Thriving After Thyroid Cancer With Carly Brown

Introduction and Carly's Background 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Thyroid Pharmacists Healing Conversations podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Isabella Wentz, and today we're going to be talking about thriving after thyroid cancer. Carly Brown is a wellness-focused entrepreneur, juice enthusiast, wife, and mother on a mission to contribute to a happier, healthier world. She's grateful to run two different wellness focused businesses, inspired by her experience healing thyroid cancer with integrative health practices, Carly launched Alchemy Juice, a local juice delivery company in Austin, Texas, and an eight-week detox course, the Daily Detox, on her website carlybrownwellness.com.

She's also passionate about teaching others how to build online businesses. That sounds very interesting. she loves spending time cooking in her kitchen, exploring with her husband and two sons. cruise and cache, and traveling to beautiful places off the beaten path. Welcome, Carly. It's so great to have you here with us. Thank you. thank you so much for having me. I know we were chatting for a few minutes before we started, but I wanted to wait till we're live to say this, that I had found your website early on in my healing journey, it was such a blessing to me to hear from someone who had this more functional approach to the thyroid.

And it gave me different perspectives and ways of looking at things years ago when I first started on this journey. So I wanted to personally say thank you for that and it's really fun to be connected in this way now. Thank you so much for the kind words. I really, really appreciate that. It's amazing when you share about your healing journey, you never really know who it is going to reach and how it will impact. everybody but I am a big proponent of you know if if we've healed something let's share it even if our story is not perfect right there's always something that we can help others with maybe we're just a few steps further along on our own healing journeys and so I really appreciate you being here and you know, really talking about your healing journey and what you've gone through with with thyroid cancer, I feel like there is, you hear the word cancer and it just gets to be a very, very scary thing.

And you were actually diagnosed with thyroid cancer shortly after you became a new mom. I know many of our listeners having hypothyroidism, Hashimoto's, they're at greater risk for having thyroid and some of them are listening. They might have thyroid right now or be post-thyroidectomy themselves. So I'd love for you to take us back to that time, perhaps share about how you found out about your diagnosis and what led you that. Yeah, my heart is like so tender hearing you share that there are people like currently navigating that right now and just because I remember those initial feelings.

And so I just hope that I'm a voice for looking at things through another lens and taking a hold of your health and knowing that you will be okay and you won't make it through all of this. That's why I share my story. So let me just share a little bit about how it started. I've been into holistic health in holistic healing for a long time. My mom was like gluten-free and in the 80s and, you know, she used to get raw milk delivered to our home when I was in high school. And maybe I wasn't a little younger than highschool.

It always tells me the story where she was telling me, the benefits of rawmilk. And she's talking about hormones and pesticides and all this that's in conventional milk. And I was like, I don't care. I just want the hormone filled milk like everybody else is having mom. She loves to tell that story because obviously I've changed my entire life to be about wellness and healing. So I grew up in this environment somewhat of wellness, became a holistic health coach in my early 20s, and was living this lifestyle of eating well and exercising.

I was a yoga teacher taking care of myself. And my husband and I loved to travel. We were avid travelers. So after the birth of our first son, Cruz, we decided we were going to keep traveling and move down to Mexico.

Diagnosis After New Motherhood 4:18

We were living in Mexico. I was four months postpartum. And it's hard because I was postpartum. I still carrying extra weight and losing some hair and fatigue and all these very normal post partum symptoms. But I'm not recovering in the way that I felt like I would intuitively, let's say. So a friend of mine sent me to a massage therapist who's like a therapeutic massage therapists. And at the end of the massage, she said, just so you know, you have a lump on your neck. you might want to get that checked.

And I was like, it's nothing. I'm four months postpartum. It's just I am sure it is something hormonal. Like I wasn't nervous. Oh, there's a lump on my neck. Interesting. it will go away. Once I saw it and I actually became aware of it, which is so interesting, because once I see it I couldn't unsee it. How did I not see? It was right here, a bump on the neck, I began to watch it grow. And so I went down to the hospital in Playa del Carmen, Mexico and I met with a doctor there and they didn't speak enough English to convey what was going on.

And I didn' speak Spanish to understand, but I knew that they wanted to get me into a biopsy. Again, there's still real no red flags for me. I'm like, you know what? It's fine. I don't know, I just never had that idea of could it be cancer or could be something serious. Over the next four months of living in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, i continued to watch it grow and i continue to not feel well. We moved back home to Austin, Texas. I went to get an ultrasound and that was when i got it back. If anyone's ever gotten an Ultrasound, it's lit up red.

