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Dr. Pedram: Hey guys. Dr. Pedram with Dr. Sara here to talk about some fun stuff today.
Hi Sarah. How are you? Dr. Sara: Good. Pedram, good to see you. Hi
everybody. Dr. Pedram: Hi. Today I think we have on our
list to talk about thyroid and it's complicating effects on weight loss and why people may
not be getting the results they want to get. Dr. Sara: Definitely talking about that. I
feel like so many people struggle with their weight and maybe half thyroid issues or half
problems with endocrine disruptors, please don't let your eyes *** over, and they
don't know it. I want to talk about that today. I think that's a really important topic. We've
got some juicy science on this. Right Pedram? Dr. Pedram: Yes. Our job is to take all the
geek science and try to break into human speak here.
Dr. Sara: That's true. Dr. Pedram: There's a lot of research coming
out on this that shows that it's basically our toxicity that might be leading to our
inability to lose weight and what that means is really where the rubber hits the road for
us because every one's picking up weight, everyone's not feeling as well, everyone's
feeling lethargic. The fact to the matter is we live in a toxic world so what are we
going to do about it and how can we look at this is really what I'd like to hopefully
focus on today. Dr. Sara: Definitely. I think solutions are
so important and I love that we have this time to translate the science for people so
that they can make it actionable. Also I'm a bit of a blocked half full type of a person.
I wanted to say first that even though we're talking about endocrine disruptors today and
how they can mock with your thyroid and your metabolism, I also think it's important to
say there's ways that the environment actually loves us up. There's some ways that the environment
mocks us up and loves us up. Loving us up I just wanted to mention this concept of grounding.
When you walk on the beach this has actually been showing to help you with your hormone
balance. I wanted to maybe say that quickly before we get into how these endocrine disruptors
cause problems for people. Dr. Pedram: I love that because everything's
so doom and gloom in our world and we're all going to go up and smoke. There are ways to
reverse a lot of this stuff, there are ways to mitigate it. The basic science that we're
looking at, we're just [stealing 00:02:27] about seven articles here. For you people
who like to look at the articles we're going to reference them for you so you can go back
and look at all that stuff. Essentially, the fat cells in our body store the toxins to
protect us and then as we start losing weight these toxins get released into our blood stream
and then there's some evidence to suggest that that then start to disrupt different
hormones including the thyroid hormones which then signals our body, hey go get more fat,
get some weight back on so we can get this junk of the streets and put into the prisons
again. Dr. Sara: Stay in the prison.
Dr. Pedram: Exactly, or rehab the prisoners something but not on the streets please. That's
really what's happening. We have this junk, the pesticides, the chemicals, all stuff that's
out there in our world which is obviously better living through chemistry hits in the
wrong way. Dr. Sara: It's like we're crushed [test 00:03:29]
tummies for the chemical industry. I don't want to get all shrill and so foxy about this
but you made such a good point about how we need to put this back into prison and we need
prisoner reform. I think that's such a beautiful point. We'll explain what we mean by this
in a moment because basically these endocrine disruptors get stored in your fat and then
the sad part is when you lose weight they come out of prison. That's what we're going
today is the science on this. Then I also think it's important to realize
we're talking about pesticides, we're talking about these plastics that we can expose to
but we're also talking about the sofa in your living room. We're talking about your mattress.
The sofa in your living room has flame retardants in it. Your mattress has flame retardants
unless you have an organic mattress. Otherwise you're getting exposed to things that disrupt
your thyroid and that's what we're talking about today. Maybe, Pedram, if I could back
for just a moment just to say a quick thing about the thyroid just to make sure we're
on the same page. Is that cool? Dr. Pedram: Yes absolutely.
Dr. Sara: Okay. So as you know, my first book is about women and their hormones. My promise,
I'm going to be either writing a book or an app for men next time.
Dr. Pedram: Thank you. Dr. Sara: When it comes to women and their
thyroid we know that women are 15% more affected by thyroid problems than men. Women are specially
affected but men are certainly not immune and it's important to understand what does
the thyroid do. It's this lovely little gland in your neck. It's the biggest endocrine gland
in your body and it's in charge of a couple of things, well actually about 300 but I'll
just name the top three. It's in charge of your weight, your metabolism, how you burn
calories, number one. Number two it's in charge of your mood and number three it's in charge
of your energy. You want this thyroid to be on your side working for you, not against
you. Anything you want to add to that Pedram? Dr. Pedram: No. Those are the big three. There's
a lot that goes into how the thyroid works and I can't tell you how many people drag
themselves into our clinics everyday on six cups of coffee a day wondering why they're
not feeling better. The first thing you look at is your thyroid on the ground, what's happening.
