PCOS and Hashimoto’s Shared Healing Protocol [Podcast]
For me, it’s not about being on the perfect diet; it’s about tuning in to your body and figuring out what your body needs at this time and what’s not serving it. – Dr. Izabella Wentz
Women with PCOS are three times more likely to have Hashimoto’s Disease, a condition in which your immune system attacks your thyroid and the most common cause of hypothyroidism. In fact, there is quite a lot of overlap between Hashimoto’s and PCOS (fatigue, weight challenges, changes in brain function, depression, feeling unmotivated, anxiety, panic attacks, constipation, hair loss). Dr. Izabella Wentz has developed an effective protocol that may be helpful to women with PCOS whether they have Hashimoto’s or not. Listen in as we discuss:
- Symptoms of Hashimoto’s Diesase and labs you should request
- The role of toxins, adrenals and gut balance in thyroid and overall health
- The necessity of detoxification and suggestions for liver support
- Healing foods and the myth of cruciferous veggies
- Protocol for healing your adrenal and cortisol issues
Resources:
Link to Dr. Wentz’s book,Hashimoto’s Protocol, and free gift: thyroidpharmacist.com/gift
Link to my previous podcast with Dr. Wentz:
All PCOS Diva podcasts are now 
A full transcript follows.
Izabella Wentz, PharmD, FASCP is an internationally acclaimed thyroid specialist and licensed pharmacist who has dedicated her career to addressing the root causes of autoimmune thyroid disease after being diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis in 2009.
Dr. Wentz 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 the forthcoming protocol-based book Hashimoto’s Protocol: A 90-Day Plan for Reversing Thyroid Symptoms and Getting Your Life Back.
As a patient advocate, researcher, clinician and educator, Dr. Wentz is committed to raising awareness on how to overcome autoimmune thyroid disease through The Thyroid Secret Documentary Series, the Hashimoto’s Institute Practitioner Training, and her international consulting and speaking services offered to both patients and healthcare professionals.
Full Transcript:
Amy Medling: Hello and welcome to the PCOS Diva podcast. My name is Amy Medling and I’m a certified health coach and founder of PCOS Diva. My mission is to help women with PCOS find the tools and knowledge they need to take control of their PCOS so they can regain their fertility, femininity, health and happiness. If you haven’t already, make sure you check out pcosdiva.com because there I offer tons of great free information about PCOS and how to develop your PCOS diet and lifestyle plan so you can begin to thrive like a Diva. Look for me on iTunes, Facebook, and Instagram as well.
Today, I am welcoming back Dr. Izabella Wentz to the PCOS Diva podcast. If you haven’t listened to our podcast about what you need to know about Hashimoto’s and hypothyroid, then you definitely want to catch that. Today, we are going to be talking about her new Hashimoto’s protocol and I think that her protocol could be very helpful for women, whether you have Hashimoto’s or not.
Welcome, Dr. Izabella to the podcast today.
Izabella Wentz: Amy, thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to connect with you and talk more about the Hashimoto’s and PCOS connection.
Amy Medling: Great. We’re going to do that and I just want to give listeners a little bit of your background first. You are a thyroid specialist and licensed pharmacist who has dedicated your career to addressing the root causes of autoimmune thyroid disease after being diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis in 2009. You’re the author of the New York Times bestselling patient’s guide, Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis: Lifestyle Interventions for Finding and Treating the Root Cause and the forthcoming protocol book, Hashimoto’s Protocol: A 90-Day Plan for Reversing Thyroid Symptoms and Getting Your Life Back.
I have to just let women that are listening know that PCOS actually makes you three times more likely to have Hashimoto’s and my bet is that there are women listening that have it, but don’t know yet. I find that a lot of doctors are just testing TSH to see how women’s thyroids are doing and they’re not getting into sort of some of these deeper labs. I was hoping to get started, you could kind of explain what Hashimoto’s is and maybe give some of the symptoms that we should be looking out for. Then, maybe, getting to some of the labs that we should request from our doctors.
