The Doctor Who Beat Thyroid Disease Reveals Why Most Get It Wrong

At what age were you when you noticed that something was not functioning as it? Started really young and I did not know that it could be related to thyroid. No amount of exercise and dieting is working. I mean, I have tried every diet out there and you know, they work temporarily and then, you know, I just gained all the weight back and I didn't really understand Physiology. I didn't understand how the thyroid impacted all of that.

Just kind of give us a deep dive on the thyroid and its function as a whole. So if the thyroid function is low, many women experience the inability to lose weight. Upwards of 98% of women who have low thyroid actually have an underlying autoimmune condition. That's why they have a low thyroid. Their thyroid just didn't stop working. That's why this is not like a menopausal thing. This is more of an autoimmune issue. And we are live. Doctor Heather Stone, how are you today?

I'm good, thank you. How are you? I'm doing wonderful. I'm excited to be chatting with you because I get so many questions about thyroid health, hormone health. I mean, I've had several guests on lately talking about HRT, TRT as it pertains to improving longevity, improving performance, just optimizing health overall. But it seems as though there's a void in the communication around thyroid health specifically. So I'm excited to see what I can learn from you today.

Before we start though, I mean, what, what even got you interested in this line of work? Like what was the the catalyst for you going down the path of optimizing thyroid function? Yeah. So I think with, like, a lot of healthcare practitioners, it starts with a personal story. And, you know, for me, I was having all the typical thyroid symptoms. I couldn't lose weight. I had, you know, hormonal imbalances. I was tired. I just did not feel like myself.

And, you know, I went down this path where doctors continue to tell me that nothing was wrong and I'm like, something is definitely wrong. And they would also tell me that, oh, by the way, you know, your hormones are out of balance, but you'll just need fertility treatment when you're ready to have kids. And I thought, oh, my gosh, this is not the path I'm going down. So I had to figure out, you know, what I needed to do to change this because I was not

going to live like that. And so once I figured it out for myself, I was like, oh, my gosh, there are millions of women who are struggling with low thyroid. And even though they're on medication and they have a diagnosis, they're still struggling with all these symptoms. And it really just isn't necessary. So that's kind of what I dedicated my life to do and and really to the mission is to change the face of healthcare. At what age were you when you noticed that something was not

functioning as it should? Like, was there like a a pretty stark line in the sand of like, OK, this is not right, this is not how it's supposed to be like? What were the telltale signs for you personally? Well, I think it started really young and I did not know that it could be related to thyroid. But even in my teenage years the my hormones were always a mess and I was struggling with weight

gain about 18/19/20 years old. And then that's when I started probably 2021 is when I started to go to a doctor because I was like no amount of exercise and dieting is working. I mean, I have tried every diet out there and you know, they work temporarily early and then, you know, I just gained all the weight back and I didn't really understand Physiology. I didn't understand how the thyroid impacted all of that.

So it started for me very young, but I did not realize that it was all connected, our hormones, our thyroid function, our metabolism until I really started to understand what to do to fix the issues. But at the end of the day, you know, you always have to get down to the root cause of the underlying imbalance because a lot of people think like the, a lot of people think when we're looking at our health that everything works in a vacuum or everything works separately.

Like the thyroid does not work separate or by itself. It doesn't work. It works together with your immune system and your insulin and other hormone production and your liver and your gut. So everything works together. And I think it's really important that because we get stuck in this model where everything is blamed on the thyroid, that's why people struggle so much is because they're only looking at the thyroid or like you said earlier, they look at other hormones, but they're not

looking at the whole picture. Yeah, totally, 100%. What was the messaging like from the doctors initially when you were going in to see what the issue was when you're trying to get some advice like what was their general messaging? Was it totally generic and related to the calories and calories out model of what were they pointing to think about so? And I am grateful for this experience because this is what made me realize that what they were telling me was not true.

But I went in and they said, OK, your thyroid is totally fine. There's nothing wrong with your thyroid. And I think that your menstrual, you don't have a menstrual cycle because you exercise too much. And I was like what? Like I knew because you know that back then that was pre Google. So we didn't have doctor Google that we could go consult. But I was in pre Med, I was reading textbooks and I knew that when a women woman's body fat goes below 10% that she will lose her menstrual cycle.

