Got PCOS? What You Need to Know About Hashimoto’s and Hypothyroid (Expert interview)
Does any of this sound familiar: chronic fatigue, apathy, depression, brain fog, memory lapse, mood swings, anxiety, bipolar disorder, depression, OCD, panic attacks, weight gain, hair loss, low body temperature, or joint pain? You may have a thyroid disorder.
As a woman with PCOS, your likelihood of having Hashimoto’s Disease is 3 times greater than other women. Many of us suffer from this or some other type of thyroid disorder. With this in mind, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Izabelle Wentz, a prominent thyroid expert and pharmacist. Her search for the root cause of Hashimoto’s Disease offers hope to all of us who suffer from thyroid issues. During our conversation, we discussed:
- Hypothyroidism vs. Hashimoto’s Disease
- Tests you need to ask your doctor about to be properly diagnosed
- Common and often overlooked or misdiagnosed symptoms
- Actions to take when you are diagnosed
- Possible benefits of pharmaceuticals
- Causes and results of not properly treating thyroid issues
A full transcript of our talk can be found below.
Listen to the full audio here:
Dr. Izabella Wentz, PharmD, FASCP is a pharmacist who has dedicated herself to addressing the root causes of autoimmune thyroid disease after being diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis in 2009.
She is the author of the New York Times best-selling patient guide “Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis” Lifestyle Interventions for Finding and Treating the Root Cause” and is an ardent champion of incorporating lifestyle change and functional medicine into the treatment of autoimmune disease.
Free gift: www.thyroidpharmacist.com/gift
Complete Transcript:
Amy: Hello. This is Amy Medling. I’m a certified health coach and I’m the founder of PCOS Diva. Welcome to another edition of the PCOS Diva podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about Hashimoto’s. I don’t know if you know that women with PCOS are three times more likely to have this autoimmune thyroid disease. I’ve invited one of the prominent Hashimoto’s experts, Dr. Izabella Wentz, to join us today. She’s a pharmacist who’s dedicated herself to addressing the root causes of autoimmune thyroid disease after being diagnosed with Hashimoto’s in 2009. She’s the author of the New York Times bestselling patient’s guide Hashimoto’s Thyroidosis: Lifestyle Interventions for Finding and Treating the Root Cause. She’s an ardent champion of incorporating lifestyle change and functional medicine into the treatment of autoimmune disease. Welcome, Dr. Izabella, to our podcast and I’m excited to have you share your knowledge with PCOS Diva.
Izabella: Thank you so much for having me, Amy. Please call me Izabella.
Amy: Okay. Izabella, why don’t you explain what the difference is with Hashimoto’s and hypothyroidism? I know so many women that follow PCOS Diva have thyroid conditions, whether it’s Hashimoto’s or hypothyroid. I think it’d be great to give us an overview and explanation of both.
Izabella: Sure, of course. That’s a really great question. Just to talk about the differences between the two, hypothyroidism is basically a clinical state where a person does not have enough thyroid hormone on board and this clinical state could be induced by a variety of reasons. That may be due to a person not having enough of the building blocks to create thyroid hormone within their own bodies. A person who may be iodine or selenium deficient may become hypothyroid. A person who has had their thyroid gland removed surgically may become hypothyroid. A person who takes certain thyroid-suppressing medications may become hypothyroid. Then, also, some people are born without having a thyroid gland and they may not have an internal ability to produce thyroid hormones.
However, the most common reason in the Westernized world for a person becoming hypothyroid and not having enough thyroid hormone within their body is due to an autoimmune attack on their thyroid gland. What’s basically happening within the person’s body is that the immune system begins to recognize the thyroid gland as an enemy or a foreign invader, much like it would with a bacteria or a virus, and begins to start attacking the thyroid gland and breaking down thyroid tissue, which eventually leads to destruction of the thyroid gland. At that point our poor little thyroid can no longer make enough thyroid hormone and a person becomes hypothyroid. This autoimmune condition is known as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.
It sounds exotic. When I was first diagnosed my husband said it sounded like a Japanese sword fighter. It’s actually a pretty common condition. Looking at the rate of hypothyroidism that is induced by Hashimoto’s, it’s going to be anywhere from 90-97% depending on where the studies were done and the references that were used for that particular study. A lot of women may be told that they have a sluggish thyroid, an under-active thyroid, or hypothyroidism, but they may not be told that the underlying reason for their thyroid becoming sluggish is because it’s under attack by their immune system. They may never be tested or diagnosed with Hashimoto’s where really that’s the reason why their thyroid is under-active.
