Why conventional medicine is failing Hashimoto’s patients

Introduction to Diet and Inflammation 0:00

So this is where the diet comes into the first picture. You know, change how you eat and what you eat. You know, give up processed food. That processed food literally doesn't have anything good that it can do to your body. So giving up all that processed food, processed meats or processed sugar in itself is a big change for a lot of people because that itself will take away a lot of inflammation containing foods over there. And then after that again like you know swap for healthy food choices. Most of us are not eating enough vegetables in our diet.

Those non-starchy colorful vegetables have great antioxidants.

Introducing Hashimoto's and Dr. Gupta 0:34

That's the natural way of giving nutrients to your body and reducing inflammation to your body. This is Dr. Talks. Welcome to My MD Unscripted. I'm your host, Dr. Clint Carter, and today I'm super excited to talk about Hashimoto's and thyroid, and you would say, why would I care? Today we are honored to have a guest who's one of the world's experts in here. And so I guess I would start with if Hashimoto's is the most common autoimmune condition in the world, then of course all the doctors know how to handle it and it's easy, right?

Unfortunately, millions of people in the US and many more worldwide are suffering without real answers. And I guess the question built into that is why? And my guest today might say that what if the question isn't even really at the thyroid, but the problem is that the thyroid is a symptom of bigger issues. So it's without further ado, I would love to introduce you guys to Dr. Anshel Gupta. He's renowned thyroid autoimmune specialist trained at Cleveland Clinic functional medicine. He has a best selling book called Reversing Hashimoto's and he has a global mission to heal a billion people with a beat.

and they're out there to be healed. So thank you so much for joining us, Dr. Gupta. Tell us kind of how you got here and thank you so much for joining. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having me on your show over here.

Dr. Gupta's Personal Health Journey 2:12

You're doing an amazing job of helping so many people and sharing so many relevant information that is needed in today's world. Thank you. Because, you know, like the internet is filled with a lot of information, but we want like, you know, MDs like you who are actually sharing information, which is research-based and relevant, so people have some trust factor in that. So thank you for doing that. Yeah, thank you, man. Absolutely. So, you know, like interesting in a functional medicine world, you know, like this is always a joke that whenever two functional medicine providers meet, you know, we always tend to ask this first question, what is your story?

Like, you know, you are a conventional MD. How come you land up in functional medicine? Because obviously in our medical school, we all are hating, you know, those people who are talking about like alternative world of healing or modalities, right? So my story was very similar. I was a traditional family medicine trained physician. After my residency, I was working in my dream job in a small clinic in the Virginia area. And just a couple of years into my practice, I started having a lot of health issues of my own.

I started gaining a lot of weight even though I did not change anything in my lifestyle. I was having a horrible stomach problem. This stomach pain will hit me suddenly out of the blue and it was happening again and again. I thought initially maybe it is acid reflux. So I started taking over the counter medicines for it. Then I thought maybe those are not working for me. Let me take higher doses of medicines. So I started taking prescription medicines for that. Even then, it was not getting better.

I was getting brain fog. By the end of the day, I was not able to concentrate on things. I was feeling literally fatigued during my clinic hours that my lunch hour was gone and taking a nap because I just had to function. All these things were happening, but blood work was absolutely normal. Nothing could pinpoint what was going on. I saw my friend who was a gastroenterologist. I said, well, let's cope you. Just do an endoscopy. Let's see what is going on. He did that, everything was normal. A bunch of ultrasounds were done, other testing was done, and nobody could figure out what was going on with me.

They added more medications, maybe it is your gallbladder, maybe it is your gut mortality issues, maybe you are allergic to things. So everybody was throwing things at me, and these are all my friends, great doctors, amazing doctors and trying to help me out, but they could not do it. I was only 32 years of age at that point of time. I was already on five medications and still suffering from all those symptoms. And I was like, really? At this age, I have to take all of these medications for lifelong basis and I had no hope of getting better.

So that's where, you know, like somebody said, well, why don't you try functional medicine? This is for people like you, you know, who have no hope of getting better. I was desperate times call for desperate measures. Yeah, so I looked into functional medicine, got trained into it and started implementing those things in my own life. I changed how I eat, how I process stress. I included some workouts as well as some meditations in my life. And within one month, my stomach pain was completely gone.