I was 50 lbs overweight. So I knew that what he was telling me was absolutely not the reasoning that he gave me was not right at all. And he did not address the whole weight loss issue. And then and he said, Oh, by the way, when you're ready to have babies, come back and I'll, we'll give you fertility treatment. And I'm like, this is the craziest advice I've ever seen. And I just paid him for that advice. And I was like, and I, but I am grateful because because of what

he said, I knew it wasn't true. And so I said, all right, I have to figure this out because I am not going to go down this path. And what? What age were you then? Do you remember? I was about 19 or 2021, somewhere around that age. Wow, so they were suggesting at that point your lack of a regular cycle was because you were exercising too much and they were already recommending IVF or something crazy like that and. Let me tell you, I was not exercising too much like I was

the I would walk and I would do like, you know, cardio for an hour like three to four times a week. I wasn't some professional athlete. So what they were saying just did not make sense whatsoever. And you know, when I was younger, when my hormone cycles were, they just put me on birth control. And so, and that is typically what happens. So they don't look to see why your hormones are out of balance, like what's causing this issue.

Instead, they override the Physiology and put you on hormone replacement essentially with birth control. And that should just fix the problem until you're ready to have kids. And then you're supposed to get off of it and expect the body to function in and be fertile.

Yeah, it's funny you mentioned I had a podcast, I guess about a week now, we were talking about just my frustrations with the birth control model because you go in there and they don't they don't talk anything about the lasting effects of that hormone. I mean, which is totally foreign to the body from that level of input. Depending on the type of contraceptive, if it's like an IUD, that's a foreign object in the body. They'll talk about this stuff.

They just say, yeah, put this in and then as soon as you're ready to have kids, take it out and you'll be golden. But just total, I mean, there was somebody that was getting a birth control pill prescribed after they had gotten through menopausal years just to simply help with some of the symptoms. And it's just like that's common. That's that's not, that's not a Horror Story. That's, you know, I mean, it just happens so frequently and people don't recognize it. Yeah.

And I think it's important to understand, I mean, we could literally talk an hour about birth control and and how we are really mismanaging and misunderstanding hormone health across the board. But they don't tell you that you're at risk for ovarian cancer and uterine cancer and breast cancer. And that doesn't go away when you get off of the pill. Like, you would think that your risk for those cancers goes away when you get off, but it actually doesn't. But I don't recall ever hearing

that when I was being prescribed birth control pills. And I think that, you know, most, most women are never told that and don't even understand that. And it we really are just overriding the body's underlying imbalances and Physiology to try to make those hormones somewhat imbalance. But in the big, big scheme of things, it doesn't really work that way. Yeah, yeah, totally agree. Everything that we're looking at is not, you can't view it through the lens of it being in

a vacuum. Like especially with hormones, like you pull one lever and 10 other levers get pulled by default exactly as it pertains to the thyroid. Can you just do like a deep dive on we'll, we'll just go super basic and then we'll get deeper and deeper. But what is the thyroid? What is its primary function in the body? How does it manipulates metabolism? Like just kind of give us a deep dive on the thyroid and its function as a whole.

Yes, perfect. So the thyroid is a butterfly shaped gland that kind of sits at the base of your neck. All right, So the thyroid mostly makes T4 hormone and then the body has to convert that T4 hormone into T3 hormone, which is the active form of thyroid hormone. That's what your body can use. Now, the thyroid hormone in general is responsible for regulating your metabolic rate, right? Or your metabolism, right?

So how fast your metabolism works or how slow your metabolism works is usually regulated by thyroid hormones, specifically T3. Now the thyroid is pretty cool or the thyroid hormones, and they are so important. There is a receptor site on every single cell in the body from your head to your toe to receive thyroid hormone. And that's why when our thyroid hormones go down that we can

have a whole host of symptoms. So if the thyroid function is low, many women experience the inability to lose weight or weight gain. They have trouble sleeping, whether it's falling asleep or staying asleep. They may have issues with depression and anxiety both at the same time, which sometimes it's hard to understand how someone can be depressed and anxious, but it happens.