It could all of these variety of things. I went to a, that's when I began to take it seriously at that point, when it was like, okay, something is going on here. I want to have thyroid specialists in Austin, and they are able to provide their own ultrasound, which is much more precise than like a generic ultrasound place. And within a few moments of looking at it, she says, this looks like thyroid cancer. It looks it's spread to your lymph nodes. I do need to take a biopsy because that's the only way that I'm going to be able to know exactly what's going on.

So I agreed to the biopsy. Um, and it's interesting because there was that sinking feeling of fear, but I guess I'm an overly optimistic person where I was like, okay, I'll wait for the Biopsi. Like I just, you know, there, it was, like I, was taking it more seriously. There was not feeling a fear and overwhelmed, But I said, There's still a chance. It's nothing. But I got that phone call November 9th, 2019. It was 9 a.m. My son, Cruz, was eating oatmeal. He was eight months old at the time having breakfast.

And she called and said, I'm sorry, it's cancer, its metastatic thyroid cancer. Its in your lymph nodes. We need to get you into immediate surgery. That was when it really hit me. those feelings of, I even have goosebumps. I mean, how many years later is it now? Six years and that feeling of will I be here to watch my son grow up? I didn't know anything about thyroid cancer. It didn t know much about cancer as a whole other than it felt really scary. And I sat with it for maybe five minutes.I was alone.

five minutes of sitting on my kitchen floor I remember this feeling and the only way that I can describe it is like mama bear energy of like I will be here like, I am going to tell a story of victory and I'm going tell the story healing and i will not be a victim of this and that's sort of where like the trajectory of the next three years really began was in that moment. such a scary thing to go through. And you know, sometimes people will say when you have thyroid cancer, it's like the good kind of cancer or it like grows really, really slowly.

But that was not the case with you. You were actually watching it grow before your eyes and it had already spread to your lymph nodes. Now, you had so much knowledge already in holistic health. And you are so determined to, like, really heal and tell your story and be there for your kids. I feel like there's nothing more motivated than a mom, right, to be their for her kids, I would love to know what kind of a path that you took to your healing from from the things that from that moment of like, I will choose healing, victory.

I'm going to come through this. For one thing, i never said I have cancer. i only said i'm healing. Literally i would talk about it and say I am healing my body. That's why i am drinking green juice. I am navigating a diagnosis, but I'm healing, so I was really speaking life over my body. Like I said, that doctor called and she wanted immediate surgery, a complete removal of my thyroid, lymph node removal, and then radioactive iodine. Let me go back to that moment. In that movement, I knew well enough to say I'm gonna call you back, right?

Like I know well about health not to be like, yes, doctor, on my way to the hospital, which I think was a big gift because now that I've been deeply involved in the cancer world for five, six years, understand that a lot of people feel guilt, guilted, forced, rushed into making decisions. So one of the best things that we can do upon any diagnosis is take a beat, take a breath, gather ourselves, sit with our loved ones, and have intentional conversations about how we want to move forward in our healing.

So I did that. I said, thank you, I will call you back. And I'm going to talk to my husband, my mom. It was November, but I didn't have health insurance. so I knew that I had to apply for health, insurance and I wouldn't happen until January. Sorry, sort of use that to buy myself some time and like get rid of that off of me for a moment. And in my mind, I said, Carly, you have eight weeks until the new year to figure out how you want to go about this. I did learn things like thyroid cancer is the good cancer to have.

And while I felt very blessed and fortunate that I could have a surgery and radiation treatment and not need to do chemo, that's still a silly thing to say to someone who was just diagnosed with cancer. Is there any good cancer to have? And I started researching ways to heal the body in a holistic way. I learned things like raw food, organic cold press juice, detoxification via coffee enemas, colonics, red light therapy, IV therapy hyperbaric oxygen chambers. And learned I began to learn about the emotional connection between our healing of you know, these wounds or these traumas that we hold on to that can

Choosing Integrative Healing 11:30

get stuck in the body. And really, the way that I did that was maybe had a community of like, 10,000 people on Instagram at the time, who it was just me sharing like holistic health coach Carly. My Instagram, at that time was still Carli Loves Kale. And I said, friends, I'm navigating this. I know there's a lot of people passionate about health in this community who has resources on integrative and holistic ways to heal. and I was taking stuff in, right? Book recommendations and call this person.

an open book. And the internet wasn't where it was now with like the amount of resources that we have. So I had to go out searching for it. Um, and I began to drive around Austin to all of these different therapies. At a certain point, it got a little bit overwhelming for me. That was the very first time that I heard about an integrative cancer clinic. where you could go to a location and they would have a medical professional, a doctor who was overseeing all of these therapies under one roof. So it was probably about three weeks after the initial diagnosis that I packed up and went to my first integrative cancer clinic and chose that pathway.