The only major component I see with that that's kind of a can of worms to open up here is
we're starting to see a lot of thyroid problems coming from gluten intolerance and food allergies
and sensitivities that we had noticed before or hadn't really been a problem before but
it's surging. What you eat could be affecting your thyroid just as much as your exposure
to chemical, toxins and all of things that are out there challenging us.
Dr. Sara: That's right. I think that's such an important point. We're talking a bit today
about these chemicals, these endocrine disruptors that are undermining your best efforts if
you're trying to lose weight but it's important to put it in context that the weight issue,
eat, move, think and supplement is the big part of how your thyroid is functioning, it's
a big part of your health. It's a big part of your vitality, right Pedram?
Dr. Pedram: That's right. Run around the block with that banner for a while.
Dr. Sara: That's right. Dr. Pedram: Really it's how we live. It's
how we live now. Unfortunately, because of the way the world is backed up right now supplementation
is something that's a big part of it because our bodies like to detox, our bodies are designed
to detox but they could use all the help they can get. Us getting up every morning slamming
that alarm snooze things and it's stumbling through our days and barely having time to
rest and recover let alone to detox has been a challenge and that's why certain supplements
are indicated for this kind of stuff. In an ideal universe, I know Sara you'd agree
with me on this, first of all you got to cut your exposure to the stuff, the flame retardants,
the out gassing of stuff, that new car smell that we've gotten used to that are just gross.
They're bad for us and we're trying to figure out a way to mitigate those loses to standoff
from some of that exposure. Good, clean, healthy living I think is the baseline of our springboard
into this unwind of what we're talking about here. You could detox all you want, if you're
re-toxing more than you're detoxing good luck with that.
Dr. Sara: Right. It's a simple equation in some ways. You want to make sure that you
are not re-toxing more than you're detoxing. I think that's a beautiful selling bite. I
think we need to make sure you get credit for that Pendrum. I want to get into this
first study about how when people lose weight they actually are releasing these toxins back
in their system. That's this whole concept that you are alluding to about these nasty
guys getting out of prison. The cool part that we're going to get to in the moment is
you can do something about this so we've got some science on what you can do and it's as
simple as taking a probiotic which has been proven to reduce absorption of one of this
thyroid disruptors something called Bisphenol A, BPA. Maybe we should go to that first study,
Pedram. Should we go to that first one and just talk about how ... ?
Dr. Pedram: Why not. Dr. Sara: To me it's like adding insult to
injury for people who are charged and they are trying to lose weight and maybe they're
obese or they're overweight and they're trying to get some pounds off. What I find so frustrating
for them is when they have this initial progress and then they either hit a plateau or they
just feel like no matter what they try nothing is working. That's what I feel like this first
study from 2010 addresses. Would you agree with that, Pedram?
Dr. Pedram: Yes, absolutely. We're looking at what PCB as organic fluorides and basically
pesticide used and a lot of this stuff guys happened back in the '60s and '70s when the
wild, wild west of our chemical dominance and we figured out this nature thing and we've
cracked the code, now we'll just create a pill for nil or a chemical for anything. What's
is us trying to get these stuff out of people's systems has proven to be very challenging
and the body ... Think about it, millions of years of human evolution in the natural
environment and then 50 to 100 years of all of a sudden a bunch of chemicals that the
body/nature have not ever known about and so their attitude is perfectly running homeostatic
system of saying okay, this is a bug out, this is friend or foe.
Now we have all these things that the body's just scratching its head saying I don't even
know what to do with this. The genius of our systems is that we've figured out way to offset
some of the stuff, tied into a fat cell, put it away for a rainy day until we figure out
how to get it out, but at the end of the day you got to pay piper so we got to figure out
how to actually get these things out of the system, and I think we can talk about some
of the supplements and the natural remedies to do so on this.
Again, my stance on this is first things first, limit your exposure. That includes some of
these deodorants, you're using your fancy Italian cologne, the new car smell. All the
things that we may or may not have slipped under our radar because we've just been using
them on a day to day basis. One of my nutritionists, as far as foods go, he says look, if it has
a label don't eat it. My thing with personal hygiene stuff is really look at it and if
there's anything on that thing that you can't pronounce, walk away.
