Your Thyroid Could Be Affecting Your Brain

Introduction to the summit and Dr. Gupta 0:00

Hello and welcome to a very special interview for the Reversing Alzheimer's Summit 4.0. I am your summit co-host, Doctor Christine Burke. Over the last decade, I've helped many patients reverse their cognitive decline, and that is why I have founded true Nara to help patients and practitioners to be extraordinarily successful in this brain health work. In this summit, I'm bringing you interviews with thought leaders who can help you understand the pillars of brain health and the root causes of cognitive decline.

I want you to learn what you need to know to prevent and reverse cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease for yourself and your loved ones. I am very pleased to introduce you today to Doctor Anshul Gupta, MD. Doctor Gupta is a bestselling author, speaker, researcher, and the world expert in Hashimoto's disease, the autoimmune attack on the thyroid. He educates people worldwide on reversing Hashimoto's disease. He is board certified, and he is a board certified family medicine physician with advanced certification in functional medicine peptide therapy, and his fellowship trained in integrative medicine.

He has worked at the prestigious Cleveland Clinic Department of Functional Medicine alongside doctor Mark Hyman, and he has helped thousands of patients to reverse their health issues by using the concepts of functional medicine. His dedication towards his patients was recognized when he was awarded Reader's Choice Best Doctor in the Northern Neck area of Virginia. He is now on a mission to help 1 billion people reverse their health conditions to achieve this mission. He has written a bestselling book called Reversing Hashimoto's.

He has also started a virtual functional medicine practice, a blog and a YouTube channel so he can reach people from all over the world. His blog and YouTube videos have already reached more than 30 million people worldwide, and we are about to join that group. Welcome, Doctor Gupta, thank you so much for being here to talk about Alzheimer's and its link to the thyroid disorders. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on this summit and the show. You're doing amazing work. So I'm really honored to be here to kind of share my bits and information about how the link is there between the thyroid and Alzheimer's disease.

Yeah, I think it's one of the most important things that we deal with when we're working with people with cognitive decline. So why don't we talk about how thyroid hormone balance affects brain health? Absolutely. So thyroid hormone is very vital even when we are born, like if you do not have proper thyroid hormones, when we are in the womb of a mother, we will not have any brain development. And this thyroid hormone actually continues to play a significant role. You know, even when we are as an adult, to maintain our brain health, it is responsible for even actually myelination of our brain cells, which is a protective layer and kind of leads to communication between the brain cells, as well as also keeping the brain cells in good health.

How thyroid hormones support brain health 3:04

So without thyroid hormone, our brains will not be able to function properly. That will lead to cognitive decline. That will lead to several brain disorders. The two thyroid hormone we have in our body, the T4 and the T3, both have receptors present in the brain cells. So that's the reason thyroid hormone directly affects the brain health and connects to different neurons and other brain cells, so that they can function properly. It's really critically important. It's one of the few things that we look for in conventional medicine when we're evaluating a patient for cognitive decline or just a change in their cognition.

So it's really widely and well known. You know there's about an 80% higher chance of dementia in thyroid patients. I think you touched on a bit why that is. Then maybe we could dive in a little bit more on the two types of hormones as well as we're talking about that higher risk. Yeah, absolutely. So, whenever, you know, there are different kinds of dementia, Alzheimer's being one of those. And the hallmark of Alzheimer's disease is the accumulation of the amyloid protein. Now, interestingly, there are some research studies which shows that thyroid hormone is actually playing a role in the clearance of this beta amyloid protein.

And, you know, when we have low thyroid hormones or the optimal levels are not present, especially of the T3 and the T4 hormones, then we see an excessive accumulation of the beta thyroid called beta amyloid protein. So that's the reason it is like, you know, direct connection between the thyroid and the Alzheimer's pathology this way. The second connection is that, you know, like, you know, both thyroid and Alzheimer's, it's kind of inflammatory conditions. We know that the root cause of lot of Alzheimer diseases is the inflammation, which is build up in the body, which is directly attacks the brain.

And same happens in the thyroid conditions too. So again, that is a connection that the thyroid hormone, you know, if they are low into that or Hashimoto's disease is an autoimmune condition and excessive inflammation in that affects directly your brain. And the third way it connects is that as we know that, you know, thyroid hormone affects our brain health directly, especially by the way of mitochondrial health. Also, we know that thyroid and mitochondria totally integrate with each other. Mitochondria is a powerhouse of the cell.

