Today I am speaking with Dr. Izabella Wentz on all things Thyroid health and autoimmune. Dr Wentz in an expert on thyroid health and became interested in thyroid health when she was diagnosed with and reversed her Hashimoto's. We discuss what the thyroid does, what autoimmune disease is, and how to improve symptoms or reverse it.

About Dr. Wentz Izabella Wentz

Dr. Wentz is a pharmacist, author, and thyroid health expert. In 2009, she was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, an autoimmune thyroid disease, which led her to investigate the root causes of thyroid disorders and develop a holistic approach to managing them. Wentz is the author of several books, including Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis: Lifestyle Interventions for Finding and Treating the Root Cause and Adrenal Transformation Protocol: A 4-Week Plan to Release Stress Symptoms and Go from Surviving to Thriving.⁠ Dr. Izabella Wentz

Dr. Wentz Website

Dr. Izabella Wentz Instagram

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction and Background

04:12 Understanding Thyroid Health and Conditions

08:44 Diagnosing Hashimoto's with Thyroid Antibody Tests

10:06 The Impact of Toxins on Thyroid Autoimmunity

14:19 Factors Contributing to Autoimmune Conditions

19:50 Addressing Gut Infections for Autoimmune Conditions

29:45 Lab Testing and Nutrient Optimization for Thyroid Health

34:02 The Role of Diet in Supporting Thyroid Health

37:25 Using Natural Desiccated Thyroid Medications for Thyroid Health

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00.480] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

Welcome to the Longevity Optimization podcast, where we discuss longevity, optimal health, nutrition, peak performance, cognitive excellence, and so much more. Doctor Wentz, it is such a pleasure to have you here with me today.

[00:00:14.170] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

Thank you so much for having me, Kayla.

[00:00:16.010] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Absolutely. We are going to be talking about such an important topic today, thyroid health.

[00:00:20.760] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

My favorite topic.

[00:00:21.830] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

I know, I know. So, before we jump into it, would you tell us just a little bit about your background and what made you so passionate about thyroid health? Sure.

[00:00:30.680] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

So, in full disclosure, I was never really interested in the thyroid gland. When I was going through pharmacy school, I just thought the thyroid gland was this, like, boring little organ, and sometimes it got a little bit of slope and people just needed to take thyroid medications. And it wasn't really until I was diagnosed myself with Hashimoto's thyroiditis in 2009, in my twenties, after almost ten years of debilitating symptoms of. And at that point, I was already a practicing pharmacist. And at first when I was diagnosed, I was like, okay, this is exciting. I know what's wrong with me. This explains some of my symptoms. I'm going to start taking thyroid medications, and everything will be perfect. Everything will be fine, right? And that's sort of what I learned in school. You take thyroid medications, and that's it. That's all you got to do. And so I was excited to start the thyroid medications, but they didn't really help me that much. So I went from sleeping, like, eleven to 12 hours a night to sleeping 10 hours a night. So that was an improvement. And I went from wearing two jackets in southern California to just one jacket.

[00:01:39.990] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

So that was an improvement, right? But I still had irritable bowel syndrome. I still had carpal tunnel, acid reflux, hair loss, anxiety, panic attacks, allergies, all kinds of really frustrating symptoms that weren't killing me, but were definitely influencing my quality of life. I was too exhausted to do anything but sit on my couch, and so I was like, okay, I'm taking thyroid medications. Is there anything I can do to make myself feel better besides thyroid medications? And then the other part of it was that I learned that it was an autoimmune condition. So my thyroid didn't just decide to be lazy one day and needed more hormones just because it was lazy. There was an autoimmune attack against my thyroid, and my thyroid had been destroyed, and that's why it wasn't producing enough thyroid hormones. So I thought, well, what in my lifestyle did I do to create autoimmunity in my body? Is there anything I can do to make it go away. Is there anything I can do to make it better? And so this is really how I became a thyroid expert slash human guinea pig was just trying to get myself feeling better.

[00:02:47.430] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

And I started looking into pubmed research and patient forums, trying all kinds of crazy, voodoo alternative medicine things and trying to figure out what actually moved the needle and what actually helped me. I didn't know anything about biohacking back then, but it was, you know, biohacking. I would track my markers, I would track my thyroid antibodies and my symptoms, and I tried different interventions. I did a whole bunch of experimental tests to see what was off in my body, and I was able to get myself into remission within a few years and eliminate all of my symptoms, which I, you know, I thought I was an anxious person. I thought I had, like, I just was lazy or brain fogged or just couldn't wake up in the morning. And it just turned out that really wasn't me. That was the disease process, right? And that was the autoimmunity in my body. It just revealed a brand new, calm, happy, fit person, and that was hiding underneath all of the illness.

[00:03:46.390] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Wow. I love that. But I think something so important is you started to ask questions, right? You. Instead of just being okay with being on the thyroid medication, you asked the question, is there anything else I can do? Which is so important? But then you also said, why did this happen? Which I think is so important because we know that today chronic diseases are just rampant, right? And they all take many years to develop. It's not something that happens overnight, but we have to start asking the right questions. And I love that you did that. Can you talk a little bit about the functions of the thyroid just so we all kind of understand what it does and why it's so important?

