How Your Thyroid Health Could Hold The Key To Reducing Cancer Risk

Introduction and Guest Background 0:00

This is Dr. Talks. Real talk from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most. Welcome back to the reversing Hashimoto's and thyroid disease summit. My guest today is Dr. Nisha Winters and she is just a cancer expert, but a pioneer in the cancer field. And she's dove deep into the research and has actually built training programs for other practitioners and programs to help prevent, but also help get you through that time if you were in that state of dealing with a cancer diagnosis. And this is not contained to thyroid cancer.

Of course, we're gonna dive into that today. It's all cancers everywhere, but the information that you are going to get from Dr. Nasha is going to want to make you explore her more in the area of prevention or in the area of proper treatment for cancer. So Dr. Nasha, thank you so much for jumping on today. Thank you so much. This is an incredible summit. I'm super honored to be part of it and such an important discussion and something that's affecting so many of us. So thanks for having me. Well, you know, and a lot of my patients have already gone through a thyroid cancer diagnosis and treatment, which we know is total thyroidectomy or radioactive iodine.

So let's start with the thyroid cancer diagnosis, what you see in your practice and how there is a distinct connection to Hashimoto's. Yes, absolutely. So basically broken down into three major sections of thyroid cancer types that we know about today. The least common and the most aggressive hits about one to three percent of thyroid cancer diagnoses, which is called anaplastic. Thyroid cancer, it's a very aggressive, very squirrely, non-responsive to standard care treatments, very rapid moving, often fatal, and really related to a strange kind of DNA disrepair from like major radiation poisoning, things like that.

Very, very, very rare to see that.

Thyroid Cancer Types and Hashimoto's Connection 2:04

I think I've seen two in my entire career. The second one is about 10% of all thyroid cancer types is a combination of the medullary and the follicular. Now these can have metastatic potential, but they tend to be pretty slow growing. And thyroidectomy is often enough for these treatments as well. And then just watching if it's already left the building, if it's already metastasized, then they'll look at systemic therapies. But I do want you to know that chemotherapy is not really favorable to cancer diagnoses in general of the thyroid.

It's just not as responsive. There are some new tyrosine kinase inhibitors and some targeted therapies that have some benefit, but chemo is often not a good option. But the most important one, which is so relevant to this summit, it's also the most common, the least aggressive, and the least fatal. And that's 80 to 85% of all thyroid cancers are this papillary thyroid carcinoma. And PTC is what you might see in the literature. And this is starting at these little, a lot of people will notice little nodules in their thyroid and they'll be sent off for a biopsy or an ultrasound.

And if there's anything, it might just show anaplastic or not anaplastic, excuse me, hyperplastic. So just like some subtle changes, but nothing yet cancerous that they might think of pre papillary carcinoma. But if they do find papillary carcinoma, I will tell you this, most patients can take a very thoughtful watch and see approach. It will probably surprise you and your listeners to know that By the time we reach the age of 70, virtually all of us have cancer in our thyroid, all of us. We will die with it, not of it.

And of those findings, they're papillary in nature. And so to bridge all this back to the Hashimoto's discussion is the most common driver of a papillary thyroid carcinoma, a diagnosis of thyroiditis secondary to things like Hashimoto's or Graves. And so the nature of the beast is when we have this chronic autoimmune process happening, we have increased levels of inflammation. We have increased levels of reactive oxygen species, which are reactions to changes in our environment that lead to some DNA vulnerability.

And we have other endocrine hormone signaling malfunctioning going on. So maybe our cortisol responds or our sex hormones responds or our pancreas, you know, insulin levels respond or our pituitary responds in response to these changes happening. So Hashimoto's, when you start to find nodules and whatnot, patients for the most part will find that they're Hashimoto's nodules and that going after it more, and we talk about prevention instead of just cutting it out and radiating it with this high dose radioactive iodine, we could start with some dietary and lifestyle modifications and head this off at the pass way before we get too aggressive and then can't basically change what damage we've done with either surgery or an radiation iodine uptake process.

And that RAI in and of itself. So, so many patients out there, right? They're presented with the diagnosis of a thyroid cancer and they're presented with two options. You either have that total thyroidectomy or you have the radioactive iodine treatment. Now, I always tell them, go for the surgery. Yeah, I know it's going to be a little scar. It'll heal. Don't worry about it. Cover it up. Do some laser or whatever versus the radioactive iodine treatment, because I mean, just the term radioactive.