Yeah, that could be so overwhelming to have all this information for yourself to sort out. And I totally agree with you. Sometimes doctors can say things that are just not the most sensitive, you know, whether they say like, oh, You have the good kind of cancer or you have a good autoimmune disease. I feel like it's really important to acknowledge that having a diagnosis like this can be scary. And I also love that you use some healing mantras in the process rather than being like, this is me and feeling like a victim.

You really focused on putting yourself in that positive action oriented mindset of I'm healing my body, you're reaching out to your community to figure out if there was any resources and trying to find some community resources to support yourself. I think this is the best thing we can do for ourselves when we're facing a scary diagnosis is to reach out and get that support. I'm choosing. So we talked about choosing that was a really big part of your healing journey. I'd love for you to tell us all things juicing, like how did you do it?

If you have any kind of reason why you think it might work? Are there specific juices that are better than others? Right? I am thinking like probably you don't even chug orange juice all day, right? Yeah, so one of the initial books that I found that others might know of in the cancer world, let's say, is crispy cancer. And he was a guy who had stage four colon cancer, or stage three, stage, three colon, cancer was like 20 years ago, and really relied on juicing to heal. So as I'm in this exploration of like, if someone says it can heal me, I will do it.

I really took to juicing, and I was jucing 64 ounces of raw, organic, cold-pressed juice every single day, so a half a gallon of juice, every, single, day. The idea was twofold. One, put as little stress on the digestive system as possible so that my energy could be spent on healing and cellular regeneration and detoxification, because heavier foods, processed foods and animal foods take a lot of energy for our bodies to digest. By juicing, I was keeping the energy needed for digestion really low.

And two, flood my body with as many life-giving nutrients as possible, phytonutrients, plant enzymes, micronutrians. How can I literally imagine my food is like an IV of nutrition to my And so at that point, my main diet for about a year was really this 64 ounces of cold pressed juice and two really big raw salads with like broccoli sprouts and hemp seeds and just lots of deep, rich fruit, vegetables, not even fruit. I wasn't doing fruit in my salads. And then my juice that I focused on was it had ginger, garlic, We actually have this recipe at my juice shop, Alchemy Organics.

Now it's called Immune Boost. It's ginger, garlic, turmeric. Its beets, cucumbers, celery, carrots. The only fruit in it was green apple, which is the lowest sugar fruit that we can add to juice. And I would just have the gallon of it and I'd sip on it all day. The interesting thing about just like the side note of how Alchemy came to be was my healing journey was expensive. I was doing all of these things outside of the medical model, outside, you know, being able to have insurance cover things.

And I thought, how am I going to continue to fund all this? And think that's something that a lot of us navigate when we're doing these alternative journeys of like, I didn't have that money sitting in my bank account. Russ, my husband and I were entrepreneurs probably making like two to three grand a month, like just getting by, paying the mortgage, buying groceries. And so there were a couple days I couldn't get to juicing and I looked around town and i couldn' find organic juice in glass bottles.

All of the juice I was finding was in plastic, so now we have microplastics leaching in. They were full of fruits, super sugary fruits. not a lot of vegetables, and so we were making what we called therapeutic juice, like really healing for the body. And I thought, why don't we just start making juice for people? And that was really how it came about, was to get this product into people's hands, but also to keep funding my journey. That was the original reason the business started. So juicing, I still juice today.

I do eat animal protein now. I'm in a different phase now, but I still include juices in my daily routine. Thank you so much for sharing that. Do you have any kind of juicers that you like using? I know that there's controversies on cold pressed versus using different types of juice out there. Can you... Do have thoughts on that? The least expensive juicer are centrifugal juices, so they spin really fast. So it's really, really quick to make juice, but what they do is they heat up the juice and you end up killing off some of the enzymes and the Enzymes are what's so beneficial in a raw juice.

Any of They pasteurized it so it can sit on the shelf for long periods of time.

Juicing and Starting Alchemy Juice 18:30

Anything that's on The Grocery Store shelf that is not raw, meaning it won't expire within five days, is essentially glorified Mott's apple juice. It's not doing much for us because it's lost the live component, the living component. I personally like masticating juices, which means it kind of like chews the fruits and vegetables and or cold pressed. So we use a variety of juicers within my business. One of them is a commercial cold pressed juice called Good Nature. And at home, I really like the Nama juicer.

So, and if I can give you a code to hand out to people if you don't have one, but the nama juice is, yeah, it's Carly 10. It's 10% off the normal juicers and I love that jucer. And that's a really beautiful at home juicing that is going to give really high quality. If you're going spend the time to juice, you want to make sure that you are using a powerful extraction process. you're using organic produce. Why? Because in juicing, we remove the fiber to concentrate the nutrients. And when we concentrate nutrients, if we're not also using Organic produce, what else are we concentrating?