Amy: I know a couple years ago I went in to my doctor, my general practitioner, and asked to be … This is after the study came out that women with PCOS are three times more likely to have Hashimoto’s. All my doctor was willing to test was my TSH. How can we advocate for ourselves and ask a doctor to also test for this autoimmune condition? What types of tests do we need to ask for and advocate?
Izabella: That’s a great question. I, personally, was struggling with many thyroid symptoms for probably a decade before I had the proper testing done because the standard test is the TSH test. That’s the screening test for thyroid disease. It’s known as thyroid stimulating hormone. This basically is a hormone secreted by our pituitary gland in response to low levels of thyroid hormone in the blood. The problem with this test is that, one, it assumes that the pituitary and the thyroid gland are communicating correctly, which they’re not always doing so. The other thing with that is that the levels may be all over the place in Hashimoto’s. If you do the test one day you may test within the normal reference range. If you do the test on another day you may be hypothyroid and on the following day you may be hyperthyroid depending on what part of your Hashimoto’s you’re testing in.
Basically the thyroid antibody tests are going to be the tests that you want to ask for because these antibodies can be elevated, telling you that you have an immune attack on the thyroid gland, before you actually start seeing more of a permanent change in the TSH. This can be present for about five to 10 years. The other issue with the TSH test that I should mention is that a lot of times the way that reference ranges are calculated is when doctors or researchers will take blood from “healthy donors” and then will figure out what the normal reference ranges are for those people. With thyroid disorders being very common, affecting as many as one in five people depending on what references you’re looking at, they accidentally had some people in that pool of blood who actually had thyroid disease.
The reference ranges were very lax for the TSH, and people were being told that their thyroid function was normal when they had a TSH of maybe a six or an eight. My TSH was personally around four. My doctor at the time told me that this was a normal number and that my thyroid was fine. I was losing hair. I was sleeping for 12 hours a night and just was very, very exhausted and had a lot of the common thyroid symptoms. If you’ve had a TSH test one of the first things I would encourage you to do is ask for a copy of your thyroid test results and then look at those numbers yourself. Most people without thyroid disease should have a TSH, I would say, under 2.5. Further getting that range a little bit smaller, I would say that most women feel best with a TSH between 0.5 and two. If you wanted to be a real stickler for it, a healthy young woman should have a TSH somewhere right around one.
That would be your first step, is making sure that number is tested, but also asking to have your thyroid antibodies tested. The two antibodies that are going to be the most common in Hashimoto’s are going to be thyroid peroxidase antibodies. About 90% of people are going to have those if they have Hashimoto’s, and then thyroglobulin antibodies. Those are going to be present in about 80% of people with Hashimoto’s. If you’re taking notes you can abbreviate those as TPO and TG antibodies.
One thing that I would ask your doctor is letting them know that you have a family history of Hashimoto’s or that you’re aware of women with PCOS having higher rates of Hashimoto’s and then advocating for yourself that way. It helps to bring in some published research studies so if you can Google PubMed and look up Hashimoto’s and PCOS you might see an article or abstract of an article that you can take to your doctor just to help you with advocating for yourself. I’ve found that most doctors are going to be pretty open to testing for these as long as you ask for the tests. The best doctors will test for the antibodies on their own but in many cases we may need to advocate for ourselves.
Amy: I will post a link to that study that I was referencing underneath this interview because I think it would be great for you to take that to your doctor’s office. That has really worked for me in the past, to come armed with studies from PubMed, because you really can’t refute those.
Izabella: Absolutely.
Amy: You had mentioned some symptoms. I find that a lot of the symptoms of hypothyroidism really overlap PCOS. For those of you that are listening and you’re not quite sure if you may have low thyroid, I would love for you to listen and see if any of this sounds like you. Why don’t you go over the array of symptoms that you might experience, Izabella?
Izabella: Absolutely. In surveying people with Hashimoto’s the most common symptom that people experience is going to be fatigue. Probably 80% of people will just report being just so tired all the time. They may have trouble getting out of bed. They may have hypersomnia where they’re sleeping a very long time and they still don’t feel rested. They may kind of lose their lust for life and just be tired all the time. Along with that comes basically a general slowing down of your body where you may feel apathy. You’re just not as excited about life anymore. Some people may feel depressed. Another part of common symptom in Hashimoto’s is going to be brain fog and memory lapses. A person with Hashimoto’s may start feeling like they’re really forgetful.