We know that the brain has one of the highest concentrations of mitochondria. In fact, mitochondria is responsible for powering our brains. So any brain activity requires the mitochondria to be present. And high growth hormone controls our mitochondrial health. We know that thyroid hormone, when it is low in function and not functioning optimally, it directly affects the mitochondria. Enhancing motor disease. Whenever there was a pathology done where they looked at the thyroid gland, they saw a lot of dysfunctional mitochondria.

That means those mitochondria was not functioning at all. And it is very commonly known that in people who have thyroid disorders, they will have symptoms of brain fog very commonly or fatigue very commonly. And these are again mitochondrial symptoms. And again in Alzheimer's we know that the people's mitochondria especially in the brain is not functioning properly. And that is the reason they have this cognitive decline present. So that's a way not only one way is it is three different ways that the thyroid affects the cognitive ability of the person.

And that's the reason you know, like 80% or more people will have higher chances of having Alzheimer's disease or dementia or any cognitive decline if they have a thyroid disorder. That is such an important connection to make. And so interesting to weave together all of those different three mechanisms that thyroid is going to impact the brain health. I think, you know we, we are looking at,

Inflammation, Hashimoto's, and cognitive decline 6:54

at not just the pathology of Alzheimer's, the presence of the amyloid, but what are all of the drivers. So when we're looking at a functional precision integrative medicine approach to reversing cognitive decline, those are all of the things that we want to be looking at. And I think that there is another connection there between our cognitive health, Alzheimer's and thyroid disease. And that's through inflammation. Maybe we can talk a little bit about how you see inflammation first impacting thyroid function, and then how that can sometimes develop into the autoimmune condition called, Hashimoto's, because some of our viewers may not really know what we're what we're talking about between those two things, you and I do, but we want to share with them.

Absolutely. So a lot of people have heard about inflammation. Yes, yes, my body is inflamed. But what does really mean by inflammation? So there is an acute inflammation. There is chronic inflammation. Acute inflammation is very protective for our body because whenever you know we get attacked, you know, by let's say a virus or a bacteria or even really get an injury, there is an inflammatory response which is made in that particular site that raises an alarm to signal our body to kind of send cells like white blood cells or any other inflammatory cells, so we can protect our body from this acute injury from happening.

Now this is protective and really good. Now this inflammation subside down as soon as the threat is gone from our body. Whether the infection is neutralized or the injury is repaired. But when this doesn't happen, when our body cannot shut off this acute inflammation, then it is called chronic inflammation. Now this chronic inflammation actually starts attacking our own body and destroying it. And this is happens in several autoimmune conditions. Hashimoto's being one of those autoimmune conditions, which is actually the most common autoimmune condition worldwide.

So in this condition, the antibodies or this chronic inflammation starts destroying our own thyroid gland and then ultimately leads to hypothyroidism. This is what most people get diagnosed with is a low thyroid condition. And that's the reason they're taking the medicine called uterus. And now interestingly, as you said, most people don't even get checked for Hashimoto's disease. So they don't even know that they have Hashimoto's disease because the conventional way is only checking the hormone called TSH.

They're not checking the antibodies for Hashimoto's disease because unfortunately, they do not have a medicine to lower the thyroid antibodies. So why do check this level? And that's the reason most people are told they have low thyroid condition or hypothyroidism, but they don't know the real reason of it, which is a Hashimoto's disease. Now why that is important. The reason it is important is that when you go only orthodox and replacement, you're only doing a job of replacing thyroid hormone. You're not doing anything for the underlying destruction or underlying inflammation which is present.

Now, the research shows once you get one autoimmune condition, you are going to happen or develop a second autoimmune condition 5 to 10 years down the line. So that is very important that you tackle the underlying inflammation. So it not only attacks with the red gland, but also do not destroy other parts of the body. And that is very important to know because again, thyroid gland or this chronic inflammation, if it is not addressed, ultimately it starts affecting our brain health and start damaging the brain, which can lead to cognitive decline and brain fog issues and ultimately can cause Alzheimer's or other problems too.