Dr. Sara: I think that's such good advice and you're absolutely right. I do think that
the first part here is to limit exposure and as an integrated physician functional medicine
practitioner like you Pedram, I am very focused on spirit and hormones. My fist book is about
what I call your hormonal Charlie's angels, your thyroid, your estrogen and cortisol and
for men I call it the three negos , your thyroid, your testosterone and your cortisol. We're
talking today about the thyroid. I can say when it comes to estrogen there's more than
700 known vino estrogens. Endocrine disruptors that harm the estrogen levels in your body
and are linked to infertility and breast cancer, other problems like that.
We're talking about a lesser known disruptor today, the thyroid disruptors. I don't actually
know the total number that's proven right now with the thyroid disruptors but I love
this idea of limiting the exposure and I want to even get more granular on that. I alluded
before to the fact that flame retardants are a very well-known thyroid disruptor. One thing
you can do is you can get an organic mattress. That's one of the best things I recommend.
I imagine for many of you that you don't sit on your sofa in your living room for as many
hours as you lie on your mattress. When I started learning about thyroid disruptors
I [inaudible 00:13:29] to my local organic futon shop and I bought a mattress. Honestly,
it was less expensive than the mattress I had before, the one that was filling me with
flame retardants. The interesting thing Pedram, I don't know
what happens outside of the State of the California, but in the State of California at least when
I got my mattress, you have to have a doctor's prescription to get an organic mattress because
of this severe risk of cutting out the flame retardant and how you're going to die in a
fire because you have an organic mattress. I don't know if that's true outside of the
State of California. I hope people will comment on this. Fill this in. I want you to go buy
an organic mattress and find out and then share your feedback with us.
Dr. Pedram: Yes, absolutely. We can get in to the story of this flame retardant lobby
and how someone decided that they're going to ... Why don't you tell the story real quick
because it's a good one. We'll do it on the quick because I think it's pertinent to understand
how some of these things have worked into our households because it's kind of yucky.
Dr. Sara: How these endocrine disruptors have become part of our lives?
Dr. Pedram: Well, no. How the flame retardants have gotten into our things. You told me this
and it made me scratch my head and yes, that's amazing.
Dr. Sara: The flame retardants as you can imagine, there's a big industry that are trying
to pump flame retardants into every aspect of our lives from those little outfits that
babies wear, the pajamas that have the feet, to our living room sofa as I mentioned. Your
car is just chockfull of flame retardants. When you fly on an airplane, every single
thing you come in contact with is just chockfull of flame retardants. I actually read this
interesting story of a guy, I believe it was in National Geographic, where he did a body
burden test. You don't need to know all the details [of
science 00:15:34] on this but he did a test where a company, I think it was the Environmental
Working Group, ran a body burden test on him and he came back sky high in flame retardants.
He was just like, "What?" He's someone who's super environmental, he was really careful
about his exposure to plastics and it turned out that his travel and the amount of exposure
he had on airplanes was the number one risk for why he was exposed to so many flame retardants.
Oh by the way, I think his thyroid wasn't working so well. I don't know if that's the
story that you were thinking of, but did you have something you wanted to add?
Dr. Pedram: On top of the flame retardants and let's just say okay, so we're putting
all these chemicals that we may or may not need. How many buildings are going up in fire
right now and how bunch of a problem is this. I think the problem really came with the cigarette
industry having to worry putting things on fire so they came up with this and created
a whole new shop business out of flame retardants which is static cling if you will. You create
your own problem and you have yourself an industry. One of the things I was just looking
at was ... Dr. Sara: I love your analogies. That [clean
00:16:54] prison. I love your analogy. Dr. Pedram: Thank you. I can be the analogy
guy. Here's something we've been looking at which just blows my mind is there was a study
done in the UK where they were looking at plastics in the water and they realized that
there's this micro particles of plastics everywhere. They started studying ocean populations finding
micronized plastic fragments in the water of all the oceans of all the world. They say
okay, this is crazy. Where is this coming from?
We started backlogging back into where this was coming from. It turns out it's our washing
machines in our houses because all of polyester fabrics that we wash breaks into these micronized
particles. They go out and so they're finding plastic in fish, we're finding plastic in
everything. That's just the extent to which this chemical stuff has worked into our lives.