The herbicides, the pesticides, and everything that's sprayed on there. So, organic produced, make sure you wash it well, use an extraction process like cold press or masticating, go live your vibrant, happy juiced life. That sounds so delicious. I use juicing as part of my healing journey with Hashimoto's as well. And I did use a masticating juicer and yeah, it can get quite expensive when you have all of these organic vegetables and they take up so much space in your fridge. So I really appreciate you starting a company where I can now go and get some juice for myself because it is it can be a lot of work to create juice but it's so worth it and it just really I feel like it floods your cells with so much healing.

Absolutely. And that was the idea behind it was how do we make juice that's of the same quality that you would make in your own home? And I have a lot of customers who say, I travel the world. I've tried juice everywhere. Nothing tastes like this. All we're doing is properly washing it, using organic produce, putting it in glass, and using the proper extraction method. So when you do that, you will be left with a beautiful product at the end. I love that. And thank you so much for sharing the juicer.

I have a masticating jucer that I really like as well. So I can share that in the show notes. Sometimes it's tricky. The cleanup process can be a little bit tricky too. Which juicers do you have? Gosh, I'm trying to remember. It's like one of these long ones. Yes. Is it the Tribest? Yes, yeah. That's a very good juicing too, it is just a bit more annoying to clean. But that was the one I started with. great juicer, it's like this long. Yeah. It's a good one. I'm going to try yours though, because I am looking for something that is a little bit less maintenance.

Yes, I would say that's the biggest benefit that I like the Nama for is how quick the cleanup is. Yeah. Sometimes it's just those little things that make a really, really big difference in whether we're going to implement a healing habit into our lives or not, right? So true. So in addition to juicing, you also investigated some of the root causes that were contributing to you developing cancer. Can you talk through some The thought that I had in my mind was, because I was into the wellness space, I knew that there was over 50% recurrence rate for a lot of different cancers.

And I thought, 33 years old at the time, if I have an eight month old baby, then I cannot be part of that statistic. And so I thought, okay, this happened to me, but not just like, let's get rid of it. But why did it happen? I eat well, I'm mindful, like I do yoga, and I don't eat fast food. I am not a smoker. And I not eating processed food, how did this happen to mean? So that was a really Paramount, part of my healing journey was to get to the root cause, which is why I appreciate your message so much focused on root-cause healing.

Thank you for being that type of practitioner in the world, because I needed people like you, and the word needs people you. So thank you! Um, and so this focus on root cause healing was really my, my focus. And so when I went to that first integrative cancer clinic, I sat down with the doctor and he said, tell me your story. He was like, start at the beginning. So I was, like okay. I think I talked for 30 minutes straight telling him my journey. And I shared about an accident that I had in college.

Freshman year of college, I was at a frat house. I wasn't with my girlfriends. It was not drinking at the time, but I slipped on beer on the floor and I fell where it was my legs, my belly, and then my face was the last thing to hit. And knocked out my two front teeth and broke the upper bone in my mouth. 12 years prior to the diagnosis. And over those 12, years I had done years of reconstructive work on my mouth to heal the bone. I have root canals, titanium implants. In addition to that, I've had all four wisdom teeth removed.

And he said, that is it. I was like, what do you mean that's it? He said I can bet that you have had an infection growing in your mouth at least for a decade. and I see a correlation between root canals, dental infections and cancers of the head and neck. So that afternoon he sent me to a biological dentist and i did something called a cone beam scan. and it can see infection in the mouth. And the dentist said that it was the worst infection that he had ever seen in his clinic. He actually told me, you're lucky that is was cancer because the bones of your mouth could have disintegrated if we hadn't found this because of how bad the infection was.

It was on all of the upper bone of my mouth, I had infection where all four wisdom teeth had been removed. and people are like you know the the number one thing is like well did you have symptoms like did, you, know in hindsight when I look at past photos of

Finding the Root Cause in Dental Infections 25:00

myself I can see some like swelling of the gums but that was it there wasn't pain and I kind of had done so much work on my mouth I was like Whatever. This is just part of my path. There's swollen gums. So the majority of the seven weeks that I spent at that integrative cancer clinic, I did three different surgeries to remove the dental infection from my mouth. As tough as that was, and quite honestly, I will say that the hardest part of the entire cancer healing was the dental work. He had done, he took the infection out, put ceramic implants in.

The ceramic implant failed because there was still infection. So the implants had to come out. There were a couple weeks, my mouth was sewn shut. I would go to the cancer clinic in the morning and I'd sleep and take RSO, which is a Rick Simpson oil, it's a type of cannabis that's supported for cancer patients in the afternoons, and I pray because I couldn't talk, I could not smile, couldn t interact with my son or my husband. That was absolutely the hardest part of all of it. And it turned the faucet of infection off.

