I’ve really put off an update to this blog for a while now because my Hashimotos Thyroiditis has not been assessed much differently since I’ve begun my NAET treatments. However, many other wonderful “side effects” have been noted. Although not a direct change in my disease has been noted, I have come to realize that enough changes have happened to record those in this post.

Let me explain. I began NAET treatments about a year ago. My scheduled visits were about 2 per week and I, as recommended by the protocol, started with the basics (Vitamins, Minerals, Amino Acids, etc.). The first few treatments were not very life changing because these are only components to the combinations of foods I eat on a daily basis. In order for me to feel significant changes, I had to begin the whole food treatments like wheat, milk, etc. It was then that I began to see remarkable changes. Here’s a simple explanation of what NAET is:

I kept a journal of all my treatments and any reactions or notable aspects to the treatment that came up. In a later post, I will write these important treatments and notes specifically but for now, I will just say that the response to some of these treatments were incredible! The most notable food treatments to date was the pepper treatment. I used to be severely sensitive to eating black pepper and even worse to jalapenos. I would get a fast heart rate, bloatedness, and frequent trips to the restroom to “let nature take it’s course”. This would be so disruptive to my life if I were to have this reaction while dining at someone’s home or in a restaurant. After the treatment, all those terrible reactions were gone and have been gone for over 9 months! They have never come back! There are other treatments which have been as effective and there are others that have been slow to respond or have only responded partly. Something to realize about NAET that I think others miss is that it can sometime take food combination treatments to clear symptoms after the initial individual treatments. In other words, if you have an allergy to wheat and you expect your reaction to spaghetti to be cleared by that treatment, you may have to have a combination treatment of wheat and tomato sauce in order to clear the spaghetti.

What bothers me the most about NAET criticizers is that “it doesn’t work” but they haven’t even done combination treatments or they haven’t done the amount of treatments their body needs to begin the healing process. They believe that NAET should be some kind of “magic pill” treatment or it “doesn’t work”. First of all, we never ask traditional medicine to cure our ailments - we ask them to “disquise the symptoms” - the root problem still being there and leaving us addicted to the medications given! This is NOT healing. For healing to take place, we need to give our bodies the chance to begin a healing cycle. Allergens and toxins must be eliminated to a great extent for this process to begin. It is not a magic pill and although NAET is amazing and can have significant effect on individual allergies, the whole body must be worked on to experience real, long-term, healing.

This is what I am in the process of attempting. I realize it’s taken 45 years to become sick with this disease and I realize it could take up to a year or two to reverse the damage and begin to heal. This is my journal of the journey.

On another note, it is imperative that we not only find the root cause physically, but also what may have triggered this physical reaction. This brings me to the emotional side of things. I want to extend on this in my next post but I will at least mention here that our emotions can do some pretty significant things to our body - both bad and good - depending on the emotion. I would like to explore energy therapies a bit in the next post. Here is what I believe to be the root problem of most disease - stress and emotional trauma. I am being careful not to blame anyone here, including myself because there have been traumas in my life that I could never have controlled. However, now that I understand some of the ways energy therapies work, I realize I may have been able to deal with these traumas in a way that may have not set up disease in my body. I want to remind you that I am not a doctor - I am a patient. Many believe this is a significant benefit to understanding your particular disease. After all, it is your body, not your doctors, and many times I think doctors forget this “small fact” when working with their patients.

May you continue to find answers for your healing.

The quest for the root cause of Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis is very dear to my heart. It HAS to be. I have suffered many years with this disease. That’s why I think I have the experience to post on this subject. Mary Shomon has been a patient advocate and a thyroid patient herself for many years now. The problem I have and why I am writing today is to find balance in a bold statement she made in her latest article correcting Oprah Winfrey’s suggestion that somehow your thyroid disease can be your fault. Oprah admitted to working extra hard and being extremely tired before her diagnoses. Here’s the excerpt from Mary Shomon I am concerned about:

Here’s my wake-up call to women everywhere: Thyroid disease is NOT your fault. Thyroid disease results when heredity and genetics, autoimmunity, environmental exposures, viral infections, and hormonal shifts come together in a perfect storm to trigger a dysfunction. And while emotional and physical stress, as well as nutrition and lifestyle, can play a role creating a climate receptive for — or fighting against — most diseases including thyroid conditions, these factors are only part of a larger, complicated puzzle.