I mean, come on. That's something that we avoid all of our life. So why would someone why is that even an option? And why would you advise someone to to avoid that form of treatment as well? I love that question. I mean, first of all, to break it down, radioactive, as you alluded to, problematic, known carcinogen, no damaging of our DNA, whether it's healthy DNA of the healthy tissue around or the cancerous DNA of the cancer, they're bringing in radioactive iodine in hopes that it only targets cancerous rapidly dividing cells but unfortunately what we see more often than not is it also damages the surrounding tissue making those cells more vulnerable to DNA damage and more mutate mutatable that's a word makes them vulnerable to have a recurrence or a progression of that very same cancer and the not so distant future.

In fact, I was telling you in a previous discussion that I've never had a patient with papillary thyroid carcinoma, first of all, not have Hashimoto's. So there's that piece. I always see those go hand in hand. The other side is I've never had somebody who's come to me with thyroid cancer, papillary specifically. I've had more aggressive, like the medullary follicular or the anaplastic I talked about, but papillary, I have never seen a single patient die of papillary

Radioactive Iodine, Surgery, and Recurrence Risk 7:13

thyroid cancer, nor have metastasis except in those who did the RAI. And that helps understand is that we cause more gene mutations in that surrounding tissue, more reactive oxygen species, more inflammation, more vulnerabilities. And then we hit another whammy with this influx of a massive bolus of iodine which has some confusion and controversy out there, but specifically with this combination, iodine in big or small amounts in the radioactive iodine uptake or in supplemental does in fact stimulate thyroid peroxidase antibodies.

which is the hallmark blood test for Hashimoto's autoimmune thyroiditis. So you're thinking here, we're going to give a treatment that makes the cells more vulnerable to becoming cancerous, and we're going to give a treatment that makes the very reason why they became vulnerable to begin with even more so. So it doesn't make sense to me. And because of that, if I'm lucky enough to get somebody before our AI, I will help them avoid it like the plague. And if I see someone and surgery seems to be indicated or they've already had the surgery, I get them into somebody like Dr.

Amy, who knows how to properly evaluate their thyroid orchestra and its relationship to the rest of the endocrine system and how to be very alchemical in the way you can medicate and support these folks. Because What also happens after a thyroidectomy is people get put on a single high dose of a T4, synthetic T4 and T4 only, which thank God Dr. Amy speaks volumes on this. It doesn't work. No, it doesn't work. It's not even remotely who we are. We are such this complex, beautiful orchestra of T4, T3, T2, T1, even all these different thyroid hormones and their relationship with everything else.

Here's a crazy thing we were also talking about for the recording was there's been suggestions that over hyper or over suppression of TSH, so putting a patient basically into hyperthyroidism also proliferates cancer cells. So any residue of cancer cells after the thyroidectomy and after the radioactive uptake, when they're then put on a massive dose of T4 by itself, that leads to an even more vulnerable push of cancer proliferation of any residual cells there. So it doesn't surprise me that my patients who were just very proactive with cleaning up their terrain and supporting the beautiful orchestra of their endocrine system in relationship to their thyroid and removing a lot of the things that were contributing to those antibodies that led to the Hashimoto's diagnosis, that's where we either prevent cancer or prevent cancer from recurring after it's already started.

Okay, yep, absolutely. Now, is there a connection or is there a TPO limit that you look at, let's say over 2000 or over 1000, where you go, this person has antibodies so high, they're at a times 10 greater risk of thyroid cancer or do the antibodies number not matter? That's a stinkin' awesome question. No one's ever asked it of me. And here's the funny thing. We also run thyroglobulin, which is a cancer marker for thyroid. So if I've had a patient who's had, say, breast cancer and they've had radiation, say, to their breasts at that time, I will check a thyroglobulin on them annually because just the field of the radiation could reach the thyroid and increase the risk of thyroid cancer after having breast cancer radiation.

