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Is It Really My Thyroid?
Follow along with Dr. Kurt’s presentation at Natural Grocers on July 25th.
Is It Really My Thyroid?
The Gut
I like to think the readers of this blog are very savvy. You read, you research, and you make informed decisions when it comes to your healthcare avenues.
Because you fall into that category, than you have probably heard and researched many conditions that can relate to problems in ‘the gut.’ Your digestive tract has huge implications into virtually every chronic illness, not just the ones that seem digestive related.
What’s funny is that I often get challenged that there’s no way the gut can have impact on behavior and that changing diet won’t affect ADHD, Autism, and other behavioral conditions. To those people, I simply reply, ‘let’s go have a few beers and talk about it.’ Most of the time I get blank stares.
For the ones that do get it, it’s like a light bulb just went on. They put 2 and 2 together that if we drink alcohol, we have the potential to act stupid. BINGO! But you know this. You’ve done your research. The gut affects behavior, no big whoop.
With lots of sources pointing back to poor gut health, it’s rare to find any that say why? There are just remedies and protocols to help you fix secondary and tertiary problem. When you understand the why, the how, what, where, and when fall into place easier and you address more than just the gut. You address you, not just a symptom.
You were born with a leaky gut.
In the world of gut health, everyone is quick to jump on your leaky gut as a cause of you illness, ailment, or dysfunction. The reality is that if you didn’t have a leaky gut, you probably wouldn’t have made it alive past 6 months. A leaky gut as an adult is an effect, not a direct cause.
We are born with a very weak and immature immune system. We genetically require a leaky gut to allow for mom’s antibodies to pass through our gut and into our blood stream. Your leaky gut saved your life as an infant.
Your leaky gut saved your life as an infant. Click To TweetCalling leaky gut a bad thing is like calling high blood pressure and an elevated heart rate bad. It all has to do with context. Symptoms are neither good nor bad. Your symptoms are not a moral or ethical dilemma. Your symptoms happen for a reason. That reason is the context of your life.
Fever
As a parent, seeing your kid with a fever sucks and they can be very scary. Once you have context of the fever, you’re able to take some of the emotion out of the issue and use some logic. Hopefully this gives you a bit of insight to assess the situation.
Why does my child have a fever?
A fever is your child’s intelligent genetic natural ability to fight off bacteria and/or a virus. We use heat to kill off pathogens that might be lurking in our food. Your child’s body does the exact same thing. The cool thing is that your child’s body doesn’t have to get to 120+ degrees to kill everything.
Most bacteria do not live above 120°F, and as you increase the temperature you kill more of them. At 102°F most bacteria can no longer reproduce, which is the protective nature of human fevers. – Dr. Terry Simpson MD
A fever is an aspect of inflammation. Inflammation is a function of your immune system. In an acute phase, inflammation is great because it’s signaling your body to fight. Be thankful that your child has a fever. It means that his or her body is capable of fighting. Long term is where problems arise and this is why I think so many parents quickly jump to a fever reducer. We hear scary stories of brain swelling and think the child’s head is going to explode.
Since 102°F will drastically limit the ability of a bacteria to reproduce, let the fever ride. With my own kids, I plan on letting it ride for 2-3 days. If after 3 days it hasn’t come down then I look for an intervention to bring it down. But having that game plan going into this time helps me not screw up the intelligent design of their body.
Ultimately the fever is trying to slow your kid down to conserve energy. The immune system uses a lot of energy. Your kid will be lethargic, that’s ok. Being active takes a lot of energy. Digestion takes a lot of energy. Your kid won’t have an appetite, that’s ok.
NOTE: My kids at age 3 ½ and 1 ½ have never had a fever above 102°F last for more than a day. They also have never had an antibiotic, Aspirin, Tylenol, or Advil. I will detail why I think our kids have been fever less at the end of this post. This isn’t to brag but to give hope and possibly take some fear out of parenting.
Why does a fever yo-yo?
Your child’s fever will yo-yo because your child’s body is intelligent. A fever, much less one that goes up and down is your kid’s internal genius expressing.
You’ve probably noticed that the fever is best in the morning when your child wakes up and will be highest at night after dinner. You get frustrated because you thought your child was getting better. You immediately think things are taking a turn for the worse and you break initial plan of letting it ride for 3 days and start easing the fever with fever reducers.
The next morning comes and the fever is better. You back off on the fever reducers and to your dismay, the fever is worse again at night. Panic starts, even though the fever hasn’t broken a high threshold for more than a couple hours. When I say I plan on letting the fever ride for 3 days at 102° to 104°, I mean there’s no change. If it’s dipping down to 101° in the morning and then back to 103° at night, I’m ok.
