The Thyroid-Gut Link: Digestion’s Dual Impact

Kelly Halderman, MD

Thanks, Sinclair. Thanks for having me here.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

So let’s just dove right in, because you also I have a personal story with Hashimoto’s. I know you do, too. Tell us what your journey was with this and define Hashimoto’s for folks who may not be familiar with it.

Kelly Halderman, MD

Sure. So I’ll keep it short and sweet. But basically I was in a thyroid debacle. So this is very. Well, that’s a great title. Well, given for what we go through when we are experiencing thyroid issues. And most of us, which is sad but I was practicing now as a naturopathic doctor and this is around 210, 2009 and I was delivering a baby and all of a sudden I got a giant psycho trauma. A migraine just came out of nowhere. And at that time, I had been healthy up to that point, but I started having all these strange neurological symptoms out of nowhere. I had no idea it was going on. And so of course, when you’re in the medical allopathic model, you get shuffled to the best. You get to the head of the line in the neurology the best of the best neurology. And so I was told that I had the beginnings of multiple sclerosis, and I was like, say what? Me I was like, in my twenties, I had two young kids and I was really given a death sentence. And Claire, it was you have this debilitating disease that’s going to kill you. We don’t know when, but we’re sorry. And here’s a couple of pills. And I thought, no, no, no, no, no. I had so many tools in my toolkit at that point, but the one to save my life, I did not have. And so I had to go back and get an answer, a naturopathic medical degree. During that time, I started applying principles such as detoxification and nutrition, and I started to get better. But along the way I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s and again it was, Oh, we’re sorry about this, but here’s your T4 and be on your way. But we know now we know that Hashimoto’s is an autoimmune disease, but not in the sense of your body’s doing something wrong. My body’s actually protecting itself. Hashimoto’s autoimmunity from auto, which we can get into, doesn’t come out of thin air. It’s from cellular stress. And so there is this process in our body called the cell danger response. And it’s a primordial response. 

It’s as old as time, it’s this, and it goes like this is that when it works, we encounter a virus, a bacteria, a stressor can be emotional is that our body changes metabolism into more of a fighting. We’re going to fight now because we have to because we’re under assault. And that changes all of our physiology. That changes everything from, you know, rest and digest and make babies and all of that growth to, like, run from the freaking tiger. And so when you’re in that cell danger response with that cellular stress and again, it can be from just living in this toxic world, your body is actually setting off a protective mechanism. It doesn’t sound right. It doesn’t sound right that your body would purposely be making antibodies to kill your thyroid gland. That’s what Hashimoto’s is. It’s an autoimmune attack. But trust me, I wrote a book with Dr. Eric book, which is almost 300 references from PubMed. And that’s the facts, folks. Like that’s what’s going on here. It’s not your fault you didn’t do anything wrong. We just need to have a skilled practitioner come in or we need to have you really listen to summits like this. Listen to Sinclair. Listen to these interviews and really lessen that cellular stress so your body doesn’t have to stay in that cell danger response.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah, I think that’s a beautiful description of what’s happened to so many people and really has the underpinnings of so many of our chronic conditions as well as, you know, this autoimmune spectrum of disease, shall we call it so? Because it’s so personal to both you and me. And I know it is for most people who have clicked on this interview, I really want to dove in in depth, like, how are the gut and thyroid physiology related? How would you describe that relationship to people?