I know for me it was quite embarrassing because I was always very sharp and very quick and all of a sudden I couldn’t remember very simple words. I couldn’t remember people’s names. I was forgetting conversations. I was walking into rooms completely spacing out why I had walked into them in the first place. It took my husband being like, “Honey, we know how your memory is,” for me to really realize that this was a big issue where, unfortunately, my doctors were telling me this was a normal part of aging when I was 25. We laugh now, but at the time it feels scary and you don’t really quite know what’s happening.
The other kind of symptoms that I really always try to highlight at the beginning of my conversation about Hashimoto’s symptoms is the impact of Hashimoto’s on people’s mood. Numerous studies have connected a variety mood disorders from anxiety to bipolar disorder to depression to panic disorders, even obsessive compulsive disorder, to Hashimoto’s. Women with Hashimoto’s are more likely to suffer from anxiety attacks, panic attacks, different kind of mood disorders and really it’s the thyroid that can be causing all of these things. When we think about the immune system attacking the thyroid gland, what’s happening is that there’s a breakdown of thyroid hormones and those hormones get rushed into the bloodstream so you might have a hyperactive thyroid for a few minutes or a few hours where you feel palpitations and anxiety attack and panic attack or irritable and then you will have a crash after that hormone gets cleared from the body and your thyroid gland is under-active, and you might feel depressed.
Unfortunately, I’ve seen people who were … most commonly they’ll be told that they need antidepressants or anti-anxiety medications, like I was told that I needed those, but that will be the most common thing. In some very sad cases women have actually been hospitalized for bipolar disorder or psychotic disorders and put on heavy-duty psychotropic medications where, in fact, it was their thyroid that was causing them to have all of these mood symptoms. That’s something that’s very, very important and I would recommend for anybody with any weird anxiety symptoms or just their mood being off to get tested for thyroid antibodies.
Some of the other more common symptoms are going to be weight gain or an inability to lose weight; hair loss, especially if you find that your hair has become more difficult to brush and you start losing more of it with brushing and after the shower, that’s going to be a common symptom; a loss of the upper third part of your eyebrow, that’s one of those telltale thyroid symptoms. If you are more cold than the average woman … If you’re the woman in your office that is always wearing a sweater and a scarf where everybody else is in short sleeves that could be an indication of a poorly functioning thyroid gland. Joint pains in your body or just being tired, those are some of the things that I want people to think about.
Generally the thyroid gland has receptors in just about every single cell in the body so thyroid symptoms can be very, very nonspecific and they can mimic so many different conditions. It’s very easy to talk yourself out of all the symptoms and say, “Okay, I’m just tired. I’m not eating well and that’s why I’m losing hair,” or, “I’m stressed out.” It’s one of those conditions that can be very nonspecific in the symptoms. If you were to look at thyroid symptoms, I think there’s a blog post out there that talks about a thousand different potential thyroid symptoms just because we do have thyroid receptors in every cell of our body.
Amy: I think a lot of women listening, it sounds a lot of what we experience with PCOS, the hair loss, the fatigue, the anxiety, the depression, the brain fog. I highly recommend that women go ahead and get tested for the antibodies just at the very least to rule it out. What if a woman gets a positive for those thyroid antibodies and she has Hashimoto’s? What’s the next step? For PCOS Diva I really love to advocate lifestyle therapies and interventions. Maybe we could discuss those first.
Izabella: Yeah, absolutely. I’m a big fan of lifestyle interventions as well. Looking just at a person with elevated thyroid antibodies, the greater the number of thyroid antibodies the more aggressive the attack on the thyroid gland will be. We definitely want to try to reduce those antibodies and bring the immune system back into balance. There’s a variant of Hashimoto’s that is seronegative where a person will not have thyroid antibodies but if their doctor were to do a thyroid ultrasound they would show changes consistent with Hashimoto’s with immune cells in the thyroid gland and more of a rubbery texture in the thyroid gland. That’s something that I would want to tell women who really think they identify with this condition but maybe did not have the antibodies, is also ask for a thyroid ultrasound.
Off of that tangent, some of the most helpful lifestyle interventions that I’ve found, and many of them are also going to be helpful for PCOS, … I’m sure that you advocate for them … are going to be balancing your blood sugar. About 50% of women with Hashimoto’s were also found to have blood sugar dysregulation. A lot of people have said that basically blood sugar imbalances are like pouring gasoline on the fire in autoimmune disease because they basically have our adrenals working harder and then that has an effect on our ability to control inflammation. Getting blood sugar in balance, making sure that you’re eating good proteins and good fats every four to five hours and limiting your carbohydrates, is going to help people feel better very, very quickly. A lot of the anxiety symptoms are going to reduce. We’re going to see a reduction in thyroid antibodies.