It sucks for the child and for the parent watching, but it’s ok.
Vagus Baby
If you’ve heard me speak on any topic, thyroid, detox, cholesterol, hormone imbalances, or even lost productivity, hopefully you took away one message. Your nervous system is the master coordinator and organizer of your life experiences. Your nervous system is going to organize life into either protection mode or growth mode.
Something you would have also heard multiple times is a paraphrased quote from Dr. Bruce Lipton PhD, “You can’t be in growth and protection at the same time.”
Dr. Bruce Lipton PhD, 'You can't be in growth and protection at the same time.' Click To TweetWhat does this mean? It means based on what is happening in your life at any current moment, the nervous system is trying to play triage whether you are in danger or not. The nervous system will ALWAYS favor survival over sex and life over legacy. If your body has to sacrifice your digestion, fertility, and happiness to keep your legs moving to escape a bear, it will do this 100 times out of 100.
Where we run into trouble is our nervous system is also plastic. Imagine trying to bend a plastic fork lightly without breaking it. It will return to its normal shape. Keep doing this over and over again and eventually you can create a bend in the plastic. Your nervous system is no different. The more it uses the protection side, the more survival becomes your default setting. The more you use logic over emotions, logic becomes your default.
What does survival look like long term? High blood pressure, indigestion, auto-immune flare ups, chronic ear infections, constipation, headaches, hypothyroid, weight gain, inflammation, fatigue, insomnia, blood clots, infertility, PCOS, anxiety, ADHD, autism, allergies, learning disorders, memory, concentration, emotional imbalances, anger, low T, and list continues. Survival long term drives you away from growth and repair.
Why would you be in survival long term? It’s called modern civilization. I wouldn’t trade our conveniences of today to go back to hunter gatherer days. But we have to realize virtually everything we do on a daily basis today is foreign to our DNA requirements for health, longevity, and growth. We sit too much, eat too much, worry too much, and use our healthcare system to mask the ill effects of our lifestyle too much.
If the majority of your life is spend in protection mode, how do you help the growth side of your nervous system express?
VAGUS BABY!!
Not-So-Obvious Toxic Top Ten
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A replay of the Not-So-Obvious Toxic Top Ten presented at Yoga Studio Satya in Colorado Springs. This workshop has a slight change of the top 10 from the original post. You can even follow along with presentation below.
Hormone Imbalance Treatment
What do you think of when you hear the term ‘Hormone Imbalance?’
Weight Gain?
Loss of Muscle Mass?
Poor Sex Drive?
Fatigue?
Anxiety, Depression, Irritability, or Brain Fog?
Poor Sleep?
Hot Flashes?
What hormones come to mind if you’re seeking hormone imbalance treatment?
Estrogen?
Testosterone?
Progesterone?
Thyroid?
These initial impressions just scratch the surface concerning hormone imbalances. Before you even think about the specific hormones, you should back track and look at what coordinates and organizes your hormones, the nervous system. If you’re not addressing the nervous system, you’re not getting to the route cause of your hormone imbalance.
The nervous system organizes and coordinates your life. The hormone that is released is just an effect of how your nervous system (you) is interpreting your environment. This organization can be generally lumped into 2 categories.
Life is organized into PROTECTION or it’s organized into GROWTH.
Dr. Bruce Lipton PhD says it best, “You can’t be in growth and protection at the same time.”
What does that mean for your hormones and the results of your hormone imbalance treatment? Unless you address the underlying nervous system imbalance, your desired results probably won’t be lasting or satisfactory.
ABCs of Hormone Imbalance
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If you weren’t able to attend the ABCs of Hormone Imbalance at Natural Grocers in Colorado Springs, here is the audio. There’s quite a bit of background noise as we were in the middle of the store. The link below is also the PDF of the handout I gave the attendees to follow along.
Finding the Right Doctor…Here’s How.
I get emails and messages every week from people complaining about their doctor. I get very similar stories each time.
“I want to know nutritional strategies to help my condition but all they do is recommend is a stupid low fat diet.”
“I told them I don’t want medications and all they recommend is drugs.”
“They told me if I don’t get my kid vaccinated, they will kick me out of their office.”
As much as I sympathize with these complaints, it’s not really the doctor’s fault. As the consumer, you have to do some homework about that doctor you are trying to develop a relationship with more than just looking up if they are covered by your insurance.
There’s a lot of doctors that are covered by your insurance that will do you far more harm than help. After all, our healthcare system is the 3rd leading cause of death in our country.