Women are more susceptible to thyroid disease, as well as most of the more than 80 autoimmune diseases, for a variety of reasons, including the balance of our hormones. Times of hormonal change — i.e., pregnancy, post-partum, perimenopause and menopause — are key trigger points for the development of thyroid disease.

Another factor that can affect your thyroid is overconsumption of soy. In an official letter of protest to the FDA, Drs. Daniel Doerge and Daniel Sheehan, formerly the FDA’s two key experts on soy, contradicted soy’s health claims — which were approved by the FDA — saying:

“…there is abundant evidence that some of the isoflavones found in soy, including genistein and equol, a metabolize of daidzen, demonstrate toxicity in estrogen sensitive tissues and in the thyroid….Additionally, isoflavones are inhibitors of the thyroid peroxidase which makes T3 and T4. Inhibition can be expected to generate thyroid abnormalities, including goiter and autoimmune thyroiditis. There exists a significant body of animal data that demonstrates goitrogenic and even carcinogenic effects of soy products. Moreover, there are significant reports of goitrogenic effects from soy consumption in human infants and adults.”

Dr. Northrup, however, dismisses the opinions of these experts, as well as the many journal articles on the issue, and instead points to the soy industry’s own studies as evidence of soy’s safety for women.

Also from another article from Mary Shomon:

I can’t make it any clearer: Thyroid disease is NOT your fault. It is a result of autoimmunity, environmental exposures, genetics/heredity, and hormone shifts. Yes, stress and diet can play a part in disease– in fact, thyroid problems are, as noted, sometimes triggered by overconsumption of soy. (italics and bold mine)

In order to give her fair representation, I have quoted her full thoughts on what she believes causes thyroid dysfunction. In summary, she maximizes the environmental, hormonal and things “out of our control” and minimizes our own emotional and physical choices. Notice how she minimizes stress and diet - kind of just floats through the statement as though it isn’t there? Is it wise of her to use such a bold statement as “Thyroid Disease is NOT Your Fault” given her admittance that “emotional and physical
stress, as well as nutrition and lifestyle, can play a role”? Doesn’t the bold title convey we absolutely have NO control over this disease? I beg to differ. Here’s an excerpt from her OWN book “Living Well With Hypothyroidism” (2000), suggesting her OWN thyroid problem could have been jumpstarted by none other than a severe pushing of her body to the max during a certain time of her life:

Looking back, I’m fairly sure the onset of my thyroid problem occurred in early 1993, when I was thirty-two… I had about a ten pound weight gain from age thirty to thirty-two, I grew from a size 6/8, to a size 8/10, but didn’t worry much about it. Then in the winter of 1993, I published my first book. I was working an intense fulltime job, then coming home and working late into the night on the new book. I had a new boyfriend. It was a period of several months of intense work/book/life excitement and stress, coupled with too little sleep, poor eating habits, and lot of cigarettes and caffeine… (bold and italics mine)
Page 6

Does this sound like someone who had NO fault in her own body’s decline? Hmmm… does this not sound strangely familiar to what Oprah was saying might be related to her thyroid condition? Then she writes at the end of this article:

P.S. And Oprah, if you’re reading — my wish for you is that someday, you realize that your thyroid condition is truly not your fault. And please reconsider all that soy!

So let me get this straight - I have NO control over my thyroid disease BUT stop using all that soy? Doesn’t that imply I have some control? I hope Mary Shomon considers revising her strong statements about having no control yet publishing many books and articles about how we can actually control our Hashimoto’s Disease! Her statements are confusing in that they give the impression that there’s nothing you can do for your thyroid disease, and yet gives testimony to the positive effects of avoiding soy.

