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If I had a dollar for every high achieving woman that comes to me with symptoms of thyroid dysfunction, I’d be a very rich woman. 

These women are feeling run down, they have low moods,  high levels of anxiety, thinning hair and a host of other symptoms that they just can’t seem to move through. 

They’ve already been to the doctor and have been told that it’s not their thyroid because their TSH levels are fine, but they don’t know where else to look.

Unfortunately, thyroid dysfunction is extremely common, but you need to look further than your TSH levels to get to the bottom of it. Your pathology panel needs to include levels of T4, T3, TSH and your thyroid antibodies. This will give you a clearer picture and establish where your thyroid is at.

Once it’s been confirmed that you are suffering from thyroid dysfunction, the next step is to understand the causes of this dysfunction and where you can make changes to improve your health.

 

Understanding the Stress-Thyroid Link

Stress is undeniably a significant factor in our health. But how exactly does it impact our thyroid function? The main culprit here is cortisol, our body's primary stress hormone. Whether your cortisol levels are excessively high or abnormally low, both indicators suggest that your stress response system isn't functioning as it should. And when this system goes awry, it can directly impact your thyroid gland, leading to thyroid dysfunction.

 

There are four primary ways that cortisol can negatively affect thyroid function:

1. Blocking TSH Signalling: Cortisol can inhibit the signalling of Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH) from the brain to the thyroid gland. TSH is crucial for the production of thyroid hormones.

2. Impairing Conversion in the Liver: The liver is responsible for converting the inactive thyroid hormone T4 into the active form T3, which is vital for energy, mood, and metabolism. High cortisol levels can block this conversion process within the liver.

3. Preventing Cellular Uptake of T3: Even if your T4 to T3 conversion is optimal, cortisol can prevent the active T3 hormone from being utilised by your body's cells, resulting in persistent symptoms of hypothyroidism.

4. Compromising Gut Health: Cortisol can cause damage to your gut lining, leading to what's known as leaky gut. This condition triggers systemic inflammation, which can exacerbate thyroid dysfunction, particularly autoimmune conditions like Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.

 

Symptoms of Thyroid Dysfunction

 

The symptoms of an underactive thyroid (hypothyroidism) or Hashimoto's disease are varied but commonly include:

– Fatigue

– Anxiety

– Depression

– Brain fog

– Weight gain

These symptoms occur because thyroid hormones play a crucial role in energy production, mood regulation, cognitive function, and metabolic rate.

 

Steps to Mitigate Thyroid Dysfunction

If you suspect that stress has affected your thyroid, here’s what you can do to address it:

 

1. Get Comprehensive Testing: A complete thyroid panel should include T4, T3, TSH, and thyroid antibodies. Often, standard tests only measure TSH, which isn't sufficient to get the full picture of thyroid health. Additionally, liver function tests are essential since the liver plays a crucial role in converting T4 to T3.
2. Reduce Stress: While easier said than done, reducing stress is crucial. This includes managing physical stress through diet and lifestyle changes, like regular nutritious meals and proper sleep. Mental and emotional stress should also be addressed, potentially with techniques discussed in Episode 5 of our podcast, such as mindfulness and cognitive-behavioural strategies.
3. Repair Gut Health: There’s a strong connection between gut health and thyroid function. Remove inflammatory foods from your diet, such as gluten, which has changed significantly over the years and is now often genetically modified, impacting gut health adversely.
4. Enhance Liver Detox: Once your gut is on the mend, focus on supporting liver detox pathways by cutting down on caffeine, alcohol, processed foods, and sugar.
5. Nutrient Support: Specific nutrients are vital for healthy thyroid function. However, I recommend addressing the foundational issues first before adding in supplements like selenium, zinc, tyrosine, and iodine. Herbal support such as ashwagandha can also be beneficial for its calming effects on the nervous system.

 

Medications and Ongoing Symptoms

For those on thyroid medication, it’s important to remember that medication typically provides T4, and your body still needs to convert it to T3. This process requires a well-functioning liver and sufficient co-factor nutrients. So, even if you're on medication, you might still experience symptoms if other system irregularities aren't addressed.

Even if your lifestyle is inherently stressful and busy, there are many steps you can take to improve your thyroid function through targeted diet and lifestyle changes, as well as stress management techniques.

