How to Eat Well for a Healthy Thyroid | Elle Russ on Health Theory

In today's episode of Health Theory with Elle Russ, we discuss why you probably have a thyroid problem, how to fix it yourself, the foundation of the Primal diet, and why you need to chill out on the exercise. Everybody, welcome to Health Theory. Today's guest is Elle Russ, the author of The Paleo Thyroid Solution and host of the Primal Blueprint podcast with Mark Sisson. She's also a former sketch comedy writer and performer who got her start with Chicago's legendary Second City comedy troupe. And most interestingly of all, she cured her own thyroid disease with diet, exercise, and self-dosed hormones. And Elle, that's where I want to start is with the self-dosing. Um, I get being your own medical advocate and not just taking people at face value. It's a whole 'nother thing to start self-dosing. What led you to that? Wow, you know, uh, 2 years of being left in the dust by the medical community. And what do I mean by that? I mean uninformed doctors uh, practicing 40-year-old outdated protocols, you know, from what they learned in medical school that are no longer valid, not testing me correctly. I was undiagnosed for 2 years. So, they kept saying, "You're fine. Just, you know, uh, my one doctor hit my gym shoes. He goes, "Use these more." I'm like, "I'm working out 2 hours a day. I'm practically an athlete. I'm eating less than 1,200 calories. I am gaining weight by the day, by the hour. My hair is falling out. Um, I had horrific acne. I had perfect skin my whole life. Um, next thing you know, I was getting my period every week. I mean, an onslaught of symptoms that just ruined my life for years. And at that point, I thought, "You know what? No one's helped me. I'm done with this. All these doctors are hurting me. They're not helping me." One doctor misdiagnosed me with polycystic ovarian syndrome and had a whole protocol he wanted to do. Another doctor was like, "Here, take progesterone." I was 30 years old. And so, you know, finally I thought, "I'm taking my health into my own hands. You know, they're not going to do it for me. So, I did it myself. I ordered them over the internet and I dosed myself and I used doctors for blood work and then just didn't listen to what they had to say. So, being a nerd for him like I have sympathy for the doctors in terms of it gets overwhelming. So, we were talking before we started rolling, my mom has suffered now very dramatically with thyroid disease. And even just trying to be mildly useful to her, it's like you run into this like this is so big, I don't understand. I don't understand the variables I should be testing for or what the right numbers should be or what protocols are or, you know, some of the stuff that you've talked about with iron. Like how walk us through your actual protocol even if some of it was just fumbling around so that people can understand when they hit that wall of intimidating like I don't know what I'm doing. How do they begin the process to self-educate? Well, my book and then there's another book called Stop the Thyroid Madness, which is a great book. That woman saved my life. And then one other author who wrote a book called Recovering with T3. Those are really the three books that I trust and I've read them all. And the best-selling thyroid books are written by patients for a reason. We know what it feels like and we understand how the thyroid hormones feel. I've been hyper, I've been hypo. The The trouble is is that you you have to still get blood work done. And there's some states that don't allow you to test your own blood work. So, at some point you have to kind of navigate working with a doctor. But, in general, you just go to a doctor, you get the right test, but they often don't test the things you need. So, they're not even properly assessing you. So, then what do you do? You know what I mean? I mean, a lot of this is self-diagnostics at home. You can test your temperature, you know, your pulse. There's There's things that are relatable to this and symptoms. But, at the end of the day, you do need to look at lab work. Um so, for example, even just a couple of days ago, I'm helping a friend in Hawaii and I said, you have to get your reverse T3 tested. The doctor said, we don't do that. I can't do that. And she said, we only test that if you're in the ICU." Now, wait a minute. That That says a lot right there. So, ICU is intensive care unit, means like you're on your way down, right? So, why would they test it in an emergency situation? If it's in the worst-case scenario that you test it, why wouldn't you test it here? It's so that you don't get to the ICU. So, doctors are just confused. They don't even know what the meanings of some things are. And frankly, they just don't If it's If you don't test it, it's not a problem, right? So, I can think of no worse environment to walk into than that, where the doctors don't know. What are the key pieces of information that somebody needs to understand in order to take control? Learning about how the thyroid works, which I'm happy to explain. Yeah, hit us with the a one-on-one on thyroid. Here's a thyroid 101. So, basically, the thyroid's at the base of your neck, under your Adam's apple for men, and it's the master gland of the human body. So, it's in charge of the production and regulation of all your sex hormones, your heart rate. That's why when you're hypothyroid and you have low T3, your brain's not working. We've got more receptors there than anyone. It's why you get fat. You have no metabolism. There's no fire. On the counter side of that, bodybuilders jam themselves with T3 6 weeks before a competition to burn fat. For a reason, it's a potent fat burner, which is why hypothyroid patients get fat. And people have an overproduction, hyper, or often can be skinny, lots of, you