Why thyroid problems show up in older women
The thyroid is never independent. That is the sentence Dr. Martin builds every thyroid episode on, and it is the reason he will not look at one on its own.
So when a woman in her sixties has every symptom of a slow thyroid, his question is not what is wrong with the thyroid. It is what is pulling on it. In episode 985 he names three: long running stress, estrogen dominance, and a liver loaded with sugar.
None of those three are the thyroid. All three end up showing as a thyroid problem.
The puppet on strings
Dr. Martin on the thyroid:
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 985The thyroid is like a puppet, has a lot of strings attached.
Everything else on this page hangs off that one line. Pull a string somewhere else in the endocrine system and the puppet moves, and what you see move is the thyroid.
He is not against blood testing, and he says so directly. He encourages people to get their blood work done. His objection is to testing being the whole conversation, when the strings never show up on the panel.
He covers that principle in full, along with TSH and thyroid medication, in the thyroid never acts on its own. This page is about the strings.
Estrogen dominance and stress, the two that pull hardest
Here is the one he sees most in women, and the reason so many of them are stuck on a scale.
Dr. Martin on what women are not told:
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 985But they don't understand that stress and estrogen dominance slows their thyroid to a crawl.
They look at food and they gain weight, he says, and they are frustrated because they live on the scale. Nobody explained the hormones to them, so they assume it is willpower. A lot of them starve themselves, because they were taught it is all about calories rather than whether the food is nutrient dense.
He calls them horror hormones, which got a laugh in his office and made the point.
And once the thyroid is slowed, weight loss stops being a fair fight. Good luck, he says. Twice. Because the thyroid is your gas pedal. The thyroid is metabolism.
The liver step nobody mentions
This is the part of the episode most women have never heard, and it is the one that links the thyroid to the sugar bowl.
Over a whole year, your body makes about a tablespoon of thyroid hormone. That is it. A tablespoon, doing all of it.
Dr. Martin on the conversion:
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 985So you can see how your thyroid gets thrown off, because at the end of the day, you need T3 for your thyroid to work properly.
T4 has to be converted to T3, and that conversion happens in your liver. So a liver that is gummed up is a thyroid problem, even though nothing is wrong with the thyroid.
And how do you gum up a liver? Sugar. Plus the crappy carbohydrates that turn into sugar in nanoseconds. He says the vast majority of people have fatty liver and have no idea, because nobody goes looking until something comes back abnormal.
Selenium, the nutrient he says gets missed
Everyone has heard iodine and the thyroid. He is not arguing with iodine. He is arguing with iodine on its own.
Dr. Martin on selenium:
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 985Your thyroid needs selenium every bit as much or even more than iodine.
The two are synergistic, he says. They work together. He was never big on iodine by itself and gave a combination in his practice days.
Then the food part, and it lands squarely on what a lot of women over 60 eat every single day. Chicken and salad. He is not rude about it. He has three daughters, a wife and four granddaughters, and he knows exactly what is on the plate. But in chicken and salad, he says, you do not get selenium. Some iodine, no selenium.
Steak is where he points. Vitamin S, in his shorthand.
What he looked at before the blood test
Patients found it disconcerting. When someone walked into his office he looked at them head to toe first. Eyebrows. Hair. Skin.
Dr. Martin on what he looked at:
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 985Hair is a really important indicator for thyroid function.
He is firm on this one. It is never normal for a woman to lose hair. It might thin a little with age, sure, but thinning that a woman notices in the mirror is information, and it was information he wanted before he read a number.
That is his whole argument about symptoms. The panel is one input. The woman in front of you is the other one, and she is the one the strings are attached to.
What to do about it
Work the strings, not the puppet.
Food first, and that means the sugar and the fast carbs, because that is the lever on the liver and the liver is where the conversion happens. Selenium with the iodine rather than iodine alone, and red meat is where he sends you for it. The stress load next, because it is one of the two he says slows the thyroid to a crawl, and it is the one nobody writes on a chart.
Then get the bloods done, and read them next to the symptoms rather than instead of them. If the numbers say fine and the woman says otherwise, he wants both things on the table.
Common questions
Why do older women get thyroid problems?
Dr. Martin says the thyroid is never independent, so it is usually being slowed by something else. The three he names in this episode are long stress, estrogen dominance, and a liver gummed up with fatty liver.
What slows the thyroid down?
Stress and estrogen dominance, which he says slow it to a crawl, and a sugar-loaded liver, because the liver is where T4 gets converted to the T3 your body actually uses.
Does sugar affect the thyroid?
In his chain, yes. Sugar and fast carbs give you fatty liver, and the liver is where the conversion step happens. He is blunt that people who do not see the link do not understand nutrition.
Is iodine enough for the thyroid?
He says no. Selenium as much as or more than iodine, and the two are synergistic. He was never big on iodine on its own and gave a combination in his practice days.
Can you tell anything from hair and skin?
He looked at them before he looked at the blood work. He says losing hair is never normal for a woman, and calls hair a really important indicator of thyroid function.
Read next: Hypothyroidism After 60: What Changes and Does A Slow Thyroid Make You Look Older?.
Thyroid, from the clinic shop
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