[00:04:23.190] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

So it's this tiny little gland that sits at the base of our neck, and we don't realize, many of us don't realize how important it is. It impacts every single cell in the body. So it helps us grow hair, it helps our brain function, it helps to run our metabolism. So it's the gland, you know, some people will say, like, I have the kind of thyroid that makes me fat, right? So if you have an underactive thyroid, you're not going to be able to metabolize properly. It also helps us generate heat. So people that may have trouble with cold intolerance, this is going to be a red flag for thyroid conditions. But really, people oftentimes don't realize how many symptoms just having a thyroid out of balance can produce.

[00:05:08.420] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Okay, so now we know what the thyroid gland does and its function. What is the difference between hyper and hypothyroidism?

[00:05:15.720] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

So, hypothyroidism is an underactive thyroid. So it's like a slowing down in the body. Typically, people will have symptoms like brain fog, hair loss, fatigue. They might be gaining weight, they might have a slower metabolism, and they might also have fertility issues with hyperthyroidism. That's an overactive thyroid. You can think about it as speeding up. You would have palpitations, you might have anxiety, you might have some diarrhea. People oftentimes will have excess weight loss without trying. They'll just be like, oh, my gosh, I just lost, like ten pounds. When did this happen? And they start wasting their muscles. Big part of that might be just really severe anxiety. And in some cases, there might be antibodies that cause people's eyes to protrude. So they might have this graves eye disease as well that's associated with the autoimmune hyperthyroidism. And both conditions do have overlapping symptoms. So menstrual cycle problems are going to be common in both of them. Both conditions can cause hair loss, and both conditions can cause fertility issues.

[00:06:30.680] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

And when it comes to diagnosing hashi, specifically, what markers are you looking for?

[00:06:37.130] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

So I really am a big proponent of using thyroid antibody tests. So these tests look at whether or not youre, a body is producing antibodies to your thyroid gland, meaning that it's setting up your thyroid for destruction. These tests are thyroid peroxidase antibodies, tpo antibodies and thyroglobulin antibodies, tg antibodies. These tests are going to be elevated, sometimes 510, 15 years before we see changes in other thyroid tests, before we see, like, TSH changes. And oftentimes, unfortunately, doctors don't quite get it right. If somebody suspects they have a thyroid issue, they'll test their tsH. They'll be like, your tsh is normal.

[00:07:22.830] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah.

[00:07:23.220] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

Or it's just maybe a little bit elevated, but we're not going to worry about that now. We'll just test you in a year or two, right where those thyroid antibodies, when they're elevated, that is like, the best time to really start the lifestyle interventions to get them down so you don't end up with having so much destruction on your thyroid gland that you actually need thyroid hormone medications for life. Right?

[00:07:47.420] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah, that's a great point. So what's the threshold over what numbers are, you know, potentially having Hashimoto's?

[00:07:56.610] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

So it's a little bit controversial. So I would say functional medicine always has these slightly more, I guess, aggressive guidelines. Generally, depending on which lab test you use, some might say over 100 is considered active. Hashimoto is under 100. I wouldn't really worry about it. But most, I guess, conventional tests will have markers like under 35 will be okay. As far as TPO and TG antibodies go, functional medicine clinicians might say, I don't even like seeing a five, six, or a ten on that test. That still indicates that you have antibodies against your thyroid gland. From, I guess, a normal physiology standpoint, zero, one or two might be normal as part of just the overall process of the body breaking itself down and fixing itself as part of our natural cycles. So I would say if I see somebody with a TPO of ten, I would consider that to be positive. For Hashimoto's under ten, I'm sort of like, ah, we might want to do a few, few different things.

[00:09:07.450] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah, that's, that's great. And that's gonna help so many people. It feels like, and maybe it's just the circles I'm in, but it. It feels like autoimmune conditions are just exploding. Do you know any stats around that? And, you know, I've also done quite a bit of reading, and women are being diagnosed with autoimmune conditions, I think, like fourfold. Men, please correct me if those numbers are wrong, but what do we think that's. Why is that happening?

[00:09:34.360] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

Such a good question, and so much to unpack here with regard to thyroid autoimmunity. For every man that's diagnosed, there's going to be maybe three to five women that are going to be diagnosed. Autoimmunity does tend to be more prevalent in women. The rates are increasing with time. So looking at frozen blood samples from ten to 20 years ago, if we were to test them for various antibodies for various types of autoimmune conditions, the rates then would be lower. If we were to test a similar sample size of individuals, a lot of people will say, oh, our diagnostics just have to be so much better. And yes, that's true, we are better at recognizing this. But there's a variety of studies that really focuses on those markers over time and frozen blood samples. And yes, their rates are unfortunately increasing with time with women. I oftentimes think, like, why women? Right. And I think we have this unique gift capability to be very tuned into our environment, where I believe a lot of autoimmune conditions are, unfortunately, a way that our body adapts to stress or adapts to current circumstances from an adaptive physiology standpoint, for example, hashimoto's and hypothyroidism, it can help us survive something like a famine.