Kelly Halderman, MD

That is such a good question. It’s so central to why people are tuning in to this is the gut summit. So how are they connected? They seem so far away. Wow. How can they how can what I’m eating in my stomach affect my thyroid? They are integrally connected. It’s almost like what came first, the chicken or the egg. Did you did you have thyroid issues first and that cause gut issues? And let me talk about that one first. I’m going to talk about the second one, meaning that did your thyroid issue cause your gut issues? So, you know, we talk about what we just said was the cellular stress. And so your thyroid problem does not start in your thyroid gland. It starts at the cellular level. It starts when all the red flags start waving with your cells saying there’s too many toxins going on here. Or, you know, there’s too many endocrine disrupting hormones at your slathering over your body or you’re eating gluten or you’re doing something right, that inflammatory fluid. And so those cells are waving the flags and your metabolism is changing. And so your thyroid gland actually has a lot of control over normal gut function. You have to have proper, proper thyroid physiology for your pancreas to work, for your bile flow, to work for your gut, to actually have peristalsis. The thyroid gland secretes modal in modal and is a hormone that goes to your gut and tells the food in the bullets to move along. So again, if you’re under all that cellular stress and you have a diagnosis of hyperthyroidism or maybe you don’t, and we could talk about that. We could talk about what subclinical hypothyroidism looks at, looks like and why. When I trained as a medical doctor, I turned so many people away because I would say things like, Your test is normal, you’re fine. I’m like, I should just go back and smack myself a couple of times, but what I’m seeing is that when that, when there’s compromised thyroid physiology, every cell your body relies on thyroid hormone, right? If your thyroid is compromised, those cells are compromised. Again, your guts not going to work. Right. You know, I rarely see a person who doesn’t have gut issues and symptoms and signs of hypothyroidism. It’s almost like how can you not, right? Like because those cells fuel the gut. Like they nourish the gut. It’s like the gasoline in the car. 

So, you know, if that’s what came first. So let’s that’s that paradigm of in I, I think like it’s probably 50-50 some practitioners may say differently, but your thyroid problem may have come first. Your body is just way down with all that cellular stress. Again, physical, emotional, chemical, microbial, all that stress is weighing it down. We got to get it off. Right. We’re not going to give you a magic pill and everything’s going to be fine. But the other way is that your guts not working. Let’s say like you have dysbiosis, you have SIBO, you have leaky gut. You just you have like a lot of issues with your with the GI tract itself, with motility, something genetic could be going on dietary and that sets off your cellular stress. And so we could talk all day long and we could reference papers all day long about the connection of gluten and the genes, the genetics that really tie those together, that tie that thyroid disease and gluten and Hashimoto’s. And so it’s like it’s a no go, guys, just don’t do it. Just, just don’t. I mean, like there’s so much research out there and yes, you will get blood tests and things, but it’s really worth a try. Going gluten free because of that association of the thyroid condition and the sensitivity to gluten. And you can get your genes, then you can do your genetics, but it’s worth a try. And if you do go gluten free, let’s say you have thyroid issues, you have got issues, you go gluten, gluten free. I love the analogy by Dr. Horowitz, and he used to say that if you have 16 nails in your foot and they’re causing you pain, if I take out two nails, is your foot going to feel better? No, not yet. But is it a good thing we pull those two nails out? Well, absolutely. So that’s how I think about gluten free diets when people say I went gluten free for like two months and it didn’t do anything for me, it’s like, well, actually, it’s like pulling out the nails, but we have more work to do. Maybe you need to go paleo, maybe you need to go out on Paleo. Maybe you really need to go down more rabbit holes of like a elimination diets and things like that. So again, it goes back to like which one came first. I don’t. it doesn’t really matter really which ones come first because, you know, some people too will say like, well, I don’t have any gut issues or I have one or maybe just constipation, but I do have thyroid issues. It’s like, well, then we better make sure you optimize your thyroid other than just taking T4 and not doing a darn thing else for you. Sell your stress. Also, you’re going to end up with more gut issues and more detoxification, more bile flow issues.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah, I’m really happy to hear you highlight bile. And I knew you’re going to because I think you love it as much as I do. I do think it’s dramatic, crucial for both gut function. And of course, there’s that intricate relationship between thyroid health and bile flow. And you take a moment to just describe that in your own words for the audience since we brought this up.