And within six months, you know, I was off all medications. The stomach pain was still off. You know, my energy was really good. I lost 40 pounds during the time. And plus, you know, my brain fog was so good. I was feeling so good that even I participated in a 5K rugged maniac and I was a never athletic person. So for me to doing that was really a big achievement that finally I was able to do something. Wow. Yeah, right on. So that was my aha moment, like, you know, just few months, you know, of doing things, you know, like changing my lifestyle, taking certain supplements can heal me.

What Hashimoto's Is and Why TSH Isn't Enough 5:56

So there is something out there. So I want to do research. I want to look into like how this functional medicine model of care can help other people. So, you know, like I was invited to join Cleveland Clinic functional medicine center that is an only academic center, which is looking at why or how functional medicine can be incorporated. So over there, actually, I started seeing time and again that I was attracting these kind of patients, you know, who had a very similar story as mine. They were all having weight issues, unable to lose weight, they were tired, they had brain fog issues, and they were all taking medications.

And that was thyroid disorder. and they're still not doing good. So I said well you know like there is something out there maybe that has not yet been discovered why these people with thyroid and Hashimoto's are not getting better. So I started researching over there and realized okay well Hashimoto's is just not about deficiency of thyroid hormone it is much more than that. So I developed protocol over there and then started implementing and we saw amazing results. Not only they felt better in terms of their symptoms, but the disease process also got better.

This is the first time that I realized that finally that the Hashimoto's antibodies could be reduced because before that I was always told there is no way that once you get an autoimmune disease, that's a life sentence for you and those antibodies are never going to go down. But in our patients, we saw amazing results of reducing antibodies as well as improving their lifestyle. So that's been my mission of like, you know, doing functional medicine model of care, especially for Hashimoto's patients has been the journey now.

I'm gonna say most functional medicine guys and ladies that I've talked to, it all starts with their health. My health was, I am Hashimoto's, low thyroid, I mean, of course thyroid, low testosterone, depression, of course, I mean, low T and low thyroid, you're gonna be depressed. I was burnt out in the hospital system and I was like, no, there's gotta be a better way. This is awful. And so, yeah, I'm super excited about talking about Hashimoto's a little more just personally because, you know, in regular training, you're right, no one talks about reversing autoimmune disease.

They just talk about controlling it, throwing in some medications to suppress your immune system because obviously it's out of whack. So I'm, I'm super excited about what you kind of what your protocol looks like. I think we could take a step backwards though, before we get too deep into this rabbit hole and just for the audience, what exactly is Hashimoto's? Sure. It's auto-mute. Tell me, you know, what's, how do you explain it to your patients? Absolutely. So I think a lot of people know that they have a thyroid disorder, right?

Their thyroid is not working and that they're told that is hypothyroidism but what they don't know is the reason of that hypothyroidism and Hashimoto's is the number one reason at this point of time for hypothyroidism world over. So Hashimoto's disease is an autoimmune condition where your body is making antibodies against your own thyroid gland and that starts a very slow destruction of your thyroid gland and then weeks to months to years it takes that thyroid gland to be destroyed and finally then you become hypothyroid.

Now, the problem is that, as you said, in conventional medicine, we are only told to check one thyroid marker, which is the TSH. And that is not even a test for Hashimoto's disease. And by the time the TSH becomes abnormal, we have missed that window of testing or diagnosing Hashimoto's at earlier stages. people are going for these blood testing and they have been symptomatic for years and then they keep on telling their doctor something is wrong with me you know I feel tired I have brain fog or I'm gaining weight even though I'm not doing anything they've all been told that you know they are stressed out but in reality it is a Hashimoto's disease so very important to get complete thyroid testing to know whether you have Hashimoto's disease or not specifically if you do have symptoms Now previously once first when we got diagnosed with hypothyroidism like years ago, the number one reason at that point of time was iodine deficiency.

Now because of the world over like you know iodine has been added to so many different foods, now the current scenario is actually 90 plus percent of patients

Functional Medicine Root Causes of Hashimoto's 10:10

actually have Hashimoto's disease. So very important for people to know that you know why they have the hypothyroidism and is it only genetic or is it actually because of Hashimoto's disease. It's crazy that in my family medicine residency program, we only checked TSH. We didn't check any, you know, TSH isn't even a thyroid hormone. It's a brain hormone, right? It's your brain's opinion about how well your thyroid's doing. God forbid your TSH be in range and you be, fully symptomatic. There was like, well, can't help you.