We have kind of a fair amount of research at this point of time that people who have cognitive decline, they do have underlying inflammation or their inflammation markers are a little bit on the higher side. So that does suggest that chronic inflammation is not only affecting other parts of the body, but also affecting our brain health. And that's the reason we need to know, first of all, why we develop inflammation. Because most will have this question. Well, suddenly one day our body doesn't decide to develop inflammation.

There are root causes that are present which causes inflammation. And those similar root causes are also responsible for the cognitive decline from happening. It's exactly it's exactly spot on. We see that these same root causes can be expressed in the body in different diseases conditions. And if we're not looking upstream for the root causes, then we just go from one diagnosis to the next diagnosis to the next diagnosis. And it's really fascinating that you point out that the the most significant risk factor for getting an autoimmune disease is already having one.

And so I, like you think it's really important that we know whether or not someone's hypothyroidism is a result of Hashimoto's, so that we know if they have that autoimmune process happening. What UN what, you know, one of the things that people have a lot of control over is their food, what they choose to eat, what kind of dietary choices. Because we know food can create inflammation in the body. Food is information or inflammation. And so what kind of diet choices do you see that you find best help people with thyroid conditions, and probably also help people with Alzheimer's?

Absolutely. So again, like, the way I look at thyroid conditions is that, you know, there are certain foods that we need to remove from our body which are causing inflammation because you're talking about root causes and food is medicine, but the wrong foods can definitely cause inflammation and destroy our body. So that's a concept that we need to remove foods, which is causing inflammation in the body or destroying the thyroid gland. And we need to include foods, which is healing for the thyroid as well as for the body.

So the top of the foods which we know that causes inflammation in the body are sugar containing foods. So whether it is white sugar, brown sugar, you know, we need to remove the sugar containing foods because ultimately they all causes insulin spikes in our body. And the insulin spike ultimately causes inflammation in the body. And that inflammation starts attacking a thyroid gland or again, our brain in that way. So that is very important to limit or absolutely remove sugar containing foods. The second food in this list is processed food.

These processed foods are very high in trans fat as well, as they are very high in certain food additive chemicals, which directly attacks a thyroid gland, as well as are sensitive parts of the body like our brain. So any kind of fast food or processed food that people might be eating, we need to remove those immediately so that we can again stop the damage from happening. The third food in this list is gluten containing food. Again, gluten has been in the limelight for a long time, especially for Hashimoto's patients.

We know that gluten can cause autoimmune conditions. The present gluten is very different from what you were eating before. It is had been completely genetic modified and it is a foreign material for our body. So as soon as we consume gluten, that ultimately leads to leaky gut problem. And that again flares up too much inflammation, an autoimmune component in our body. So that's the reason, again, very important to eliminate gluten from our diet to safeguard our thyroid gland.

Diet changes to reduce thyroid and brain inflammation 14:07

The next food in this list is dairy food. Now dairy traditional was really very healthy. But the current modern dairy, the way it is being produced is again very inflammatory. It is added with hormones, you know, the way the livestock is treated and fed. The diet is completely inflammatory. So once we consume that dairy, all that inflammatory containing foods go into our body and start destroying our body. So again, very important to remove the dairy from our diet also. Then comes alcohol. You know, alcohol can be okay in certain situations, but especially the new research is very clear for our brain health.

Even small amount of alcohol is not good. Over the course of time it will definitely accumulate and lead to brain damage. And that's what we typically see in our Hashimoto's clients. Also that as soon as we remove their alcohol, the brain forgets better, their fatigue gets better. So again, especially if you are looking to improve your brain health, alcohol is something that people should give up completely also. Then comes the soy in the corn food. The soy again is it's kind of thought process.

Is that 80% of the soy world over currently is completely genetically modified. So yes, like, you know, certain in Asian countries, soy was really great, like fermented soy and things. But currently most of the Western countries do has completely genetically modified soy. So that's the reason again, avoiding soy will be very, very important. So these are the complete food list that people definitely should be avoiding so that their inflammation levels go down. But the next question most people have is that you have literally taken each and every food. So what is left for us to eat?