I understand the role I played in the disease that eventually was diagnosed in my body. I was even warned by someone early on that if I didn’t control my stress, I would make myself sick. Even though the event was beyond my control, my emotional response could have been much better. Referring to her sudden weight gain, Ms. Shomon stated, “I didn’t worry much about it”. I reacted the same way when I was warned about my stress. Is it possible that the body was warning her earlier about some stress it was going through but she did not connect the symptoms to change her lifestyle? I think so. But of course, this is just my opinion.

Regarding the other culprits she mentions, environmental, soy, etc., I have no doubt they are likely contributors to some people’s thyroid problems and I am not here to blame all cases of thyroid disease on the person. I am mostly concerned with the bold statement that there is NO fault to be contributed to any thyroid patients in any way!

I am not trying to write a technical story - those of you that have read my articles know I am writing from a patient’s viewpoint and steer away from the technical. However, having lived many years in a body that shows response to my “moods” and my lifestyle choices, I can tell you FOR SURE that we do have some control over the body and it’s function. I have kept journals on how my choice of foods and lifestyle effects my thyroid condition. It always does! That tells me there is control there. Having that information may not solve the problem at this time, but it indicates to me that there may eventually be a way to use this information to help reverse this condition. The body seems to react to stress and asks for changes by alerting us to it in ways that manifest as unusual symptoms. If we don’t “listen” to the body when the symptoms are small, I suspect disease is the outcome.

In my own life, I am aware of traumatic events that came prior to my diagnoses. I am aware of my decision to take medications that are now known to suppress thyroid function, like steroids for my asthma, birth control pills which could have easily made me estrogen dominate, eating high amounts of soy products (buying into the soy hype) and although difficult to control, many stressful events that I hadn’t any idea how to handle. Maybe I wasn’t aware of the damaging effects they might have but I need to admit that I made these choices. I might have been a victim in some ways but nevertheless, I am the one that chose the course. Could it also be that I can also help turn that around? Why wouldn’t that be a positive goal? What would I be losing if I was to make positive changes to my lifestyle that might alleviate or possibly reverse my condition? When should a person “give up”? Or should they?

I am very encouraged by the stress management programs popping up presently which would have been a very important asset to my life years ago - perhaps teaching me how to release pent up emotions for years. I am confident this act alone is a major contributor to thyroid disease. So, in that statement alone, I emphatically disagree with Mary Shomon’s strong statement that there is no blame to be found in the patient. The sooner we admit to any misuse of our body, the sooner we will be in position for healing. It goes both ways. It’s admitted that we can be predisposed to illness (when extra stress is given to the body). Could it be that we are also predisposed to healing (given the right support to the body)? I encourage you to think about the implications of such a possibility.

In an effort to ease your mind however, I want to make it clear that I am NOT trying to dismiss legitimate factors beyond our control (environmental, viral, etc.) that can result in disease, but to recognize ways you might be contributing to the problem yourself (ie. intense work or demands on the body, too little sleep, poor eating habits, cigarettes, caffeine, etc.) as Mary Shomon has previously admitted. Why would we NOT try to figure out what fault we might have in our own health? That is a troubling thought to me.

Let’s join together and admit any contributions we have made and support each other on correcting them. None of us are “perfect”. It also concerns me to read that Mary Shomon actually said that you can do everything “perfectly” and still have a thyroid problem. Have you ever met a perfect person? I haven’t and that helps me admit my contributions to this disease. It does not make me feel guilty. It makes me feel empowered. I hope you’ll join me and take responsibility for your health.

None of
the information or personal testimonies on this blog are designed to take the
place of being under the care of a qualified medical doctor. Please make sure
you find a caring doctor to treat you for all your health concerns.

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Okay, I know I said I wouldn’t go with the technical approach to Hashimotos Thyroiditis but really, this is amazing! I’d rather see this in somebody else’s thyroid for educational purposes so I thought I’d share this with you! Thank you to the maker’s of this video:

Hashimotos Thyroiditis and Herbal Remedies

The question is burning in me; can an herbal treatment go a long way in helping someone with Hashimotos Thyroiditis? I have to confess, I’ve never been one to trust herbal remedies for something as complicated as this disease, but recently my research has been promising. I may consider, for the first time, delving into the thought a bit more. read more…

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Hashimotos Thyroiditis is an autoimmune disease that causes the body to attack its own thyroid gland. This guide is intended to help you take the first steps towards reclaiming your health. I have this disease myself and have found many helps throughout my journey. I am now sharing these with you.