You know, you're barely in range. That means you're normal. And even, I mean, that would have been true with iodine deficiency, you know, 50 years ago. But now with Hashimoto's, man, it wasn't until the patient started asking me to check their TPO antibodies, their antibodies against their thyroid. And that's just one antibody that I was like, and then my doctor that was taking care of me checked it for me. And I was like, oh, cool. What's that? So, and you know, I was 10 years into my career at that point.

So it's just crazy what the average well-trained family medicine physician doesn't know about this condition. Absolutely, and I was in similar boat, you know, like, you know, whenever people will come to see me, say that, you know, oh, I've heard that, you know, there is Hashimoto's disease and can you check my antibodies? I will say that why you want to check your antibodies, you know, you are on right medications, your TSH looks great. Even if your antibodies are positive, my protocol is not going to change.

Simply because there are no medications or even at this point of time also a lot of physicians don't know how to lower these antibodies. So I would have done the same thing until later on when you realize why these antibodies are so important and actually you can reduce it. That's the reason now we are able to check them and want to follow them so we can actually reverse the disease. Okay. So now that we kind of have a good, you know, the, we all are on the same page. What is Hashimoto's? Tell me about the functional medicine approach.

Tell me about what I didn't know coming out of residency that is, you know, fueling really your passion for helping people worldwide. Absolutely. So again, as I said, Hashimoto's is an autoimmune condition. And again, going deeper, people should ask this question, why? Why did I get Hashimoto's disease? That's where my journey also started. Well, why are people getting Hashimoto's disease suddenly? And unfortunately, there is not a very clear or like, you know, appropriate understanding from the research standpoint.

But what research says is that it is an interplay between your genetic makeup and the environment around you. So people will say, oh, so it means it is genetic. No, our genes do not change so quickly. It takes decades for your genes to change. So it is certainly the environment around us which has changed dramatically that has caused this autoimmune disease, especially Hashimoto's disease. So we have to look at environmental factors as a cause of these Hashimoto's disease. And when we work on these environmental factors, actually that's where we see an improvement.

So through my research, I call them as root causes. So I've identified five major root causes which leads to this Hashimoto's disease. So these five different root causes, first of all, would be food sensitivities. Now, these food sensitivities are very different from food allergies because people might think that, okay, well, I don't have any food allergy because I'm consuming every food. I'm not breaking out in hives and I'm not like, you know, swelling up like a balloon or anything. Well, these are food sensitivities.

Food allergy is that way people might have peanut allergy. You eat peanuts, you blow up like a balloon, you land up in the hospital. While food sensitivity is that you eat certain foods like gluten, your body says, hey gluten, I don't hate you, but I'm not really fond of you either. So produces very small amount of antibodies and these small amount of antibodies start destroying your gut leads to something called leaky gut issues. And we know that research suggests that leaky gut is a starting point of autoimmune diseases like Hashimoto's.

So, more and more food is what we are identifying, especially gluten, dairy, processed food, processed sugars that we are eating in our diet today has been associated with destroying our gut and leading to this problem. So, food sensitivity is a major problem which is leading to Hashimoto. So, that's the first root cause. Second root cause is nutritional deficiencies. Now, what is happening is that we have been producing food with all of these modern agriculture techniques, but what we forgot was that our food also needs proper nutrients because we are relying on our food for these nutrients.

Now, there was a research study done which compared the nutrient density from food from 1980s to 2010. And what we realized was that majority of the nutrients which are needed by thyroid gland like magnesium, like zinc, like selenium, all of these are very deficient in our current diet because our food itself is low in density of these nutrients. So several of these nutrients are low in our diet, we are not consuming them and that again leads to Hashimoto's disease. As I said the top ones over here are magnesium, zinc, selenium, obviously vitamin D everybody knows about it.

So these are certain nutritional deficiencies which has been associated with research studies of triggering of Hashimoto's disease. It's funny that like I think it was probably that same study. They were like like the eat your vegetables mantra from the 80s almost doesn't work. You would have to eat like five bowls of green beans to get one servings worth of nutrition that you would have gotten the 80s and obviously before. So it's just we've out. harvested the nutrients we don't, we were taking without replacing from the soil.