Izabella Wentz: Absolutely. Hashimoto’s, you know, it kind of sounds like a rare Japanese flower or sword fighter …
Amy Medling: Mm-hmm.
Izabella Wentz: If you ask my husband, but it’s a very, very common condition and looking at advanced diagnostic studies, it’s going to affect about 27% of our population and the general population. Now, in women with PCOS, we see that 27% of them with … Sorry about that. Hashimoto’s is very, very common condition and effects about 27% of our population. I’ll talk a little bit about the symptoms and we’ll get into the tests in a little bit and then I’ll share how some of these tests might actually be even higher in women with PCOS.
Some of the more common symptoms of Hashimoto’s, which is essentially an autoimmune attack on the thyroid gland, are going to be having fatigue, so women who are really, really tired and then just having a hard time going about doing daily things. This is going to be a common symptom. It’s just thyroid tired is different than, you know, I just stayed up a little bit too late last night and I’m tired today. It’s a constant fatigue that’s with you throughout all the time. Then weight challenges are another big symptom, so people who have a hard time losing weight, or people who are just gaining weight without really doing anything differently. Then we’re looking at changes in brain function. This is the third biggest thing that women complain about and one of the cardinal signs of Hashimoto’s or thyroid disease is going to be brain fog where you just have a hard time remembering things, so you might have trouble with word finding. You might be walking into rooms and forgetting why you got there. You might be losing your keys.
There are some other symptoms as well, and these might include feeling depressed, feeling just very unmotivated, feeling like you have anxiety or even panic attacks have been reported. Then we’re looking at generally an overall slowing down of the body. In a person who has advanced Hashimoto’s because they become hypothyroid and so we’re going to see, perhaps, constipation, in the early stages it could be diarrhea. Then we’re going to start seeing hair loss. We’re going to start seeing a loss of the upper third of the eyebrow. Then cold intolerance, as well as heat intolerance are some other potential signs and symptoms. Now, all of these things don’t have to be present in order for one to have Hashimoto’s. One person might have all of these symptoms and then some. Another person might have just one or two of these symptoms.
I always recommend getting tested. In the general population, about 27% of people, men and women, have Hashimoto’s. Now, women are five to eight times more likely to have Hashimoto’s compared to men. When we do some more of these advanced diagnostics, we’re going to catch it. The current conventional test is known as the TSH test, the thyroid stimulating hormone test, and this test is going to be elevated when a person has an underactive thyroid, which is sort of the advanced stage of Hashimoto’s. For the first, maybe 10-15 years that a person has Hashimoto’s, that test might actually come out in the normal range.
Hashimoto’s comes in five stages. The first stage is the genetic predisposition, where for all intents and purposes we don’t have the condition, we don’t have any of the markers of the condition, and we don’t have this immune attack on our thyroid gland. You would be asymptomatic from Hashimoto’s symptoms at that point.
The second stage is when we start seeing that our thyroid gland becomes recognized as an enemy by the immune system. This is the beginning of the attack of the immune system on the thyroid gland. This can actually be measured by thyroid antibodies. Thyroid antibodies, TPO antibodies and TG antibodies are the two to ask your doctor for. This can be elevated for 10-15 years before doctors will actually find your TSH test to be elevated. There’s also thyroid ultrasound test that can be done at this stage to find the earlier stages of Hashimoto’s because about 80% of women will have thyroid antibodies when they have Hashimoto’s, but about 20% will be thero negative Hashimoto’s, which means they do not have thyroid antibodies. In a study done with women with PCOS, 27% of them had thyroid antibodies, whereas 42% of them had abnormal thyroid ultrasounds that were consistent with what Hashimoto’s looks like on a thyroid ultrasound. As the condition begins to progress, we start seeing more and more changes in different lab values.
At stage three, we’re going to start seeing more symptoms and then a slight elevation of TSH, but this is not always reliable because it might go back and forth.