[00:11:05.740] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

It could help us survive something like a war. Because when we go through hypothyroidism, if you were a woman that wasn't recognized to have hypothyroidism and just progressed, you would end up feeling very sluggish. You would be pretty much very introverted. You would not be fertile. You would have all this extra weight. Your metabolism would not be working, which in a famine would be very handy because you wouldn't really need to eat that much. Right. And so I oftentimes think about, what is it in our modern world that makes our bodies think that we're in a famine, right. And. Or why are our bodies perceiving stress, right? And so there are things like processed foods. If we were cave women, we wouldn't probably eat something that's in a package. Right? We'd be like, that's not food.

[00:11:59.330] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah.

[00:11:59.790] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

And so our bodies sort of get this message that we're in a famine when we're under eating, over exercising, when we are not eating the foods that nourish us, when we're eating inflammatory foods, when we're eating highly processed foods. And I, of course, there's other factors of modern life that I think lead to stress. I mean, just watching the news, right? You turn on the news and you get stressed out or watching scary movies. Just being a woman, I feel like speaking to, I think there was a. Let me start this again.

[00:12:36.250] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah.

[00:12:36.780] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

And there was a post going around Instagram lately where it was asking what things men were afraid of or what men perceived as danger versus what women perceived as danger. And for men, it was like, okay, being out in the woods and a bear attacking me. And for women, it was like walking outside alone after dark. And there's a lot more threats for women in our modern world than there are for men. And then, of course, we can't ignore toxins. So our food is highly processed. We've got all these chemicals that haven't really been tested. They're in our foods. Our personal care items, like, women wear so many more personal care items. These are going to be absorbed through our skin. Right. There are so many ingredients that haven't been tested. Triclosan, something that used to be used in antibacterial soaps and toothpastes. This was tied to increasing thyroid antibodies. Then there are birth control pills. Recently, studies have shown that birth control lead to higher rates of thyroid disease.

[00:13:42.180] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Oh, wow.

[00:13:44.210] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

Other things as far as thyroid conditions go specifically, is public health like our public health officials trying to look out for us? They noticed that iodine deficiency led to hypothyroidism because we didn't have enough of the building blocks to make thyroid hormones. So they said, let's be wonderful and super helpful and put iodine in the salt supply. That way nobody will be iodine deficient. Unfortunately, their efforts led to higher rates of hashimotos. And so there have been studies done in eastern Europe where the rates of hashimoto's have doubled, tripled, sometimes quadrupled within a ten year span of adding iodine to the salt supply. Nuclear disasters. So children closer to Chernobyl had higher rates of thyroid antibodies compared to genetically similar children that were not downstream from that area. Then we have fluoride. Right? So fluoride is something that's added to our water and to our toothpaste to make our teeth beautiful and shiny. And that also has been tied to higher rates of hypothyroidism. So there's a lot of things that I feel like are present in our environment. Some are very well intentioned.

[00:15:06.620] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah.

[00:15:07.490] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

And some of them are just toxic. Right. And outright bad for us. And all of these things can contribute to thyroid autoimmunity.

[00:15:17.300] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

It's so sad because I feel like you have to be like a full time researcher to look at the products, what you're putting in your body, on your body. And it's just so unfortunate that every piece of food in the grocery store, for the most part, is sprayed with, like, glyphosate. And I, you know, we have all these added toxins, same thing, you know, like fragrance. Like, I got rid of all my fragrances like, a decade ago, and now I only use essential oils and a few, like, really clean brands. But if you think about it, where are you spraying fragrance?

[00:15:49.560] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

It's like, right on your neck. I used to do that all the time.

[00:15:53.180] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah, exactly. But it's just sad because the information is not necessarily there for everyone. And even if you have the information, it's so much work. It has, it requires a lot of resources to be healthy. And I think sometimes people think I'm so extreme, but. And I. Maybe I am, but also, like, I do a total tox burden a couple times a year and I have pretty much the lowest toxins we've ever seen. And I'm living in LA, so it makes it even more difficult. But it has to be something that we're conscious of.

[00:16:24.510] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

Right.

[00:16:24.710] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

And, like, working to improve our products I always say, just like, start small and start swapping out more toxic products for like, cleaner versions. I like the EWG. Do you ever look at that?

[00:16:35.060] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

I love the EWG website. They're such a great resource. So you can find less toxic versions of makeup and hair products. And, you know, honestly, at first it does seem a bit extreme, but once you find products that you like and you just get into a new routine.

[00:16:50.720] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah.

[00:16:51.110] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

And then you just have your go to shampoos that work really well for your hair or go to skincare products and you can do it over time, it seems. I know when I first talked to people about doing this, it seems overwhelming, but you just do it, you know, one day at a time. Like, you'll just, you can just say, I'm going to make over my personal care products this week, and next week maybe I'll get a whole house filter to get some of the filter, some of the fluoride and toxins out of my water. And then we focus on cleaning up air and there's just, you know, you go through a process and it just becomes routine and it becomes really easy. And I also am a proponent of using supplements and sauna and just sweating therapy to actually get your body to clear out the toxins. Right. Really support your own body's natural detox process.