How fun is that? So I'm watching their thyroglobulin antibody regularly. If they lived near Chernobyl or if they were near Fukushima or they lived in areas like there's a hot spot in Norman, Lake Norman in North Carolina, Hot spots on radiation tailings, you know, old mining towns in Colorado, big one where I grew up or where I spent time in Durango, Colorado. Lots and lots of Hashimoto's there. Then and only then am I watching like annually for thyroglobulin to screen for and stay ahead of a thyroid cancer diagnosis.

The antibodies themselves do not seem to have. I've had patients with full blown papillary thyroid carcinoma. with like a 12 on their TPO antibodies. Right. I've had people who have like no more thyroglobulin, which is the tumor marker and their imaging looks good. And their TPO is at a thousand. Like I've not seen that number correlate. So it seems like you've had the similar experience. Yeah. Yeah. And I wonder what your, your experience was since you dive into this and see so much thyroid cancer.

So now you had mentioned as well, the connection of gluten and iodine as being huge drivers. And obviously we know gluten is a huge driver in Hashimoto's expressing itself and then kind of expanding and growing. I always use the analogy of having soldiers. So when we look at those antibodies, if you think of them in terms of soldiers and those soldiers are going out and they're beating up your thyroid gland,

Antibodies, Thyroglobulin, and Radiation Exposure 12:24

well, when we consume gluten, those soldiers look at that gluten that looks like in chemical structure, like the thyroid gland, they're like, let's go start a war and let's beat up that thyroid gland again today. What is the connection between gluten, iodine, and thyroid cancer. Got it. Well, first of all, I mean, I love what a stinkin' awesome analogy for this piece here. And also, you know, up until about 19... late 1960s, early 1970s, celiac disease, so the HLADQ gene, or the human lymphocyte antigen genes of the celiac risk factors were, you know, we were still probably about one in a thousand of people with true celiac.

We saw that number start to explode upwards of one in 10 today, not necessarily true celiac, but true gluten sensitivity. And that's thanks to another massive endocrine disrupting chemical that is ubiquitous in our environment, no matter where you live on this globe. And that is glyphosate. Yep. Okay. So glyphosate has basically it's like been like kryptonite to our GI tract and it has created a deeper leakiness, more issues with how we take in information we shouldn't and get rid of information that we need to be holding on to.

It has taken gluten and sort of turned it into like a made it from a mole hill into a mountain. Right? So even if somebody doesn't have celiac, thanks to glyphosate, it's created these changes in our microbiome and in our GI tract, and therefore in our immune system that makes us all basically gluten sensitive today, for the most part. So if you have, and what's very interesting is gluten itself, I love how you describe the army, that's exactly what happens is the gluten comes on board and the body sees it as a cell, like something to attack.

Yeah. It just keeps you in this perpetual state of chronic autoimmune dysfunction. And it's impacting your mineral balance even more because you're eating something that is causing even more leaky gut and causing more imbalance of your minerals, which then leads to selenium imbalances magnesium imbalances calcium vitamin d vitamin k2 iodine all of the even the micro you know the the micro minerals as well start to get thrown off there with this the other component is that gluten itself kicks up something called nf kappa beta.

We can measure that in realms of like interleukin 6. We can measure that with C-reactive protein. If I see patients with chronically elevated AST ALTs, which are your liver enzymes with they don't drink or they drink very minimally issues, that is always a marker of celiac or gluten sensitivity as well. So that's an interesting piece that these patients might be getting re-trigger and unbeknownst to them. Like I learned the hard way that my toothpaste at one point had gluten in it. So I was avoiding it so strategically in my diet and suddenly I was getting it in my toothpaste.

Wow. And it was a Tom's of Maine. which was even crazier. All right. So now you have to like go to those depths of like, okay, what's my body care products a whole bit? Cause somebody like me, I've got true Celiac, right? So I've got the HLA DQ gene and I have Hashimoto's and I had ovarian cancer and I was on a big kick for a long time on iodine supplementation to deal with my thyroid. Cause that's what I was studying at the time about 25 years ago. And Oz an explosion. I shut my thyroid entirely down because of massive boluses of iodine.

I didn't understand that connection in that the iodine will tick up the thyroid peroxidase antibodies. I did not understand. I always knew that it would make your TSH look falsely elevated, Right. And that it could have some issues there, but no one ever taught me in that realm in the iodine world about the thyroid antibodies. And when I started correlating and doing that test on myself, as well as the hundreds and hundreds of patients I had on high doses of iodine, luckily I test those antibodies regularly and it was very easy to see how quickly those thyroid antibodies go up in the face of exogenous iodine uptake.