There's some regenerative farming techniques that are making a push trying to replace that. But at this point in the game, it's really, you're going to have to supplement some of those things if they're symptomatic in certain conditions. So, food sensitivities, nutrient deficiencies, what else you got? The third one is chronic infections. So we know Epstein-Barr virus reactivation has been shown in several research studies to be associated with Hashimoto's disease. Then poor gut health. We have certain parasites, specifically one parasite called blastocystis, which is the most common parasite which is present world over.

We have research studies that the presence of that parasite increases the chance of Hashimoto's disease. Plus, you know, like we have now case report studies that post COVID or long COVID people have again higher chances of having Hashimoto's disease. So these are certain viral factors, parasites, bad bacteria, which can live in our gut, can hijack our immune system and turn it against our own body, which can lead to Hashimoto's disease. So that's the third factor that we are seeing. Right. Then the fourth factor over here comes is stress.

You know, again, you know, we are living in a world which is stressful and people think that stress I'm talking about is like, you know, like if people are going through a bad phase in the relationship or maybe like overworked at their work. No, we are talking about physical stress, emotional stress, spiritual stress or any work related stress. It is all combined, all of that together, puts pressure on your adrenals, again increases your cortisol and that again pushes your immune system in an overdrive and leads to Hashimoto's disease.

I don't have any stressed out patients, so that can't be it. And the other problem is everyone just thinks they're tired because they're stressed. You kind of are, but if we could control the stress, your body would respond much differently, including Hashimoto's. Easier said than done. I think we are living in a world where we are using the corporate language. And the corporate language is that if you do not do the grind, then you don't get the results. So you are showing yourself as being weak.

So that's the reason I think majority people do not look at stress in that way. They just feel that if they are weak, they're not able to kind of push themselves. Well, that's not the case. Our body has so much it can handle and so much we can do. Obviously, that doesn't mean that you give up your job or you just sit home and not do anything. That's not what we are talking about. We are talking about developing resilience to stress. Yes, you still can do your dream job, you still can do other things, Spend some time, you know, like, you know, developing a resilience or, you know, like that negative effect of the stress doesn't, you know, get to your body.

So absolutely. All of my patients that come to see me again, they say, well, I think I don't have stress as a problem. You can rule that out. I was like, oh boy, that's the first problem you have to deal with then. Right. Right. So you're pouring yourself out all the time and you're never filling back up and you don't have a problem. Okay. Yeah. Just making sure. Yeah. Absolutely. And the fifth root cause over here is toxins. Okay. So the world we are living in, you know, each and every day more and more chemicals are being poured together.

And again, a lot of these studies are suggesting that they can specifically be harmful for our endocrine system. Because our endocrine system, you know, our hormones are very, very sensitive and all of these toxins that we are going through in our body basically sometimes disrupts our endocrine system. So whether they are heavy metals like lead and mercury, we already know that, you know, from ages that they are destroying our body. Then now we are dealing with mold toxins. Now this is a new research study.

Maybe in the last 10 years or so, we came to know about the negative effects of mycotoxins in our body. Most people are thinking I'm talking about the mold allergies. Oh yes, you know, I think I'm sensitive to mold. I have mold allergy. My allergic doctor told me. Well, we are talking about mycotoxins. This is the toxins which mold produces, which lives in your system. And that's where it hijacks your immune system and destroys it.

Lifestyle Foundations: Food, Protein, and Fats 20:18

So that's the mycotoxins we're talking about. And then obviously the environmental toxins, whether it is the BPAs from the plastics, whether it is, you know, like the glycosides from the insecticides and the pesticide, you know, sprays on our crops, or whether it's like, you know, other chemicals which is present in our home environment, which can be in our furnitures, in our cooking utensils, or even like, you know, make-ups and things, body products that we are using. So all of these toxins come together and hijack our immune system and again leads to Hashimoto's disease.

Gosh. Yeah. So that's a lot. So, you know, you've got a book on it. The functional medicine approach in general is that your body has an incredible capacity to heal itself. If you can put it in the right conditions to do so, which might mean figuring out which foods to avoid or where the toxins are coming from or handling your stress or, you know, gut health is which, and all of those are individually pretty big topics. Uh, where do you start with your folks? So again, I'm a big proponent of lifestyle changes.

A lot of people are taking bucket loads of supplements or doing a lot of advanced things. Well, if you have a building which doesn't have a strong base, your top floor is not going to be very stable. So you have to lay the proper foundation. That's where the lifestyle comes into picture. So anybody who's working with us or anybody who's listening like to things which are putting out always says, start with the basics because that is going to be most important for you. Yes, it is confusing when I talk about all these root causes, but if you look at those, you know, these are not only good for your thyroid or Hashimoto's, it is good in general for each and every person out there.