Right? I imagine that for 12 years, I had this drip of infection that was slowly shutting my immune system off. And after the infection was fully gone, which by the way, walked around with no front tooth for three months, couldn't have cared less. Like I look back on photos of myself and I'm like, no teeth, like happy as can be, because the infectious, the faucet of infectious was turned off and now I can really heal. I was so grateful. that we'd gotten down to it. And that, I think from there, it was like, all right, now, like game on.

We got to the root cause, and now all this healing that I'm doing is actually like affecting, is gonna affect me on a deeper level. Wow. Such a challenging thing to go through. I mean, nobody likes dental work. If all of us had to choose 10 of our least favorite things, I'm sure dentalwork would be on there. But what a blessing that you were able to find all those infections. And it's something to consider for anybody that's had a root canal, for anyone that has had wisdom teeth removed, that there could be this lingering silent infection going on in your jawbones that you don't even feel, and that can be fueling cancer in our body, that could be fuelling autoimmunity or just overall feeling like crap.

I have had some clients where that was their root cause, was actually root canals and things going in their mouth. wanted to ask you a couple of questions about that. So, ceramic implants, you weren't able to tolerate those. Were there other types of implants you ended up doing once you had the root canals removed? Right. I had titanium implants which wasn't a bioavailable material for my body. They recommended zirconia implants that are ceramic. That's going to be a material that a lot of biological dentists use.

Once they failed, I was like, how do you just put teeth in my mouth at this point, right? Like I have no interest in going under surgery again. So I had a bridge from canine to canines. This is a branch right here. It's permanent. I can't pull it out, but there was a time when I could pull out. click my tongue behind it and it was like a fun party trick that I did. It is permanent so this will last probably up to 25 years and then at any point I could either get the bridge replaced or I couldn't do ceramic implants.

I'm still only six years out and I still have no interest in Doing that, I get a cleaning every six months from a biological dentist in Texas. I stay very on top of my dental health. It's a very big deal for me. And I'm good to ride the wave of this bridge for as long as it will stay in my mouth. People are like, you have a gorgeous smile. Thanks, you don't know what I did for this smile. You do have a gorgeous smile and it's good to know that there's also alternatives to implants because I know a lot of people with autoimmunity or immune system dysfunction, they might not tolerate the implants as well and can be quite a scary process too.

The permanent bridge has worked fabulous for me. Yeah, and it looks gorgeous. And of course I wanted to go back to what happened once you had the infections cleared, what happens to the tumors and what happen to your symptoms? Did you start seeing a transformation in those? So over about 18 months of healing. So remember I told you I had until January and then I was gonna call, I'd told the surgeon I come back and essentially I've told her I'm doing integrative healing, Don't tell your doctor that they don't want to know that.

But I said, I'm doing integrative healing and juicing and detoxing. And she essentially said you can't be my patient anymore because if you come back in 10 years in hospice and this didn't go the way you want and I didn' do surgery on you, i could lose my license. So the bridge was broken there with her and i was sort of free floating on my own. And over the 18 months from that November, 18 month later, I had an 80% reduction in the amount of cancer in my body. The tumor on my neck shrunk. You could hardly see it.

It was almost flat on the neck. I ended up going to a clinic in Mexico called Hope for Cancer that I now call my healing home. It was very similar to that first clinic that went to in Florida, but I didn't resonate with the doctor there and I did not see him as my long-term partner on this healing journey. So I switched over to the clinic and Mexico and they said, essentially, you are in maintenance mode. You can come back every six to 12 months. keep doing what you're doing with the nutrition and the detox and everything.

And cancer is a disease of growth. They were like, not only are you stable, but you've seen reversal in the past 18 months. So they said, as long as we keep monitoring you, you are good to go. I believe that from the moment the infection was taken out, that was when everything kind of skyrocketed. in my life felt the way that I felt those days. I Felt so good. If I saw the world through different lens, I didn't know it was possible to exist in the World feeling how good I've felt. And I think it Was a wild paradigm shift for myself and others who are watching my journey on social media to say this girl is navigating cancer.

The worst and hardest thing we see happen to people. Yet, she's getting healthier. She's becoming more optimistic. Losing weight. Becoming more energized. I just kept getting healthier because of what I was doing to focus on my health. So, yes, we definitely saw a progression of the cancer. And I have tests and scans that show that. That's incredible that you were able to shrink your tumor by 80%. And then was it no longer in your lymph nodes as well? It wasn't active. It was an 80% reduction of lymph node activity and then shrinking of the tumor.

Emotional Healing and Radical Responsibility 33:00

So it was just not, it had progressed in the lymph notes and it progressed and was no long growing. I think it still somewhat present there but there was activity to it. So then as part of your healing, a big part was the juicing and the root canals. There was also an emotional healing component. Is that true? Yeah, absolutely. When I got down to vote for cancer, they had a therapist that you work with who actually brings you through a process of what was going on for your, what, was your mother's life like?