They have issues with their hair falling out, their nails being thin, their skin being dry, extremely low energy and brain fog. And so it's like how can one tiny gland or 1 hormone have all of those effects? It's because it truly effects from your head to your toe and it's really at the reason it's is because it regulates your

metabolic rate. And I think one of the things in the biggest fallacies that we have with understanding thyroid health is that most thyroid hormone Physiology happens outside of the thyroid because your body makes mostly T4. And women who've been diagnosed with low thyroid, they're

looking at one marker only. Now, we can go into all of these little things and go deeper, but when they're looking at one marker only, they're typically only looking at TSH and that stands for thyroid stimulating hormone. And that's actually not even made by the thyroid, it's made by the pituitary. So your pituitary, a small gland inside of your brain, tells the thyroid when and how much

thyroid hormone to make. And so most of the time they're just looking at the TSH and prescribing medication based on if that's high or low, and they're not looking at all of the other thyroid Physiology that goes outside of the thyroid, thyroid gland. And there's more than 22 different patterns of thyroid Physiology imbalances that we can see. And most of the time, women who are diagnosed with low thyroid are really just prescribed AT4 hormone and kind of shushed out the door.

Now, men do have thyroid issues as well, but it's just much more common in women. But men can have low thyroid. In a perfectly healthy individual that's natural, not taking any thyroid medication or you know, HRT of any form. What can one expect thyroid function to look like as time goes on? Like how is thyroid function impacted in a healthy individual without, you know, all the external factors naturally? What would what would one expect

to see there? Well, are you asking me like, what does it look like if somebody is functioning with a great healthy thyroid? Because you should maintain thyroid health all the way through life. Like it's not normal that the thyroid moves into hypothyroid or low thyroid function, but you should easily be able to

maintain your Physiology, right? You should maintain your, your body composition. Weight should not be a struggle all the time, so that and you should have good energy, you should sleep well, you should have regulated hormones. That's what it should look like whenever you have a healthy thyroid metabolism and function. So thyroid function should operate at normal capacity, healthy capacity, independent of

menopausal years, for instance. Like it's not like testosterone, whereas when you go through menopause that drops off a Cliff for females. Yeah, that's exactly right. So it we don't have these big fluctuations and transitions through different stages in our lives, right. So thyroid function should be maintained all the way through the entire lifespan. What is the difference between thyroid function between male and female? Is there significant shift there?

Is that pretty even keel throughout both? It's pretty much even killed throughout both. There really isn't a lot of differences between male and female thyroid Physiology. Now there's a lot of different Physiology that goes on between men and women, which makes it, you know, it impacts thyroid function in women differently

than men, for example. So the most common cause of low thyroid is an autoimmune condition called Hashimoto's, and this is where your immune system makes antibodies to tag the thyroid tissue for destruction. So about 90, upwards of 98% of women who have low thyroid actually have an underlying autoimmune condition. That's why they have a low thyroid. Their thyroid just didn't stop working. That's why this is not like a menopausal thing. This is more of an autoimmune issue.

Now, these autoimmune diseases typically turn on with big hormonal fluctuations. All right, So we see Hashimoto's turn on when women go through puberty. We see it especially at the highest rate after women have babies. And then again, you see either it turn on or an exacerbation of symptoms as women go through menopause. So you do see different, you do see like different thyroid Physiology as we go through these phases and the thyroid is impacted by our other hormonal

fluctuations. And mostly it's because the

immune system is impacted by estrogen and testosterone surges. So women are going to be at a higher risk for developing Hashimoto's and therefore there's going to be a higher occurrence of low thyroid in women. But men also do get low thyroid and they can have Hashimoto's. And the most common times that I see this turn on in men is after they've gone through a major

stressful event, right? So, you know, I, I've treated many male patients, but it's after like a death or a bankruptcy or some major life event where it really tips the scales and the immune system starts to attack the thyroid.

Gotcha. So are there many issues in which case the thyroid itself is the primary driver for these conditions, or is it more so the thyroid is what is negatively impacted, the result of these underlying root causes and then it's just manifesting itself in metabolic disruption? Yeah. So the first thing that happens is the immune system starts attacking the thyroid. That's the first thing that happens. So most of the time it is not a primary thyroid issue.

It is an autoimmune disease. And this autoimmune condition turns on and it can be there for weeks, months, years before you ever get diagnosed with low thyroid. And this is one of the frustrations with many people is that they have every symptom of low thyroid, but they go to the doctor and the doctor keeps telling them that their thyroid hormones look fine, like there's nothing wrong, but they're like, I have every thyroid symptom in the book.