know, bowel movements, and like shaky, and losing weight. Um so, it's really like a Goldilocks situation. There's a million reasons why this can get out of whack. But essentially, what happens is the pituitary at the base of the brain is sort of like a sensor. And when your body is low in thyroid hormones, it kicks out a signal. And that signal is called the TSH, which stands for thyroid stimulating hormone. It's not a thyroid hormone. It's just a wake-up call to the thyroid. It says, "Yo, wake up. Start producing T4 and T3." Okay. Now, if you're a normal person, and if you have no thyroid problems, then your body's going to be great, and it's going to output about 80%. We don't totally know for sure, but roughly 80% T4 and 20% T3. So, T3 is so powerful. It's so powerful that you can almost imagine the T4 like a slow release mechanism and it's a storage hormone. So, it builds up, it's steady, and then as you need it, it converts. Okay? Now, what doesn't convert into the biologically active hormone, the only bio You can live I lived 6 years without any T4 in my body. T4 is useless unless it converts to the thing that matters. T3 is what matters, which is why a free T3 blood test what is free and unbound and available in your system is what corresponds to how you feel. T4 converts to T3 as you need it. Now, whatever you don't need will be flushed out through a system called reverse T3. Reverse T3 is the inactive form. What is going on with this feedback loop? Why does it do this? Again, you've got almost like a atomic bomb with this T3. I mean, in a good powerful way, but it's kind of controlled by the T4. So, let's say you get Lyme disease, you get a chronic infection, you fall off a cliff, and you know, traumatic, your leg breaks. In those kind of scenarios, your body's going to down regulate. It's like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's not for throw more fire into this metabolic mess of inflam- inflammation we have going on. Let's dial it back." So, in an emergency situation, your reverse T3 is Dr. Forrestman's almost best sort of unspecific marker for wellness and unwellness in the body, which is why they test it in the ICU. What are you looking for in reverse T3? Is it Is it a disproportionate amount of T4 versus T3, or is it I had a reverse T3 problem, which means the T4 that I was taking in my medication was not converted into the active T3. It was converting to the inactive. So, I was still hypothyroid while on thyroid medication until that was discovered. Now, what we usually do is we calculate a ratio between the reverse T3 result and the free T3 result. 20 and higher is usually great. If it's 18, the person doesn't need to go on T3 directly, but you might give them extra selenium and and some other things to just kind of help that along. Because there's something going on in their system that's stopping the T4 Right. going to T3. Right. But T4 is going to convert one way or the other, either to active or inactive. Right. Okay. Right. And so, when it keeps converting into the inactive, something's wrong. Heavy metals can screw up reverse T3. Lyme's disease, a bad resurgence of you know, EBV, Epstein-Barr. There's a lot diet? Absolutely diet. And that's where you know, the paleo part comes in. A lot of people think that you know, it's a gimmick like, oh, you got fat cuz you went hypo and now this how you lose the weight. That's a little bit about it, but the reason a high-fat, low-carb, moderate protein paradigm is the best for this is first of all, it's it's our DNA blueprint as humans. Let's say you're a hypoglycemic sugar burner. Every time you've got those dips, cortisol comes to respond. That's not only antagonistic to your testosterone, but it's antagonistic to this whole process. Um, as you go down the road of becoming insulin resistant. So, in this modern world of a lot of metabolic issues, type 2 diabetes and thyroid issues go hand-in-hand. So, basically, a paleo primal paradigm or any kind of ancestral paradigm is the ultimate in blood glucose management and the ultimate in adrenal management. And why is that important? Adrenals and thyroid work hand-in-hand. Adrenals always suffer when you're hypothyroid for any amount of time that's you know, if you don't catch it quickly. And the reason is is cuz you've got no T3 but no energy, nothing to get you out of bed, nothing to move you. So, cortisol takes over. Your adrenals take over. They're like, get her out of bed. She needs to move. So, then you get high cortisol and you get fatter on your middle and next thing you know, your adrenals go, I've had enough and they peter out. And now you're just like depleted and you've got nothing. That's where most people are when they come to me or they're at their wit's end because they've gone down this misdiagnosis. So, gets back to the thyroid. If you're just testing the TSH, which is the standard endocrinologist would do this for 40 years. That's the call out. Send send the T T3 T4. I don't If I don't get it, I don't keep ordering it. Right? Where's the package? Where's the tracking? That's the T3. Did you get the package? The package is T3. So, a lot of endocrinologist, you'll see someone There's a success story in my miscarriages, sick for 10 years, depressed, maybe you you need anti-depressants, maybe you have a client closet disorder. Lots of accusations from the doctor. It's not your thyroid. When we looked at her 10 years of tests, they only tested her TSH and her T4. She wasn't getting the package. So, essentially this signal tells us something, but it fluctuates a lot. Um Mark Sisson and Brad Kearns wrote the Keto Reset Diet got their thyroids tested and had two doctors tell them that they were concerned about their thyroid because of their TSH. Their TSH might have been 3.2 during the test, but that was just a snapshot. At that