals to function, you actually have the proper amount.

Yeah. I mean, I was thinking specifically of a former patient of mine who had breast implants explanted. She had her mercury amalgams removed probably like within a month of unsafely. not by a smart, certified dentist like Zoe poisoned himself and her. And then after that, her cortisol bottomed out, blood pressure bottom out. She couldn't get out of bed, and they put her on, like, Cortaf. Like, they'd put it on a hydrocortisone drip. It was like a pump, Dr. Vaughn. A pump for her cortisol. So she's gonna...

She just waited a few years so she could have osteoporosis? I could never get her off of it. it was impossible to wean her, our body was addicted to it at that point. and it wasn't even a cortisol problem, really. No. It was a toxicity problem. And I think most. I'm going to say... Almost all disease is toxins and deficiencies. Because the human body is a self-healing organism. When our organs are functioning at an optimal level, they're designed to do all the things that are miraculously done. These people are like, oh, I just miraculously healed.

Like, did you? Or did change your diet and your lifestyle and you know these natural things, and then your organs started to function at the level they are supposed to? And then it started self-regulating, and then the body heals itself, right? Yeah. But what are the two biggest things that cause toxins and deficiencies? I always go back to that, probably a broken record. Probably not everybody agrees with me, but I'll tell you this much. If you are a doctor and you have a patient that comes in to see you, And you look and see what their big complaint is, what the markers are, Why not go and go, huh, what vitamins and minerals are required for this to be normal?

Okay. And what toxins could potentially cause this dysfunction? And then run two more panels and see if it's right. I guarantee you about, like, I'll bet you dollars and doughnuts that you're going to see the deficiency and you'll see some toxins that do affect that

Mitochondria, Minerals, and Adrenal Function 40:48

pathway of whatever issue you are dealing with. Yeah, I agree with that completely. You know, you mentioned intermittent fasting earlier and how you love it and you do it. What do you think about it for a woman? I, early on, when I was first in practice, like a lot of things, I recommended it for certain women, but within, within a couple years of doing that, and I don't recommend it to women. Not past a certain amount of hours, because it's kind of like the cold punch. And people have to understand, I'm looking at it and I'll just do myself as an example here again, right?

I told you like the biggest thing, like why is my sex hormone-binding globulin high? And you look at the reasons and it's like stress, you know, low calories, fasting. And I've been intermittent fasting since like 2015, probably 80% of the day. By that I mean, I have like a coffee in the morning. Yeah. but I don't eat and usually until lunch. But now as I'm going back and looking at stuff, I am like, oh my gosh, even for me, like that is clearly cause my, Like I have to make a ship now because now it's causing my hormones even though my body is doing what it needs to.

the end result is not because of that. And when you look at women, women their hormones are so much more complicated. That's why when I have women come in with hormone issues, I would tell them like, i'm going to send you to a friend that does hormones. Not because I can't do it. I probably kind of could, but it's so more much complicated and there's much to it, especially with women. When you look at men and women, it comes to hormones. We're the same as hormones as we are in real life. Men are very simple creatures, right?

So are our hormones, like they're simple. Women, not simple, very complex, just like their hormones and if you mess with their hormone or don't get things done the right way, you can really mess them up. Like I saw that with women that were on like the Marenga. Oh yeah, the Moreno's awful. 100% of them. Yeah. Major hormone issues, gained 30 pounds in a month without like, even though they work out every day and eat perfect. It doesn't matter how much you do, how well you eat, and how you work, if your hormones are messed up with a woman, you will not lose weight.

We're a guy. That's not the case. A guy could eat perfectly and work out. And if his hormones are a little off, he could still lose weight. Yeah. Not fair. Intermittent fasting really does can screw up women's, I think, and kind of affect their hormones. So for me, Kind of like with keto diets, not anti-keto diets. I'm like, well, what are we trying to do? Okay, metabolic issue. You're going into my type two diabetes protocol, four month protocol to reverse it. Yeah. Put it on keto or cancer, keto.

Take a detox. Right. So time period. Not long-term because now you're gonna end up stress out the liver if you doing this long term, right? But that four months, five months while you're dealing with cancer or you are dealing metabolic issues. So it's a time frame. I use the same thing with like women with intermittent fasting. Yeah. And I've kind of seen a similar correlation with the cold plunges with women. Oh yeah. Where it affects women differently than men. Um, and I feel like the hormones or the fasting as well.