I try to wear 100% cotton everything, [inaudible 00:17:52], it's hard. It's hard to find cool
clothes even that are not polyester based in some way.
Dr. Sara: It's so true. I did an experiment a couple of years ago where I wore only organic
clothes for one year and I can tell you I was like a dork. I did my best to try to find
some hip [inaudible 00:18:17] clothes and oh my gosh, it was not so pretty. I had friends
who were saying, "Can you just finish the experiment maybe after six months? This is
not you." Dr. Pedram: I'm not having lunch with you.
Dr. Sara: Things are getting better but I think a lot of people don't realize that your
jeans are so full of endocrine disruptors and heavy metals. It is part of what happens
in China, and by the way the average American woman has seven pairs of jeans. I think you're
making such an important point and this idea about the runoff from our washing machines,
I imagine dolphins are involved somehow or dolphins involve ... I think I saw a study
on dolphins. Dr. Pedram: Yes. These poor little dolphins
are picking up. One of the few we got up here is pure dolphins, they're picking up all this
toxicity because it's getting into the oceans. One of the things I'm looking at, one of the
studies right now is the effects of these toxins on T3 and the basa lmetabolic rate.
What's happening is the resting metabolic rate on people is dropping and effectively
what's happening is your toxic, the thyroid says hey slow down so we can get fat. We get
fats that pull the toxins out of the system. We're looking at these people who are poor
responders to all these weight loss programs and one of my good friends Dr. Michael Yang
who's got book coming out on this very subject, the whole point is you're not fat, you're
toxic. Dr. Sara: Yes.
Dr. Pedram: Obesity and weight loss are very implicated in this as are all of the things
that you talk about with your hormone problems in your books. For me I'm kind of a generalist.
I look at everything. Movie Vitality is about looking at overall concepts of lifestyle and
then drilling down with friends like you to say okay now let's talk about hormones, let's
talk about weight loss, let's talk about this. The real essence or the crux of this argument
is we've departed from nature and then all bets are off so we don't know what all of
these things are doing to our systems and even the drugs that we take that are designed
to be good for us the fallout with some of the side effects has been catastrophic for
many people. I know people that take three drugs for the one drug that they were originally
supposed to take just to deal with the fallout. Dr. Sara: So true. You're Movie Vitality is
about to be released. I'm so excited about Vitality. I've been very honored to be able
to see it before your formal release and I just want to encourage everybody to watch
this film and share it with 10 people in your life once it comes out. It's so exciting and
I hope there's a link somewhere where people can actually do that.
I want us to pick up on a couple of things that you said that I think are so important.
One is I struggled with weight quite a bit when I was younger. I was always a little
pudgy as a kid and I think some of that was maybe due to endocrine issues and endocrine
disruptors since I can remember growing up in suburban Maryland. I remember riding my
bike when I was about seven years old in the summer when they were spraying foliage for
mosquitoes and I bet that that was DDT because it was around the time that DDT got banned
shortly thereafter. I think it's so important as someone who struggled
with my weight until I really figured out this hormone issue in my 30s which is about
10 years ago, I think it's so important to realize that you want to look at the biology
because both men and women, but especially women, are vulnerable to this. When it comes
to trying to find the right weight and trying to develop and easeful relationship with your
body and with your weight, we are so quick to blaming ourselves and feeling like the
reason I can't lose weight or the reason why I'm a yo-yo with my weight is because of will
power. One of the really important messages that
I feel like we have for everybody today is to understand that you want to look at the
biology. I'm not taking off the hook with the Psychology and eating just food especially
if you learned that as a kid, but I think it's still important to look at the biology
in parallel with the Psychology. I agree with this point about endocrine disruptors and
how it can slowdown your thyroid. What's stunning to me is that I really believe we have an
epidemic of slow thyroid and I believe you also look at it this was Pedram that most
conventional physicians are looking at the normal range when it comes with their thyroid.
I can tell you I had three women this week and one man who came to see me and said, "I
have all the symptoms of low thyroid functioning. I asked my primary care doctor to run thyroid
test. He did them and he told me that they were fine. He patted me on the back, you're
just getting older, that's just how it is." Dr. Pedram: Deal with it.