I have no problem with people getting it from their food, seaweed, salt, you know, the body knows what to do when it's coming from that, or like a nice mineral, like a beam of minerals I really like. Some of those out there have a really nice balance that's not throwing or skewing you in one direction.

Gluten, Glyphosate, and Iodine as Triggers 16:48

So food, and some of those mineral supplementations are completely fine, but by itself I've been careful with any exogenous iodine supplementation, especially in those who already have Hashimoto's, and then I'm watching at least annually thyroid antibodies if somebody is taking iodine. had they not had Hashimoto's. And so we've learned pretty quickly, even those folks tend to start to move into Hashimoto's in a relatively short period of time on exogenous iodine. So it's something I would really encourage practitioners listening to start to run TPO and anti-thyroid globulin antibodies.

And then that relationship is with iodine, also interesting when you take a lot of exogenous iodine or a bolus of it in the radioactive iodine treatment of thyroid cancer, you will in response to that upswing of iodine increase your estrogen levels. It will respond to that. So it creates this, even if it's temporary, a moment of estrogen dominance, which my world can be a not so great place to be for a lot of the patients that we're working with that have already vulnerabilities to growth factors of which in an active state of cell proliferation, you do not really want to be messing with adding any more insult to injury with other growth factors.

So we tend to be very, very careful with any exogenous hormones, exogenous iodine, watching gluten in all of our patients with cancer, just so we don't end up with these autoimmune storms, these DNA vulnerability storms, these reactive oxygen species, and this just general immune dysfunction. Right. Well, okay. You mentioned immune dysfunction. That was going to be my next question is supporting the immune system is key for the prevention of cancer, but it's also key for autoimmune conditions. And people get that confused.

They're like, wait a minute, it's autoimmune. My body's attacking my thyroid gland in the case of Hashimoto's. So why would I support it? Why would I use something like vitamin D to support my immune system? And essentially I just want my immune system to sit in a corner and shut up, stop attacking my good stuff in my body. So what is the importance of, can you dive more into that, into supporting the immune system? on so many levels. I got gooseies on this one. Great question because you're right.

We've got, so here's my teeter totter. Okay. In the center is TH3, which is your T helper cell, which think about that. And this is a component of the immune system, not the thyroid system per se. This is about the modulation of immune function. When we have cancer, not always mind you, but for the most part, it's TH2 dominant. Okay, so TH2, T helper cell 2, is hyperactive in most cancer situations. In autoimmunity, TH1 is most dominant, T helper cell 1. You also have, I was one of these cases and I see dozens of these, people that are both TH1 and TH2 dominant.

which is really weird, because it's like, oh, we really have to skate a really thin line. So if you're someone who's both got autoimmune history and cancer and they're dancing with each other, maybe simultaneously or taking turns, you've got to really stay on that TH3 zone to support them. And I'll tell you about how we do that in a moment. When people have been extremely over-treated, chemotherapy, immune suppressive drugs, bio-modulating drugs, so like the drugs used for rheumatoid arthritis, et cetera, emberls and those things.

That will push both TH1 and TH2 down, basically taking your entire immune system completely off the grid. That's not a good idea either, because then you just like die of some strange random like tooth infection, right? Like your body gets so taken over, it doesn't know how to recognize, respond or remember when it's facing these things. That's a functioning immune system. So how we support a balancing act, a modulating an act, not a stimulating or suppressing of either end of the teeter totter, is to focus on the center.

So for instance, if I have a person who's got a Hashimoto storm, or even an autoimmune storm after taking an immune therapy like Catruda or Opdivo in the cancer world. So we're using a lot of immune therapies today. Immune therapies, by the way, fully suppress, turn off the switch on Th2 and fully crank up Th1, right? Basically they create an autoimmune shit show. Yep. All right. And so I help patients by saying, okay, you're going to get on these drugs, but we're going to find out where your immune system is hanging out in the teeter totter land right now.