So there is a big world out there that you can eat. So the first category of food list is having a rainbow colored diet. What that means is that use your non-starchy vegetables very wisely. Each and every color in these vegetables is an antioxidant, which helps to lower your inflammation, as well as support your brain health as well as your thyroid health. So make sure you have vegetables at least half of your plate in each and every meal of yours. Now, again, a very important myth that has been told to thyroid patients.

But each and every doctor is that stay away from cruciferous. Don't eat. Your broccoli is loaded. Don't eat your brussel sprouts. Cabbage is a whole bunch of foods. Now, this was a very age old study that was done which showed that maybe if you are eating too much cruciferous vegetables, that might cause issues with the thyroid. But at that point of time, when this study was done, the major reason for hypothyroidism was iodine deficiency. Now, in current scenario, most of us have enough iodine in our diet.

So the number one reason currently of hypothyroidism is Hashimoto's disease. And we have at least 2 to 3 research studies, which shows that including this cruciferous is actually really good for Hashimoto's patients. So don't shy away from eating these colorful vegetables. They are really going to be helpful for your thyroid as well as for your brain. So that's the first food that people should be including in their diet. The second food over here is good quality protein. All of the amino acids are needed by our brain cells.

All of these amino acids are needed by at high rate to produce thyroid hormone. So very important to include good quality protein again, on the regular basis, if you are a vegan or vegetarian, then make sure you're relying on your lentils, legumes, beans or your nuts and seeds like chia seeds. Flax seeds. If you can eat meat products definitely include good quality organic chicken you know, of, like in a wild caught fishes or even organic, you know, grass fed beef and things are good. But make sure you are including good quality protein.

And the last food over in this list is actually good quality fats. Again, we have been fat shamed for a very long time. We have been told that low fat diet is the way to go. We should completely avoid fat, but we know that good fats is very important for our brain. And same thing. Good fats is also important for thyroid health because a lot of these good fats are response able for reducing inflammation in the body, especially omega three fatty acids. We know that they support, each and every cell in our body.

So make sure your diet is rich in Omega three, which is all these great fatty fishes that you can include. Again, if you are a vegan or vegetarian, then you might have to rely on Ala as your source of omega threes, which comes from these walnuts, your chia seeds, your flax seeds. But make sure you are including good fats. Avocados are a great source for good start. You can do that again. Other nuts and seeds like your almonds, your walnuts, your ease, your flax seeds. Again, great sources of good fats.

Make sure you're including them, including your olive oils, you know. So that is very important to include that. Don't shy away from including good fats. So this is the foundation of a great diet that is not only going to support your thyroid health, but also support your brain health by, first of all, removing foods which is causing the damage, and then including foods, which is going to heal your body slowly and slowly and then reduce inflammation in the levels in the body. Rebalance your hormones not only your thyroid hormone, but your insulin and renal hormones, as well as female hormones too.

So this is the diet I feel that is going to support most people with thyroid as well as with, cognitive decline. Yeah, I think that you bring up a lot of really important points. One is your point about gluten and how gluten or wheat are wheat crop has changed so much and now has five times more gluten than it did in the ancestral wheat. And another connection there is that, you know, we also know that gluten is one of the strongest proponents of Zombieland, which causes leaky gut. And that's part of what lets extra proteins across the gut barrier to stimulate the immune system and potentially create an auto immune response.

So I noticed that many of the foods that you were listing off in the don't list are all things that contribute to that process. Absolutely, yes. That's the reason we need to eliminate those foods. And unfortunately, a diet for any person is very heavily loaded with all of these foods and they are not even aware that they can cause inflammation, like for instance, dairy is has been told us that it is really very healthy for for folks, right? Especially for, you know, getting the calcium, getting the protein.

So make sure you have your dairy regularly or other foods, you know, also. So again, very important message for people is that, you know, make sure you are looking at where your food is coming from. And you can have alternative sources of calcium, alternate source of protein. You don't have to rely on just dairy for doing that. Yeah I think that that's really important. And and your to your other point, just the way that modern farming is, the way that modern dairy production is that when the animals are fed a diet that makes them inflamed, then the things that we get from the animals create inflammation in us.

So sometimes it isn't so much about this, the food substance itself as how how it was processed, how it got to the consumer. It's a really interesting point and a good thing for us all to be thinking about. You know, we, we didn't really touch on yet the difference between the, the two main types of thyroid hormone, the T4 and the T3. And for brain health, we know that the T3 is, particularly important, although both are. Do you want to do you want to walk us through a little bit the the difference between them and what some of the things are that we've been talking about that can influence that balance.