In stage four, we’re going to see the elevation of TSH and then we’re also going to see alterations in free T3 and free T4, where those will be low. These are the active thyroid hormones that are measured. For a full and comprehensive thyroid panel, I recommend doing the TSH test, T3, T4, which are the active thyroid hormones, and I always recommend getting both the total versions, then the free versions, which tell us how much thyroid hormone is there to interact with receptors. Then we’re also looking at reverse T3. Now, this is something that becomes elevated in times of stress and adrenal stress. It’s always good to look at that. Then we’re also looking at the thyroid antibodies. Thyroglobulin antibodies, which are TG, and thyroperoxidase antibodies, which are TPO. Then for every woman, at least once in her lifetime, I recommend getting a thyroid ultrasound because like the studies have shown, thyroid ultrasounds can reveal Hashimoto’s more frequently than even the antibody tests can.
Amy Medling: This is really great information. I think a lot of people listening can see that a lot of the symptoms of PCOS sort of mimic these symptoms of Hashimoto’s. The other thing that I wanted to point out, is that I had to really fight with my doctor to get the antibody tests because my TSH was normal. I didn’t end up having Hashimoto’s, but he did give them to me and I’m just glad that I was able to get that information. Part of being a Diva is really advocating for yourself and realizing that your doctor is working for you, and if they’re not willing to do these tests for you, then it’s important to find somebody that is because the number of women with PCOS … Did you say 27% of … What was that statistic that you mentioned, Dr. Wentz?
Izabella Wentz: Yeah. 27% would have elevated thyroid antibodies.
Amy Medling: Yeah. It’s important to advocate for yourself. There will be a transcript of this call so you can, you know, go back and look at the testing that is suggested. I wanted to kind of dive into your protocol. I’ve been reading your book at night over the past week …
Izabella Wentz: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Amy Medling: And really as a woman with PCOS that does not have Hashimoto’s, I can tell you that so much of what you’re recommending in your book, I think could be so helpful for me. A lot of what you’re discussing, in terms of the role that toxins have to play in this autoimmune condition and your adrenal health, and then keeping your gut balanced, it’s all so appropriate for women with PCOS with or without Hashimoto’s. I tend to feel, after all of these years studying PCOS, that there’s definitely probably some underlying autoimmune issue for some women as well with PCOS. As you know, once you have one kind of autoimmune condition, you’re much more predisposed to have others, like Hashimoto’s and celiac. Maybe you could kind of touch a little bit upon the role of toxins, adrenals and gut balance and maybe give us a couple of tips on how to kind of reverse bad lifestyle choices, I guess, in each of those areas.
Izabella Wentz: Mm-hmm (affirmative). When I first started working with people with Hashimoto’s, I was kind of looking for ways to help them uncover their root causes and I was …
Amy Medling: Yeah.
Izabella Wentz: Really doing my due diligence to try to figure out what the triggers were for their condition. In some cases, this took a lot of time. People had to spend a lot of money to get expensive tests and this became a bit frustrating for me. Then I saw that there was a subset of women who just seem to react to everything that I recommended so I would give them a B vitamin and they would have an adverse reaction to it. They’d say that, “Wow, I just can’t tolerate any kind of supplements. I’m just really, really sensitive.” Then I did a little bit more research and I thought about, okay, how do we help people who are very, very sensitive? How do we help them kind of get to baseline, right, and how do we address that? I really started looking into the connection between the liver toxicity …
Amy Medling: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Izabella Wentz: And thyroid health and generally autoimmune disease, right? What I found is that in autoimmune, we tend to have a very, very congested liver. I think that’s one fun way to say it. You can’t really catch it on a lab test, but that’s essentially what’s happening, is that the liver will have a backlog of these toxins and then it can’t process the toxins correctly. We end up walking around with a lot of toxicity within our bodies. I like to use the example of like an overworked office worker that has a stack of papers on her desk and people just keep putting more and more papers on her desk and things that would take her five minutes to do are just now taking weeks or days for her to complete and she’s overwhelmed and she’s stressed and nothing’s getting done and nothing’s getting out.
