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Your thyroid regulates your metabolism, and if your levels are low, you’re going to have a slower metabolism. That can lead to a number of health issues, including weight gain, poor energy, depression and more. In this short video, Dr. Mark Stengler offers insights and advice on what influences Thyroid Level.
We talked a bit about thyroid before remember thyroid regulates your metabolism. And if your levels are low you're going to have a slower metabolism. You can burn calories for energy as quickly. So what I find with a lot of patients they've been tested by their doctor not extensively but they've had some thyroid tests and their doctor tells them your thyroid hormones are in the normal range. Well unfortunately when you look at reference range with lab tests they tend to be quite wide. Matter of fact unless you're almost dead you tend to fall right in the reference range. You don't want to be just in the range you want to be at least mid range if not the upper range of normal right. You want optimum. Don't we just want to be alive you want to be optimal. So that's what I do with patients. If the thyroid levels on the low side of normal We've got to get those thyroid levels up. How do we do that? Well you use natural substances for example iodine you know some people have iodine deficiency because they avoid table salt in table salt is the main source of iodine in the American diet and they're avoiding table salt because of blood pressure issues and that makes sense. But if you have iodine deficiency your thyroid can make those thyroid hormones effectively as well. You need the mineral selenium and selenium has been depleted from the soil in America to a large extent. So if you're not taking multivitamins for example you could be deficient in selenium and you can't make those thyroid hormones effectively. The other thing I see with a lot of patients their doctor tests are thyroid and they do what's called a TSH thyroid stimulating hormone. That's the hormone which comes from your brain actually your pituitary gland and it stimulates your thyroid gland to produce more thyroid hormones. And it's a very generalized marker. It's like me telling you go to the grocery store and get some vegetables. I mean it doesn't tell you what kind. Right to choose from. They may also measure what's called your T4 level. When the main power hormone levels in your body? But here's the interesting part. The main function of T4 in the human body is to be converted into the more active free T3 lot of people have low T3 levels. Why? Well could be due to genetics. It can be due to insulin resistance for pre-diabetic or diabetic you have more trouble converting that T4 into the more active T3 stress like high levels of the stress hormone cortisol interfere with that process if you're deficient in certain nutrients like the selenium I talked about you could have low free T3 levels. That's why even see patients who are on thyroid medicine you know the conventional thyroid medicines which by the way are T4 and they're just still have symptoms are gaining weight they're cold they have low energy they have poor mood? And it's because they're T3 levels are low. And so what we can do these people is get them on a nutrient so their T3 levels get up or get them on a natural thyroid hormone prescription which gives them that active T3 along the T4.Doesn't that make more rational sense. That helps a lot of people.
Contact the Stengler Center for Integrative Medicine today to set up an appointment if you've got questions about your thyroid!