Absolutely. Yes. So very important thing because again, this is where the testing is also very important. And the right tests for thyroid hormones and stuff. So the way like our thyroid hormone is produced is that it starts like with the master thyroid gland. So sorry endocrine gland which is the pituitary. This actually produces a signaling hormone which is a TSH thyroid stimulating hormone. Now this is not an actual thyroid hormone. This is just a signaling hormone that goes from a pituitary gland towards your thyroid gland.

To us produce the thyroid hormone. And then our thyroid gland produces the thyroid hormone which is the T4. Now T4 is actually an inactive thyroid hormone which the thyroid hormone thyroid gland produces. It circulates in the body. And in terms of the cells, this T4 needs to be converted to T3 so that your body or each and every organ of your body can utilize it, especially the brain. There are specific T3 receptors in the brain, and that's kind of helps the brain to utilize the T3 hormone. So very important that people know about the T4 and the T3, because a lot of times the only medication they are getting is this lever traction, which is a T4 hormone.

In some people this conversion from T4, T3 is actually not happening. So the T3 hormone levels are really very low. And that's the reason that the brain is not functioning fine. So knowing your T3 hormone levels is very important that way. And what you can do, there are obviously no medications that you can specifically take. Only T3 hormone medication, or you can take T3 along with the T4 medicine especially that helps with your brain health. So that's the reason when you're getting your bloodwork checked, make sure you getting your T3 levels check T4 levels checked as well as TSH.

You're already getting it. And then plus, if your doctor is willing to order those thyroid antibodies, the two thyroid antibodies to add will be the TPO, which is a thyroid oxidase antibody, and the second will be thyroid globulin antibodies. If any of these antibodies are higher, then the reference range mentioned in that particular lab that is diagnostic of Hashimoto's. You don't need a biopsy. You don't need an ultrasound to confirm it. Just these antibody presence is important. So that's the reason you need to know about these T4 and T3, specifically T3, because the medicine you're taking is only T4.

And most people you know like just with a small amount of T3, they brain starts functioning really well. The brain fog gets better, the cognitive function gets really better. And you know, it's an easy medication without any side effects. Yeah. It's a really important one to be looking at and so often overlooked in regular labs when they're done. Another, another interesting piece of that or the things that can inhibit or impair the conversion from the inactive T4 into the active T3. One of the things we've been talking about is the chronic inflammation.

But there's also a few other things. Do you want to touch on those briefly. Yeah, absolutely. So again, there are a couple of reasons which can inhibit this conversion of T 43. One is nutritional deficiencies. So there are certain minerals which are needed for the conversion. One of them is selenium. So selenium is an important mineral which is not only needed for thyroid hormone production, but also conversion from T4 to T3 because it is a part of an important enzymes called dehydrogenase. These are the enzymes which are responsible

T4, T3, and thyroid testing for brain function 25:18

for conversion from T4, T3 to selenium deficiency can cause that. The second deficiency is zinc. Again, zinc is a very important mineral which is needed for the conversion from T4 to T3, and we see these mineral deficiencies very commonly happening. The third over here is B-Complex or B vitamins. Especially your B9 and B12 are responsible for conversion from T4 to T3. And again, so again, a lot of people are deficient in B vitamins. People might have something called methylation issue where they have this empty HFR gene, which is not letting their B12 or B9 to get methylated.

And that's a reason which can also lead to this conversion problem. The next issue is accumulation of toxins in our body, whether it is heavy metals like lead or mercury, whether it is the more toxins or environmental toxins like insecticides or pesticide that we all get exposed to, this can all lead to toxin buildup. Now, the interesting factor is that thyroid gland is just like a sponge. Each and every toxin that your body get exposed to goes through your thyroid gland and gets deposited over there.

So that's the reason toxins are really important. 90% of my patients will have Hashimoto's disease as some or the other toxin present in their body, which has led to this chronic destruction of the thyroid gland. So that's the reason toxin buildup is very important because again, it stops this conversion therapy for T3. And the last reason is stress, especially adrenal dysfunction. Whether this is stress is physical stress, whether it's emotional stress, whether it is spiritual stress, any kind of stress that your body gets exposed to directly affects this conversion of T4 to T3 by affecting your adrenal glands.