Kelly Halderman, MD

Sure. So the gallbladder makes the sludgy, beautiful substance that Sinclair and I both absolutely love. In this substance contains a lot of recycled hormones. It contains toxins. It’s manufactured to carry. The toxins really in the old recycled out of your body. It goes into your it goes into your gallbladder if you have one. I don’t have one. And then it is going to go into your intestine and it’s going to end up in the toilet, this bile and it’s sludgy. And I will make a plug for staying hydrated because it’s 99% aqueous, 99% water. So if you’re not getting your water intake optimized, you’re not detoxifying, you’re not keeping your gut happy. But bile keeps your gut very happy. Your microbiome, which is about 100 trillion cells and I think 3.3 million genes, which outnumbers us by a hundred fold. In how much gene expression. And it’s just massive. The microbiome loves bile, it keeps it stable, it nourishes it. And so we have to keep that bile flowing. We have to keep our phosphatidylcholine status up. We have to keep our acetylcholine, our acetylcholine levels like acetyl co a all these levels we have to keep up and we want to keep it flowing and we want to keep it moving through our body because again, bile flow, we could do a whole interview on bile for gut issues that was my problem. 

That’s why I wrote the book Phase 2.5 Detoxification. The Phase of Detoxification that saved my life because I kept getting put on all these detox protocols. And what was happening is that like I was up regulating, like my liver is getting all these toxins and it’s great, but if it doesn’t have the exit strategy, if the bile can’t flow out and it goes back into your blood, like that’s no bueno, you’re going to get it in your brain and your tissues and things like that. So we have to optimize it. So these 2.5 is like the bile moving out and through. It’s like making your bile moving your bile and you can go and download that book. It’s pretty simple. The protocol that I have, some people like to I just caveat this. Some people like to use bile salts, right? They say, oh, the answer to everything, especially if you don’t have a gallbladder, is bile salts, right? OX Bile, TUDCA, but the thing is, thyroid physiology is that bile salts actually act on the enzyme that converts T4 to T3. So you’re inactive, active. So if you start taking a bunch of bile salts, you can actually turn yourself into a hyper, hyperthyroid state and burn out all your stores of T4. So I always caution practitioners, I teach this, I caution the layperson when they start to like, oh, I heard Brazil nuts, good for me. I’m going to take a ton. I’m like please be careful, go slow. Everything, you know, we take things and we think that they’re safe, but sometimes there are side effects, so we just should be mindful of, especially with thyroid physiology and everything that is going on. I prefer to try and get everything I can. And now you’ll agree with me from food trying to get my phosphatidylcholine from eggs if I can tolerate them or almonds, you know, trying to get other nutrients that are important for the gut too, and for the thyroid through food too.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah, I totally agree with you. And it’s so hard to I know our audiences sometimes feel like we’re talking both sides of our mouth or like, hey, you get everything from food. But also we’re living in a really weird day and age. And since your gut isn’t absorbing your food, let’s also do all this together. 

Kelly Halderman, MD

That’s right. That’s right. So that’s where micronutrient testing comes in. I think that’s where we’re probably going with this is like I always say, you know, my one of my colleagues and his super brilliant Sean Bean, he’s like a medical savant. And he can he’s one of those people like, quote, papers and things. But he says, test, don’t guess, test, don’t guess. Like where are you on your selenium? Where are you on your RBC? Magnesium, you know, and some of these are expensive. Yes, I am sorry. It’s not all free and some of them are just okay to just eat some more, you know, need some more Brazil nuts or something to get some of those nutrients when desperate times call for desperate measures. I love micronutrient testing. I love to know people’s vitamin D levels. That’s really correlated with gut. Every right is correlated with everything. I like to know, like what’s going on with their hormones, what’s going on again with those micronutrients, especially selenium, the zinc, the magnesium. I’ll do an iodine urinary 24 collection if I have to. But you, I bet you know, the iodine world is very weird. You have like the people who are all in it take a lot of it. You don’t have any of it. And so Doctor Eric and I in our book kind of landed on you can get iodine from food and start there. And if you look at a bell curve, most people on the bell curve do just fine with iodine, some food. But, you know, there’s outliers, of course. So practitioners are the people who help with the outliers on their get their get those labs in place.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

What do you some of your favorite lab panels like? Who do you like to use? What tests are your favorite? Especially like let’s help people prioritize that they’re on a budget too.