[00:17:42.310] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah, I love that. I do sauna about five times a week and usually like 20 to 25 minutes. But again, it's like we have, I feel like sauna. And if you can't do sauna, you could do at least vigorous exercise to be sweating. Right. But our bodies were just not made to withstand the toxic burden that we're experiencing today. It's really something, you know, even in other countries, like, food and drinks are in glass, they're not in plastic. I mean, the studies now showing that microplastics and nanoplastics are in the placenta and in testicles and in every major organ of the body. And I mean, you know, again, correct me if I'm wrong, but then we have this correlation with fertility decrease and autoimmune increase, and it's, it's really kind of just a sad state of affairs. And so I'm so excited that we have people like you just educating women and men about how we can live healthier lives and. Yeah, thank you for that.

[00:18:41.530] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

Yeah, it's crazy because, I mean, BPA has been tied to fertility issues and thyroid issues, and so it's common in so many of our plastic foods. I personally recently. So I do the total tox burden. I love that test. And I've also done some hair tissue tests.

[00:18:59.400] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah.

[00:18:59.850] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

And I started, I did aluminum cans for just a few months. Right. I was like, oh, this is pellegrino. We couldn't get the bottles.

[00:19:07.670] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah.

[00:19:08.180] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

Of pellegrino. And I did my hair samples and it was like, oh, your aluminum levels are going up. And you just have to be aware of all of these, I guess, toxins that can really accumulate in your body and just be very mindful and intentional about staying clean and healthy. Like, I think people say, oh, my gosh, you're so extreme. But I actually think it's extreme to be taking ten to twelve medications.

[00:19:34.650] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah.

[00:19:35.360] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

Like I was in my twenties, right. And I think it's more extreme to be eating a whole bunch of food that's not food and just eating real food and not slathering myself with a bunch of chemicals. Right.

[00:19:48.280] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

I could not agree more. And, yeah, I think that's a great test because, you know, a lot of times, too, people, when we see this in my clinic, many times people, they do not think they're going to have any toxins. They're like, no, I'm living so healthy. Sometimes you can even be near something that is giving you a toxic exposure. You can be, you know, consuming something. So I think if you can, um, it's a great thing to invest in is understanding your toxic burden. So I love that test as well.

[00:20:17.960] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

And another, another big fan, another big test that I, I'm also a fan of. Mycotoxins testing and the organic acid testing.

[00:20:27.080] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah.

[00:20:27.710] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

Because sometimes we think about, okay, we're living clean, we're eating clean, we're doing everything well, but why am I having symptoms? So I've had a few clients over the years where it was like, they're eating kale, they're doing green smoothies, they're doing all the things, and they're very intentional about being healthy. But there might be something that's in their homes that's causing toxicity. And so I found mold to be a potential reason for that. When people are like, but I already clean, why do I feel so bad? Right?

[00:20:59.810] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah. I mean, mold, we see, obviously having a functional medicine clinic. We see patients that have tried a lot of the western medicine, so we're, we're really drawing people that may have some more, like, complex issues, but, and it also depends on, right, like, how you detox. So, like, I detox really well, per my genetics, but my husband doesn't, so I have to keep that in mind. Um, as well, because we're all different, but mold can really, I've seen it do some, you know, really sad things, and it's hard to catch, too. Um, I actually work with a biological home builder, which this may be extreme, but, you know, they come in and they help to build your home, like, in the healthiest way. They look for mold, and there's also tests online that you can get for mold, but I think that's definitely an under and then a mycotoxin test to see if you're exposed. So I love that. So how do you classify an autoimmune condition? Is it an inflammatory condition or what's happening in our body to make it attack organs?

[00:21:58.060] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

So, essentially, with autoimmunity, what's happening is that the body stops recognizing a part of itself as itself. So it might treat your thyroid gland as though it was a foreign invader, and it'll launch an immune system response to it that's going to result in inflammation. And definitely, autoimmune conditions all have an inflammatory component. And I guess I think where I differ, when people think, okay, autoimmunity is the cause of my illness, where I really think about, but what caused your autoimmunity? And so I'm asking the question, is the inflammation in your body. There's some sort of source of inflammation in your body, and that's leading you to have this autoimmune inflammatory condition. So, for example, a big part of what I've worked with and what I've witnessed in people with Hashimoto's is gut infections. And these infections will cause inflammatory response in your gut. And this may lead to some cross response against the thyroid gland and various foods can trigger an inflammatory response in the gut, as can infections.

[00:23:15.790] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

All right, so, so interesting, because I am obsessed with gut health. Gut, gut health. I just send off my GI effects. I do one, like, twice a year. So talk to me about how viruses or, you know, poor gut health can lead to autoimmune conditions. Potentially, there's some.