Other things that I highly recommend is looking for your food sensitivities, so trying to figure out which foods are nourishing you and which foods are causing you harm. Gluten, dairy, and soy are the biggest offenders in thyroid disease. Some women have been able to normalize their thyroid antibodies and thyroid function just by getting off of either one, two, or three of those foods. The other types of things that are going to be helpful is eating a nutrient-dense diet like the paleo diet, so making sure that you’re eating plenty of good fats, organic meats, organic vegetables, and just really filling up and nourishing your body.
There are multiple nutrient deficiencies that have been implicated in triggering Hashimoto’s. Selenium is probably the best researched one. Studies have shown that a selenium methionine supplement of 200 micrograms per day have been able to reduce thyroid antibodies by about half over the course of three months. This is something that I recommend for just about every person with Hashimoto’s, is getting on a good selenium supplement. Selenium, unfortunately, is one of those things that is difficult to get through diet. Brazil nuts are the richest source of selenium but the levels of selenium in them are not going to be reliable and may not be enough or may be too much for getting the selenium levels up.
The other common nutrient deficiencies are going to be B12 levels and then iron levels. The most reliable test is going to be ferritin, that’s a storage form of iron, to get that tested. Then, also, getting vitamin D levels optimized. Vitamin D, I would say … I did a survey of 2,000 or so of my readers who had Hashimoto’s and something like 70% of them were found to have low vitamin D levels. Vitamin D levels have been correlated with the aggressiveness of Hashimoto’s. In my experience the women who have been able to get their Hashimoto’s into remission usually would have optimized vitamin D levels and have their ducks in a row with getting rid of their food sensitivities and getting rid of their nutrient deficiencies. Those are pretty much the recommendations that I recommend for everybody to get started.
The other thing that is just so important but just not as scientific and not as popular is actually stress reduction and making time for self-care in your life. A lot of people will say, “I can change my diet. I could take supplements, but you want me to stop stressing out?” It’s easier said than done but it’s just so important. I encourage women to take a yoga class, to start doing meditation, to really think about the stresses in their lives and cut out what is stressing them out and bring in more of what is making them happy.
A recent study had evaluated all the different lifestyle factors for thyroid autoimmunity and they have been able to find that stress or even trauma has been a precursor for autoimmunity in a large number of cases. Getting your stress response under control and putting your body in a rest and digest mode versus a fight or flight mode is going to be very, very helpful to healing. I know it sounds easier than done, especially if you’re dealing with the symptoms of anxiety but really it will go a long way to do Epsom salt baths, to do some meditation, to do some yoga, and just really get involved in self-care.
Amy: I can tell you, and people who have followed me know my story, that it wasn’t until I really practiced extreme self-care and took care of myself that things turned around for me with my PCOS symptoms. At one point my husband said, “Gosh, you’re really becoming a diva,” because I was advocating for what I needed. Even though I had little kids at the time I made sure that I got to yoga or I had the right food that I needed to eat. I went to bed at a reasonable time. I remember saying to him, “That’s absolutely right. That’s what it’s taken for me to get this under control and it’s really this extreme level of self-care.” It ended up making me a better wife, mother, daughter, friend, because I was being able to take care of myself and feel better. I completely relate with what you’re saying. I think that self-care piece is so critical.
What do you think about pharmacological treatments? For women with PCOS we’re often given the prescription metformin and even the birth control pill to help regulate PCOS. A lot of women are familiar with those prescriptions but for somebody with hypothyroidism or Hashimoto’s what would you expect to hear in the doctor’s office? What kind of prescriptions would you probably receive?
Izabella: One of the first things that you will hear from most conventional medical doctors is that this is a lifelong condition, that it’s very easy to treat, and that all you have to do is take this medication. The most commonly prescribed medication for thyroid disorders, for an under-active thyroid as well as it was the most commonly prescribed medication in the United States in all of 2013, is a medication known as Synthroid, which is synthetic thyroid. This is a medication that contains one of the active thyroid hormones that we affectionately call T4.
That thyroid hormone, it has some activity in the body but as a pharmacist I like to think of it as a pro drug because it actually needs to be converted into the more active form, T3, within our own bodies. A lot of people have been very much helped by this kind of medication. I would say if somebody is having an elevated TSH and they’re having thyroid symptoms and thyroid antibodies, getting on thyroid medication can be like night and day. It can make a person feel tremendously better. It can actually reduce thyroid inflammation, give the thyroid gland a chance to have some rest and reduce the autoimmune on the thyroid gland because the thyroid is not working as hard.