Again, this stress makes things even worse and again affects this conversion from T4 or T3. So going from nutritional deficiencies to stress to toxins, all of these things will actually affect this conversion of T4 or T3. Now, another important thing over here is another hormone which is the reverse T3. So again so reverse T3 is actually so if T3 hormone is your gas pedal then reverse T3 is your brake pedal. Again, not many practitioners are aware of reverse T3 and they'll never order this test.

So only certain labs can do a good job in checking the reverse T3. But what happens is that when your T4 is not getting converted T3, it can actually convert to more towards a reversed T3, which again actually harms your thyroid even more than that because it is not letting your T3 to function properly. And again, these toxins and especially stress causes your T4 conversion towards the reverse T3. So again more important to work and identify whether you have been exposed to any toxins or work on your adrenal hormone rebalancing so that this reverse T3 goes down.

And actually your T2 T3 conversion happens more often. These are all the same exact principles that we're working on when we're working with people with cognitive decline. And I would say that just like you, at least 90%, if not more of the patients that I work with, with cognitive decline or Alzheimer's disease have toxins as a part of their root cause puzzle. And we live in a pretty toxic world. We have a lot of chemicals that are around us. And so people often say, well, I don't have any chemical exposure or I don't think I do, but we we know that that's not true because when you test people, you find a lot of it.

And we just, you know, accumulated over, over a lifetime. Yeah. Very interesting factor over here. Just kind of point out to people is that, you know, because I just get this question all the time too, that yes, I don't get exposed to any chemicals or I've changed my life. Everything is clean and clear. The issue is not just right now. The issue is which is happening in the last 20, 30 years because these chemicals get accumulate in our body and then they'll reach the toxic level at a very slow rate.

So what is happening right now is not so much important of what has happened in our body. So each and every one of us has accumulated these chemicals over the course of time. So unless you have done dedicated things, you know, a proper detoxification or things to remove these chemicals, they will be present in the body. So that's the reason, you know, like, you know, I just want to make people aware is that that's the reason you might have high amount of these toxins, because what has happened in the last 20, 30, 40 years is the reason of this chemical exposure.

Exactly. And then how we come equipped with our genetics, as we both know, impacts your ability to get rid of those toxins as you are exposed to them or accumulate them over your lifetime. And so certain people are kind of I call them toxin hoarders. Their body is not good at getting rid of them, and they just accumulate more and more burden as they go through their normal everyday exposures, you know, what do you think people can do to improve their brain fog and sharpen their mental clarity? What do you think is the are the most important things for people to keep in mind? After our chat today?

So I'm a big believer of lifestyle choices. You know, like, you know, I can talk about fancy supplements. A lot of people want to kind of know that one supplement, which can help them out, but your foundation is your lifestyle, so supplements can boost your health. But unless you have a great lifestyle, those are not going to get better. So in that aspect of the diet we already spoke about, you know, so just clear up your food. You know, like just remove those inflammation causing food, including great healthy food.

That's a first step each and every person can easily do that. The second thing is work on your sleep. Again, most of us are not getting good quality sleep. You know, 7 to 8 hours is needed with each and every person. And that also we have great devices now who can monitor your sleep so that you can know exactly you know which sleep cycle you are and how much REM sleep you are getting, how much deep sleep you're getting. So make sure again, sleeping early again because of the social media and being on the phones all the time.

We are sleeping late in the night. We know that our healing

Toxins, stress, and improving mental clarity 31:28

capacity of the brain, you know, is maximum between 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. so if you're not slept at the time, you are not getting the benefit of that sleep because brain is healing during the time. Plus, sleep is also getting rid of all the waste materials during the time it is getting rid of inflammation during the time it is helping to rebalance your hormones. So so much is happening when you are sleeping, so make sure 7 to 8 hours of sleep good quality sleep is very important so you can do that. Magnesium is a great supplement if you want to add anything just to improve your sleep.