We can run tests like through companies like Cyrex. We can do a lymphocyte mapping panel. I can take a questionnaire and kind of get a sense of people. I can just look at their family history. I can look at things like their neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio, their white blood cell count. I can look at their inflammatory markers and I can get a sense of which teeter into the teeter totter is at play, if not both. Then we focus on trying to modulate it. And so if someone's flaring in that autoimmune, we can give high, high dose vitamin D fish oil, vitamin A to literally suppress that hyperactivity instead of what standard of care would give is steroids.

Right. Not a good idea. OK, because we're going to set up the metabolic mayhem and really push cancer again.

Immune Modulation in Cancer and Autoimmunity 22:08

So if we can do that short term, like really bring on like two weeks of like high doses of those nutrients I just talked about, you can deescalate that autoimmune flare. And then what we do is we titrate amidst that of using the right amount of vitamin D, the right amount of probiotics, such as our acromansia, which is very balancing in the TH3 zone to both cancer side and autoimmune side. we can bring on things like low-dose naltrexone, which is an off-label drug, which is one of my, I mean, my personal saving.

I'm pretty sure my teeter totter is alive and well today because of low-dose naltrexone with my years of autoimmunity and years of cancer. These are the things that we can modulate the immune system so it recognizes self, but also can recognize other and respond appropriately and not over excessively or under, you know, underwhelmingly. And so this is the dance about modulation, about balance, about homeostasis, and that pushing either end on either side of the coin is often not a great idea, at least for long term.

Now you had mentioned LDN. What are your thoughts on black cumin seed oil? I went down that rabbit hole and I was blown away. Well, number one, I use that with patients to lower antibodies, right? And I was blown away. So this is why I put it in my Hashimoto's fixer because Number one, it lowers the amount of antibodies, but number two, anti-cancer. I was like, do you know what kind of studies you have to have in the supplement world to say that any, to even use the C word, but to say that it, That's cancer.

Oh my gosh. So there has to be substance there or the, all the alphabet soup agencies would be slapping down on any supplement company with black human in it. It's so crazy. I want to say is that thymoquilone. Yeah. So it's like everyone's all the words like, I see it go across my little mental brain here. Because if you look at black cumin seed, you might not see the data. But if you go up and look up the thymoquilone, that's where you see the data, which is one of the constituents of that whole black cumin seed.

And it has pro-apoptotic effect. It's a BCL2 inhibitor, which is what induces apoptosis. It works on the main metallometrics proteins. It specifically can lower VEGF, which is vasoendothelial growth factor, which is the angiogenesis in the wrong places of the body. It dampens NF-kappa-beta. It is a toll-like receptor modifier. It can work on interleukin 6, 10, and 8 to lower those. What I'm saying probably sounds like Greek to you, but this is where the research is in the oncology space. All of those individually I talked about have tons of research and looking for that one drug to treat that one particular target.

And yet this particular Ayurvedic food has got hitting all those targets at once. It is such a potent modifier. I love that you brought that up. Yeah, and it also has, because it's working on the toll-like receptors, that has a similar impact of what low-dose naltrexone is doing. So they're very synergistic and supportive of one another as well. Yeah, so for me, I put that into the category of what I call the no-da supplements. As in, duh, you're going to take that every day, right? You're kind of like with vitamin D and magnesium and the minerals.

You just do because the benefits are wide reaching and just tremendous to the body. What would you put in your no-da supplement list for those with, let's say Hashimoto's and or dealing with thyroid cancer? I love this. This is so good. I mean, first of all, I want to take some things out. I want to make sure they're not taking iodine in any supplementation or in like iodized salt. I want to make sure they're getting, getting like a good like Kalima sea salt. There's a really good sea salt from South Africa or Himalayan salt.

You're still getting plenty of iodine to meet your daily needs, but you're not overextending it. There are some folks that like myself, I'm really sensitive, like red salt is my favorite, but it's got a lot of iodine in it. And so I can get my antibodies will tweak if I eat too much. I can tell I get swollen in my joints if I get too much iodine. So if I go out to eat and I'm eating iodized salt, I know I'm getting a little bit of a thyroid flare. That's how sensitive I am. I'm a canary in the coal mine though, so not everyone's going to be that sensitive.

But I would avoid gluten at all costs. I'm really careful with that. And even for folks who are new to the Hashimoto's dance, maybe gluten alone isn't enough. So I like to pull all grains and legumes to get the gut healed, at least for a period of time.