And so they just wait until the immune system has attacked the thyroid enough to where they actually have low thyroid hormone and then they give them thyroid medication. All right, so this is a primary autoimmune issue. And then secondarily, we develop hypothyroid. This is in most cases. Now, certainly there are some people who have primary hypothyroid, but for the most part, that is a small percentage.

Most people who have Hashimoto have low, low thyroid, actually have Hashimoto's. So then if you take the, we got to look for the solution, like why is this a problem? What do you do to fix it? So Hashimoto's is kind of at the top. It's the highest priority. So it's an autoimmune condition. So now you have to ask a deeper question. What's causing the immune system

to attack the thyroid? Now this is very important question because when you have one autoimmune disease, you're at risk for developing multiple autoimmune diseases. And in particular with Hashimoto's, you're at risk for developing thyroid cancer. So it's really important to get the immune system stable and to handle what's causing the immune system to attack the thyroid so that you don't start to get all these other autoimmune diseases or thyroid cancer.

Now, when we're looking to understand what's causing the thyroid, there's the immune attack on the thyroid. There's some pretty standard underlying triggers that many of us are dealing with. Now, we're not usually dealing with all of them, but we are dealing with a few of them. So one is insulin resistance. Every time we have an insulin surge, it will cause the immune system to attack the thyroid.

So that's when we eat bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, cookies, cakes, candy, soda, or if we don't eat enough or we're fasting for too long, that will cause an insulin surge. So not only does it make the immune system attack the thyroid, but when we have insulin surges, that's the one of the only hormones that is for fat storage.

All right, so it's kind of we get stuck in these bi directional feed forward pathways where it's like we're trying to focus on the thyroid, but we're ignoring insulin resistance and our blood sugar. And the crazy thing is insulin resistance has the almost the exact same symptoms as low thyroid. So you have to handle both of them. You have to handle both of them. Otherwise you're going to feel like you're chasing your tail and you're not going to get anywhere.

And, and this is one of the reasons when people take thyroid

medication and they don't fix these underlying issues, especially insulin resistance, they don't get anywhere. Like they may feel good for a short period of time, but because they didn't fix the insulin resistance, they still have all the same symptoms. And then they feel like, you know, nothing ever works and they don't really understand what's going. Going on with the root cause, yeah, now I can go through some more of those triggers, go ahead. But we you can interject here.

Yeah, no, definitely. Let's go through all the triggers for sure. But if we're trying to avoid the unnecessary insulin spikes and improve insulin sensitivity and not be chronically dieting, it sounds like a pretty good argument for following relatively low carb approach at a maintenance or slight surplus intake from time to time, as opposed to just eating a bunch of carbs and eating too little far too often. Exactly.

You're, you're right on. And, and for me personally and even for my patients, we kind of shift between more of a Paleo into a keto and with some circadian fasting and then kind of back and forth so that you're not always in ketosis, you're not always in, you know, a deficit, But when you kind of fluctuate back, back and forth and you have to make that a lifestyle. But in order to stop this vicious cycle, we have to pay attention to our blood sugar and

our insulin. And it has been really eye opening to me. I started using continuous glucose monitors with my patients and myself. And it is amazing to see how the body is actually responding and how much some of these foods impact your blood sugar. Like, I have been doing this for, you know, two more than two

decades, almost 2 1/2 decades. And I know that when you eat corn and you drink a Margarita, your blood Sugar's going to go up. But I had a continuous glucose monitor on, and I just wanted to see, like, what it would do.

And my blood sugar went over 200. And I couldn't believe it. I'm not diabetic. I my blood sugar is good. But I was like, Oh my God, I knew it was going to go up, but I thought maybe 160, maybe 170, but I had no earthly idea that it was going to go over 200. And for me, I was like, wow, the, the, the book knowledge is important, the clinical experience is important. But seeing that on a glucometer for myself personally, I'm like, wow, that Margarita was terrible.

It wasn't even that good. It is definitely not worth it. So that was pretty eye opening. And I, I don't think it's been eye opening for patients because when you can see what it's actually doing to your Physiology, it's pretty crazy. Yeah, I'm a big fan of the CGMS. I mean, I'm not diabetic either, but I've worn one on multiple occasions and I feel like I'm really in tune with my body through the different preps that

I've done. So I, I know how certain things are going to affect me and I've been keto for forever. So my, my CGM data is pretty boring. But a lot of people that are not familiar with track and macros or they're not in tune with their body having something tangible to look at and see how a food that they would previously think would be a non issue massively causes a blood sugar spike. I think that makes it real for them and I feel like it empowers them.

