I'll be hosting a thyroid webinar at the end of August where I'll be revealing what Jim Laird and I discovered taking over 60 people through a thyroid program last Spring. Set a reminder for the webinar:
We put together a quick video on these mistakes here. But in the rest of this post, I want to cover the five most common lab abnormalities I see in thyroid cases.
Here they are...
1. A high copper/zinc ratio in the blood
Copper and zinc are both necessary for thyroid function. You'll rarely find overt or severe deficiency of either of these minerals, but you will often see patients respond radically to them when we supplement them or increase them in the diet.
But the ratio is critically important. We need far more zinc than copper in general. This is not controversial - it's almost impossible to eat a diet higher in copper than zinc.
The other pattern you'll see on repeat lab testing (assuming the right treatment protocol was used) is heavy metals coming out, including copper, on subsequent lab tests.
Patients typically feel much, much better as this happens. I had just such a call this morning about a very difficult case. Her aluminum level went through the roof with the right mineral protocol and aggressive sauna.
Women often have high levels of serum copper. Men will typically only have high levels of copper if they are on copper supplements or beef liver supplements (same difference).
However, you'll only see high copper levels in the blood show up in the hair once the body starts to eliminate it. Once that starts, patients usually feel much, much better.
This is why I'm crazy about putting copper to work, as I wrote about here:
For those of you still skeptical of these patches, the positive reviews continue to roll in. I’ll be sharing more of them with you soon.
If you’ve got a review of the LifeWave patches you’d like to share with, please share it here. Good or bad - I want to read them all.
2. "Normal" thyroid hormone levels
Would you be surprised if I told you that in our thyroid program, almost no one had overtly abnormal thyroid labs? Even I had crazier thyroid hormone levels than some of our patients, and I have zero thyroid problems.
Why did that happen? First, most people with overt thyroid dysfunction are on at least an adequate dose of thyroid hormone. Often, they are on too high of a dose. Second, most people today who are told or who suspect they have thyroid problems actually just have a combination of toxic overload and nutritional deficiencies. Thyroid hormone levels become deranged as a result of this, not because anything is inherently wrong with the thyroid gland.
How do we normalize thyroid hormone levels? We nourish the body. We rid it of toxins. More on this later.
3. Low hair chromium and selenium levels
Chromium is necessary for glucose utilization. Chromium deficiency results in insulin resistance. Fitness enthusiasts have been using chromium for years as a weight loss supplement.
It's no wonder why Americans are increasingly insulin resistant - as a rule, their hair chromium levels are far below levels that were normal just a few generations ago.
Selenium is necessary for production and metabolism of thyroid hormone, as well as vital cellular detoxification pathways. This is why selenium is thrown at practically everything by people in the integrative/natural/functional medicine world.
Doses up to 400 mcg per day tend not to result in over-dose. I recently caught a very elevated level - three times the upper limit of normal - in a patient who was taking 600 mcg per day. She still had not normalized her serum level a few months later. Just a word to the wise - make sure you're not getting too much of it. You'll find it in many supplements. Brazil nuts are insanely high in selenium - just three or four a day will get you to 300-400 mcg. And I see no reason to use more than that.
Chromium and selenium aren't the only minerals that tend to be low in the hair.
4. Low manganese, copper, zinc, and iron in the hair
Manganese, copper, zinc, and iron are all essential elements, and they all compete with one another. That's why I'm grouping them together here. However, unlike chromium and selenium, they can be low on a hair test, but only because the body is hanging onto them.
Thyroid patients overwhelmingly are low in zinc. So are most people who complain of fatigue.
Manganese, copper, and iron can go either way. Patients can hide these on the first test, but once you treat them to balance their minerals and restore their nutrition, you'll find that enormous quantities of copper, manganese, or iron may come out. This is typically accompanied by a dump of heavy metals as well.
What the body is eliminating is metals it no longer needs, because they are being replaced by minerals the body is deficient in (most commonly chromium, selenium, and zinc, but not always).
5. High heavy metal levels
You will frequently find elevated levels of heavy metals in either hair or blood of patients with thyroid problems. This is because thyroid hormone controls many of our detoxification processes, notably moving your bowels, and because heavy metals poison the thyroid.
What kinds of metals do we often see elevated? Aluminum, lead, mercury, cadmium, nickel, and arsenic are the top offenders. We typically see these coming out in waves as we treat successive hair tissue tests.
If you want to learn more about the thyroid, register here to learn what Jim and I discovered taking 60 people through our thyroid program last Spring. You will also learn more about how we can help you, specifically if you have thyroid problems.
Until next time, be well,
Dr. Stillman
Thanks for sharing this. I think #2 is especially important and it is staggering how many 'thyroid specialists' make conclusions based solely on blood levels, despite decades of studies spelling out that uptake into cells is variable (even in the early 90s, it was clear that those with metabolic challenges have 10-67% drop in T4 uptake and 55-76% drop for T3, see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8412761/).
Excellent!