Dr. Sara: Don't you see that all the time? Dr. Pedram: There are so many people that
wash up on the beaches of natural forward thinking clinics that had just been tossed
and turned around by this system because a lot of this toxin ... We're working pretty
aggressively. We train a lot of these docs to see things at a more functional spectrum
but their training says look, unless this is some sort of gross pathology or meets my
criteria, get out of here. That's no way to treat humans. If someone comes into your office
complaining about something it's obviously a problem. People have busy lives so you got
to listen. Dr. Sara: So true. I think another issue,
and maybe we can talk about this at another date because I've got about 27 of these topics
that I want to do with you Pedram, another issue I think is that there's a problem with
thyroid resistance. I think the next 10 years is actually going to be about thyroid resistance
and probably people who are listening know about insulin resistance. When your cells
become numb to insulin, insulins of fat storage hormone and so as it rises it needs you to
store fat no matter what you're doing. Just as with insulin resistance you can have
resistance with these other hormones, to thyroid, to cortisol, to estrogen, to progesterone.
I think this is another important piece that your labs may not always reflect what's happening
with your thyroid and this is so true when it comes to thyroid disruptors. Thyroid disruptors,
it they're in prison that's one thing, but if they're out of prison they could be blocking
your receptors and you may have normal labs but the thyroid disruptor might be slowing
down your metabolism. Dr. Pedram: You have specialized tests to
figure that out with people. Dr. Sara: Absolutely. When I went through
medical school, I think I'm little bit older than you Pedram, when I started at Harvard
Medical School in 1989 the normal range for the thyroid, for THS, Thyroid Stimulating
Hormone, was considered to be .5 to 4.5. Do you remember those days, Pedram?
Dr. Pedram: Yes. Dr. Sara: Then actually some of this national
endocrinology organizations have changed that range thankfully because they use the range
for 95% of the population and oh by the way, about a third of the population is low in
thyroid function so that's not such a good measure. If we use the optimal range we know
that it's much tighter than that and even this conventional medicine organizations in
endocrinology have tightened that range to .3 to 2.5 or .3 to 3.0. What I find in my
practice with men and women is that I even like it to be between .1 and 1.5. I'm curious,
do you have ... We can't give medical advice of course to people who are listening to us
without a full history and physical. I'm just wondering if you have numbers that you use
in your practice? Dr. Pedram: Right there with you. Basically
for us it's about how the patient comes in feeling. First step is how you're feeling,
how you're living, how's your vitality and then we'll take it from there. When I start
seeing thyroid jumping around what we look at is cortisol levels, we'll start looking
at [DHA 00:27:23, we'll start looking at all baseline endocrine function including gut
dysbiosis, salivary ... I don't want to get too geeky in the terms here.
Dr. Sara: Doing a happy dance. Dr. Pedram: Doing a happy dance. That's the
thing. It's like you cannot look. It's like if a child comes in and has a problem, first
thing you do is to look at the family and see what's up in the household. It's not an
isolate thing. We have to look at the family of hormones and say what's going on here?
What is this picture? I'm telling you, nine out of ten times the picture is going to be
different. Same two presentations pictures are going to be different because let's face
it, you grew up in Maryland, I grew up in California and we had different exposure to
different things. My parents every time I got an ear infection as a kid I get a slapped
with amoxicillin. For me it might be building the probiotics
in my gut. For you it might kelating out or detoxing out certain chemicals that you might
have been exposed to. These are just random examples but different strokes for different
folks. For us it's about taking a cold, hard look at the global picture and saying now
what? What do you need? I think this is a good time for us to segway
into, because I know we're running lower on time here, solutions. We started with some
doom and gloom and what's wrong with the world kind of thing. Now what would you do ... I
don't know if you're a fan of kelation. I know there's a lot of docs that have different
opinions on kelation. What's yours for some of these heavy metals and all this stuff?
Dr. Sara: I definitely thing if you're high in heavy metals I think that evidence is uneven.
If we're talking about the thyroid and honestly it's a little hard for me to only focus on
the thyroid because just as you mentioned, you got to look at the whole neighborhood
and cortisol is the engine behind your thyroid. You got to look at cortisol all with these
hormones crosstalk, the hormonal Charlie's angels, the three negos . Just to answer your
question specifically about kelation, mercury is one of the heavy metals that I get the
most concerned about in terms of the thyroid and being a thyroid disruptor.