So I think I'm a, I'm a huge fan of it. There's been some doctors that, you know, you know, naysay against CGMS if you're not diabetic, but I think, you know, the more data people have, the more empowered they'll feel. For sure, and you know, it was eye opening for me because I knew drinking a Margarita wasn't good, but I didn't realize the impact that that had. And I think we get stuck in OA little bit is OK and we get stuck in O on the weekends.

I'm not going to be as strict as I am during the weekday. And it's like you blow your whole week because you on the weekends you cheat, but you don't realize the impact that those things are having. So it makes it much easier. And I think that, you know, doctors that may not like CGMS, unless you're diabetic, I feel like they don't understand the impact of insulin resistance and the lead up to the actual

diabetes. But this is there may be a different approach to reverse that and to optimize Physiology versus you'll deal with it when you have a problem. Totally agree. Totally agree. I got another question that's maybe taking us down a tangent here, but I'm curious. So when you're doing Paleo and then transitioning your patients to keto as it pertains to their circadian rhythms, are you having them in more of a deficit during their keto phase or are you having them at a surplus

while keto as well? Well, I'll say this. When I take patients, usually I go through the Paleo phase in the beginning because it's an easier transition. So like if you take people who are used to eating McDonald's and Taco Bell and you know, they just have a terrible diet, moving them into Paleo is going to put them in a deficit because it is really hard to overeat proteins and vegetables.

I mean, you could certainly do it, but from where the typical patient is coming from, they're going to be in a, a bigger deficit than where they started. So then and getting them used to cooking this way and making different choices and, and getting them used to consuming Whole Foods and changing their mindset is a much easier transition than going straight keto. And so I like to start there. And many patients do exceptional and some of them I don't even have to really move into ketosis.

But the ones who really struggle with their weight and maybe they came to me and they were already eating low carb or they tried

low carb and they didn't get, you know, a lot of traction there. We start to work on all their underlying Physiology and working on moving into insulin, working on their blood sugar and then moving into ketosis. And when I'm in, when I have them go into ketosis, in the beginning, I really, we're not counting calories that much because you know, from where they came from and if you're eating mostly animal protein and green vegetables, it's really

hard to be in a surplus. I mean, it is really hard now. You could certainly overdo it. The other day I was eating macadamia nuts and I looked at the bag and there's 2000 calories in a bag of macadamia nuts. And I don't even know to tell you how much fat is in there. And I'm not really worried about the fat and I wasn't too much

worried about calories. But when you can eat half a bag of macadamia nuts sitting here as you're sitting all day in between patients, I was like, huh, this is crazy. So, you know, trying to pay attention to what you are eating because you can certainly go over if you're, if you're not looking at things appropriately. But moving people that are really struggling with weight and insulin resistance, moving

them into ketosis. And then maybe doing circadian fasting where we start with no eating 3 hours before bed and then moving into maybe skipping dinner a couple of times a week. And then seeing how their blood sugar responds and seeing how they're doing with their goals. Yeah, no, I can totally respect all of that. I feel like a lot of people, you got to make it easy for them from where they're coming from. You got to meet them where they're at.

So totally agree with everything you just said. There's been a few people that I'd say that keto long term is it causes implications with thyroid health. But I feel like in that context, it's always been from people

that are just chronically in a deficit. I feel like if you ate at a higher intake from time to time, that would revolt. You know, that would remove any issues for thyroid misfunction following a strict ketogenic approach. I think people just diet far too long far too frequently and that's what causes the issues. Yeah, I agree. And one of the, and I think that they do it sometimes in the wrong times of day. So there's a lot of, and I'm guilty of this too.

I was intermittent fasting kind of when that first started kind of coming out and intermittent fasting in the morning. And when you don't eat in the morning, it really impacts your thyroid health, your cortisol levels and your blood sugar. For me personally, when I was intermittent fasting, I loved it because I didn't have to eat. I am, I could, I could fast a lot, which is not great because that means your metabolism isn't necessarily where you want it. But I check my numbers all the

time, right? I get my blood work done. I'm looking at my A1C and my thyroid and all of that. And I was doing really hard intermittent fasting and I was in about ketosis. My ketones were probably anywhere from 2:00 to 3:00, which is pretty high, but it wasn't terrible. After about 3 months of that solid I went and got my labs and my A1C was pre diabetic and I was like what in the world is happening? And so this was before continuous glucose monitor.