[00:23:33.270] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

There's a lot of research behind the Epstein Barr virus, and that potentially leads to autoimmune conditions. What I've noticed, it's been an interesting connection with people who have had Epstein Barr virus and don't quite recover from it, is that there's also some sort of a gut component with it. Most commonly with Hashimoto's, I've seen the protozoa parasite known as blastocystis hominis, about 33% of cases that I'm home with. And this interesting connection is that the protozoa essentially makes your body have a higher demand for lysine, which is required to fight viral infections. And my observations have been that treating the gut infection will oftentimes help the immune system stabilize and take over and just really be able to handle the viral infections. So a lot of times I have seen people, like, really focusing on the viruses and focusing on the viruses and trying to clear them and struggling with it, and then we'll run a gut test on them. I'm really. I used to do a lot of the GI map tests, and I've been doing a lot of gut tumor tests as well. And then we'll find there's a protozoa infection, and that'll be the, I guess, the missing piece, where we treat that, and then the immune system just really gets into balance.

[00:25:01.850] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

So it's interesting, there's been some research studies after, like, I noticed this, and I wrote about it in my books and my blog, I noticed there were a few scientists in Europe that started noticing blasto as a correlation for Hashimoto's. It's also a common infection that can cause irritable bowel syndrome. It can cause chronic hives and then potentially even some other skin issues. So that's been fascinating to me, that it's like one little bug that can lead to this. And in some cases, for many people, it's not just one infection. It might be multiple infections that really, really kind of confuse the immune system, for lack of a better word. There might be some cross reactive proteins on, let's say, H. Pylori or borrelia, the bacteria that causes lyme. They have parts of them that look similar to the thyroid gland. So the theory is that when the immune system is trying to fight one of these infections, it might also attack anything that looks like it. So it's been really, really fascinating to really focus on the infection component of it, too.

[00:26:14.360] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Absolutely. How do people get infections in their gut? How do people get parasites and infections and viruses in their gut?

[00:26:23.000] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

It's so common. I mean, I just. I think it's really underappreciated in the modern world, how common and how easy it is to get these infections. So we can pick them up from the foods that we eat, we can pick them up from pets, kids can pick them up from sandboxes. So if you go hiking, you can get beaver fever from the water streams when they're, you know, when it's still water. So you can pick up Giardia that way. There was a article maybe 1015 years ago about the water supply in LA being contaminated with Giardia. And a lot of us, like, I think in the western world, we just think like, oh, no, this doesn't happen in the US, or it doesn't happen in Europe, where it absolutely does. And I have so many test results to prove it.

[00:27:09.730] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah, I mean, I, two years ago, I had a parasite. I mean, I must have just picked it up from eating something and maybe a restaurant or traveling or, you know, but thank goodness that I did a test and I, you know, realized that I had it so I could treat it because otherwise, you know, it was slowly increasing my calprotectin and leading to inflammation in my GI tract. But that's what's so frustrating, too, is outside of the fact that you have to do so much work to avoid toxins, it's unfortunate that you're not going to get a GI test from your western medicine doctor. You have to essentially, I guess, go to a private practice of some sort, some functional medicine practices, offer them, but it's hard to get to the root cause. I feel like these types of tests should be part of the standard of care.

[00:27:57.920] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

Yeah. And, you know, I kind of laugh because we oftentimes deworm our pets, right, on an annual basis, or we give them worm prevention or various types of support, antiparasitic support, but humans don't get the same treatment.

[00:28:11.260] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah, great point. Great point.

[00:28:12.990] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

And I personally always recommend people work with a functional medicine practitioner. There are also ways you can self order many of these tests. So I'm a big proponent of people really owning their own data and knowing what's inside of them. So there are labs like rupa or ultalab, direct labs that allow patients to self order their own labs and see what's going on in there. Of course, you might still need to work with a practitioner if you need medications or some kind of a specialized protocol for whatever is going on in there. But it's kind of easy to see because it's like with the test, that's either you have it or you don't. When it comes to parasites, some people will say, oh, I did a parasite test and it said I had just a few, so I don't need to worry about it. But no, that actually means that, oh, my gosh, a few in that sample. There's probably like a million of them, though.

[00:29:04.950] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Geez, I can't even. I remember when I got my parasite result test back. I talked with my practitioner at my clinic and I was like, just we're going with the big gun. I want something to just wipe it out. And I was literally at the pharmacy by like 09:00 that night. Cause I was like, I also felt like invaded or something. I'm like, ew, this, like these pat this get out. I have been like, it's not just been me here, it's been this parasite and I hate that. So that's such a great point. So in terms of lab testing, so we talked about some of the markers and levels. You like gut testing and you like total toxic testing. Is there anything else that you really love?