This is just looking at your environment and then changing. So this is where the diet comes into the first picture. You know, change how you eat and what you eat. You know, give a processed food. That processed food literally doesn't have anything good that it can do to your body. So giving up all that processed food, processed meats or processed sugar in itself is a big change for a lot of people because that itself will take away a lot of inflammation containing foods over there. And then after that again like you know swap for healthy food choices.

Most of us are not eating enough vegetables in our diet. Those non-starchy colorful vegetables have great antioxidants. That's the natural way of giving nutrients to your body and reducing inflammation to your body. So try to have colors in your diet as many colorful vegetables you have the better it is for you. And then after that, if you've done that, then maybe you can move to the next step of maybe eliminating foods like gluten, dairy, sugar, caffeine, alcohol, you know, like if you can do those.

But that comes definitely after that, you know, first you have eliminated the processed food, you have included a lot of veggies, plus included good quality protein in your diet. yes a lot of people are talking about protein that's the like the it thing you know for each and every person but you know good quality protein is important because it gives you the right amino acids so make sure you're getting it from food if you can you know like you know good quality fish you know chicken you know or like you know like even meats you know like if you are getting some grass-fed organic meats And you're a vegan or vegetarian, well, you know, go for vegetarian source of proteins like nuts and seeds and even lentils, legumes, all of those, you know, still have good quality protein that you can do.

And then good quality fats. For a long time, we have all been shying away from fat, saying that, okay, well, you know, fat is good, low fat diet is a way to go. And we have not seen any, literally any improvement in any of the disease processes from it. So literally our body needs fats. We just need to differentiate between good and bad fat. So you just need to stay away from that trans fat that we don't want you to eat, which is again the processed food or the fried food. But the good fats, you know, which is the olive oils, you know, that you are good for you, avocados, again nuts and seeds, you know, those fatty fishes, that good fat is absolutely needed for your body to produce right hormones as well as keep your cell membrane in good shape.

So include those good fats in your diet. Don't shy away from it. And low fat diets are usually full of processed carbs. You got to make it taste good somehow, right? So yeah, no, absolutely. Do not get low fat dressing. You know, that's a terrible strategy. I love that. So what about testing? When do you start implementing food sensitivity, functional testing? What do you test for your, on the thyroid side of things? What do you do for that?

Thyroid Testing and Advanced Functional Labs 24:58

So let's first talk about the general testing, which people can easily get to even the regular doctors. So this is a complete thyroid panel. As you were discussing before, that only test that you're getting is a TSH. Go beyond that. We want free T3, free T4. So you know actually where your thyroid hormones lie. And then two antibodies to check for your Hashimoto's disease. One is TPU, which is a thyroid peroxidase antibody, and the other one is thyroglobulin antibodies. And if any of these antibodies are higher than the reference range of that lab, that is diagnostic of Hashimoto's disease, literally.

You don't need like ultrasound, you don't need any biopsies or anything for the testing, that itself tells you that. So these are testing which each and every person should get because easily available through all the labs, insurance pays for it, you just need to ask your doctor. So this is the basic testing that everybody should get. Now beyond that you know obviously we do have advanced testing available. So one of the favorite tests for me is actually looking at your gut. You know those especially gut testing which we are talking about looking at your gut microbiome, what kind of bacteria lives in your gut, good bacteria, bad bacteria, prebiotic levels, your probiotic levels, candida levels in your body, do you have leaky gut issues.

So this test is very powerful in looking at that. And yes, a lot of people have symptoms of the gut, but some people don't. So they don't even know that they might have a poor gut microbiome that they're not aware of. And we all know that, you know, gut is so important. Like, you know, every day there is a new research study which comes up, which links to that, you know, gut is the main reason of increase of, let's say, cancers or like in autoimmune diseases, Hashimoto's. So this is one of the favorite tests that I order in a lot of my patients starting with the gut analysis of looking at their gut.

The food-sensitive test actually is not my favorite test to order because it is not a perfect test. The food-sensitive test, we have to interpret it with a table of salt. Basically, what that means is that, let's say if you're not eating gluten for a long time, it might show that you are not sensitive to gluten and it might show negative while you might have a problem with it. But you love almonds and you know, each and every meal you are eating almonds and it might show that your body is sensitive to almonds.