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If you are new to this disease, I hope you will feel more support than I did when I was first diagnosed with Hashimotos Thyroiditis about 14 years ago or so. I say this because I had no internet access, the disease was relatively unfamiliar and because of this, difficult to research. To top it all off, my doctor basically slapped the diagnosis on my lap and said, “it’s no big deal. You just take a pill every morning and it’ll take care of it. You will live just as long a life, it’s just that your thyroid will eventually die.” This was said in a short, 5 minute phone conversation as he noted that I had a prescription waiting for me at the pharmacy! He never mentioned that my life would never be the same! Okay, I don’t know about you but when someone tells me a part of my body is on its way to death (and I was only in my early 30’s) with such casual delivery too, it can really be confusing. I’m thinking to myself, I guess it’s fine, as long as it is my health and not his!

The reason I am writing this little entry is hopefully to ease your mind a bit. You see, there is no immediate danger in this diagnoses (for most of us). There is time to learn, and more importantly, time to choose your course of action! I have a lot of “if onlys” in my journey. Perhaps it would benefit you to hear some of them? Okay, here it goes:

1. If only I was aware of natural treatments, I could have avoided the “hook” of synthetic drugs which in many ways, kept me from realizing my true potential in healing early on. (not to mention that I was unaware that they weren’t helping me at all for 10 years!) Now I must try to heal while fighting with dosages of natural supplements and trying to figure out how much improvement is truly being made having the supplemental thyroid going in every day. I feel I was denied education and the choice to deal with it more naturally.
2. If only I had considered a natural doctor (for a second opinion) for the initial course of treatment or healing. My HMO never gave me any indication there were any options other than theirs which was immediately taking Synthroid. I can’t believe I never questioned this!
3. Natural dessicated thyroid supplements! If only I had known about them. I suffered for 10 years taking Synthroid.
4. If only I understood the benefits of tracking my own health. Taking my body temperature daily, using a food journal to identify food allergies and sensitivities, and tracking the effects of exercise and stress management. This would have saved me many years of unnecessary symptoms due to diet and prescription drugs.

These are just a few of the “what ifs” and “if onlys” at the top of my head. I will likely talk about this more in future entries. But all of the things above would have given me a better foundation for dealing with this disease. I have heard many times since, that seeking the best natural treatments from the point of diagnoses can greatly improve your success in fighting this disease.

I recommend that you consider joining a *forum where others are that maintain a positive attitude in overcoming this challenge in your health. I have had a message board for four years now and sometimes I really don’t know where I’d be without the support of other Hashi sufferers. (we all tend to call Hashimotos Thyroiditis, Hashi for short.)

I hope that I have helped you to empower yourself with choices. In the end, it’s your body, not your doctor’s. Please take the time to choose your course well. Your body will thank you for it!

Maureen

*The forum I used to provide was public and had spamming and advertising issues. It is now necessary to register at the new forum. This is a safety measure and a way to keep your e-mail address safe from spam. We’re just “moving over” and would love to have you join us! The more of us coming together for answers, the faster we will find them.

None of the information or personal testimonies on this blog are designed to take the place of being under the care of a qualified medical doctor. Please make sure you find a caring doctor to treat you for all your health concerns.

For many years I’ve wondered if I could somehow reverse my Hashimotos Thyroiditis by finding the “root” problem. I began to entertain the thinking that there was a connection between autoimmune thyroid disease and gluten sensitivity. After some research, I found articles that seemed to point me further in that direction like the following one from Mary Shomon:

According to research recently reported on in the medical journal Digestive Diseases and Sciences, a significant number of patients with autoimmune thyroid disease also have celiac disease. Celiac disease is a disorder that causes the intestines to react abnormally to gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye, barley, oats, spelt,kamut, and other related grains.