What was life for her when you were in the womb? what were her parents life-like and her, when she was in her womb and you kind of go back about three generations and look at your lineage and see you know, where did something happen that I either haven't been willing to look at or I wasn't aware of? I had one exactly one year before my diagnosis, my dad had suddenly passed away eating dinner at the kitchen table and had an aneurysm and within seven minutes he had passed on. So there were wounds like that.

Then I'm like, I am strong, resilient, and I can handle this. And when I really Said Carly, your, you know, Your health is on the line. Your future is online. It is time to take a good hard look at these things. I really gave myself the spaciousness to be with that pain and be what that suffering and a big message of mine is like Don't wait for a diagnosis to greet these things in your lives because what's repressed will be expressed later on in different ways. And so I really got to sit with a lot of things from, and I had a great childhood too, right?

I didn't have these. anything big but it's like these these little micro traumas of losing someone or hurt or pain or suffering when you're a child or even something silly that can happen on a playground when your six years old but you never stop to like sit with yourself in a sweet way. The Body Keeps the Score is a great book and Dr. Tony's book, A Hope for Cancer, it is his book It's called Hope for Cancer, is a fabulous book that has a bunch of physical modalities, but also emotional ways to support yourself.

So I would say the trio of the root canals, the nutrition and detoxification, and really being willing to do the work, work with healers and therapists and also different types of plant medicine that allowed me to access different parts of myself was a really massive part of The Healing as well. Thank you so much for sharing that because I feel like a lot of us focused on like the physical elements of healing and we can change our diets and take supplements or do some of these more physical things.

But a big part of feeling is also emotional. And I know my friend Dr. Joel Carnahan talks about the role of suppressed emotions. with regard to cancer, and really getting those emotions and processing them can be a really big game-changer for people with a lot of issues, whether that's cancer or autoimmunity. I have found that to be quite frequently something that people really need to work through. AMNA NAWAZ. Yes. And there's actually, in Dr. Tony's book as well, he talks about how different glands and organs of the body are associated with different emotions.

So for our thyroid, for example, it's maybe it perhaps not being able to speak our truth or speak up for ourselves or advocate for you know, there's the liver, and I believe the livers grief. And I've met so many people who are navigating a diagnosis that when they heal that emotional center, they've healed that wound. Just like I said, with my teeth, I felt like that was when the healing began. They say that's when I thought like the feeling really began was what they got honest with themselves.

and they were willing to look at what was really going on. Yeah, I mean, our bodies can do really powerful things once we feed them properly. And once, we take away the things that really suppress and interfere with our body's own way of healing, right? Absolutely, yeah. I feel like one of the big shifts that I saw in you and I see a lot of people with autoimmunity and that get themselves into remission is like taking radical responsibility of our health where we realize like nobody's really coming to save us.

It's up to me. Right. How do you think you got to that place? I think just kind of within our society, we have this idea that we put doctors and practitioners on pedestals, right? When you're a little kid, you are like, oh, he's sick. Okay, let's take you to the doctor. He or she will fix you up. And so I believe that doctors are obviously here to serve us. They have good hearts and goodwill, and they get into this because of a mission and a heart for helping people. And they only have one piece of the puzzle, right?

I know that in medical school, they're not teaching detoxification. They're teaching nutrition. And so my view is that we get to use the medical establishment as a resource. We get use it for testing and information and how blessed and grateful are we that have people who can support us in that way so we can do scans and blood work and have the intel. But they are a team member. They are not the boss. And I think for so many of us, we just say, okay, tell me what to do because we're scared. But the most beautiful thing that we can do is to use them as a referral.

Thank you so much for that information. I'm going to go back, I'll talk to my team, get a variety of opinions. you know, and really building your medical team. And I think part of it came from being blessed with a mom who did think about things differently early on in my life and also just running into it myself, because here's the thing. When I was first diagnosed, that doctor said, you need immediate surgery, radiation and lymph node removal. Had I done that, I wouldn't have gone on the journey of finding my dental infections, of healing the traumas, or healing cellularly, doing the detoxification.

And who knows where I would be now if that infection was still sitting in my mouth. Now, part of my story is I had the 80% reduction in cancer. But then I got pregnant with my second son. And while I was pregnant, with the second, there was some progression of the cancer. I knew that was a possibility. So, when my son Kash, my 2nd son, When he was four months old, I decided to have surgery. I had a complete thyroidectomy, and I some lymph node removal, but I went in on my own terms. Listen, I'm ready.

Book me in. Now is the time. My immune system was stronger, my entire life had changed, and I removed the dental infection. I have a video of me on Instagram where I am in the gown and dancing a Mariah Carey before I go in because I went in empowered. And I believe there are people who could look at the outside and say, well, you still ended up getting the surgery. And I'm like, yes, but they were two completely different people because I went through healing on my own terms. And, I built my team and I used doctors as referrals.