I'm a big fan testing their mercury and finding out if this is a problem and as you probably
do in your practice Pedram, what I find is that conventional physicians occasionally
are willing to order mercury tests and a lot of people want to use their insurance for
this. You want to be a little careful because if you are mercury toxic and your blood level
comes back high, it's going to potentially impact your insurability and your future.
I have one patient who has tried to pay through the nose for insurance and she had a blood
test done with her conventional doctor. Anyway, I think it's worthwhile to test out
spite of the system if you can afford that. I'm a big fan of the [needle loavers 00:30:26].
What are the really simple things you can do coming out of this conversation. Number
one I would say check out a lab called MercOut. I don't know if you use them but MercOut is
M-E-R-C-O-U-T.com and they allow you to take a questionnaire to see if mercury might be
an issue for you as an endocrine disruptor of the thyroid and order a test where it's
a provoked test where you take a kelator and then you collect your urine for two hours,
you send it off to a lab. It costs like $79. It totally think it's worth it especially
if you have symptoms. I'm a big fan of that in when it comes to kelation. Do you want
to say something more about kelation? Dr. Pedram: I think kelation is something
that is sometimes overdone because there's a lot of people out there saying that you
need to do my $6,000 protocol to clean out your pipes and all those kind of stuff. As
much as the normal traditional medicine people are pushing their drugs, potions and lotions,
some of the natural people are pushing a lot of their protocols that might be a little
excessive. I think that there's definitely a time and a place for kelation. If you've
got mercury, you got to get that stuff out. It's absolutely critical to look at the amount
of tuna that's going into your body, the amount of fillings. All this stuff that we need to
just look at and say okay, is there a holistic dentist around that can pull thing out and
how would I mitigate my exposure to this so that I can safely get this out because it's
not just about getting it out, it's about safely getting out. If we go to the prison
example, you don't just open the doors for the prison and just let out the inmates. You
escort them somewhere. Dr. Sara: They have some rehab in there for
all the endocrine disruptors. I'm so glad you are making this classical, Pedram, because
I can sometimes start talking about the science and get too excited. I wanted to just mention
a couple of things around mercury. I was mercury toxic.
Dr. Pedram: Were you? Dr. Sara: Back in 2006 and I just want to
tell you the way I got mercury toxic was not from fillings because I don't have any amalgams.
I have heavy metals showing which by the way are 50% mercury. What I have is a fondness
for sashimi. My medical office in 2006 was right next door to a Japanese restaurant and
I would go there once or twice a week and have sashimi. I really love yellow tail, I
love tuna, spicy tuna. Dr. Pedram: High protein and low guilt. Wonderful,
right? Dr. Sara: Yes. I thought I was taking such
good care of myself. I was limiting my carbohydrates, I was focused on the protein, I'd have a seaweed
salad. Life was good. I would go to whole foods and get one of their brown rice sushi
things. I thought I was taking care of myself. Then low and behold, I'm gaining weight. Actually
I had two kids in my 30s and I had trouble losing the weight after I had my babies. I
was struggling with my mood. I was not feeling like my glass half full type of a person and
I was also struggling with energy. My energy was really inconsistent. It wasn't high like
it was when I was younger. On a whim I actually tested my mercury levels
and found that they were ridiculously high. Ridiculously high. This is not just my experience.
I live in a bay area. There's a woman, a physician internist, conventional internist who did
a little experiment at her practice in San Francisco where she decided to just run mercury
levels on all of her client and she found that somewhere around like 30 to 50% had elevated
levels of mercury. She wrote a book about it that I think is so important and interesting
to read. Very few conventional physicians are going
to think that way. It's not that we're blaming conventional physicians because Pedram, you
and I went through that training. It's not ignorance. It's more that you learn a different
model. You just don't think about these things. On the other extreme as you were describing
is the more natural practitioners who maybe are overstating the benefits of kelation.
I think what's so great about our conversation is that we're the middle path. We want to
talk about the evidence with everybody and what makes sense, but we're not conventional,
we're not alternative woo woos to the point where we're not talking about the evidence.
Dr. Pedram: Absolutely. The middle path is where it says let's be sensible about this.
I'm not going to put away my [inaudible 00:35:19] and start going with the horse strung buggy
to work. We live in a complicated world and we just have to look at everything rationally
and not so religiously. I think on both sides of the camp it's like I don't believe in herbs.