Magnesium, like it is a great supplement is can improve that. Magnesium three eight is another form of magnesium which can also support your brain head, but sleep is very important. The second thing to work over here is stress management. Again, when I see my clients, clients or patients well, I don't think stress affects me. I can handle stress very well. Well, you can handle stress very well, but the stress is destroying your body. So if you are getting exposed to stress, which can be work related, stress, which can be relationships, travels can be financial stress, we all get exposed to stress.

So we have to develop a routine or things in our daily activities so that we can come back. This effect of stress on our body. So again just kind of simple tend to finish it's meditation or relaxation activities or even deep breathing exercises is a really great to combat the stress on your body. So just include them into your routine. 10 to 15 minutes is more than enough to do that. If you can do more, obviously that is better, but work on a regimen that is sustainable for you. But a de-stressing routine is very, very important.

The third is body movement. Again, we are sitting in front of computers or in front of our cell phones all the time. Most of us have this big job, right? So we are sitting majority of the day. Body movement is very important. So again make sure you are including body movement on the regular basis, whether it is walking, jogging, running, cardio or strength training any of those things, make sure you including them 2020 five minutes of body movement is very important. Take breaks in between when you are sitting.

So just set alarms on your smartwatch, on your phones every hour. Just five minutes, you know, like go for a quick walk, you know, or maybe just climb certain steps. Or even better, if you can do those jumping jacks, you know, like just across your table. And it'll just take care of that body movement. Because we know that this exercising releases so many endotoxin, so many endorphins in our body which have reduce inflammation, supports our thyroid health, as well as support your brain health. So these are like foundational things if you just make your life around it with a few tweaks and a few changes, that itself is so powerful in itself that is going to help your thyroid and then help your brain health.

In terms of supplements, I already spoke about magnesium. Omega three is a next supplement, which is one of my favorite supplements. Supports the thyroid health. Supports your brain health. Most of us are low in omega threes, so that's the reason. And they have the highest anti-inflammatory potential as well as supports our brain cells. So that is the second supplement most people should be taking. Again making sure you're getting a good supplement source. Because if you are getting omega three, which is developed from fish oil, which is high in mercury, or they're already rancid, so they're not useful.

So make sure you're using a company which has good practices over there and good quality. Omega threes will be the second supplement to include a third one D vitamin D. Most of us are low in vitamin D. Most often people are aware of vitamin D supplement, but what they will do is that they will take it for a few months and then they will stop doing it. Well, if you are deficient in vitamin D, then make sure you're taking it on the regular basis so that can support your brain health as well as your thyroid health.

So these three are foundational supplements. Again very easy to take, don't have any side effects and anybody can take them. So again if you want to include certain supplements these three will be top of my list. That will support your brain health and other things. Yeah those are really great suggestions and all such important things. This Doctor Gupta, this has just been a really wonderful discussion and I so appreciate you sharing all of this very important information, emphasizing the pillars of health with everyone on the summit today.

My key takeaway is that I think we all need to be aware that the thyroid can be sort of the canary in the coal mine, if you will, this delicate organ that can be the first signal of imbalances in our physiology. And then that can lead to a whole host of diseases, including Alzheimer's disease. And I think you laid that out for us today beautifully. We absolutely, you know, like, it is really a pleasure coming over here discussing this, you know, great phenomenon. And also like, you know, I just want to know people.

Is that so easy to check your thyroid. So make sure you're getting a complete thyroid panel check and make sure you are on the right supplementation of thyroid with either levothyroxine and also check your T3. And this can be a big game changer for you. Absolutely important. Now I know that you have a YouTube channel and Gupta MD but if people would like to know how to get in touch with you or how they might be able to work with you in your virtual clinic, where can they find you? So again, our website is a great resource.

You know, like we have a very active blog. We put out a lot of great information which is research based. So if you have a thyroid condition, want to know more you can go on that. Our website again is unsure Gupta md.com. So that is a great blog. Plus, you know, that is all the information about working with us virtually. So we have a virtual clinic so you can work with us from anywhere in the country as well as anywhere in the world. You can get consultations from there. Just go to our website.

Anshul Gupta, md.com, to get more information there. That's wonderful. All right. Well, thank you again. And for the viewers, if you have enjoyed this discussion today on the summit, please join some of our other sessions where we continue to dive into my passion solving the root causes of cognitive decline. Thank you again for joining us today. Doctor Gupta. Absolutely. Thank you again for having me here.