That’s sort of what happens with the liver, and we know that we’re constantly bombarded by various toxins in our environment, and our modern diet doesn’t necessarily include a lot of foods that help us detoxify, and, in fact, has a lot of toxins within it so we end eating foods that have hormones in them when we’re not eating organic meats. We’re eating things with potentially pesticides on them when we’re eating non-organic vegetables. Then also, we’re eating foods that are highly inflammatory to us, like gluten, dairy, and soy, which then have to get processed out as toxins essentially. In people who have food sensitivities, which are always present in Hashimoto’s, what they do is they produce circulating immune complexes, to the foods, and it’s basically a complex that forms an antibody into the food reaction and these complexes all get shunted to the liver.
A lot of times women with thyroid disease, they also will an impaired ability to sweat. Now, this is not something they commonly complain about. It’s like one of those things that seems like a side benefit, but it’s actually quite toxic because then we’re not clearing out the toxins because our skin is one of our biggest elimination organs. Again, those things that would normally be cleaned out through sweat and through the skin, end up going to the liver.
Then the gut is also impaired in Hashimoto’s and in a lot of women with chronic health conditions. This ends up in the toxins that would normally be cleared out of the gut going to the liver. In some cases, when you have a person who is really struggling with their health, getting them on liver support can produce a dramatic change. When I first started working with women who were sensitive to a lot of things, you could say multiple chemical sensitivity, quite a few of them had that as a diagnosis. I would put them on liver support for about two weeks, and I was actually surprised to see the results that they had.
One woman had headaches. She had anxiety. She had joint pains and she also wasn’t able to go to mall because of the scents there. What we ended up doing is doing the liver support protocol and this was a couple of weeks before Christmas where she called me and left me a message and said, “Hey, I’m actually able to go to the mall again. I’m no longer sensitive to all these things in my environment. My headaches have resolved. My pain has resolved.” Then, sure enough, the next time we tested her thyroid antibodies, which are an indication of how aggressive the autoimmune attack is on the thyroid gland, those were reduced as well.
What’s happening when you support the liver, you help your body get rid of some of that toxic backlog and then, once again, you have this happy office worker that can go on and process things effectively. How you do that, the few things that I recommend for liver support are going to be cleaning up your environment and cleaning up your personal care routine. Getting a reverse osmosis filter …
Amy Medling: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Izabella Wentz: Is going to be very, very helpful because fluoride in our water supply can actually suppress thyroid function and it’s a toxin. Getting off of personal care products. A lot of our conventional personal care products have a lot of endocrine disrupting chemicals and chemicals that act like estrogen within our body. I know there was one study done in women with Hashimoto’s and PCOS and the researchers were trying to determine which women with PCOS were likely to get Hashimoto’s, which were not as likely, and they found that the women with higher levels of estrogen, or those who had estrogen dominance, were more likely to get Hashimoto’s and so this is something that can be actually induced by potentially some of our personal care products.
Then we start thinking about what foods are supportive. Let’s think of food as medicine and then trying to give people foods that are going to be helpful for detoxification. That’s going to be hot lemon water, doing some smoothies with cilantro, eating beets can be very, very helpful in helping to clear out some of those toxins through the methylation pathway. We go through just a two-week time period where we remove things and we add things and do some targeted supplements that include milk thistle and methylation support and within, I would say, 7 to 10 days, people start feeling a difference. About 65% of people in my experience will see a dramatic turnaround within just those two weeks of the liver support.