 

LINKS:

Pathology Tests to Manage Stress

Turn Cortisol Into Your Ally

Website: vesnahrsto.com

Master Cortisol Webinar: https://training.vesnahrsto.com/join-masterclass 

Live Masterclass: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMucOivrDMqG92awZu_Nej0mkUO7zZocdxh [/vc_column_text][vc_tta_accordion style=”flat” shape=”square” color=”white” active_section=”3″ no_fill=”true” collapsible_all=”true”][vc_tta_section title=”Transcript” tab_id=”1716528090603-cfde93dc-583317165356843821716536535162″][vc_column_text]Vesna: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Peak Revival Podcast. My name is Vesna and today I'm going to talk about high stress and poor thyroid function hypothyroidism. So I see clients who are being through a high stress period, whether it be months or years and it starts to affect their thyroid. So they start showing symptoms and pathology signs of hypothyroidism or Hashimoto's and it really affects their energy, mood and metabolism.

So how does this happen? And what does stress have to do with thyroid function? And our main stress hormone cortisol, whether it be high cortisol or low cortisol, both situations indicate a dysfunction in our stress response system. So whether it's high or low, we'll have an impact on thyroid function because there is a direct link between our stress response system and our thyroid gland.

Now, there are actually four ways that stress and cortisol affects thyroid function. So number one, cortisol will [00:01:00] block TSH signalling and this is our signal from the brain to produce more thyroid hormone.

The second way is that cortisol blocks the liver from converting the inactive T four to the active version T three. So the T three is a one that gives us energy, elevates our mood, helps with detoxification and so much more. So cortisol will block that conversion within the liver. The third way is that cortisol will stop the cells from actually receiving the T3. So you may have good levels of TSH, you may have good conversion from T4 to T3, everything may look balanced, but actually it's not getting into the cell, so still you're having symptoms and signs of hypothyroidism or underactive thyroid.

So the fourth way is that cortisol breaks down our gut known as leaky gut. So this is where the lining becomes compromised around our digestive system. We have our immune system. So it triggers a lot of inflammation. That inflammation is whole body inflammation and it inflames and [00:02:00] affects our thyroid and creates thyroid dysfunction.

Particularly the autoimmune thyroid conditions like Hashimoto's.

So, the symptoms of thyroid dysfunction are really, the common ones are fatigue, Anxiety, low moods or depression, brain fog and weight gain because our thyroid hormones really serve a huge role in all of those areas of producing energy and memory and concentration, our metabolic burn rate and so forth.

Okay, so it's a really important hormone to check. It's very, very common for women to have an underactive thyroid and to be missed.

So if this is you, if you know that maybe you've had a period of stress and then you developed a thyroid condition, then what can you do? Or if you're in a high stress state, you feel those symptoms that I've mentioned of undirected thyroid. It's not showing up in your pathology, but what can you do to make sure that it doesn't show up or what can you do to resolve the symptoms?

So number one is to do a pathology [00:03:00] test. doing a complete thyroid panel, looking at T4, T3, TSH, your thyroid antibodies as well, because quite often for women, their thyroid antibodies will be out of range, but the T4 and T3 is still in range, okay? But it's still creating these thyroid symptoms, even though, normally, if you were to get a test on your thyroid, you normally just get TSH, but, If at a stretch you get T4 and T3, it's still not enough to detect the health of the thyroid.

And the other test is looking at your liver markers, because remember how I said, your T4 needs to be converted into T3, that occurs within the liver and poor liver function, liver toxicity, fatty liver, all these conditions will affect how that conversion takes place. So again, everything's going to look normal on the other pathology, but you may be producing what's known as also too much reverse T3.

Reverse T3. has a reverse effect of T3. So instead of giving you energy and helping with memory and [00:04:00] concentration and metabolism, it blocks that function. So we feel tired, gain weight, have brain fog, et cetera. So that again occurs within the liver. And that's why it's such an important marker to check.

Well, the second obvious thing is to reduce stress. Okay? And that may seem easier said than done, but there are different things that you can do. You can reduce the physical stress on the body. So we use diet and lifestyle changes to reduce cortisol, even though your life is still busy. Things like regular meals, making sure you have good nutritious.