I believe that what's come after that, my health, and my resiliency, the way that I've coped with not having a thyroid is completely black and white than how I just got into it week one when she suggested. And I love that you share that because I feel like sometimes people think integrative medicine is this or that, but oftentimes integritive is,

Thyroidectomy, Recovery, and Hormone Support 41:20

this and that. So there's a lot of things you did naturally to support your body. to made you more resilient so that you could recover from the thyroidectomy better and have like all of this healing because I'm sure the root canal infection would have showed up somewhere else in your body. Perhaps it was the thyroid gland that it show up somewhere else. So I feel like that's such an important thing to share is like, you can do different things. You don't have to be caught up in a dogma of like I can only do the natural things, or I could only follow my conventional medical advice.

you Can absolutely choose the best plan for yourself to help yourself thrive. Yeah, absolutely. And I was no longer a candidate for radioactive iodine. So I didn't have the radiation treatment, I had surgery and that was it. I've been 100% cancer-free ever since then. And I believe with 100 percent certainty it was because of all of the work that I did leading up. I can also share that that's a paradigm that is out there. Either you have to go all conventional and do every single thing your doctor says and they say, eat ice cream, drink wine, live your best life, have fun, or you're all the way on the holistic side and you are shamed or guilted if you decide to do anything else.

I believe you get to be in charge of your healing. We get a diagnosis, you take a breath, and take the beat. You use other people as references and resources. and you get to bring the best of both worlds together so that you thrive in this environment. Personally, within the cancer world, I like to think of it as a sandwich. People ask my opinion. I'm like, you do what you want to do. But if you're asking me, i'd say root cause healing, nutrition, diet, detox, emotional healing. If you decide to do conventional therapies, you do your conventional therapy and then you sandwich it on the other side with the healing and the recovery of detoxification, nutrition, mindset, all of that.

Thank you so much for sharing that now. So you are post-thyroidectomy and so you're taking thyroid hormone and that's an important consideration for anybody that has a thyroidectomy of course. Can you give us some best practices for perhaps from your own healing journey that you found in replacing your thyroid hormone and how you were able to heal after thyroidectomy? Absolutely. So one of the biggest fears for me was that in removing my thyroid that I would lose a part of myself. Our thyroid is such an important part of our endocrine system that I thought, well, what if I lose this zest, this fire, or this light that i have?

I've heard people say they never felt like themselves again or weight gain or fatigue, and I though, I can't go through life like that. I don't want to go though life that way. So those were my biggest fears initially in losing my thyroid. And I can say, absolutely, none of that has happened to me. Granted, I am pregnant. I'm almost in my third trimester with my 3rd son, but I've been the fittest that I have ever been, the strongest, most energized, made the most money, had the impact, been most radiant and vibrant that ever have been in life post-thyroidectomy.

And a couple of things, am very mindful of what I eat. So I eat a higher protein diet, lots of healthy fats, fruits and vegetables, a gluten-free diet. I drink molecular hydrogen water, which is a powerful anti-inflammatory. So, I'm very mindful of what I ate. And very, mindful how I move. i'm going to be 40 in June, so I am aware of putting muscle on. so, i do crossfit three to four times a week. As opposed in my 20s where it was just like yoga and walking, I am mindful of muscle composition. And then I also worked with a more of a functional practitioner who helped me get on both T3 and T4 for my thyroid because it's very common that if you go to a conventional endocrinologist, they're just going to put you on T-4.

From my research and reading your website, I learned that there's the value of the T3, T4 connection. So I'm on both of those as well. Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that. It's wonderful to see you thriving. You're glowing, you're pregnant, your living your best life, and part of it is how you show up for yourself and how certainly done your research. We do know that oftentimes people who do have thyroidectomies, they do require T4 and oftentimes T3 just because their own thyroid gland isn't able to produce their hormones.

Some people also benefit from carnitine if they still struggle with thyroid fatigue. I've seen some interesting research around that. And I would love for you to tell us a bit more about molecular hydrogen water. Mm-hmm. So essentially, I had, obviously here, changed so many things about my life, the way I eat, move, think. And it was probably like a year and a half into my healing journey. I was at Hope for Cancer because I go and do these detox boot camps, essentially once or twice a years. Even being cancer-free, go back for a week at a time and just get a cellular upgrade.

They have these water stations around the clinic. And I thought, what kind of water are they giving their patients? They're so intentional about everything they do, but I never questioned the water that they were giving our patients. Oh look, it's my T3 alarm going off. And at that point I was drinking filtered water. Obviously I knew the value of removing the contaminants and the fluoride from our water, and I learned that they give their patients ionized molecular hydrogen water I'd also read about it in Dr.