So I was checking my blood sugar every 30 minutes in the morning and I noticed that my blood sugar was fine when I woke up at you know under 100 and then by 10:00 it was at like 110 and then by 11:00 it was at 1:20 and by 1:00 it was over 120. And so my body couldn't handle that type of intermittent fasting. For me it was not good and I did not see that it was great for my patients.

So if you shift it to mimic your circadian rhythm, because when you wake up in the morning, your court, you're going to get a cortisol spike. And if you're not eating, you're going to get an insulin surge as well. And it's really hard on the body because that's when the body needs most of its energy is first thing in the morning. And then cortisol starts to go down when you're trying to sleep at night and everything is moving into a different

direction. So I found it's much easier on the body and we get better results when we do more fasting at night versus first thing in the morning. Yeah, so now you got to switch from late night margaritas to mid morning mimosas, right? Something like that or no margaritas would be better. But I am finding. That when I go out to dinner with my husband, I'm like, can we what time do they open? 5:00, OK, we'll go 5:00 and then

that way I can eat early. So we're eating like with with all the old people, but that's OK. Yeah, it is crazy how there you go, there you go. I mean, parasympathetic sympathetic state has a massive impact on hormone function, thyroid health as well. And like, I just get so frustrated seeing people real. I mean, fasting can be great. It can certainly be a tool, intermittent fasting and extended fasting as well.

But when it got really popular, I guess probably like 20/20/21, I feel like it just blew up and you had so many people just taking it to the extreme with, you know, more days not eating than eating throughout the course of a week. And that's not necessarily natural in our current day and

age either. I mean, you can make an argument from an ancestral standpoint that, you know, they were definitely periods of time where we were doing extended fasting, but, you know, people can certainly overdo it and that's going to wreak havoc hormonally speaking.

So yeah, I, I think you got, there's a yin Yang to everything. Like there's, there's a benefit to eating and feasting. If you're going to have a fast, you have to also feast. And people just seem to forget that feasting component of it. Yeah, and then other people forget the fasting. I will say this, having a continuous glucose monitor has really helped me because I now can do a 72 hour fast and feel amazing and my blood sugar is very stable. So it's more of an extended

fast. I haven't really had patients do this yet. I mean, because if as long as they're doing well with what we're doing and it's not like an extended fast and I'm going to let them continue to do that, but there's some patients that certainly you could do that. But I've, I've learned that a 72 hour fast like once a month for

me is great. And then, you know, as long as I will continue you to be in kind of in and out of ketosis, that's where my body functions the best, I feel the best and it seems to work physiologically. Yeah, totally. So what are some other primary drivers? So we got the Hashimoto's. What are some other triggers that you see people dealing with from an autoimmune standpoint that are then wreaking havoc on the thyroid downstream?

Yeah, so blood sugars #1 #2 is what you were talking about, your adrenal glands and, and stress levels. And so we get stuck in sympathetic OverDrive where the body is always feeling like it's under threat, it's always under stress. And so that is going to, first of all, drive the immune system to attack the thyroid. Secondly, you, because you don't go into Paris sympathetic where your body rests, digest and heals. So then you've got sleeping issues. Your circadian rhythm is dysregulated.

Circadian rhythm, for those that don't know, is that this is your sleep and wake cycle and it is regulated by your adrenal glands

and the production of cortisol. It's also regulated by melatonin and serotonin. But an oversimplification is that your adrenal glands produce cortisol in the morning and that should be your highest peak in the day. That's when you should wake up, pretty much when the sun comes up, you should feel great, you should have energy. And then cortisol slowly decreases throughout the day so that it's preparing you for sleep at night. And then it should stay low throughout the night and then

peak again in the morning. But a lot of times, because we're in OverDrive, we have high cortisol levels, which makes us gain weight around the midsection. And no amount of exercise is going to fix that. Cortisol is also impacted by insulin and your blood sugar. And so many people don't sleep at night because their blood sugar crashes and then the adrenal glands secrete cortisol and then you're awake and then you can't go to sleep for