point, the brain could have been like, "Yo, yo, yo, we need more thyroid hormones." And he took the blood test and then there you go. And now they're worried about nothing. Had they looked at their T4 and T3, which we tested later, totally normal. So, again, things can fluctuate there with the TSH and someone could go in and have a normal TSH, but have nothing on the other end. Now So, do you recommend like a frequent test? So, for instance, I wear a continuous glucose monitor largely for that reason, right? So, that if I take one reading and it says that I'm high, but if I took it 5 minutes later, I might get a completely different reading. Um how often do you look for people to run this panel? Um is there a time of day, fasted state? Like how do people get the the blood work done? fasting morning between 7:30 and 9:00 a.m. Fasting, you can have like a cup of coffee and you know, water, but I just wouldn't take any supplements or eat anything. And then between 7:30 and 9:00 a.m. is really a good time to get tested. The earliest the lab opens. The thing is that the TSH fluctuates. That's not really what we're looking at. It's it's part of the picture. So, for example, um someone I know decided to go off thyroid medication after many years, just said screw it, I don't know why. Long story short, we got her test back, her TSH was 150. The top of the range is five. It's the highest I've ever seen it. 150, which means that her brain is screaming. If you looked at her free T3 and free T4, they were below the range. She had nothing. I said, "How are you alive?" She goes, "That's what my doctor said." So, we got her on the thyroid medication. So, again, that in that scenario, yes, if something that's high, that's also an indication of your brain screaming, please help this person, she's dying, cuz that's essentially what's happening. Um but it's not the measure by which to assess the picture. It really isn't. And if you're only taking TSH, free T3, and free T4, that's not fully the picture because you need to get the reverse T3. Why? Because if someone's not converting T4, whether it's their own or medication they're taking, you don't want to give them any more of the thing that's converting into the thing that doesn't matter. So, you're hurting the patient. There's So, that's actively worse. So, to have T4 that's converting to inactive T3 is worse than just having no T4. Well, I mean, uh both scenarios are terrible. Both scenarios are hypothyroidism because you can have reverse T3 hypothyroidism. And essentially, you can kind of look at it like this. When it convert over converts into reverse T3, it's almost like you can imagine reverse T3 is sort of standing in front of the T3 cells and blocking it. Meanwhile, the T3's pooling in your blood, so you could have a normal free T3 result, and the doctor's like, "I don't know what's wrong. Everything looks fine." But it's really not converting. And until they take the reverse T3 and the free T3 and do the ratio. So, every doctor should be testing for reverse T3 um to make sure that the protocol of giving them any kind of T4 at all is going to be okay. Because if you give a patient with a severe reverse T3 problem, T4, they're going to get worse. I had doctors during my reverse T3 problem say, "We just need to give you more T4." And I said, "Don't you understand that's going to kill me. You're You're hurting me." They just didn't get it. So, reverse T3 is imperative. We have more conversion problems in this day and age. It's a stressful society, the multitasking, our level of health, the toxicity. So, there's an increase in an inability to convert. And another reason why T4 only as a treatment. So, that's like the end-all be-all. That's like the endocrinologists from back in the day were like, "This is the only thing any patient needs is Synthroid or T4." And it's the number one selling prescription in America. It can work for some people, but it often fails eventually. And people just do better on a combination of T4 and T3. Why? Because as I explained, when that signal's sent, the thyroid outputs, it's not just outputting T4. It is giving you some direct T3. So, my mom, as we were discussing, is uh she's struggled with this now for years. They irradiated her thyroid, um which is actually made it worse for a while. Um and I have a very strong feeling that a big part of her problem is diet-related inflammation is stopping this from working. And I heard you say something which that was really interesting cuz in in in your message, it's very much like, "Look, a lot of doctors do not know what they're doing." Um take responsibility, get in there, learn it. And you said you have to own everything that you do from what you put in your mouth to what comes out of your anus. And I thought, "All right, there it is. Nice and direct." So, walk us through that. Why primal? What for people that don't know what primal is? What is it? Why is it beneficial? [clears throat] Why was that part of your journey? Where does keto fit into all this? The way I look at paleo primal is it's I live next door to some horses. I've never seen their owner cook up a ribeye and feed it to them. And you wouldn't do that cuz that's mean cuz that's not the DNA of that that's the DNA of a horse dictates a different diet. Same with the cow, right? We is We as humans are dictated like our bodies are dictating us to eat a certain way. One of the things we know contributes to at least Hashimoto's or any autoimmune disorders. You could just type grains and then enter whatever autoimmune disorder it is. What happens is your autoimmune makes a mistake just like type 1 diabetes and it starts attacking the gland and it thinks it's an enemy. Well, the in gluten or corn glutens or anything in in grains but particularly gluten increases the antibodies because we know that that is