Tony's book. And I just began to research it. I was like, molecular hydrogen water, Molecular hydrogen is a gas. It's the most potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory on the planet. So the idea is that filtration is step one, removing the contaminants, the estrogens, The fluoride, arsenic lead, birth control pills, all of that is found in our public water system. so removing that, and then it goes through an ionizer, which then the by-product is molecular So that's the water that I drink all day, every day.

And I got really excited about sharing it with other people because there were some people that had never get to do a coffee enema or maybe never got to drink green juice. But I was like, if I can meet people where they are with water and they start feeling better, that is like a little crack in the door for them to make other changes in their life. Yeah, that's a great stepping stone, because I know there are some holistic things that are a bit more intimidating than others, especially for some of us just new to our healing journeys.

Some of these things can be quite intimidating. So today, you are absolutely thriving. It's so great to see you doing that and being an inspiration for others. I'm going to put you on the spot and ask you a couple of rapid fire questions. Before we do that, I thought you might share a little bit with our listeners where they could find more of your information,

Molecular Hydrogen Water and Final Advice 49:00

where can connect with you if they're wanting to learn more about you and your work. First here, my Instagram is Carly Loves Kale. That's probably the most robust place to find resources. I have hundreds of highlights, My Healing Journey, Detox, all of that. and carlybrownwellness.com is my website that has offerings, detox programs, retreats that I do, can all be found there. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. Okay, so if you had a wellness hack, if were given a list of wellness hacks, is there one that you would never participate in where you're just like, that's a hard pass for me?

No, I wouldn't do any. There's really not. I'm down for the ride. If it contributes to my longevity and well-being, um, pretty much open to it. So you will try anything at least once, right? For sure. Yes. You know, and that's a great attitude to have. Sometimes that can be very helpful on your healing journey. I know sometimes people get caught in dogmas where they're like, I will never change my diet, or I'll never take supplements, right? I won't ever take medications. And that could be quite dangerous where you might really miss out on something you can benefit from.

What about if the supplement police came to your house and said that they were going to confiscate all of your supplements but you were allowed to keep one? Would there be a supplement you would keep? It's a toss up between vitamin D and magnesium. Magnesium, like that's my every night, taking my magnesium, nervous system, deep rest, supports bowel movements. And then vitamin d is just so important for overall health and vitality. So omega-3s would be third, but if I only had to choose two, vitamin-D and magnesia.

I really love you sharing that. Are there any health myths that drive you nuts? that there's only one way to eat, there is only right way and this is the way that's going to heal you. I'm a really big proponent of honoring the season that you're in and also honoring your goals. There was a time in my life where a raw vegan diet was the most nourishing, beautiful thing that I could have ever done and there has been a kind of time where I've had more of a carnivore diet. And so I'm just not really a big fan of stigmas around what we eat, but honoring where we are, what our goals are and what need at that moment in time.

Our age, our gender, or goals, instead of putting black and white, good or bad on diets. I so appreciate you sharing that because I feel like more people need to hear that message and even where we're living can really absolutely influence the type of diet that we need more vegetables and more plant-based. Sometimes if we're living in very wintry regions, we might do better with more carnivore-like and then whatever is going on in our bodies, if you have oxalate issues, you're going to feel better on a carnival diet.

If we have issues with low stomach acid, were going feel about around a vegan diet and there's just so many different healing protocols and nutrition can be so valuable when used at the right time. I really, really appreciate you saying that and I hope more people become aware of that. Absolutely. And as far as any kind of final words of encouragement for people who are maybe on this scary journey, whether they're faced with thyroid cancer, autoimmunity, or a thyroidectomy, do you have any thoughts for them on how to stay positive?

My thoughts and my offering for you is that you will feel good again You can feel good again. This isn't the end all be all. I know for me, I remember when you're sick, right? You have a fever, you have stomach bug and you are like, this is it, i'm going to be sick forever. Like I can't even imagine the time where I'm running and playing and working out again and this is a season and there are so many tools and resources out there to support your healing. It's just up to you to stay the course. Don't give up.

Hold the vision of you well, of your vibrant, of you feeling your very best and just know that the healing tools are available to you. Don't give up on your healing. There is a world where you are radiant and vibrant and well, and it's waiting for you, so just keep going on you journey. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. And thank you, so, much, for your healing journey. I know that it's inspired so many people to take charge of their own health, and you're doing amazing work in the world.

We really appreciate you taking the time to be here. Yes, it is a joy and honor. Thank so you much the resources that you provide that, you don't even know, have supported me on my journey, I'm deeply grateful for how you show up in world, who you are, Thank you so much for the kind words. And everybody at home listening, I hope this conversation can be helpful on your healing journey. Until next time.