The other thing is a lot of times people will be more, I guess, suspicious of medications or skeptical of taking medications but one thing to note is that thyroid hormones are actually the same chemical structure as our own internally-produced thyroid hormones. Most of the side effects that are going to be coming from thyroid medications are going to be due to either under-treatment or over-treatment. Thyroid medications, in a nutshell, can be very, very helpful for a person who is hypothyroid and addressing all of the symptoms of the condition.
One thing to consider is that the T4 medications like Synthroid or Levothyroxine or Levoxyl, which are pretty much the go-to drugs for most endocrinologists and primary care doctors, these medications are going to work really, really well in a subset of population. PubMed studies will say that about 90% of people will do just fine on these medications but 10% won’t, whereas in my experience as a pharmacist and working with people with thyroid conditions from all over the world, it seems to be the opposite. Of course, I think I’m biased because the people that ask me questions about thyroid medications are usually the ones that are not doing well.
The other options for getting thyroid medications and getting the thyroid hormones balanced are going to be using a medication that contains T3 in addition to the T4 so that the more active versus of the thyroid hormone is already ready for the body and it doesn’t have to go through a conversion process. Some of the medications are known as Armour Thyroid or Nature-Thyroid, WP Thyroid. These are actually glandular medications so they’re derived from the thyroid glands of pigs, which sounds kind of gross but they do clean them up really nicely. They are effective and they are tested for accuracy and dosing so they have been very, very helpful for a lot of people.
The other option, also, is working with a compounding pharmacist who can prepare a specially formulated medication that contains both T4 and T3. Usually the compounding pharmacist will make the medication free of fillers if you ask them so that you don’t have any lactose and you don’t have any kind of corn or gluten, other kinds of things that can potentially impair the absorption of the thyroid hormones into the body. With respect to medications, I will say that medications are excellent for treating the symptoms. They’re not going to get to the root cause of the condition, which is really my passion, is making sure that the person is looking at the triggers and what’s causing inflammation in their body, to try to reduce or eliminate the autoimmune attack on their thyroid gland.
In many cases people will have to, if they’ve had a substantial amount of thyroid gland damage, they may have to continue the medications indefinitely; however, some studies show that some people can get off of thyroid medications. In my work with clients I have seen some that were able to completely get off of medications, others that were able to reduce their dosages of medications, and others that did not see a change in their levels of thyroid medications but they felt much better through the use of lifestyle interventions and the functional medicine aspect.
Amy: You mentioned that doctors say that this is something that can be easily managed but is it a condition that can be reversed? Once you’ve been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s will you always have it?
Izabella: There are five stages to Hashimoto’s. The first stage is having the genetic predisposition to it and not having any kind of symptoms, not having any antibodies, and not having any attack on their thyroid gland. Then as you move forward, the next stage is going to be thyroid antibodies and then you move forward to having thyroid cell destruction, hypothyroidism, and eventually a progression to other autoimmune diseases. This is something that’s pretty scary because conventional doctors will tell people that they’re more likely to develop another autoimmune condition like lupus or rheumatoid arthritis once they’ve been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s. Really the focus of my work was, how do we halt the autoimmune process? Is there a way to stop at the level that we’re at or is there a way to go back in levels?
Research advances have found that three things need to be present for every autoimmune condition to develop. These are going to be the right genes, the right triggers, as well as intestinal permeability. Obviously we can’t get rid of our genes. At the present moment we can’t change those, but we do have the flexibility of figuring out what triggers are causing Hashimoto’s as well as figuring out the intestinal permeability part, so addressing our potential … It’s known as a three-legged stool of autoimmunity. All of those pieces need to be in place for autoimmunity to manifest. If you remove one of those legs of the stool then the autoimmunity will no longer manifest itself and you can reverse autoimmune conditions. We’ve been able to see that time and time again through lifestyle interventions and identifying triggers. It’s very exciting to see when people are able to get rid of their thyroid antibodies. Then some people are able to get rid of their need for thyroid medications. They will get thyroid ultrasounds and their thyroids start looking normal on ultrasound.