Kelly Halderman, MD

Sure. I think starting off what if you have a really good practitioner you can get away with just doing CBC and BMP which I usually use request to test dot com. You don’t need a doctor and it’s cheap and you can just go into a Lab Corp request near you and you can get your labs done. There’s plenty of practitioners who put their panels on there so patients can order them themselves. But you can see on a simple biopsy, CBC, you can see basic metabolic profiles, you can see patterns of adrenal problems, heavy metal toxicity like you can look at those with a practitioner again who’s a little bit savvy and doesn’t read highs and lows like, Oh, good, everything’s good. And I’m like, no, no, no, no, no. Did you calculate that ratio in there is now looking so good, you know, with things in in the panel but starting kind of there and then not that that covers it right because we know that the sickest of the sick which I consider the serious patient chronic inflammatory response patients, they will have pretty darn good looking labs. Just your basic lab. But they look good. But boy, are they sick. They are very sick. They have very, very compromised physiology, but it doesn’t show on those panels. And so let’s think bell curve again, guys like you, probably law of averages, you fit in that bell curve. We could start to look at some of those labs and also on requested tests. There is the thyroid debacle panel. I don’t make money off of it. It’s just what labs Dr. Eric and I recommend what labs we recommend to make sure that your thyroid is optimized. 

And in the book there’s a lot of information where you look in there, share with your doctor, share with your prescriber, like the whole part three of the book is like how to get better, like foundationally, like how to list all that cellular stress. But I think that’s a really good start, as is to remember that you can do some of your own labs, but sometimes you do need some more testing. And I like the Dutch test for hormones, the GI map tests, of course, we’re talking about gut. Of course, GI map is my favorite. Just look at what’s going on in there. Again, like the microbiome. Let’s just talk really quickly about endotoxin. So let’s say you have a bad gut. Let’s just say hypothetically, I mean, asking for a friend because I still literally have a bad gut. I mean, I try so hard and everything, right? But it’s just like I’m doing my best, right? So, you know, you’re looking at like the testing on the gut and you just want to make sure that everything is within, like with, with the different bacteria. It’s complicated. Let’s say it’s complicated, but you have a practitioner and you’re looking at GI map and it looks like you have dysbiosis now. Dysbiosis you’re going to produce most likely this stuff called LPS, lipopolysaccharide. 

A little story about LPS lipolysaccharide comes from bad bacteria. Basically, it’s like a chunk of it. The scientists were in the lab 20 years ago and they’re trying to create a toxin for animal models that is so, so destructive to the human body that they could use it in animal science. What they landed on was LPS because it’s so ubiquitously destructive brain everywhere, because LPS will translocate. So we’re kind of talking about a metastatic disease. Guys, have your gut issues. I’m going to get you. You have a metastatic disease that’s going everywhere. It’s called LPS. So the LPS has sites on your thyroid. The total like receptors on your thyroid bind the LPS and your thyroid will act differently. The LPS will go to your brain and it’ll turn micro glial cells, these great cells, into vicious, you know, a cytokine slam, a gene secreting really naughty cells. And it doesn’t spare any part of your body. LPS, goes to your liver, goes everywhere. So, I mean, I don’t know about you, but the more I learn and the more I study, I swear apocalypse uses, right? It all begins in the gut. I’m not even kidding. What a cliche. What a dead on statement. I mean, this way, it’s like this is the summit. You guys. This is the one. This is the one. I don’t care what you got. You like what’s going on. You have to optimize the gut. And again, if it started with thyroid, then you got to fix it first.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah. I mean, there’s there’s so many important concepts that you brought up today. I want to underscore a couple of them and give us a chance to unpack a couple more. So one of the things that I think is most essential for people to understand out of what you’re asserting is that the thyroid can actually put a lot of stress on the gut. And that model and I’m so glad that you brought that up like this is really central to, you know, this issue of an autoimmune or even just hypothyroidism, even subclinical. It’s can really slow down your digestion because you simply don’t have that push to get that bolus of food through in a timely manner. And so fermentation can build up very quickly in the gut and you can get pathogenic species, you can call them, you know, and what is the word I’m looking for? Like, you know, they’re just opportunists. There we go. Or there can be deeper issues at play based on your other exposures, like from toxic ants, you know, that are requiring almost a polymorphic response, you know, from certain gut strains that would not be problematic otherwise. But either way, you’re setting the stage with that slow gut motility, and then you have that thyroid gallbladder relationship where if the thyroid has hypothyroidism, you know, if you even subclinical, again, your sphincter of IOTA is not going to release sufficiently. So that means that your bile, which is also supporting gut motility and is also helping to like emulsify fats and release toxins it cannot release efficiently. It’s if you still through your gallbladder, of course. So this is are all intricately connected. There’s no away in the body and you can be armed with this information. Actually go get tests yourself to start looking at under the hood. Don’t wait for your practitioner to know more than you do and like take your health into your own hands. Right.