seen as an invader too by the immune system. So, for example, someone with Hashimoto's often Hashimoto's if caught early can be really controlled by diet. You know, if you just put them on a paleo primal diet and that includes the elimination of beans, grains, legumes, dairy. Those are all inflammatory for those people. There's other things with autoimmune disorders that people have noticed. Foods high in histamines, cinnamon. Uh sometimes people have noticed that red color seasonings like paprika. But at the end of the day, we know that that ignites antibodies. So, if you drop gluten or you go paleo primal, your antibodies will go down. Here's the thing most doctors don't know. So, let's say you have Hashimoto's, you're on thyroid hormone and you're feeling great. This happened to one of my success stories in my book. She was feeling great, everything's fine, but every time she goes in and get tested, her TPO antibodies are at like 300. TPO? Yes, that's thyroid peroxidase um antibodies, TPO. And what would cause that to be high? Inflammation. I mean, antibodies equal inflammation, but again, it's because it's attacking the thyroid and we don't know what an antibody specifically when the thyroid is being attacked? Yes. Okay. Um and there's another one called thyroglobulin. There's two that would indicate Hashimoto's. What causes Hashimoto's? Dave Asprey got it from living in black mold. I've known three other people who have as well. Environmental factors can trigger it. Something like getting a bite from a tick and Lyme disease. There's a lot of things that can trigger it. But the bottom line is is that there's a lot of patients out there still that they're feeling good. They're optimized on their thyroid hormone, but they've got these antibodies in the background, but they don't feel it. So if you have rheumatoid arthritis and you eat a ton of, you know, grains, you'll feel it. You won't be able to button your shirt the next day. So you have an indicator. A Hashimoto's person might not in that scenario. And what doctors don't know is that you could do something about it. Why do you want to? You want to lower the antibodies. You want to get them to undetectable levels because antibodies equal inflammation equal beginning higher percentage of chances of cancers and all sorts of other things you don't want. So walk me through the protocol. I do the test. I have some of these antibodies. I now do what? Cut out grains? Go paleo or primal, get on a clean paradigm, you know, even a Whole 30. Um meats. Anything with parents. No, anything with parents? That's interesting. parents. Um yeah, any, you know, animals, uh fish, eggs. Sometimes eggs are eliminated depending on sensitivities and that could be one that you might want to leave out in case cuz That's interesting. There's people with Hashimoto's or even people myself who don't have Hashimoto's who are not technically allergic to eggs. It won't come up on a test, but you notice a negative when you reintroduce them after elimination. So that's just one I say watch out for. Essentially, you would follow if you have Hashimoto's, you might want to follow what we call the AIP. That's the autoimmune protocol. That's just sort of a stricter level of of the food categories. And essentially, you know, most vegetables and um again, no grains, legumes, dairy. You follow this diet. You chill out. Again, part of paleo primal is not just the People miss the triad here. It's not just the food list. It's also how we move, right? Chronic cardio, exercising way above your max. In fact, walk us through your story. I think this is this will be pretty pretty um illustrative. So, um you're you're talking about there's a Hollywood body type, leading ladies what I'm going for. I'm doing just a ton of cardio. What were you eating? How much cardio were you doing before this all kicked off? I was going by all the conventional zone, South Beach Basically, it was the zone. It was eat every 2 3 hours, keep the insulin steady, right? And it so it was kind of like a low-fat, low-carb paradigm, which doesn't really work. What would happen is I'd be driving from, you know, Hollywood to Malibu and I hadn't eaten and it's approaching the fourth hour and I'm having a meltdown, you know, hangry, right? My brain is like empty and hurts and I have to pull over and like go stuff my face. That is stressful. But also it's stressful to the body, right? I was over working out as well, but again, when you are a sugar burner and you're a carbohydrate dependent, you eat the carbs, you burn off the carb You know, you are in this and that's what you thought you had to do. I have to go put in time on that elliptical. So, I did and I actually achieved that. I I looked great and but I was dying inside. I was a mess. And then I started to fall apart. It also kind of gets eating disorders because you're kind of restricting and then you're over working out and then you're dying for carbs and so it it kind of created an eating disorder and at the end of the day I used to think even though I had this fit body and I was starting to go after these lead roles, I I I just thought, is everyone else not talking about how they're thinking about food all the time? Am I obsessed? I even looked into like Overeaters Anonymous. I almost never think about food now. Which is weird. And people go, "Oh, that's not fun." Because when you're a food addict, the last thing you want to be told is that you don't even think about food because or or that oh my gosh, I get away with eating such less food now. And if I remember hearing that at first and being like, "I don't even want to quit cuz I don't even want to know what it's like to not want it." It's a messed up addiction, but But but it happens and people that are listening will know with food addiction, the only way to get out of that cycle is to