What do you mean believe in herbs? On the other side it's like you believe everything
[inaudible 00:35:38] but you need to kelate to look crazy.
For the benefit of the audience, the sensible, lovely people that we love talking to every
single day, hi right, exactly, I think the take home story here is one, clean up your
act. Make sure you're not taking in any chemicals that you can avoid in your life. If you do
have say the new car, you want to air it out considerably before you drive it and all that
kind of stuff ... and this is a radical in terms of what to do because I could walk in
to any human's house in the western world and point out 150 items that are carcinogenic
and are going to have endocrine disruptors and things that are going to mess up your
health. The moral of the story is the world's got
a lot of things stacked against us in that capacity. What we need to do is really work
against that but also really enhance and optimize the body's function to be able to clean house
and take care of itself. I think that's just the whole argument of vitality is there's
two ways to deal with this: wait until you get sick and then try to cure it through drugs
and pills and potions, the other is to enhance your vitality so that your body can offset
a lot of that stuff and so may build up your forcefield if you will.
I'd love to hear it from you in a couple of minutes we have left here what vitality enhancing
practices can you recommend to people coming from your wonderful world of knowledge and
expertise? Dr. Sara: Yes. Had talked to you, I totally
agree. Just as in positive psychology where we want to amplify what's working. I totally
agree with this that you want to amplify the innate intelligence of your body. How do you
do that? I would say the place where you really focus is you start with your gut just as you
were describing earlier Pedram. What I love about making this actionable for people is
that we have evidence that you can reduce thyroid disruptors by taking probiotics. I
don't know anyone who get sufficient probiotics from the foods that they're eating. Maybe
there's someone in Japan that I don't know who's eating from fermented soy and I don't
know what else, nato and they're getting enough but people I know don't get enough. They have
too many antibiotics. They're talking antibiotic when their cold last for more than three days
and it wipes out all the good stuff. We need to do another session I think on the gut,
Pedram. Dr. Pedram: Hundred percent.
Dr. Sara: Suffice it to say that I want you to take a probiotic, take a protein probiotic.
Maybe Pedram you have some suggestions on that, but I don't even care what it is. I
just want to you to start on a probiotic, take it regularly. It's going to help you
reduce your absorption of these thyroid disruptors. I think that's a really important part.
Another important part when it comes to your thyroid and amplifying the positive is to
take a potent multivitamin. Let's me just stuck up for one quick second on this. I learned
that the reason why my thyroid wasn't working, wasn't loving me up and supporting me the
way that I wanted to be supported was first the mercury, so I need to get that mercury
out of my system, and second, I am low in copper.
In functional medicine one of the things we look at, and I've written a lot about this
in my book the Hormone Cure, we look first and foremost at nutritional gaps that you
might have. I learned early on that I have a genetic tendency to not absorb copper from
food and so my copper is really low. Copper is essential for normal thyroid function.
It's one of the important co-factors that helps you convert the storage thyroid hormones
you pour into T3 which is the form of thyroid hormone that really loves you up and supports
you. Just by taking a multivitamin that has copper, zinc, selenium and also vitamin D,
that is what I need to support my thyroid. I would say those two things. Number one,
probiotic. Number two, a potent multivitamin. Dr. Pedram: Absolutely. The problem with the
food is the depletion of the soil, the nutrients aren't getting there and there's a lot of
things that we have to supplement now because the food isn't there. Now on that note, I'm
a big fan of community support and agriculture. There's a lot of these organizations around
that will dump off a bucket of fresh leafy vegetables and things that will really set
you out of this favor. In terms of eating lots of vegetables, different colored vegetables,
leafy greens and all that kind of stuff but still take the potent multivitamin because
again, you have this much vitality and this much disease in the natural world. Now all
of a sudden the disease and the chemicals are up here so we have to really stack up
or odds here so we can meet it and then also deal with life's little stresses, getting
that one phone call that all of a sudden puts us over the edge and stuff like that. It's
absolutely greatly important. One thing to talk about on the probiotics
is a lot of the studies that I've been reading is high, high doze, especially for people
who need to reinoculate, some of the stuff suggests 400 billion, 400 billion microorganisms