Because women can't fast as long as men, a lot of them try to and then it messes them up. Yeah, I hate cold plunges. So I heard you say, though, just to recap, that intermittent fasting, sometimes even for a man long term, can decrease active sex hormones. Is that what I heard you say? Yeah, so like for me personally, this is like, and this was just, my panels just came back a couple weeks ago. Cause I've had people on me like you should try the testosterone. And I'm like I don't wanna just stick something in me without knowing what's going on in my body.

So I was like 50 years old and my testosterone levels are almost a thousand. That's insane. It is insane, that's really high by the way for those people who know that. Most guys my age, they're lucky if they were sitting in the 400s without hormone therapy. My sex binding hormone globulin is high, So my free- Or active? Yeah, or active. My free testosterone is low. So that usable testosterone, is lower even though I have a ton of testosterone. Yeah. And I'm looking, I am like, well what am I doing?

Like I don't, we eat a healthy diet, and you know, i'm not a purist, so i am not like perfect all the time, but like 80, 90 percent of the times we ate healthy, So I was like it's none of that, one thing I've been doing for What, since 2015? Fasting. Intermittent fasting for that many years. Probably on average five, six days a week, if not more. Pretty much every day. I really don't, unless I'm going out for like breakfast and for a meeting. Yeah. you'll never see me at breakfast, ever. I think it's just- Which is changing now.

Yeah, I made you breakfast. No, now I'm like I need to be eating more fats and protein in the morning. And I want to see what that does for my hormones, but I have a suspicion it is going to change them. Well, since women are the more sensitive of the two sexes, that fasting can really affect their hormones too with that. So if you're out there drinking coffee without eating until like two, then I am talking to you. So yeah, I mean, honestly, it's a big deal. I guess you mentioned how healthy you are, how health we eat.

And I hear so many people, so of my patient population, and I'm sure yours too, say I am doing all the right things. Am healthy, am at a healthy weight, Am eating right, cut out gluten, exercise, move my body, sleep enough at night, but am still having metabolism and thyroid problems. Where do you take them? Yeah, you very well could. Like I said, like with the hormone, this is what I learned very quickly, I don't wanna mess with women hormones, as a doctor. Yeah. I wanna send them to a specialist because I want to make sure they get taken care of well.

And I learn that, it didn't matter, and I had this, learned this very early on, had a patient who was a massage therapist, very natural, but she was also a personal trainer. So she trained people like six days a week, she works out six day a weeks. Great shape, eats perfect, young, you know, mid-20s, back during that time, got all of her food from like pre-made paleo company, because she was working, so she didn't have time. So she ate perfect. She worked out every day, and she's a personal trainer, So, she knows how to work out.

Yeah. And she wasn't great shape and put 40 pounds on in 60 days. and She's like, what the heck? And it was because you got that IUD. Oh my gosh. That was it. It didn' matter what she did. it didn't matter. And as soon as she got that out, boom, she was able to lose that weight. So it's the same thing. I think you have to look at your lifestyle. For me, even myself, self-reflection, I'm looking at going, okay, before I even introduce more supplements or medic, or even think about bioidenticals,

Intermittent Fasting and Hormone Effects 47:48

What's the root cause? Is it that I've been intermittent fasting for too long? You know, and is that causing that? Along with stress of being a business owner and all, you know life. So I'm going to try that first. I am going re-run my panels and see what that does. But it can really, lifestyle. There's something underlining if you say you're doing everything right and things aren't working. There is something else. And usually you are going to come right back to toxin or deficiency. How often do you see parasites and or like water damage in the home becoming someone's root cause for like Hashimoto's or any autoimmune condition for that matter?

You know, I think just across the board, that was my protocol. Every single hospital's patient went through a gut detox. And that included those first part of it was a parasite protocol, so every one of them. So people would ask me, well, how do you know if you have parasites? I'm going to steal. I've been telling this for years.I stole it from my brother because I saw him say it one time. That was kind of funny. A little bit of a dad joke. But I would always tell him, all you to do is put your arm out like this.

And they grab these fingers here, and then touch right here. And if you can feel a pulse, you have parasites. We all have parasites. It's insane to think we don't. All of us have parasite. Unless you've detoxed yourself, You have Parasites But we live in the USA But you deworm your dogs and your cats every year. You have dogs and cats. You eat pork, you eat sushi. Any of those things right there automatically. If you tell me you have a cat, a dog, any kind of pork at all, or sushi, 1,000% you're parasites.