“…researchers found that…organ-specific autoantibodies (i.e., thyroid antibodies) — will disappear after 3 to 6 months of a gluten-free diet.”

Celiac disease, which is sometimes referred to as celiac sprue, sprue, or gluten intolerance, makes it difficult for the body to properly absorb nutrients from foods.

You can read the full article here.

Now, the reason I brought this up is that I tried a gluten free diet for 6 months to prove to the world that the connection was there! Prior to this I was already enjoying success in eating according to the wonderful book, Nourishing Traditions, written by Sally Fallon, and my medication had dropped by one third so I thought I was on the “right road”. So I added to that a gluten free diet in 2006 just knowing I was going to find the “answer” to this disease. Okay, well… I tried. I not only went gluten free, but sugar, and preservative (which I do anyway) free, too! I also consumed live raw milk based Kefir to help re-supply the gut with probiotics. My antibody count went from somewhere around 1,800 to like 3,400 in the six months! As you can imagine, I was horrified. I expected the opposite. I was ready to celebrate but you can imagine the crash I experienced when I heard the numbers. My TSH improved but my dose of medication was slightly increased during this time also so that didn’t really mean anything to me.

Am I saying that a gluten free diet can’t improve this disease? No. But I am saying that it didn’t work for me. Reflecting back on all of this brought up some interesting points.

1. I did not eliminate corn during this time. I have a hunch that corn could be a culprit. Don’t ask me why. I will continue my research on this one. I have heard many discouraging studyies on the dangers of corn in our diet so I will just leave it at that until I have a better grasp on the possible concerns with consuming it in our diet.
2. I continued to eat raw honey (which I don’t believe is a culprit but I will confess to it’s usage in moderation).
3. I was not exercising to the capacity I believe would aid in the healing process.
4. I was not taking any supplements at that time which could indicate a “missing component” to the process.

I would love to get feedback from others that have tried a similar journey. I truly believe we can work together to find the natural cure!

Maureen

I thought it would be appropriate to share a video I found a few years ago describing the techinical side of Hashimotos Thyroiditis. All the mumbo jumbo in the professional arena was really getting to me! Anyone with this disease will attest that some days, you really just don’t feel you can understand things let alone technical jargon about your disease! So view this little video when your brain fog is not too bad.

Here’s the video:

Click here to download (requires Real Player)

Hi, I’m Maureen. The reason I am starting this blog is to share my journey, tips and support to those who are either new to Hashimotos Thyroiditis or are just looking for others to share with. I have always seen this road as a “lonely” one. I haven’t met anyone in person that has this disease yet, and I’ve been diagnosed for about 14 years! The best support I’ve had has been online. I have a great set of friends that have been helping each other for years now. I tend to keep my focus simple - not making an issue of the test numbers and other technical stuff. There’s a place for that but to focus on it is very frustrating for me. I choose to “listen to my body” more than the tests. There have been great rewards as I’ve left the “system” of the HMO and begun my own research toward a more natural approach. The book that started it all for me was “Solved: The Riddle of Illness” by Stephen Langer and tipped me off to the more natural path I am now on. I followed this up with my diet “bible” called “Nourishing Traditions” by Sally Fallon.

Please consider joining me as we work together to manage thyroiditis and hopefully gain new strategies of coping with the symptoms (which are very real). I say that because many of us have been labeled “hypochondriacs”. (See “my story” on my web page.) It seems that Hashimotos Disease has a way of appearing differently in people. In all the years I’ve communicated with others, it seems like there are no two sufferers exactly alike. What one person is dealing with and finding answers for, can really help another down the road.

I look forward to sharing my journey with you. I plan on posting a really great video on the “technical side” of Hashimoto’s Disease just “for the record” but I prefer to stick with the “whole body” approach regardless of what the symptoms are. My main purpose here is to lend support. I hope to have others involved too! On any given post, I will be asking for your experience, your thoughts, and your comments to help us all as we search for answers.