manage your blood glucose and your adrenals, and the best way to do that is a paleo primal ancestral paradigm. And part of that is chilling out. Um when I wanted to like torch fat my I got fat twice. The first one, hypothyroidism, I fixed it with natural desiccated thyroid, which is a combination of T4 and T3. Then that backfired, it wasn't converting. So, the second time around when I got fat and bloated again, I was like, "Oh my gosh." I was like, "All right, well, I'm going to go to hot yoga cuz that's going to sizzle it, right? I'll do that 5 days a week. I'm committed." And I did. And I was hungry afterwards, and I kept getting fatter around my middle. Because I was doing high-intensity every day with no recovery. Your body doesn't like that. It was so hard for me to slow down because I would haul ass up the mountain to go hiking because you think that the harder you work, the more you sweat, that's going to burn the fat. It's just ingrained in us, right? And it's actually the opposite. So, I started tracking my heart rate, and I would make sure that on those walks I really wouldn't go above do the Maffetone scale, 180 minus your age. Whatever that number is, I wouldn't really go over except for maybe once or twice a week in a sprint session or something. And I just chilled out, and it felt awkward at first to slowly But you know what? It was more enjoyable. I wasn't hungry afterwards because when you're operating at that rate of cardio, you're you're in a glucose burn it's glycolytic. So, now you're depleted at the end. Of course, you're going to want to refill it. But wouldn't you rather be burning fat? Now, our ancestors, do you think when they were like, "What's at the top of that hill?" Did they run up? No, they were like, "We're going to chill out and run up there." Because if they over-exhausted themselves, they would have become prey. You know, and think about it. Me driving to Hollywood 4 hours, haven't had a meal, I'm having a meltdown. What do you think our ancestors did? They went weeks. They got kicked into ketosis during that time. They ate high fat, um you know, probably extremely low carb and they were not sugar burners. They were fat burners. There weren't any thyroid problems with our ancestors. We wouldn't be here today because infertility runs rampant when you when you have hypothyroidism because it's absolutely related to your sex hormones. So, infertility and miscarriages. So, we wouldn't even be here. Population wouldn't have happened and and when it hypothyroidism is first on the books, it's around 12,000 years ago and um, interestingly enough, it coincides with the wheat and barley being introduced to their society. So, paleo primal ancestral is really about managing blood glucose and your adrenals, you know, aside from insulin. And those three things go hand in hand, you know? And so, when you are in that state, you can properly metabolize the hormones your body's already making. Now, let me explain something else. So, I was also starving myself essentially, right? I was under eating and over exercising and I thought that that was the right paradigm. In that situation, the body's going to go, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, this girl has no food. She's starving." That could also be signaled from your skinny and you're training for a marathon. You can have a reverse T3 happen because the body's like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, we don't want to put any more T3 into this chick's life because she already has low body fat and we're not getting enough food and nutrients. So, we're going to dial it back. Furthermore, she's not going to get pregnant and if she does, we're giving her a miscarriage. She's in no position to have a baby." Now, I am personifying, right? Your body, but essentially, that is the primal perspective. And it's there to save you and that's what I tell everyone. You have to think and understand that your body's trying to save you at every minute. Type 2 diabetes is your body saving you. Type 2 diabetes, you hope you get fat. You want it to get pushed in the fat cells. If you're skinny diabetic and you've got it running through your blood, that's more dangerous. So, your body's always trying to save you and so is this feedback loop. Now, you want a good metabolism, but you also don't want to go over. Hyperthyroidism is dangerous for the heart, but also high metabolism, right? Can mess with cortisol and glucose, high appetite. That can go in a wrong direction as well. It really is Goldilocks. Um one thing that I heard you talk about that I think is pretty interesting is so there's two notions. Uh you've got skinny fat and what that means from a blood panel perspective. And then two, you put your finger on something that for years I thought was the like completely acceptable way to go about it that if you want to eat something then you simply need to exercise it off and that there is essentially no um health difference between somebody who has exercised their way past a couple bowls of ice cream and somebody who just didn't eat the ice cream but then didn't work out. And uh I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah, you know, it's so funny because so many athletes are running into pre-diabetes. And they're like, "How is this possible?" Well, they wake up in the morning, they've got 130 g of carbs in their shake, they burn it off. Carb, burn it off. You keep doing that, you keep knocking on the door of the pancreas and it doesn't like it. It's going to get exhausted and it's going to not be happy about that. So at the end of the day, you're not really getting away with it. That's why I say, "When I you know, when you pass someone, you're like, 'Oh, I wish I had her legs or I wish I had her body.'" I'm like, "Check her blood work. You might want the blood work of the