And even if you don't, do you think that the majority of our food which gets grown in Central and South America that gets brought over here, the parasites just die as they cross the border? That's the most ridiculous thing ever, right? You know what I mean? How much of food do we get from Central South A lot, unfortunately. Yeah. And a lot of that, by the way, is the organic food, which is grown organic, but then when it comes in the US, it gets sprayed. They fumigate it. Uh-huh. But they still label it organic.

The only way you can really be organic is if you grow your own, to be perfectly organic for sure. Okay. So everyone has a parasite. Half of our listeners just dropped dead when you said sushi, just so you know. Oh, I used to eat a ton. OK. And then just over the last number of years, as much as I love it, and I've got to stop eating it. Or if I'm going to be eating, then I know I need to do a parasite protocol afterwards. So it's like one or the other. If I'm going to indulge, then I know there's certain things I have to do to fix it later.

Absolutely. What are some symptoms that people can look for? How would they know if they have parasites, I guess? Yeah, you could do like brain fog is a big one. Like you said, iron deficiency is actually a pretty telltale sign. You get itchy anus, like at night, specifically. It starts like you feel like your butt's wiggling or something. You know what I mean? No, really, yeah. Vibration. Yeah, vibration. There's a little guy who's trying to get some oxygen or somethin'. And you'll see that with kids too that are always constantly itching their butt.

They have pinworms. So contagious. And it really is. We're the only country, you go to Southeast Asia and stuff, they deworm their kids annually. Like we dewarm our dogs and cats. So it's interesting. It's very interesting, I guess in America we thought since we sterilized everything, cleaned it real good, we wouldn't get any pathogens, but it seems that bacteria and microbes protect us. So sterilizing and napalming everything hasn't quite been the answer either here. We're the only mammals on the planet that spray things on our food to kill animals, but eat it ourselves.

Yeah. Like that makes no sense, right? It doesn't make any sense. What is it doing inside? What do you think it's doing to the little... If we're spraying stuff on food, to killed bugs, what do think is doing the bugs inside of our gut? You know, I mean, just you don't have to be a scientist to know that doesn't really calculate, you know what I'm saying? Does it make sense? It doesn' make any sense at all, actually. So how often would you suggest or did you tell your patients to paracyclones? So, once we've gone through a major detox, I am a firm believer that you should do a blood panel once a year.

And in that blood, check your, you know, your base type, blood sugar, inflammation, thyroid, liver, kidneys, make sure your organs are functioning well. Check your vitamin, mineral. And you should do an annual detox. Me, I believe everybody should detox annually because you're exposed to it. No matter what you do, unless you never leave your house and you only eat the food that is grown inside of a greenhouse, not exposed in the open air, and all of the foods you eat is growing by yourself, you are going to be exposed toxins.

You can't get around it. We live in a toxic world. And so you have two choices. You just recognize that and go, OK, maybe I'm eating healthier and cleaner than most, so I don't necessarily need to detox as often. But you should definitely detox once a year. I am talking parasites, pesticides, heavy metals, because you you haven't in you. If you don' believe it, Run the test. You run those tests. Have Dr. Jess run the tests on you. I guarantee you, I've never run a panel for a toxin panel on anybody that came back clean.

Not one. And what I'm seeing more of right now, which I never saw seven years ago, How many people are coming up with atrazine in their... Oh, actually, isn't that weird? Yeah, I never saw that seven years ago. Yeah. You guys remember that meme with Alex Jones and he was like, they're turning the frogs gay. That one, that's from atrozine. And atozine is a very potent, it's funny, the thing, but it is very a potent hormone disruptor.

Hope, Recovery, and the Foundational Wellness Book 54:00

It looks like estrogen to the body. If people don't have a water or a shower filter, i see it all the time. All the times. Then you have to understand, if you don' have that water filter And ladies, listen to this, and you're going to hate me. Anything you put on your skin absorbs into your bloodstream within, what, a minute? So you have to look at the makeup and the lotions and... the water you are showering in. I can't, I know. You know what I mean? Like, you look those things because those thing, if you had bad water where you were at, or maybe it's really, it is not the best water.

You're sitting there in a shower for 10, 15 minutes. You don't think that you're absorbing that into your largest organ on your body? Yeah, there's certain chemicals that actually get worse when the water gets hot as well. Chi-halomethanes, I think. I thik the chlorines aswell. Yeah. They get worst, they get more toxic as the wate heats up. It's just like completely diabolical. It's it's really bad. I saw this I was at an event a couple weeks ago down Beverly Hills and there was this really cool company Forget the name of them.