[00:29:41.960] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

So definitely I do some blood work and three nutrients that I always test for in people with Hashimoto's are going to be b twelve, vitamin D, and ferritin. So b twelve. A lot of times people might have poor ability to absorb it from their foods. They might have h. Pylori or sivo, which can prevent them from absorbing b twelve or low stomach acid. And oftentimes they may not be able to take it orally. So they might need either injections or sublingual drops or sublingual lozenges of that. The vitamin D, getting it in the 60 to 80 range has found has been helpful for getting people into remission. So a lot of my ladies that are in remission, typically that's the range that we shoot for, for vitamin D and then ferritin. This is the iron storage protein. And a lot of people don't realize that this plays a really important role in thyroid health. It's required for proper utilization of thyroid hormone. So some people might take synthroid or levothyroxine and they'll say like, oh my goodness, I just don't feel good. I still don't feel like myself. And they'll switch over to a medication like armor and feel better.

[00:30:58.780] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

And oftentimes this might be the best medication for them. But part of the reason why they don't feel good is their ferritin is so low that their body doesn't properly convert t four to t three correctly on its own. And then people oftentimes will say, okay, I feel a little bit better, but my hair is like, still a mess. So we want to make sure that the ferritin levels are at least like 80 to 90 for proper thyroid function. And people might need to supplement with either iron supplements, lactoferrina, they might need to work on infections or heavy menses to really balance the iron in their bodies. And I don't recommend just everybody have taken iron supplement or everybody should just try to get more iron into your system, because some people do have genetic variants where they actually hold onto their iron, and they might have excessive ferritin levels, and that can be inflammatory, too. So there's going to be kind of a Goldilocks range where we want your iron to be or your ferritin to be.

[00:32:04.150] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah, absolutely. So you mentioned managing heavy menses. Is there a way to improve that?

[00:32:11.550] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

Absolutely. So, definitely a few things to consider is if you have low thyroid, and then getting on thyroid hormone can help your menses. If you're low in iron or ferritin, there's actually this vicious cycle where that will cause you to have heavy menses as well. So correcting that may help correct your menstrual cycles. If you have clots, like blood clots, with your menses. Something to consider if you have the MTHFR mutation, especially, would be high dose methylfolates. So sometimes anywhere from, like, one to five milligrams is what you might need to really help that. Right. And then myo inositol. So this is something that can be helpful for pcos, for hashimoto's, for obsessive compulsive disorder, and it can also help balance menstrual cycles as well. And in some cases, some women might need progesterone. Right? So they might have estrogen dominance, or they might have not enough progesterone, and that could be some of the reasons why they have very heavy menses. I know, personally, I didn't realize that I had heavy menses. Right. So women were not supposed to bleed for, like, seven days. We're not supposed to bleed through ten tampons a day.

[00:33:26.950] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah.

[00:33:27.920] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

Cheese.

[00:33:28.510] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

And the new research on tampons, by the way.

[00:33:30.930] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

Oh, my gosh. Yes. I'm like, okay, great.

[00:33:33.210] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Unbelievable. Truly. I mean, I was talking to a friend, and I was like, man, do I need to, like, launch a tampon brand now? Because that is just horrible with heavy metals and tampons. We can link it in the show notes, but. Absolutely horrible. Well, I'm so excited that you just shared that information, so that's not something that I struggle with, but I'm often asked that, so thank you, because you probably just helped so many women.

[00:33:55.240] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

My pleasure.

[00:33:56.180] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Absolutely. So, okay. You were in your early twenties and got diagnosed. What did you do? Like, what were the changes that you made to put your condition into remission?

[00:34:07.780] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

So what didn't work was, like, slathering olive oil and coconut oil over my thyroid gland that was sort of trending at the time. That did not work.

[00:34:16.130] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Okay. Yeah.

[00:34:17.080] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

Seaweed didn't work. High dose iodine made things worse. Made things worse. What else did I try that didn't work? Just various types of, I guess, alternative medicine, things that were recommended, just didn't really work for me. And so that's why I ended up writing a book about everything that I did try, because in alternative medicine and when you look online, there's like, oh, take Brazil nuts. They're going to cure your thyroid. No, I'm sorry, they don't. If you like Brazil nuts, please eat them. But don't think this is going to be what really, like, moves the needle for you. Right. So the things that I really did is I focused on food sensitivities. Initially, I was found to have gluten and dairy sensitivity. Getting off of those two foods helped me so much. Within three days, I was able to get rid of acid reflux. My bloating was gone, my IB's was gone. Carpal tunnel got better within two weeks. And it's very, very common in my experience over the last decade, about 88% of women feel better off gluten.

[00:35:20.810] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah.

[00:35:21.230] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

And about 80% feel better dairy free when they have hashimoto. So these were two very important things. I focused on blood sugar balance. I don't know, I just thought that, like, eating carbs was the way to go, and I didn't. I thought fat was bad. I don't know if anybody else is like that, or maybe just my generation, but eating more protein and fat and limiting my carb intake was a big game changer. So, like I said, I thought I was, like, a very anxious person. It turned out I was just, like, on a blood sugar roller coaster.

[00:35:51.370] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Aw.