Amy Medling: Yeah. It’s amazing how your body can really heal itself when it’s given the right foods and supplements. I run a twice-a-year cleanse. It’s called the Sparkle Cleanse, and we talk a lot about how to get rid of the endocrine disruptors so that you avoid, kind of, the retox, but then it’s also a liver support cleanse. It’s amazing in those 14 days what a difference you can experience in your health. I’m so onboard with the whole idea of detoxifying and the role that toxins play in your health. Just a little shout out to beets. I know a lot of women, they remember those kind of canned candied beets, you know, that maybe their grandmother ate.
Izabella Wentz: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Amy Medling: Beets can be so delicious when you roast them or you can even sort of julienne them raw and put them in your salads, and they really are delicious if prepared the right way.
Izabella Wentz: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. There are so many different ways to make them. You could ferment them. You can make soup out of them.
Amy Medling: Yeah.
Izabella Wentz: You could make almost like tomato sauce out of them. Then another food group that I think is really important and underappreciated in thyroid conditions and, in fact, sometimes some people have villainized them, are cruciferous vegetables.
Amy Medling: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Izabella Wentz: Crucifers contain nutrients that help to support the liver’s detoxification. Vegetables like cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, turnips, these can be really, really helpful to help move out some of the toxins out of the body. There’s a myth, thyroid myth, that cruciferous vegetables contain goitrogens and that they cause thyroid disease …
Amy Medling: Right.
Izabella Wentz: But in reality, you’d have to eat, like, a lot of them. A lot of them. Even in modern times, the mechanism that they are … Goitrogen is kind of like a generic term for anything that interferes with thyroid hormone absorption production function. The way that they interact with the thyroid gland is that they prevent the absorption of iodine. With Hashimoto’s, we’re not really looking at iodine as a potential root cause for a majority of people. Maybe 5% of people might have an iodine deficiency, but for the rest of us, iodine deficiency is not really relevant with Hashimoto’s and autoimmune thyroid disease. It’s more of something you would see in developing nations where they don’t have the added iodine to the salt supply.
Amy Medling: I’m so glad that you clarified that question about the goitrogens and cruciferous veggies. I get that question a lot, because, of course, I’m recommending those types of vegetables for women with PCOS in my meal plans. The other thing that I wanted to mention, in your book you talk about the benefit of having a really rich fiber diet and that helps with kind of escorting that excess estrogen. Then, berries too. You kind of talk about the benefits of berries and berries are one of those fruits that I think are really fantastic for women with PCOS too, because they don’t affect your blood sugar like some of the other, maybe tropical fruits, that we might be eating.
Izabella Wentz: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. Exactly. They’re very, very tasty too. That’s always nice.
Amy Medling: Right.
Izabella Wentz: They have a lot of phytonutrients and antioxidants and blueberries are actually a rich source of myo-inositol, so this is something that can be taken as a supplement as well, but it’s a nutrient that can actually improve thyroid function and blood sugar. I know this is something that can be potentially helpful for women with PCOS as well.
Amy Medling: Yeah. I actually recommend a supplement called Ovasitol. It’s a combination myo-inositol and D-Chiro inositol supplement. It helps women with PCOS on so many different levels, with the blood sugar control, but also with egg quality, you know, if somebody is trying to get pregnant. You can read more about that on PCOS Diva. Since we’re kind of on the subject of foods, and we’re talking about some of the good sort of healing foods, what are some of … Before we talk a little bit more about adrenals, can you just mention some of what you sort of see as the trigger foods? I know you said gluten, dairy, and soy, but are there some other foods out there that you kind of want people to steer clear from?
Izabella Wentz: As a starting point for everybody, I have them go gluten free, dairy free, and soy free.
Amy Medling: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Izabella Wentz: In some people that will completely turn their thyroid condition around and they might go into complete remission. For other people, we might need to dig deeper. One of the foods that can be reactive for some women with Hashimoto’s may also be eggs. Now, generally, eggs are going to be considered to be a relatively healthy whole food, but the protein structure may be difficult for people with intestinal permeability and some of those autoimmune responses to tolerate. Often times, I might have people get off of eggs as well. Then we’re also looking at nuts and grains. In many cases that’s potential trigger foods. For women who are struggling with pain, I might have them get off nightshades for a time period. These would be tomatoes, bell peppers, and eggplants. Sometimes these types of foods, even though they’re normally very healthy, can be problematic for certain individuals.