They have their information now because we're gonna build a house I'm like I am putting this in this huge filter that filters out every single one of those toxins but it is a full house filter so you don't have to have a filter in every room and It is your water input to the house. It filters through that and it filters out hormones, pesticides, metals, all sorts of stuff. I was like, you don't have to have a filter on every single faucet. That's important. Let's leave the audience with something positive here.

It sounds like your message, if I had to wrap it up in a bow with everyone here, is that there is hope for people with autoimmunity. You're kind of a case in point. you've proven to people that these things they've been told that they have permanently are not a life sentence. where can people get more of your information? Where can they find you? What would you leave them with advice about their bodies? The human body, any doctor that tells you this is just your lot in life, I would find a new doctor.

Unless something's been cut out of their body and that organ can no longer be used, it's a different story. But especially with autoimmunity, and I'll be honest, one of the reasons I love treating autoimmune is because it is so freaking easy to reverse. Yeah. So if you have adenine thyroid, if get with the right practitioner, it's easy to reverse, and it is easy sustain. And so I would say, have the hope. If you're not having the success with your thyroid right now, then you are not with right doctor, or not the with a right practitioners.

You need to get the the doctor or practitioner. Do you want to know more about that whole concept behind that? My book is foundationalwellness.com slash book. You can go there and read, and it talks a lot about these deficiencies. I talk a lotta stories about different thyroid patients, I talked about the patient that called me at nine o'clock on a Saturday night, because I was more concierge, that one of my patients could hold me if they needed to, crying on the phone because she had a piece of pizza.

Mm. Which she couldn't even smell a piece of pizza two years without having a thyroid reaction, you know what I mean? Yeah. And she's like, oh my gosh, this is the first time I've even been able to have gluten. I don't want people to think that just because I believe gluten is at the root of all evil. Um, I do not think it is good. But my point is, is you shouldn't have to be so restrictive that you have ask, was this cooked in the same pan as gluten? You shouldn' t. If you're avoiding gluten just in general, that's fine.

It shouldn't affect you at all. Right. If you're truly healed. if you are not healed, then it will. So just know that you can live a normal life again. And if your not there yet, you just haven't found the right doc. I love that message.I think everyone out there could hear that. Okay, so Foundational Wellness. Where can they get your book? foundationalwellness.com slash book Oh, easy. Okay, we'll put that in the show notes for everyone too, because if you guys are new to this type of medicine, you should really look at the foundations and see what Dr.

Yvonne has to say, just the steps that are easy to take every day where you can take power back into your own hands about your body. And that's what this book is about, right? So the book talks about removing doctor dependency and taking your health into your own hands. So I wrote this book for moms because I feel like moms are the first responders of the home. Even in my home, as a doctor, do you know who treats the family? It's not me, it's my wife. And she's very big on the natural stuff. She's got a doctor, but she is very well researched.

But she just naturally fits in that role within the family and she takes care of the health of our family, even me. When it comes to a lot of things, if I'm starting to feel, not feel good and in 30 minutes, I go from feeling like I am about to get the flu to 30 minute later, and I back on my feet, back to work, feel great. And so it's rent for moms so that way you can take, for me, health is about taking control of your own life and your health. And I think the one thing that we learned from COVID, more than anything else, regardless of which side you sat on, is you cannot just put the trust into other people of you own health, you have to take responsibility and do the research.

So this is just hopefully a book that empowers these moms, these first responders, to feel confident that they can take care of the health of their family without always having to run to a doctor. Above that, actually, that's what everyone deserves to read and know about. And if they want more of you, are you on social media? Where can they find you? I'm Doc Von D-O-C-V-0-H-N on Twitter, or not Twitter. On Instagram. You can say X, but you can probably find me on Twitter, probably non-existent. Can't throw it there.

I've probably got free followers. Uh, I don't even know if people do Twitter. No, no, Doc Vaughn on Instagram? On instagram. So go get more of Doc vaughan here. He is a wealth of information about the thyroid metabolism and endocrine issues altogether. Doc van, it's been my pleasure. Thanks for coming. If this episode spoke to you, subscribe and share it with someone who can't find the answers to what ails them. Please consider leaving a review. It helps others find our podcast. And download the wellness care plan I've made for you for free on my site, wellnessplus.com.