[00:35:52.090] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

And that helped so much with my energy. I really did targeted nutrients. So selenium, 83 micrograms to 200 micrograms per day can help reduce thyroid antibodies by 40% to 50% in about three months. So I utilized that. I supported my vitamin d levels, I made sure I supported my ferritin levels. And then I did some gut testing and adrenal testing to see where I needed that support. Part of my big struggle was morning fatigue, and I was found to have really low cortisol all day long. And so I utilized pregnenolone and dhea and licorice, as well as some adrenal adaptogens to help myself feel human again. High dose thiamine was a really big game changer for my energy and low blood pressure. And then, of course, I had, I guess, you know, a smorgasbord of gut infection. So I had h. Pylori, and I had blasto. I had some candida, and I really. I guess I did a lot of testing and a little guinea pigging to get myself into remission. It took, like, two to three years to get there, and a lot of trial and error. And then by accident with my clients, who, like, weren't as excited about, like, let's do, you know, $3,000 worth of testing.

[00:37:15.540] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

Like, that wasn't, like, their jam. With them, I accidentally came across doing, like, a two week liver reset that got them feeling significantly better.

[00:37:25.000] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Oh, great.

[00:37:25.600] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

Within just that two week time period. So. So that, you know, for myself, I did, like, a lot of, like, biohacking and a lot of testing for. With. With clients. Once I started, just to really understand the patterns, I was like, okay, we need to support your liver. Here's what we can do for two weeks, and then we need to support your adrenals. Here's a plan to follow for four weeks, and here's some gut support plan for six weeks. And that was my second book, was the Hashimoto's protocol was based on my experience with over a thousand people where I was like, okay, mostly everybody's got some kind of a toxic burden, and mostly everybody's got adrenal issues, and mostly everybody's got some kind of a gut imbalance. So, like, let's not spend all this time up front and money to do all the testing. Let's get a person on this feel better protocol, and then we could do the testing and then wait for the results. Cause sometimes I'd have people like, oh, my gosh. You gave me this test six months ago, and I never took the test. I still feel exactly like I did six months ago.

[00:38:31.730] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

Right?

[00:38:32.250] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah.

[00:38:32.570] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

The gut test is the worst, right?

[00:38:33.990] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Like, people do not want to take this. And I totally get it. The first time I took it, I. It was so difficult, but the information is so good. You just have to get over it. Yeah.

[00:38:43.140] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

I've had family members that I've given the gut tests to, and they'll, like, call me on facetime, and they're like, do you want me to poop in this tiny little vial? How do you want me to do that? I'm like, okay, slow down. This is what you're gonna do. But it's very intimidating. And I had a lot of clients that are like, I could take this to the regular post office. Like, are they gonna. You know, are they gonna smell the poop?

[00:39:04.200] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Oh, my gosh. Yes.

[00:39:06.190] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

It's so normal to me now, but it's very. It can be very intimidating. The urine test and the stool tests. And for people that don't like to do blood testing, it can be quite intimidating.

[00:39:16.270] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Absolutely. My mother still has a gut test sitting waiting. Mom, if you're listening to this, please take your gut test.

[00:39:24.410] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

It can be so helpful. Please take it.

[00:39:26.070] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

It's going to be a game changer. See? Okay, thank you. Well, I love that. You know, something that's been kind of going around the Internet that I think is concerning is this whole. Have you seen anything about cortisol?

[00:39:38.470] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

Face.

[00:39:38.920] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

And, like, tons of women are saying that cortisol is the problem of, like, the root cause of all their problems. Right. And maybe it could be, but then, just like you said, you had low cortisol, and that's also problematic. I mean, having cortisol is. Is natural and helpful to energy. Right. So what are your thoughts on that? Have you seen this trend at all?

[00:39:59.200] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

Yeah, I've seen some interesting trends when they're like, oh, it wasn't this. It wasn't this. It was genetics or it was something. And I think people are really trying to figure out what's going on with them, but they just may not have the background or education or knowledge of what's going on and how the body's working. So we need cortisol to live. Like, if we didn't have cortisol, we wouldn't be alive. We need just the right amounts of cortisol. Right. So excess cortisol can be problematic. And mainstream media is always like, high cortisol bad. You know, like, you need to exercise, you got belly fat, so on and so forth. But in my experience, people with chronic fatigue syndrome, autoimmunity, people with hashimoto's, they actually have low cortisol. And it's, you know, you want to get it in just the right amount. You want to have a balance, and you need to have it in a circadian pattern. So we need to have more cortisol in the morning to jump out of bed bright eyed and bushy tailed.

[00:40:57.870] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah.

[00:40:58.110] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

And that needs to gradually go down throughout the day. And then in the evening, we're supposed to have low cortisol so that we can fall asleep. And so when that. It's called a cortisol curve. When that's out of balance, we're going to have all kinds of symptoms. Typically, I will say many people might have high cortisol in the initial stages of inflammation. Cortisol, you know, like, if you, if you know a little bit about medications, there are medications that are made to be similar to cortisol, like hydrocortisone and all of the steroids, and they're anti inflammatories. So cortisol acts as a natural anti inflammatory in our bodies. Whenever we have inflammation, our cortisol is going to go off. Right. And so when we have been under inflammation or stress for long enough, our body just stops sort of reacting to it. Where the pathways sort of get over, like done and done. Now the body will be like, yes, you're still inflamed, but I'm just not going to put out any more cortisol because you're inflamed all the time. It's not good to have so much cortisol on board. So as time goes on, when we have this inflammation in our bodies, we're going to have high cortisol.