But in reality, you are just eating too much of it. So that's the reason, you know, I will order food-sensitive tests as a later part if I'm not getting the results. So that is not my usual go-to test to order it. Some people order it and they feel it is absolutely necessary. I'm just telling you like, you know, my hunch of because if the test is not perfect, you know, like I cannot rely on it a lot. Yeah, that's one of the functional tests that we were doing at our practice. And I agree with you, it's very difficult to interpret in real life.

Like, you know, I usually say pick the most likely ones and let's narrow it down because usually you get one of those that's full of red, like they're sensitive to everything. Like, okay, you're not sensitive, all that stuff. Let's go back, should have run a gut health panel because you've got a gut problem. things are getting through too big, you're full of candida, something else is going on. Because there's no way that you're just happen to be sensitive to, you know, 80% of the foods we tested.

Yeah, it's a tough test. And that's one reason I haven't run it on myself because I don't, I, I'm like, it's so hard. I'm, I'm gluten free because of my Hashimoto's and I had another actually a post COVID. I had a autoimmune attack on my spinal cord and had like a transverse myelitis picture, but then it happened again. And it's like, Hey, Hey, that's supposed to be a random one off. It's probably a spike protein thing, but I'm like, you know, let's just get rid of the gluten. And you're right. I don't feel any different.

I don't have a gut problem with gluten. I don't feel different, but my autoimmune processes are improving. And so it's like, okay, fine. I guess I'll keep doing it. But yeah, the testing, so many of my patients come in and their TSH is like three and a half. And they haven't ever had any other thyroid testing. And they're like, yeah, my doctor said my thyroid is normal, but I'm cold. I'm gaining weight. I'm exhausted. You know, my hair's falling out. I'm like, mm-hmm. Yeah. How about we run some actual, some other tests and let's see.

And they're invariably, they're either always Hashimoto's or if they're not, they're free T3s on the low end of the range. And it's like, I think we can help you, right? You're so symptomatic. I didn't even need to run the test, but we're going to go ahead and run the test and show you. Yeah. No, absolutely. I think this complete testing is so much important. And again, a lot of people don't do that. And that's the reason, unfortunately, they suffer for a very, very long time. So complete thyroid testing should be a part of it.

And then root cause analysis, you know, like, you know, the toxin test, you know, like again, very important test that, you know, if you have the ability to run it, do it. because invariably 90% of my patients will have some of the other toxins in their system, whether are we dealing with heavy metals, you know, which can be mercury, because obviously fish is great, but it does come with mercury, unfortunately, a lot of times, or it can be lead, which can be because of certain foods or certain waters, you know, like, you know, contamination that we are seeing.

And mycotoxins are again a huge problem, and environmental toxins, we know that each and every person will have it. So again knowing your total toxin burden load is so important because then you can choose the right way to detoxify or removing them or lowering the burden at least so that you know your body can function better. So that's another test that we run a lot of time or at least you know we ask our patients to run is toxin analysis so we know how bad of the toxins we are dealing with. I love it.

You know, the few times I've run mold, they've always had one or two off the chart. And I didn't, I don't run it unless I'm like. This is weird. Something else is going on. Let's try this, right? Like, cause I'm not, you know, that's not part of my routine. And so it's pre-selecting the most likely patients already. The hard part becomes then what do I do about it? Like, how are you going to find the source? You know, burn the house down and move away. How, so that transfer that burden onto the patient.

All right, you got to figure out where this is coming from.

Mold, Toxins, and Practical Detox Strategies 31:08

I think you know in that aspect obviously like you know when I started my journey like you know each and every I was told that okay well the patient just has to move out their house there is no way leave everything behind cannot take even a single clothing with you nothing and no and then just like you know start your life from like you know your life over yeah I was like I don't think that is possible but even for me somebody tells me to do that right So again, you're like, I'm a man of experiments and things.

So like, you know, I started experimenting or working with my clients as okay, well, if you cannot move out of the house or do it, that's okay. Let's lower the burden. You know, if you see any like, you know, visible places, like at least get rid of the mold from there. And I think we do a pretty good job. You know, I think what happens is that if we can lower the burden of toxins in our system, then our system can still handle it because we have a great detox system, right? And yes, for some people, it doesn't work that great.

