Emily was 35 years old when she was diagnosed with hypothyroidism during a routine appointment with her primary care doctor.
She had known for years that something was off—she was tired, depressed, unable to focus, sensitive to cold temperatures, constipated, and gaining weight, despite no changes in her diet—but her test results had always come back normal.
This time, however, her thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) was elevated, indicating hypothyroidism, or abnormally low function of her thyroid gland.
In some cases, her doctor explained, TSH can be normal, despite being hypothyroid and having obvious symptoms of hypothyroidism, which is why it wasn’t caught earlier.
“Better late than never,” her doctor added, as she wrote Emily a prescription for thyroid medication.
Band-aid medicine
For a few months after starting her medication, Emily felt like the clouds had parted, the sun was out, the birds were chirping, and she had gotten her life back.
Her energy, mood, focus, cold sensitivity, and constipation had improved, and she was beginning to lose the weight that she had gained over the years.
Clearly, the medication was working, and Emily was relieved to have finally discovered why she had felt so terrible for so long.
The profound relief of having restored her thyroid function to normal was unfortunately short-lived, however, as the medication soon started to lose its effectiveness, and her symptoms of hypothyroidism started to kick back in.
“We’ll likely have to continue increasing your dose over time, as the natural function of your thyroid decreases,” her doctor clarified in a follow-up appointment, as she wrote Emily another prescription, this time for a higher dose.
Root cause medicine
While Emily started taking the medication at the higher dose, desperate for the same relief she had experienced at the outset, she also wondered why her doctor had been so quick to prescribe medication that she would apparently need to take for the rest of her life, without investigating why the condition had developed in the first place.
Hypothyroidism doesn’t just develop out of nowhere, she thought to herself.
It’s not like it’s some inevitable condition that everyone gets.
Why did she develop hypothyroidism, when others didn’t?
What was causing the condition?
Was it something that she was eating?
Or was she was deficient in a certain vitamin or mineral or something?
Or was there some lifestyle factor that was compromising her thyroid function?
Her doctor had never asked her about any of these things, and was clearly more focused on medication than anything else, so Emily decided to do some research on her own.
Enter Quantify
Searching for answers, Emily eventually found Quantify.
She saw that other members had identified the causes of their hypothyroidism with saliva, blood, urine, and stool tests that most doctors don’t order.
And that many of these members were able to address the causes with diet, supplements, and lifestyle, and ultimately reverse the condition and get off their medication.
Excited to get more data about her health, Emily started her membership.
After getting matched with a certified health coach specialized in thyroid function, completing a health questionnaire, and meeting with her health coach over video chat, a quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) stool analysis and gluten sensitivity test were ordered for Emily, to test for parasites, bacteria, fungi, and viruses, and evaluate intestinal permeability, inflammation, the health of her microbiome, and immune reactivity to gluten, a protein in wheat, barley, and rye.
Leaky gut
A few weeks later, she received her test results, and her health coach explained that her qPCR stool analysis showed increased intestinal permeability (or, more colloquially, leaky gut), which commonly contributes to the development of hypothyroidism.1
Her gluten sensitivity test was also abnormal, indicating that while Emily didn’t have celiac disease, she did have a significant sensitivity to gluten, and that her regular consumption of foods containing gluten was likely compromising the integrity of her intestinal barrier, causing leaky gut.2
To address leaky gut and improve her thyroid function, her health coach continued, Emily would need to eliminate processed foods, grains, and dairy from her diet, take certain supplements, such as ginger, slippery elm, and marshmallow root, exercise every day, and optimize her circadian rhythm, by minimizing exposure to blue light and consistently getting to bed before midnight.3
Recovery
While Emily had never tried to make so many changes at once, the prospect of having to take thyroid medication for the rest of her life ultimately motivated her to follow her health coach’s recommendations closely, despite how overwhelming it was for her at first.
She had eaten the standard American diet for her entire life, so eliminating processed foods, grains, and dairy from her diet wasn’t easy, but her health coach helped her to make the transition by recommending certain health-promoting foods that she could easily find locally and prepare at home.
Over the course of a few months, as Emily replaced bread, pasta, cereal, crackers, cookies, and other high-carbohydrate, high-sugar foods with fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, beef, chicken, fish, and eggs, she noticed that her symptoms started to improve, even beyond the effect that her thyroid medication was having.
Six months later, when Emily’s TSH came back only slightly elevated, indicating improved thyroid function, her doctor opted to decrease her dose, explaining that the higher dose was no longer warranted, given that her thyroid appeared to be coming back online.
A year after that, Emily’s symptoms had completely resolved, her TSH was normal, and her doctor agreed to take her off her thyroid medication.
“So, how’d you do it?” her doctor asked with apparent genuine interest, having never seen any of her patients reverse their hypothyroidism.
“I worked with a health coach,” Emily replied, expecting her doctor to dismiss the concept.
“A health coach?” her doctor looked at her quizzically.
“Maybe I should get a health coach.”