Kelly Halderman, MD

I guarantee you, if you read this book, which I will not plug in, I promise. I’m just so proud of it because it’s helped so many people. But if you read this book and you are a layperson, you will know more than an endocrinologist. I’m very sorry to say that. But I came from that world and it’s so black and white. It’s so you get to the point where your TSH is now suddenly out of range and now you get thyroid hormone. It’s so much more nuance. We deserve more. We really do. And so, I mean, our personal stories, I suffered with this. I didn’t know what to do. The only thing I could do was take medication. And I hated it. And I didn’t want to take it. I ended, you know. So when I met Doctor Eric and he explained to me and we started collaborating, it was like, wow. But again, going back to the gut, I think that was an excellent point. And it’s one of the most important points, too, is that thyroid physiology is not optimized. The gut slowing. And while parasites, fungi, Candida, you’re, I mean, you’re just going to be a host for them. Definitely.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah, exactly. And so if you don’t work with a practitioner that’s first and there’s different systems and how they interconnect, if you’re only working with somebody who’s like, Oh, gut issues, well, here’s all the probiotics. I know. Let’s just dump more fuel on the fire. And like, it’s not a targeted approach. Right?

Kelly Halderman, MD

Right. And that would be a good point.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

I think this is a great, accessible way for people. And I totally agree with you. I mean, I also, you know, went through that world as a patient. You know, we started out in mental health and trying to use allopathic specialists and keep joking that, you know, the more specialized, the less they seem to know about the body and certainly by shamans, because their world is this big.

Kelly Halderman, MD

Very myopic. Yes, yes, yes. I totally agree. I will just mention that a new test that’s come around that I’m very interested in and my colleagues, Sean Bean is using it is called Biomesight and it actually is enabled. Maybe you’ve had a guest on talking about enables you a practitioner probably to help you with it. I think you can order it yourself to be targeted with your probiotics because you can give yourself dysbiosis taking the wrong probiotics. You know, we used to think like, oh, this is for 100 billion and see what happens. And it’s like, no, we actually can create problems. So Biomesight and again, I don’t think you need a practitioner or account at all. You can go in and it’ll tell you like this much before all this much lactose in a really healthy you designed what your microbiome is missing.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah. I really appreciate you unpacking this a little further, because more is not better. A guy’s going to come. That’s right. The gut has its own intelligence if and it’s the most resilient system in the body, arguably. Right. So if you have a persistent gut condition, you have underlying factors that have not been addressed yet that is perpetuating it and recreating it. It’s not one initial wound or one initial, you know, distress. And then, oh, no, we fell down. We never got back up again. We keep getting back up every three days. It’s the gut lining is rebuilt, but it’s still the same old problem, right? That’s right. So interesting. Okay. So is there anything else that we missed and maybe we need to go over like signs and symptoms of thyroid dysfunction versus gut dysfunction? How can somebody know before we even get into testing? Is this worth looking into more deeply for me? You know, things like that?