Key Supplements and Supportive Strategies 26:48

Cyrex offers a test for cross reactivity. So for instance, when I went gluten free in 2009, I was eating a lot of tapioca and sesame to make up for some of the places where I wasn't doing gluten. And my body was thinking I was still getting gluten. So I had to pull those out for a few months. Thanks to that test, it showed me that I was having hyper reactions as if my body was still thinking I was getting gluten. Took them out for a few months. I now have no problem with them. But in the beginning, you might be vulnerable that your body thinks everything is gluten, right?

And because it's in everything, not as much today as it has been in the past, but you still need to be mindful of that. Then my no duh. I love that, by the way. I hope you've trademarked that. I would, you know, I want to know their baseline of their vitamin D. I want to make sure it's in a good like 50 to 80 in the preventive mode. If they're actively cancering or actively autoimmune, I might want it higher 80 to 100, 120 as a treatment of balancing and modulating that immune system. I really like to look at essential fatty acids and see like what is the best for that patient.

Sometimes it's like the fatty 15, sometimes it's fish oils, sometimes it's other, you know, components that I might be looking at there. I also really love for folks who are dancing both with cancer and with autoimmunity, low dose naltrexone is in every one of those patients, every single one. Nothing works better. And then I really love there's, gosh, it used to be called C-Cure. I don't know what it's called anymore, but it's basically a pre-digested fish protein. It's basically like a peptide that heals the gut.

And so it's nice because it won't push a lot of the glutamine or methionine that can sometimes be concerning in an active cancering process, but it can give enough building blocks to repair the body, repair the DNA there. And I like to look at, there's some really cool testing, a company called Bytract I've been playing with lately. They can do a very inexpensive microbiome test. And I'm telling you across the board, acromansia seems to be the missing ingredient in most of our autoimmune and our cancer patients.

So I really like the pendulum product there. I get no, by the way, all these things I'm saying, I get no affiliation to, it works for me and the patient population we see, but Those are things that I think would be an ongoing. And to your point, I think magnesium, probably every single patient is on, we're so depleted in our soil. It just depends on maybe which forms they need depending on their symptoms. So I might mix that up for the patient. But that's kind of like my go-to when I travel, I take extra vitamin D, I take some extra vitamin C from like a food-based, Paleo Valley is the one I use for that when I'm on the road.

And then I take my low-dose naltrexone and magnesium. Those are like my always, always, always supplements. Otherwise, I do it through food and lifestyle. But if I had something going on, I would titrate it based on that person's needs at that moment. Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you for sharing all of that. And thank you for sharing all of your information today. It has been absolutely a pleasure to talk to you because this is such an important topic in the world of Hashimoto's, but in our world in general for preventing cancer.

So as I've shared on my podcast, when you were on my podcast, I want to work with You and your team for prevention, because that is so important. So can you let the audience know where they can find you, more about you, where they can work with your team, all the good stuff? Thank you. Yes, absolutely. So you can learn more about me on Drnasha.com. That's where you'll see my book, The Metabolic Approach to Cancer, my other book, Mistletoe and the Future of Integrative Oncology. loads and loads of other interviews and podcasts and a lot of free downloadable information just for education education education.

Where to Find Dr. Nasha and Closing Remarks 30:28

You can also find out about our trainings for clinicians and allied health professionals, as well as those who have completed our training and are available to do evaluations of you and your terrain. on our website mtih.org that's metabolic terrain Institute of health mtih.org and there's a great directory listing we've got almost 700 clinicians and allied health professionals in over 43 countries now. available to consult with you and your loved ones on this journey. And then our own podcast, which Dr.

Amy is going to join me on eventually, which is metabolicmatters.com. You can find us there. We've had a lot of incredible conversations with unbelievable thought leaders in the space of metabolic health in general, and not just about a cancer discussion, but all things metabolic. So follow us there, and thank you for the opportunity to be part of this incredibly important and informative summit. Absolutely amazing. Thank you once again. Thank you, everyone, for watching. We will have much more on the Reversing Hashimoto's and Thyroid Disease Summit.

Thank you for tuning in to Doctor Talks. We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health. Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your well-being. For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website, www.doctortalks.com. Stay connected. Stay healthy and join us next time on Doctor Talks, real talks from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.