But if we lower the load, most of the time, those people are able to handle it. Their body starts functioning better. We see the antibodies also coming down and plus their symptoms getting better. So I will say like 90% of patients don't move out of their house or have to give up their life and still like you know we see an improvement. Yes those people will never get their mold levels back to zero that is not going to be possible because you know the mold is still hidden in their house but at least you know like they can still live their life and then hopefully eventually at some point of time they are able to move out but till the time at least they're not waiting you know, for like, you know, not to start the protocol.

They still feel good. They are like able to lower their thyroid numbers and stuff. So at least, you know, I'm happy in that way. A lot of people don't agree with me. They said, no, no, no, you have to push them to get like, you know, give up everything and move out. I said, well, at least I don't feel that is possible for majority of my clients. It's not realistic. And you're going to move into a house that probably has a little mold somewhere. Or like, where are you going to go that's completely mold free, right?

I guess you'd go to a dry enough climate and a new enough house if there wasn't a leak or, you know, it's like crazy. So I'm with you. I mean, when I check these mold panels, they're positive for almost all of them. but they're low positive for most of them. And then you've got these two where the bars are just, you know, running off the edge of the paper and you're like, okay, these guys, we've got to find these guys. And, you know, of course the symptom sets match up on those. It's crazy. I love it.

So that's both a lot and a lot of hope for people because, you know, we've got a generation of people that have been on Levothyroxine, Synthroid, just T4, and their TSH looks great because T4 fixes TSH, right? Like 100%, that's how the body works, but they're still symptomatic. Their TPO antibodies with the thyroglobulin antibodies are still through the roof and they feel symptomatic, right? So this is hope for so many people that have been Letdown is a big word. They're being treated to the best of their doctor's ability.

However, there seems to be something else. And what we're saying is there's a lot more to the story and that these five pillars of possible causes that are almost completely in the control of the patient to, to take. And hopefully with a physician walking alongside them, like you or me, or another functional medicine provider to help them help start knocking out some of these, some of these possible causes. For people that want to hear more from you, get in touch with you, understand more about this, you have a book, obviously, what's the best way for people to learn more and follow you and maybe, I mean, you've even got a virtual clinic is my understanding.

That is correct. Yes. So everybody learns differently. That's what I also realized, you know, when I was trying to share information. Some people like to read. So that's where my book called Reversing Hashimoto's is a very easy read. So I've written it for like a common man who can easily understand what is going on with them and obviously actionable steps to fixing it. And plus, obviously it is research based. So at least 160 references are there in the book so that you at least believe that, okay, well, I'm just not making it in thin air.

So I've written on Amazon, Reversing Hashimoto's. If you are a person who doesn't like to read, you want to listen, then I have a great YouTube channel under my name called Anshul Gupta MD. Bitesize information is where I share over there, like what you can do today, you know, that can help you with your thyroid inflammation and things.

Resources, Book, and Virtual Clinic 35:48

And then if you want to work with us you know or interested in going in a deep dive then you know we have a virtual clinic we see patients from all over the country you can go on our website ansholguptamd.com and then that's where you can find more information about how you can work with us. So that's ways there obviously all the social media handles are ansholguptamd so we are on insta as well as facebook also. Yeah, and you've got like a bazillion followers, which is awesome because it's such needed information.

Obviously, you've hit a nerve because people are loving it. And, you know, you have a mission to help one billion people. So having a gazillion people following you on your on your YouTube channel is a heck of a start, man. Uh, one million. Then, you know, as you said, you know, we started, you know, like the YouTube channel grew and then you're reaching more people. So we want a million. That's crazy. And then we are now at the mission is the one billion. So hopefully in the next few years, you know, like, you know, we are able to do it, but that's the goal, you know, like, you know, to, touch lives across the globe and give them hope to get better because you know and I know that we can do it and the best thing we can do is for people to give hope, give them the right information that can change their life.

And thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for the hope that you're doing the mission that you have really wonderful to meet you. This is great. I'm sure I'm going to personally benefit from this as well as a fellow Hashimoto's, I won't say sufferer, but patient. And man, I hope more people reach out. I would love for people that need a deep dive to reach out and go, but thank you for all the relatively cheap and or free information that you're providing to the rest of us. We really appreciate it.

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having me on the show. Again, it was really a pleasure talking and sharing all the information. Man, thanks a lot. You have a great day. Okay. 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.

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