Kelly Halderman, MD

Yeah. I think the most common signs and symptoms of hypothyroidism are fatigue, weight gain. You can’t lose weight, cold intolerance or nails are dry, your hair is dry. You know, your constipated. You have low sex drive, but things are intermingled, too. There’s some sex hormone stuff in there, too, because it’s a web. We’re not you know, when specialists cut things up, it’s kind of ridiculous. So those are kind of the common symptoms. There’s a few more we can look in the book or Google them. You know, you can also be unoptimized on you could be diagnosed with hyperthyroidism. Oh, yes. Your TSH is too high. You know you’re free T3 is free T4 survival. Here’s your T4so many issues. We could go on and on with all the issues with that. But if you’re not feeling well on that, you know, you can take things into your own hands and help yourself with that. And then gut symptoms, I mean, your gut symptoms can be headaches, right? Like you could have a celiac patient who had one like two years ago and had no idea that she was celiac, which just kept getting these headaches. And I went straight to the gut. And that was a lot of her issue was the gut, especially estrogen metabolism, seemed to do great. Yeah, it’s like so much is going on right there. And she had a high risk for breast cancer, so we just cleaned her out for better, but weird thing. So, you know, you don’t have to be constantly updated and have diarrhea or bloating or dyspepsia, any of that. You can just have other symptoms that could totally be gut related. And that’s why I think it’s such worth a shot to radically change your diet and then the next level work with the practitioner next level also get those micronutrients tested, you know, like step by step, are you getting better? Sometimes the fix for people is just going gluten-free and that’s it. And thank God that’s all I have to do. But, you know, sometimes it is it is complicated.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah, that’s so true. Okay. So looking back on this, is there anything else, especially for the folks that have that have, are listening this and they really been down this rabbit hole for, you know, for quite some time. And they’re saying, Dr. Kelly, I’ve heard all this before. I’m working on it and I’m still stuck. What am I missing or what am I overlooking that might be more advanced? Or is there a basic step that people, people often discount get back? How can we find those gaps together?

Kelly Halderman, MD

You know, emphatically, yes. That I have come to realize the thing I really missed out on all the training, the doctorates that I had is really the emotional fitness of ourselves and guys. I cannot tell you enough how much people can just get stuck. They’ve optimized everything. All their labs are perfect, all that. But there’s emotional things in the body. Keep score. There’s a brilliant book called The Body Keeps Score and that there can be emotional blocks to your full healing. And if I put on billboards and put something on billboards, I would like, you know, really help yourself. When it comes to emotional healing, I don’t know what that looks like for everybody. I just need to mention it for people is that like, Oh, I’ve heard that I’ve been gluten-free, I’ve done this, I did that test. I had stacks of, of labs like this big and things. And I feel for them. I really, really do the biggest gains that I’ve made in my health last five years have all been with vagal nerve training and DNA and limbic training. I mean, unbelievable like gains right there. So I don’t think like I don’t think you can jump over all the real I don’t think you can still eat Doritos and Coke and all that and, you know, do your emotional work. But, you know, and also in our book, there’s fitness factors and we have fitness factors, meaning like dietary fitness, environmental fitness, detox fitness. And we have an emotional fitness chapter and we get really real about it. And Dr. Eric and I host on Thyroid Answers podcast and lo and behold, a lot of people, experts on thyroid who come and talk to us. That’s what they say. They see it again and again, like, let’s dig into the emotions. Let’s dig into why your body’s responding this way. And so if you haven’t thought about that or if you have or if your resistant I was so resistant to it, I was like train in the medical model. Like, you know, it’s all physiological. It’s nothing, you know, anything spiritual or anything going on like emotional, like trauma. But, you know, I really think it’s worth looking into that. And my favorite way to release emotions is called MAPP therapy. And there’s a lot of podcasts on it. It’s just a zoom call, you know, it’s just a nice therapy to help release the limbic release and reset the limbic system.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah, I think that’s a beautiful summary. I totally agree with you. Even coming from, you know, I specialized in somatic trauma release and I really thought that that was the end all be all back in the day and that that was why I was alive and supposed to teach people this stuff after having my own trauma. And then I got chronically ill and I did not understand at a biochemical level and a nervous system level just how much support we need. But having this, you know, background and framework in release of, you know, somatic stress has absolutely served us in like getting phenomenal outcomes with clients and amazing compliance. Like if you’re in a state of freeze or flight or fight, your ability to heal is completely compromised. And no amount of supplements can cut through that. So you really need all of it. Like, I want to do it without the supplements, without the food choices. I want to live on popcorn and wine and count and be able as well. But you really need all of it.