guy next to him that's average, you know what I mean?" You're you're not getting away with it on the back end. You know, you're getting away with it visually. Species that have secreted the least amount of insulin live the longest. And you know, the species with the highest metabolisms, like a hummingbird, they don't live very long. You know what I mean? Speedy speedy speedy, you're out. So what you see is not what you get on the inside and it's not a pillar of health. I looked like the pillar of health if you saw me at the grocery store and in you know, like a tank top, you'd be like, "Oh, she's but dying inside." You know, mentally and also um just physically. Because when you're carbohydrate dependent and most people are in the eat every 2-3 hours or the up and down, you have a drop in blood sugar. It's four hours in. You eat the Pringles and you feel better. Yeah. Same with the heroin addict. Mhm. You dropping down, a little heroin, you get right back up. Doesn't mean it's a positive thing, but that's the association. I was tired and exhausted, so I ate. I would love to see a reality competition between sugar burners and fat burners. The fat burners will survive. They will have no issues whatsoever. The sugar burners by day two are going to be passing out. You know what I mean? And having a meltdown until their body kicks in to ketosis, right? Um on the notion of ketosis, that is asking your body to get into a metabolic state that you can't get into when you're hypothyroid. So, people often go to it because they're like, "I'm fat. I don't know what to do. This thyroid is not working. My doctor doesn't know what they're talking about. I'm going to do this thing called keto." Well, now they're just eating high amounts of fat that are not being processed cuz there's nothing to burn it cuz there's no T3, which is why hypo patients get fat. They don't have any of the fat burning T3. Everybody listening should care about their thyroid because everyone has one. And if you don't have one, it was surgically removed. And if you're the one of the billion people that were born without a thyroid, I'd love to meet you. [laughter] But, they have to be administered thyroid hormones right away or they'll die. You will die on a stranded island without a thyroid. So, what do you think life's going to be like with subpar, you know, levels? It's going to be a slow death, which is what it felt like for me. Your skin thickens. You are horrifically depressed. Tom, at one point, I actually had this thought, "I've never been suicidal in my life." And I had this thought. I thought, "If this doesn't get better, I'm going to have to start thinking about thinking about killing myself." Wow. Most people from the outside go, "Oh, I see. So, she got fat and chunky. Her hair is falling out. Yeah, that has to be depressing." No, it actually is depressing. It makes you depressed in your brain. We have more T3 receptors here. Your gut is compromised as a result of it. Everything needs T3 to operate. It essentially is your master thermostat. It's your, you know, it's your fire. And so if you've got nothing going putting keto into that is like trying to light a wet log and all you're going to get is bad lipid panels and probably fatter. That's really interesting. How would you walk through with somebody that's never been fat adapted? How would you get them fat adapted in the least painful way possible? You really want to start to get insulin sensitive. You want to get off the carbohydrate train that is ruining the adrenals and outputting cortisol in the wrong ways. You want to try keep things steady. For people that are transitioning, I don't suggest fasting. You know, the IF intermittent fasting is very popular. I do it. I have about a 4 to 6 hour eating window per day. I might eat a little fat in the morning. Wow, it's intense. Yeah, and but I might have a little fat before that at some point like half an avocado or something but not like a full meal. I don't suggest doing that cuz that's very painful if you're coming from being addicted to sugar and and eating every few hours. So it starts with switch out the cereal and the oatmeal or whatever the carb heavy fruit orange juice breakfast is and you switch it with like a primal breakfast. That could be six eggs, three eggs. It could be leftover bite of salmon and half an avocado. I mean, there's vegetable omelet with meat, you know, any of kind of those things. You just clean out the pantry, start using the good oils, not the canola's and just start to eat from the list. Go look at a paleo food list and just start there. You know what I mean? And you eat when you're hungry. And you may eat more fat at first and not understand it but that's better than eating a ton of fruit and chips and all this other stuff that that's affecting you. So you start there and then you chill out on the exercise. So if you're someone that was like me and is in that game, you have to dial it back. Hardest thing is giving up grains and this is what I say. I've heard so many great objections. One was, well, but my my grandmother makes this really great lasagna at Christmas and I'm like, you know what? That's a cop out. Eat the damn lasagna. Are you eating it every other day? And I always tell everyone, look, this looks rough. This is not a life this is not relegating you to a life of never having a piece of Chicago pizza or you know, doing something fun. It's get better first. Be strict to get better and then test it from there. Then you can have your cheats. You know, get the antibodies down. Then enjoy a slice of pizza every now and then. But essentially, I would say dialing back the workouts. And it's so frustrating. It's the question I get all the time. When can I start working out? Or really, I can't lift weights. I'm like, "Well, how's that going for you?" It's not