I had a recent success story from somebody who had three different autoimmune conditions and she was able to get rid of psoriasis, Hashimoto’s, and another third autoimmune condition through lifestyle interventions. It’s absolutely possible to reverse the condition. I won’t say that it’s super easy and that everybody has to do the same thing. I will say that it is worth it and that doing a lot of these basic things like supporting your body through proper nutrition, managing your stress, and getting rid of food sensitivities and addressing those nutrient deficiencies is going to be helpful for just about everybody in making them feel better. Some people may see a complete turnaround in their conditions. Other people, they may need to do a bit more digging. My book, Hashimoto’s: The Root Cause and my website, Thyroid Pharmacist, covers a lot of these things you can dig for.
One thing we can talk about are chronic infections, so an infection like H. pylori may actually confuse the immune system so a person may begin to attack H. pylori bacteria, which has a similar protein sequence to it as our gut cells or our thyroid cells and then the person will basically be … It’s called molecular mimicry, where the person is essentially attacking both the bacteria and the thyroid gland because they look similar. In some people if we find this infection and we treat the infection the person may go into remission as well. It is a process but it definitely can be reversed.
Amy: I think what is a really great take home message is that it’s just important if you feel like you have some of these symptoms to get tested because if you have Hashimoto’s which is an autoimmune condition that is undiagnosed and untreated then it puts you at risk for some of these other autoimmune issues like psoriasis and lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. I always like to end our interviews on a hopeful note and I think you’ve already hit home that there is a lot of hope if you have been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s.
Izabella: Absolutely. I would say that most people who try these lifestyle interventions, they’re going to feel much, much better. I would say it’s definitely worth it. It’s not going to be easy. You’re going to have to be your own health advocate. You’re going to have to take things into your own hands. I would recommend you do your research and just really be kind to yourself and take the time to get to know, listen, to your body and give it what it needs. If you’re tired don’t have that extra cup of caffeine. Take a nap. If you’re having acid reflux from after a meal, think about what you ate during that meal and is it potentially a food that you’re sensitive to? Just really being in tune with your body and getting these lifestyle interventions on board, you can really start feeling better within a few days to a few months.
For me, personally, I had acid reflux for almost three years. It was so bad that I would throw up in garbage cans. I would be talking to patients at the pharmacy and I’d have to excuse myself because I would have this chronic cough. I had to sleep on four pillows and would often wake up choking at night. It was just awful. I figured out that dairy was a food trigger for me. Within three days of getting rid of dairy out of my diet, the acid reflux was completely gone and has never come back except for a few times where I accidentally had some dairy.
I’ve also had great success with a supplement known as betaine with pepsin, which supports stomach acid. This is something that can be a big change overnight. A lot of people with an under-active thyroid actually have low stomach acid levels. Getting enough stomach acid will help you digest your food. This can be like a miracle because overnight, all of a sudden, I had all of this extra energy. I went from sleeping 11 hours a night on thyroid medications to waking up after eight hours bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. There’s a lot of different things you can do and try to get yourself to feel better. I would just say don’t let another person prevent you from getting your health back. If you found a doctor that doesn’t agree with doing more testing for you or agree with trying to figure out if you have nutrient deficiencies there’s plenty of fish in the sea. Seek out somebody that will be supportive of you.
Amy: I have to say that your book is fantastic, too. If you think you may have Hashimoto’s pick up a copy of Izabella’s book, Hashimoto’s Thyroidosis. I have a copy of it on my bookshelf. I refer to it a lot when I’m talking to clients who have thyroid conditions. Where else … You had mentioned where we can also find you online?
Izabella: Absolutely. I have a website called Thyroid Pharmacist. People can go to thyroidpharmacist.com/gift. I have a nutrient depletions guide that talks about the betaine with pepsin as well as some of the other important nutrients that can be depleted. Then I have basically a gluten-free quick start guide. When I first went gluten-free, I did it wrong, and I actually sent my blood sugar on a roller coaster and did it the wrong way. I have a guide on how not to do that as well as some great recipes. If you go to thyroidpharmacist.com/gift you can get that information for free. Then I also have a Facebook page. If you look up Dr. Izabella Wentz, Thyroid Pharmacist, you’ll find my Facebook page where we post helpful articles and things like that to support people in their healing journeys.
Amy: You have a great page. I’ll also post the link to your free gift, as well, below the interview so people can go directly there. Thank you so much for taking the time and really explaining all of the details of Hashimoto’s. I hope that it’s going to be helpful for those listening. I just want to thank everyone for listening and we’ll see you next time.
Izabella: Thank you so much, Amy. It’s a been such a pleasure. Thank you for the work you do.
Amy: Thanks, Izabella.