[00:42:08.640] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

And then that cortisol is going to get depleted with time because of the body's adaptive response. And so I guess is the root cause cortisol? Not necessarily. The root cause is probably inflammation. Something inflammation or stress in your body and then your body's, and releasing cortisol to counteract that, to sort of give you a natural anti inflammatory.

[00:42:31.080] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Okay, going back to diet, what, what would you, what are your feelings on meat? So grass fed, grass finish meats are okay, or no.

[00:42:40.970] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

So interestingly, I looked at the studies with, okay, you have hashimoto's and autoimmunity. There's a little bit of controversy. Some people will say vegan diet, other people will say carnivore diet. And, you know, where's the truth, right? Somewhere, somewhere in the middle. Oftentimes, in my experience with people with hashimoto's, most of them do tend to do better with eating meats. So I've had a few reversals of people who were vegan and they were able to get into remission by adding meat into their routine and generally grass fed. You know, wild caught is what I'm recommending. The, my theory behind this, like some people specifically with red meat, is that it does tend to serve them. It's a rich source of carnitine. And carnitine can be something that gets deficient in people with hypothyroidism and also engraves disease. And that can be really helpful for brain function and just really optimizing how a person feels. The other thing is, oftentimes people with hashimoto's, they have those b twelve deficiencies and the ferritin deficiency. And a lot of times it may be challenging to get that from plant based foods without supplementing. Of course, in some cases I have had people that are very committed where we'll be like, okay, let's make sure we get some supplements on board because if you're vegan, you definitely are going to need b twelve.

[00:44:08.140] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

And I tend to be diet agnostic where I'm like, I don't have an agenda. I just want people to feel good. Right?

[00:44:14.750] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah, I agree. I've never really been too dogmatic on either side. I've tried every diet I've been a, you know, many years ago I tried raw veganism. I mean, it did not feel good. Regular veganism. And, you know, to each their own. But for me, it's just real food, you know, I mean, I do a blend of, you know, wild caught fish and then, you know, grass fed grass finish, like ribeyes and lots of veggies, organic, just single ingredient foods and seems to be serving me really well. I think we've tried to make nutrition so complicated and overwhelming and it's really not, just don't eat processed foods.

[00:44:50.310] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

Yeah, I mean, it's amazing. It's just like, eat real food, right?

[00:44:53.070] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah, that's it. I love that. What are your thoughts on supplementation like desiccated thyroid? Is there any science to support that? If you're taking a desiccated thyroid, it's going to actually help your thyroid?

[00:45:06.870] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

Natural desiccated thyroid can be extremely helpful for thyroid health. It was actually the first approach before synthetic thyroid medications were utilized. The controversy around this was that back in the day, the way that the thyroid hormones were standardized was based on the iodine content in the hormones, which didn't necessarily correlate to the levels of t four and t three. So companies would produce batches of thyroid hormone, and then you would be like, on this batch today at this dose and you would feel good, but then you'd get a refill on your prescription and the next month you would feel awful, right. You would be over either under medicated or over medicated. So there were some issues with stability these days. The pharmaceutical companies that make natural desiccated thyroid, they figured that out. So they're able to like, measure the actual amounts of t four and t three. And so there's not this inner batch variability. So armor thyroid is one example of natural desiccated thyroid that is a prescription item, and a lot of people do very, very well on that. That tends to be one of the most favorites of patients with hypothyroidism as far as rating, like, what do they feel best on?

[00:46:27.030] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

Do I recommend them over the counter or, like, buying your own? Not necessarily. I just haven't seen. I've seen some people on them that come to me, and they've been on them for a long time, and they're just still not getting those results. It's kind of like Brazil nuts versus selenium and, like, just over the counter natural desiccated thyroid. The issue with, like, the supplements is you're not necessarily because you're a supplement, you can't say how much t four, t three you have in there, because that would make you a drug, if that makes sense. When I've tried to work with companies around this and try to figure out exactly how much of what they have, they're like, we can't tell you, or we can't even like. Because that would put us in the drug category.

[00:47:09.870] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Yeah.

[00:47:10.140] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

So I'm just like, just get a doctor that knows how to work really well with it and get a prescription just so that you can be really optimized on it.

[00:47:19.730] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

I love that. Well, this has been so incredibly helpful, and it's been such a pleasure to have you here.

[00:47:26.490] - DR. IZABELLA WENTZ

Thank you so much for having me. It's just such a delight to be here with you.

[00:47:30.870] - KAYLA BARNES-LENTZ

Absolutely. Well, thank you. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and views expressed on this podcast are not medical advice. This podcast, including Kayla Barnes, does not accept responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of the information contained herein. Opinions of their guests are their own, and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. If you think you have a medical issue, consult a licensed physician.