Your insurance has covered everything that hasn’t worked for you so far. What makes you think using your insurance has anything to do with your health outcomes? Your attitude, your diet, your sleep, your physical activity, your environment, your stress levels are all things that get you better. And guess what? None of those are covered by your insurance. No wonder you’re sick. – Dr. Sachin Patel
You don’t go to a Muslim mosque and get pissed because they didn’t talk about Jesus. You don’t watch an R rated movie and get complain because there was too much violence and profanity. So why do you get frustrated stepping into an MDs office and them wanting to prescribe you drugs or give you horrible nutrition and lifestyle advice?
Contradictions lead to destruction. The contradiction at play with these destructions is your health outcomes. We see this pretty evidently with the results of our healthcare system. Lots of access and interventions, not much health production.
If you take anything away from this post, just remember, ‘contradictions lead to destructions.’ To avoid destruction, you have to clear up contradictions. To clear up those contradictions, you need to assess your own philosophy and see if that matches the philosophy of your doctor. If you try and engage this conversation with your doctor and they don’t have time, that probably answers your question.
Heart Smart…Really?
It’s February and with no surprise, the media is all over ‘heart disease’ awareness campaigns. But if you keep following what the media (and your doctor) push, you will probably get what most of Americans are going to get.
What are Americans going to get?
How about 1 in 3 will die of CardioVascular Disease (CVD)? How about a death from CVD every 40 seconds?
How about every 40 seconds someone has a stroke and about every 4 minutes someone dies from a stroke?
They like to say deaths have decreased from CVD by 31% from 2000 – 2010. How about an almost 30% increase in heart related surgeries from 2000 to 2010? I’ll give it to modern medicine for saving your life in the immediate danger but if our healthcare system was truly about health, you shouldn’t be laying on the OR table in the first place.
How about 920,000 Americans having a heart attack this year? How about 1/2 of those will show no prior symptom? How about 1/2 of those silent heart attacks have a first symptom of death?
And if you don’t think your health is at risk, how about your wallet? Since we are shifting to a universal health care system, your taxes go to paying $315 Billion dollars every year. Don’t think your tax dollars are paying for it? In 2010, it was estimated that over 2150 Americans died every day of CVD. That equates to about 785,000 deaths/year in 2010 (today it’s estimated closer to 1 million). ONLY 150,000 came from people younger than 65.
What rite of passage does a 65 year old have in this country? They qualify for Medicare, the government funded health plan. How does the government fund a health plan? Through your tax dollars.
One of the ways that the media via the government and heart association try to change your behavior is to drill into your head that cholesterol is the enemy and is an early warning sign of CVD and should be controlled…or you will die.
A UCLA study analyzing heart attack patients nationwide found that 75% of the heart attack victims had LDL (supposed bad cholesterol) within the safe limit. The researchers analyzed data from 136,905 patients whose lipid levels upon hospital admission were documented in the AHA data base. This accounted for 59 percent of total hospital admissions for heart attack at participating hospitals between 2000 and 2006.
The deadly irony is that the researchers conclude that maybe cholesterol isn’t low enough? How about opening your mind to the possibility that the cholesterol – heart disease connection is about as solid as the Iraq War – Weapons of Mass destruction connection?
Butternut Squash Soup…so creamy without the cream.
This is one of our favorite recipes, especially on cold winter days. We were made this recipe by our friend Becky when our youngest was born.
Butternut Squash Soup…so creamy without the cream.
About 90 minutes prep/cook time.
Ingredients:
1. Coconut Oil (enough to cook veggies and coat squash)
2. 1 Medium butternut squash, halved lengthwise, de-seeded.
3. Salt and Pepper to taste
4. 1 Medium onion, chopped
5. 2 stalks celery, chopped
6. 2 carrots, chopped
7. 2 garlic cloves, minced (or more if you like garlic)
8. 6 cups chicken broth or veggie broth, divided
Directions:
Preheat oven 400 degrees.
Oil sliced surface of squash with coconut oil and sprinkle salt and pepper on top.
Roast squash for about 45 minutes or until tender. Allow to cool so you don’t burn your hands when scooping out contents. Scoop out squash from the shell and put aside.
In large pot over medium-high heat, add coconut oil, celery, onion, carrot, and season with a pinch of salt. Saute until tender (about 10 minutes). Add garlic and saute for 2 minutes.
Add the squash and stir.
Add 4 cups of broth and bring to boil.
Reduce heat to low and cover and simmer until soft (about 30 minutes).
Remove from heat and puree with blender.
Add additional broth to get desired consistency.