a day to reinoculate. What's happened is big pharma has now moved in and said oh we heard
this is good so we're going to come up with a product one billion microorganisms in their
pill. You could take two, three, five, ten of those a day, you're not even scratching
the surface. If you actually have gut dysbiosis, you're
gassy after meals, you're immune system's compromised, you might have some of these
chemical toxicities. We're taking 100 billion and up a day. There's only a couple of companies
out there that I know that are doing it. Ultimate Floor is pretty good. There's a product we
use for people that have just been wiped out from a major antibiotics called VLS3 that
sets all mind. There's a lot of stuff out there for me that
the take home story with that is high doze and go for it. People say well, why do I need
that many [bugs 00:41:56]? In the old days when you would walk along the river stick
your head in there and just drink, how much bacteria were you getting everyday? When you
pull a carrot out of the ground and just wipe it off and eat it, how much bacteria were
you getting? We evolved with these good bugs and there's a lot of science out there showing
that a lot of our genetic expression and our ability to really enhance our co-existence
symbiotically with the planet comes with our relationship with the bacteria, the innate
bacteria that come with the earth. Our Lysol wiping everything and dropping amoxicillin,
bombs on everything might have backfired in a lot of ways. Good bugs, high doze. Go for
it guys. I have not seen a downside on that with your traditional patients. There's certain
kinds of patients, you got to be careful with the out gassing and all that, unless you have
some major gut issue. Always consult your doctor. [inaudible 00:42:53] talking about
here. Consult with your doctor. We're not giving medical advice. We're saying these
are the general things that tend to help. Dr. Sara: Beautiful. Honey, I love it when
you talk this way. It just makes me so happy. I want to add though that one of the things
I've seen in my 20 years of taking care of people is that sometimes when they jump on
the bandwagon a little too fast, like they don't ramp up, they can have issues especially
if you're talking about taking probiotics. What I encourage people to do is to take a
doze of it and see it slowly ramp up because if you get too much at once sometimes it can
give you diarrhea. It can also release ... you can start to get rid of things like yeast
and you can actually have kind of a detox reaction which can feel like a flue. I just
want people to be careful about that. Attune to the body and talk to your clinician about
it. Dr. Pedram: Yes, absolutely. Look, you have
measured steps, work it into a lifestyle program. Don't just overwhelm your system with something
new. Yes, thanks for that. Everything in life has to be measured steps and the taking things
out of the lifestyle diet is absolutely critical as well. Sorry, the dogs are going crazy.
Dr. Sara: [inaudible 00:44:13]? Dr. Pedram: Yes, exactly. It's great having
dogs around. Dr. Sara: [Right Buster 00:44:17]?
Dr. Pedram: Yes, [inaudible 00:44:18] Buster. Listen, Sara I love this. I love what we're
doing. I think that this is going to be a lot of fun and we're just going to keep talking
about stuff that's interesting. If you're listening to this right now and there's something
that you want us to talk about that's like hey, go back to that point, I really need
to know more. We're creating our list of things that we're going to talk about over the next
few months and keep this going. Give us feedback and we'd love to hear what you have to say
about this as well. Dr. Sara: Definitely. We want to hear where
you agree with us, what lands with you, where you disagree. We just want to really encourage
a dialogue around this. I got my list of all the things I want to talk about next but the
gut is really up. I think the gut's going to be at least one of the next pie, Pedram.
Dr. Pedram: Yes, for sure. We'll put our list together and we'll keep doing this. I want
to thank you. This is so fun. I know we live a few hundred miles apart but I feel like
we get to hang out doing this and you're one of my favorite people and I just had so much
fun with you so this is great. Dr. Sara: Thank you Pedram. Ditto. Same right
back to you. It's so great to be on the line with you. I can't wait to unpack more of the
science and make it actionable for people. So get your organic mattress, okay? Watch
Vitality, start your probiotic, very important. Those are the action methods and your multivitamin.
Dr. Pedram: And your multivitamin. To deal with the endocrine disruptors we need to know
what we're talking about. Hormone Cure, Sara Gottfried coming out soon, watch Vitality
the movie and then eat well, avoid chemical toxins, buy an organic mattress, multivitamin
probiotic. Dr. Sara: Maybe test your mercury.
Dr. Pedram: Okay. What was the website again for that?
Dr. Sara: MercOut.com. M-E-R-C-O-U-T.com, MercOut.
Dr. Pedram: Perfect. You guys get your homework. We'll see you next time.
Dr. Sara: All right. Bye everybody. Dr. Pedram: Bye.