I have two approaches. One of them is a step-down approach where you start off with the autoimmune Paleo diet and then you start introducing more foods. Then there’s also the step-up approach where you get off of the gluten, dairy, and soy and see how you do, and then as time progresses, you might remove more foods. It just really depends on the person what they’re more comfortable with. I know for some people, they want to jump right in and others might say, “Okay, it’s going to take me a long time to make these changes.” Really it’s about moving in the right direction. For me, it’s not about, like, being on the perfect diet, it’s about tuning in to your body and figuring out what your body needs at this time and what’s not serving it.
There’s definitely processed foods that I think are a problem for most people in general and artificial sweeteners can be a problem. Like sucralose can be a potential issue for … Splenda can be potential issue for people with Hashimoto’s as well. Either whole foods diet, mostly organic, is what I recommend. I know this is something that you’re a big fan of as well.
Amy Medling: Yeah. I wanted to just mention too, if you’re interested, in kind of the step approach that you had mentioned. You do have all the information in your book, which is really helpful. I wanted, before we run out of time, I want to talk a little bit about your adrenal protocol and I believe that most women with PCOS have some level of adrenal issues that they really need to stay on top of. I find that women that are really struggling with their PCOS are often … They’re either not exercising or they’re totally over exercising and just really stressed out and they have inadequate sleep and their adrenal health is really compromised. Again, that’s kind of another one of those areas that really, I think, overlap with Hashimoto’s and PCOS. Maybe you could talk a little bit about your experience with adrenal issues and kind of how you came about your recovery protocol.
Izabella Wentz: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. I found that about 95% of the women that I worked with, who didn’t get better with changing up their nutrition, so maybe they got slightly better, but they hit a plateau. 95% of them had low cortisol. Cortisol is a hormone that’s produced by the adrenals, and this is something that is going to be necessary. People oftentimes say that cortisol is bad. Well, it’s only bad when there’s too much of it. We actually do absolutely need it in the right amount for reducing inflammation within our bodies.
What happens is that initially people start producing too much cortisol and then as time goes on their body sort of stops wanting to produce more, where the body kind of says, “Okay, you’re telling me there’s an emergency, because cortisol is a stress hormone, and I’m putting out all this cortisol, but where is this emergency? You’re giving me an emergency every day, so I’m just kind of going to stop producing all the cortisol.” It’s sort of like the boy who cries wolf, right? You end up, over time, with really low levels of cortisol. A lot of times we see this as people who are just extremely, extremely tired and they’re having a hard time. They’re breaking their bodies down instead of building them back up so they’re in a catabolic state instead of an anabolic state and they’re often times going to have blood sugar issues …
Amy Medling: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Izabella Wentz: Because cortisol helps us balance our blood sugar. The ways to turn that around, we’re going to want to make sure that we’re focusing on four things. Sleep, stress, blood sugar, and then inflammation. The things that we do is, one of the fastest ways to get your adrenals out of whack is sleep deprivation. What I recommend, and I don’t know if this is possible for everybody, but just trying to take elements of it when you can, is to do spa month where you do things for yourself that are promoting sleep and relaxation, blood sugar balance and reducing your inflammation. What do I mean by that? If you can commit to sleeping for 10 to 12 hours for a week straight, that can actually be helpful and restore the adrenals.
One of my good friends, Dr. Alan Christianson, he also sometimes will recommend that a woman check into a hotel room for the weekend, and just some black-out curtains, and try to sleep the entire weekend as much as possible. The other part of that is giving yourself frequent really nigh nutrient dense food a few times a day, so you’re basically kind of training your body that that’s supporting your blood sugar issues and you’re training your body to not be having those blood sugar swings.