working out. You often get fatter and more bloated because what happens is you go to the gym and they're like, "But I feel better after I work out." Because you just blasted the adrenals again. It's taking you two steps back and it's seen as inflammation in the body. So again, now that inflammation is going to conflict with how those hormones metabolize and convert. So, the best anyone can do is chill out and that's like down, you know, downgrading their exercise to slow walking, light weights, light yoga, no crazy two three hot yoga, intense stuff. What do you think about fruit? I think people eat it more than we probably were meant to. Um I think it's it's great. I mean, I love fruit. Uh however, if you have candida and often people have gut issues and candida and or SIBO or just bad bacterial overgrowth in the gut. If you're trying to heal something like that, I say get rid of all of that kind of stuff. Stick with vegetables, you know, for a while. But if you're sugar addict, I say listen, start with fruit and whip cream. If you need something to kind of like get you off of the junk, have fruit and whip cream every night. You know what I mean? Whip? No, like heavy whipping cream or or or coconut milk and making that into whipping cream. I just think people think fruits, you know, one basket of blueberries can be a 14 g of carbohydrates. And so if you go to town, it's like with nuts. People see nuts on a paleo food list and then their their handfuls, next thing you know, that's 1,000 calories. Same with bulletproof coffee or fat coffee in the morning. I ask people, "Well, what's your version?" And I heard someone say, "I put 2 Tbsp of MCT oil and 2 Tbsp of butter." That's That's 600 calories of fat right there for your morning. That's also not paleo and keto to eat all the fat you ever want. You can get fat on a low-carb diet if you eat more fat than you're burning. And then what I say is selenium, vitamin D, and ferritin. These things are really related to thyroid problems. And the reason is is because ferritin. I think that's one that people might be like, "What is ferritin?" Ferritin is iron storage. And you can have good hemoglobin levels, which what a doctor might test you for, and they'll be like, "Your iron's fine." But they're not testing the iron stores. And that's really important. And the way I like to describe it is it's Thyroid hormones, when you're taking them or they're being output correctly from your body, cannot get to where they need to go without it. It's key. Why uh hypo patients often become low in ferritin and in vitamin D. Vitamin D's related to Hashimoto's. But the reason is this. You're sluggish, you're slow. Hypothyroidism is a slow state. So now you go to eat a meal. You're you're producing less hydrochloric acid. It's not breaking down the food. You've got compromised digestions and compromised enzymatic activity all over the body. And so then it's not absorbing and taking in the nutrients. And if you're a woman, and this is disproportionately a woman's disease, even though men have it too, but one out of women will get it in their lifetime. Um we're we're menstruating females. We're going to lose iron more than most. And if you are a menstruating female that also exercises, you might lose more iron than most. And at this point, liver and eating straight-up marrow bones isn't going to do it. Like you have to take an iron supplement. Ferritin, usually the standard range is 10 to 150. 50 to 100 is important. If it's over 100 and you're not taking iron, that could be a sign of inflammation. And it's often the missing link. It was with me. I'd started to take thyroid hormones myself many years ago for the first time, and I was having trouble. I was having like shakiness, um low ferritin is related to restless legs. I had horrific restless legs. You see these commercials for restless legs, people laugh about it, and know what it's like. You're tossing and turning all night. You literally just cannot get comfortable with your legs. This is totally related to iron stores. So, if there's anyone out there that knows someone with restless legs, you and tinnitus, by the way, test the ferritin. And it And again, it's like a $10 fix. You know, it's a $10 bottle of iron you can take for a month or two and get to the right level. So, you have to have proper iron storage for all of this to work. And that's why it also gets low. But, hypothyroid patients classically get low in lots of nutrients. So, we want to optimize vitamin D. I would take selenium right away. There's a great thyroid support formula by Gaia Herbs, um, that people can do a natural protocol. I've seen people turn it around in 6 weeks. I've seen people bloated, fat, mess, test them, Hashimoto's, didn't know they had it, they'd eaten a bunch of gluten, um, you know, ferritin wasn't optimized, some supplements, and like 6 weeks, hair gorgeous, deflated, like just 10 lbs of water weight inflammation gone. There's an absolutely I would try that first. So, I take people through a natural protocol in the book, but then it's like, well, what if that fails? Okay. Now, here's another weird philosophy. I mean, some people who have been suffering for a very long time are like, I don't want to go on medication. First of all, it's not a medication. It's giving your body what it's missing. It's not a medication with a hundred side effects like you see on TV because it's not manipulating your body into doing something it shouldn't do in the first place like birth control does. That's why birth control comes with five pages of of, you know, possible side effects. So, that's one thing to just not be afraid of it. If you've been in a state of disease because you're hypothyroid for years, often misdiagnosed or undiagnosed like me, then you're so far behind in everything, your body's falling apart. Can you