Kelly Halderman, MD

Yeah. Yeah, you do. Definitely. Yeah.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

So true. So I really appreciate you underscoring that piece. And you’re right. Like there’s accessible ways to do that. There are ways that require, you know, an investment and practitioner support. But there’s always a way forward, especially when it comes to nervous system support and somatic, really. So I love that. One of my favorite ways is to work with something which again, should be honest. You know, I have such an attitude about that. I can that that sounds so stupid. But the truth is it works, you know, it really does. And we want to give our bodies the most love and kindness and and the most help. Like if you give your body a leg up, you know, wouldn’t you?

Kelly Halderman, MD

That’s right.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

That’s right. So I also thought it was really interesting you saying that there’s an emotional and spiritual content, you know, to this as well. And I think that for emotionally sensitive people who are really aware, you’re more likely to take on stuff in your relationships with people and have to reestablish boundaries. And that can be you know, a part of the process of healing from your gut or starting to learn to use your voice again. Like there’s the body works in metaphor too, right? There’s those right I roids right over the. Okay.

Kelly Halderman, MD

Yes, right. If you’re in a relationship where you can’t speak freely or you feel like you’re being shut down. Hmm. Like, and you have thyroid issues. I want to take a moment to take a look at that, too. Right. I totally agree with you.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yeah, I certainly had too. I don’t know anybody that could skip that step so any last words of wisdom, I’d love for you to share it. Like speak directly to the practitioners in the audience because you really had gone on this journey. Shifting paradigms, expanding your toolkit. What is your advice to practitioners on a similar journey right now?

Kelly Halderman, MD

You know, it’s really a tough road. It really is, because, I mean, you get a lot of flack like I still have my medical school friends being like, you know what? They didn’t read my book, obviously, but just so far off the beaten path with the beaten path of alopecia, medicine’s getting smaller and smaller. 15 minute visits. You’re squeezed. No one’s happy. Suicide rates are so high. I feel so bad for my previous colleagues. It’s like. It’s like a jail cell for them. And so what I want to relate is that there’s hope and that there are ways to help people other than being in that model like, I know a lot of people who are just stuck in the medical model, but there’s plenty of functional medicine training. And again, I think it’s not stated enough that a lot of doctors who are practicing are sick themselves and they’re on medications themselves and they’re not healthy either and they deserve better. Like when I’m talking to the practitioner, like you deserve better, like you deserve better care than to have the tools that we spend a half a million dollars learning. Like, really, like taking care of yourself too is really important. And I don’t think physicians hear that enough taking care of themselves. And I know a lot of them tune into science like this where they come to learn. So our book is all about and our message is all about building bridges. You know, we’re not we’re not going to be divisive. And there’s a path like versus functional medicine versus natural. It’s like, no, it’s like let’s just go to the research and uncover elucidate or beautiful parts of the research that tell us we can approach disease differently. Right. We can. And we can all do this together.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

That’s so beautiful. What a great note to end on. Thank you for sharing your personal story with us today and your own journey as a practitioner expanding and on a relentless hunt. I mean, it really this is what is moving our community forward. People who are brave enough to do that. And I really appreciate you sharing your story today.

Kelly Halderman, MD

Wow. It’s an honor. Thank you.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Where can people find you?

Kelly Halderman, MD

They can find me on Instagram: drkmhalderman, I have a Facebook page. I should also just mention that I’m the chief medical officer. That’s my day job for Weo. So it’s a water company. And it’s we actually have a biotechnology that decreases inflammation, works on anti-aging pathways to mice’s athletic performance. So we completely change water. And I’m obsessed with water because while it’s 99% water, we’re 70% water. So drink your water. That’s my last message is drink your water. But a lot of the things that I do is for my I speak for my company, I run the clinical trials for our company. So I’m just very proud to be a part of that. But again I think the message is like, stay hydrated, people.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

So I really appreciate you bringing that up. Yes, definitely.

Kelly Halderman, MD

Yeah.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Thanks so much.

Kelly Halderman, MD

You’re welcome.