Then we’re thinking about what are things you can incorporate into your life that can help you stress less and help you relax more. This might be things like going for a walk or getting a massage, meditation, sewing. Different people have things that love to do. I recently got into adult coloring books, which are just fabulous …
Amy Medling: Oh, yeah.
Izabella Wentz: And they’re supposed to, I think, the equivalent of meditation, I once heard. You go through and you do these things that are going to be targeted to send your body these safety signals because adrenals respond to stress. Adrenals are sort of like, “Okay, there’s danger around. Things are changing up.” We want to send these, like, everything is good, everything is safe, so we’re thinking positive thoughts. Then we can also do things that help the adrenals out. I like to recommend the ABCs, that’s adrenal adaptogens. They can be very, very helpful to balance some of the … A lot of times they’ll say, adrenal adaptogens make everybody else a nicer person, because when you’re on them, the world doesn’t seem as stressful. They help you balance out your stress response.
Then we’re looking at the B vitamins. Thiamine is one I really, really like. That can be helpful for restoring blood sugar balance and can be really helpful for energy levels. I recommend about 600 mg per day and within three days, those people will start seeing a big difference in that. Then vitamin C is really, really important for adrenal health. Then another nutrient that I really love is magnesium. Doing Epsom salt baths or taking magnesium as a supplement can be very, very helpful and very relaxing and put your body in that sort of like rest and digest mode and heal mode, rather than in the fight or flight mode. This is like a fundamental that I recommend for everybody across the board, whether they have Hashimoto’s, PCOS, any kind of root cause or triggers. I would argue that gut, adrenals, and liver are really the core body systems that these, really when we’re ill, this is what goes out of whack. We need to start supporting them to find our way back to health.
Amy Medling: Mmm. I think that that’s really a part about being a Diva is making sure that you have time for you as well and advocating for that time. I know for me, I found that weekly acupuncture … I found an acupuncture co-op where it costs me as little as $13 a visit. That really helps me keep my stress levels … And I love how you describe that it makes everybody else seem easier to get along with. That’s exactly kind of how I feel. I’ve actually missed it the last two weeks, and I’ve been kind of irritated with my husband lately, so I think I just need to go back and have another session. Such good wisdom and advice, Dr. Wentz. I want everybody to know that her book, Hashimoto’s Protocol, is excellent. Again, I believe it’s not just for women with Hashimoto’s. I think everyone listening with PCOS would benefit from picking up a copy of the book as well. Tell us where we can find the book and how we can find out more information about your work.
Izabella Wentz: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Thank you so much, and I so admire our work and I really love that you teach women to be Divas because that’s such an empowering way to be and that’s really the only way to take back your health. Nobody’s going to do it for you. Once you fill your own cup, you can actually give some from your overflow, because we all know that when you’re empty, you can’t fill another cup, right? My book, Hashimoto’s Protocol, is going to be available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and bookstores all around the country. If people go to thyroidpharmacist.com/gift, I can also give them some wonderful resources and tools to get them started on their journey towards recovering their health with Hashimoto’s.
Amy Medling: Excellent. Yeah. We will post that link below the podcast as well. Thank you for joining us again. I hope you’ll be back again soon.
Izabella Wentz: Thank you so much for having me and thank you for the work that you’re doing.
Amy Medling: Well, that wraps up our podcast today. Thank you, everyone listening, for joining us. I hope that you enjoyed this podcast. If you like this episode, don’t forget to subscribe to PCOS Diva on iTunes or wherever you might be listening to the show. If you have a minute, please leave me a quick review. I’d love to hear from you. If you can think of anyone else that might benefit from this free podcast, please take a minute to share with family or friend so that she can benefit from it too. Don’t forget to sign up for my free newsletter. Just enter your email on pcosdiva.com to get instant access and make sure you never miss a future podcast. This is Amy Medling wishing you good health. Bye-bye.