It's made at home meals that way you can reduce the amount of processed and sugary foods, and additives and so forth. And making sure that you go to bed on time, right? Allowing your body to be in that healing state where it can recharge and recover. Now biggest source of stress is mental and emotional stress.

I did an episode on this, an episode five, where I talked about how to stop that kind of stress. over analytical thinking or the catastrophize thinking, right? The, the places we get stuck or triggered in, whether it be our [00:05:00] work, our relationships, our financial situation, and that kind of thinking trips up the fight or flight response, releasing so much cortisol all day long because we can't seem to let it go.

Okay. And it's really important that we can let it go. Um, and I'll talk about that in episode five. Number three is repairing the gut because there's such a strong link with gut health and thyroid dysfunction. So we want to move the inflammatory foods. Things like gluten as a number one. Gluten is different to what it used to be many, many years ago.

And the number one change is particularly in Australia, but actually, you know, in the US and Canada. Not in Europe, but is GMO wheat. Okay, GMO wheat is Really harsh on the microbiome. It's designed to withstand high amounts of Pesticides like Roundup. Roundup kills bugs. We have healthy bugs in our gut So it's not a good place for You know GMO wheat or any of that to be right because we want to make [00:06:00] sure that in order to restore healthy gut function We need a healthy functioning microbiome.

And so if we're eating Number one, gluten will break down the gut lining, creating leaky gut, but it'll also affect the microbiome as well.

I did go through more on how to repair the gut in episode 6 of the podcast.

The next step is repairing liver detox pathways. But, I want to preface this with, a lot of times when people go into a detox or liver repair protocol, without repairing the gut first, it means that we can actually build up more toxicity. And the reason why is because when our gut function is compromised, we have you know, an imbalance in our pH, we get bloating, we get fermentation, we get a disruption in microbiome, we get microbes, we get all sorts of things happening in there.

 That produces a lot of toxicity and that toxicity gets handed over to the liver. Now, if all we're doing is repairing and detoxifying the liver, but there's all these toxins still [00:07:00] coming over, we're not going to get the job done properly. Okay. So we need to make sure that you repair the gut first and then follow a good liver detox protocol.

And something simple that you can start with is making sure you cut out the You know, the things that really impact the liver, caffeine and alcohol and processed foods and sugar.

And lastly, nutrients, thyroid nutrients. Now I would always recommend first to do the first stages that I talked about, uh, depending on your pathology test before introducing nutrients. But you really need to heal those key systems, identify where your thyroid is at through the pathology, before throwing in, additional nutrients.

So things like selenium and zinc, okay. Tyrosine and iodine are all really important factors for healthy thyroid function, even vitamin A. Now, you can use herbs like ashwagandha, which is really good because it has a very relaxing effect on the nervous system, then the adrenals, which will help with that kind of cortisol stress response activation.

But again, you want to be doing the healing work first. Now, [00:08:00] I know some of you may be on medication, and you're wondering how this all plays into you taking the medication. So, just to remind that the medication will give you T4. You still have to convert it to T3. It still has to bind to the receptor site.

It still has to go through a proper conversion, right? And we still need those cofactor nutrients like the zinc, selenium, iodine, et cetera, for that process. And so just because you're taking medication, it doesn't, doesn't mean that your symptoms are going to resolve, right? Quite the opposite. I have a lot of women who are taking the medication, still feel all the symptoms of low thyroid function.

And this is the reason why, okay? We need to make sure that you reduce stress, repair the gut, liver detox pathways, and take your thyroid nutrients.

So even if your lifestyle is stressful, it's busy and you've got a lot going on, there is so much that you can do to reduce the stress response, improve thyroid function, just through diet, lifestyle, and some mindset tips. So I would love to know [00:09:00] in the comments below, have you noticed for yourself that you went through a period of stress for months or years and did disrupt your thyroid or you suspect that it has disrupted because you have all of those symptoms?

I'd love for you to let me know in the comments below. [/vc_column_text][/vc_tta_section][vc_tta_section title=”Links” tab_id=”1716535392600-7bbf13d5-b61c17165356843821716536535162″][vc_column_text]Website: vesnahrsto.com

Master Cortisol Webinar: https://training.vesnahrsto.com/join-masterclass[/vc_column_text][/vc_tta_section][/vc_tta_accordion][/vc_column][/vc_row]