catch up naturally? Uh, it doesn't mean you're relegated to thyroid hormone for life, but it might mean, you know, how many years this been going on? Might be time to get thyroid hormone, get un-hypo, get your body in the right metabolic state, right? Get the right primordial baseline, and from there, let's figure out what caused it. So, the most important thing you can do as a patient is become educated, which is what I help people do. Someone just told you you had a disease. Why wouldn't you learn everything you need to know about it? Correct. I have learned the hard way, and I suffered greatly, and I lost about 6 years of my life, and worth worth every minute to help others. There's no question about it. I always joke around cuz I'm from downtown Chicago, you know, we're pretty pretty tough cats over there. And I always say, you know, hypothyroidism messed with the wrong chick. You know, it just really did. Um but it's you have to educate yourself and understand it so you know how to interpret your own labs. And then even if you have to do it on your own, you know what to do. So, again, how long have you been suffering? That might be the time to get on thyroid hormone, get un-hypo, and then work on solving it. I went from full replacement thyroid hormone. I was on at one point 100 micrograms of T3, which is pretty high. Started going paleo primal, went down to 50. Kept going. I am now on 7.5 micrograms. That's almost not even anything. You wouldn't even feel it. You don't want to take too much T3. I've done that before, too, and you become hyperthyroid. That's a state of inflammation. That can make you bloated. People have this misconception, like, oh, T3's the fat burner, like the bodybuilders, and they're like, I'm just going to take that [ __ ] and then I'm going to burn all this fat. You can It'll backfire. It'll backfire eventually. It'll first be that way, and then the adrenals and everything gets screwed up, and now you will actually get fat and bloated, and it could go the other direction. This has been insanely educational for me, especially given what my mom is going through, and I really can't thank you enough for that. Before I ask my last question, where can these guys find you online? You can go to elrus.com. I have a free thyroid guide there. I mean, so you don't even have to buy my book. It tells you all the tests you need to get, when to take them, how to know if a doctor's informed or not by calling the office, what questions to ask. There's a lot there. Podcasts, podcast with the doctors, um so much there. So, you can just click on that and download it. And and if you want, you can get my book The Paleo Thyroid Solution anywhere. And every Monday, Primal Blueprint podcast where, you know, we interview kind of the similar people in in the arena of health and uh mind-body wellness, yeah. Nice. Love it. It's an amazing podcast, great book, highly recommend. I love that you've come from the um having gone through a perspective. I think that's really extraordinary and very helpful. Thank you. My last question. Yeah. What's the one change people could make that would have the biggest positive impact on their health? Hm. Taking control of it themselves. You know, just don't put your health into someone else's hands entirely. I mean, I I really think that's it because you can do the food, you can do supplements, but if you're not aware, you know, um of what you're taking or what you're told to give or what that test means, you might be headed down a wrong path. That could really kind of set you back years. And I've seen that. So, um but like I said earlier, I think the biggest thing is if someone has diagnosed you with something, become an expert. You become your own expert. You might know more than your doctor and you I've actually taught doctors things that they're now practicing with patients. Great, you know, good cuz the the more we have uh informed doctors out there on the subject, the better. So. I love that. Love that. Guys, I didn't set her up for that, I promise. Uh but I think that that is the perfect answer that really encapsulates who she is, her style, what you're going to get if you go and listen to more podcasts from her, read her book, um dive into the stuff on her website. It's it's really about taking ownership and getting the tools that you're going to need to go through and work with the doctor, for sure, if you can, if you find somebody that really understands this stuff and can help you on your journey uh and aren't shaming you or making you feel guilty or they don't want to admit what they don't know. That can be a very powerful path, but she's going to arm you with the tools that you need to really take that ownership to understand what's actually happening and that I think is the most powerful thing that any of us can do is really go in, educate ourselves, make sure that we know more about it than they do because you have the luxury of you have one problem that you're going through. That's the one that you have to learn about whereas a general practitioner, they've got to cover everything. So, take advantage of that, take advantage of your ability to specialize and go deep and we live in this extraordinary time where people like L are taking the time to put all this down on paper. Like she said, she's taken six years of pain and suffering and put it down in combination with what she's learned into a book that other people can use. So, dive into her world, check it out, you will be empowered for it. All right, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. [applause] Thank you, Elle. Thank you so much for watching and being a part of this community. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. You're going to get weekly videos on building a growth mindset, cultivating grit, [music] and unlocking your full potential.