another two hours. And so when our sleep and wake cycles are disrupted, we, we decrease the amount of time that we're healing, our digestion gets slowed down, so we get constipated. And your adrenal glands are really important for, for really your brain health as well. So adrenal function is important. And also it's also important for people to know that it's normal to have a cortisol spike in the morning and then it comes down

at night. And sometimes people have such along high cortisol that eventually the adrenal glands can no longer respond to stress in the way that it should. And this is when we start to get all these chronic degenerative diseases. And it's highly tied to your blood sugar. So if you have a blood sugar issue, like especially pre diabetes, you know you're going to have an adrenal issue because your adrenal glands help balance

blood sugar. And then you look at estrogen surges, testosterone surges, those will also trigger the immune system to attack the thyroid along with low thyroid hormones. So if you have low T3 or T4, that can be a trigger for the immune system to attack the thyroid. So a lot of women get frustrated that they've been prescribed these thyroid medications and they're not working, meaning like they don't feel any

different. So they just stop taking the thyroid medication, which actually just keeps this vicious cycle going. So one of the the biggest fallacies is that women think that when they take their thyroid hormones, all is going to be well. And the reason they think that is because that's what they're told. And so they take the thyroid medication or the thyroid hormone and they don't lose weight and they don't have any extra energy and they still have

the symptoms. And that's because some of these other underlying issues haven't been addressed. So when you start to fix the hormones and your blood sugar and your cortisol, and you also have to look at underlying infections, whether it's bacterial, yeast, fungus, viral, parasitic infections will be a trigger for the immune system. You have food sensitivities that also trigger the immune system. And then you have to look at gut health as well. So those are pretty much all the triggers.

Now, nobody has just one. Most people don't have all of them, but many people have. I would say probably like 4-4 or five of them. Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of moving targets. People got to get dialed in. How do you recommend people take action and figure out what their

body specifically needs? Like if they've got, you know, a healthy amount of stress that they're actually prioritizing sleep, getting good quality sleep if they're not drinking energy drinks all day long over caffeinating, if they're eating good quality foods. I'm assuming the best path for people to take is to actually get some labs drawn, see what their markers are looking like, see where they have

deficiencies, and then adjust from there. Yeah, exactly. So I have a thyroid transformation blueprint. And the first pillar is that we have to have goals, right? We have to have a constant pursuit of our goals. So what is our health goals? What is it that we're willing to do? What are we trying to do? And make sure that those goals are solid and that you have motivations for why you want to achieve those goals. So that's what helps keep you

moving forward. And I think a lot of people think that health is always on an upward trajectory, but it's kind of like up and down. As long as we're moving in the right direction and we're heading towards health, you know, that's the that's the progress that you should expect. Now the next thing is you have to have comprehensive testing.

So as it pertains to thyroid, when you go to your doctor and you say I have all of these symptoms and I think I have low thyroid because now we have doctor Google he's, he or she will say, OK, let's run your let's check your thyroid. And most of the time they just check ATSH. If they're lucky, they may do AT4, maybe a, a thyroid panel which includes AT4AT3 uptake and an FTI.

Now there are actually 12 different markers that make up a full thyroid panel and the, and you have to, you can't just look at the thyroid. You've got to look at your blood sugar and you've got to look at infections and you've got to look at your gut and you've got to look at inflammatory markers. Like all those things that we talked about. That is what comprehensive testing looks like.

A lot of people, if they've heard me talk or they've done checked with doctor Google, there's many different markers outside of just that TSH and they think that that's comprehensive testing. Well, that's looking at the thyroid in a more comprehensive way. But remember, the thyroid doesn't work in a vacuum.

So you have to truly test all of those different underlying triggers to figure out, OK, which ones am I dealing with? Which ones are the most priority? And that's what I'm going to start working on. It's, you know, we when we take thyroid supplements and or thyroid medication and we don't feel great, we stopped taking that. And then we say, OK, maybe it's a blood sugar issue and then we start working on that.

But we're not working on what's causing blood sugar issues because most of us think that what causes us to have a blood sugar issue is our food. And food does impact it. But if you have an underlying infection, it's going to raise your blood sugar. If you have a high toxic load, it's going to impact your blood sugar. They're actually toxins that are called diabetogens that sit on

top of insulin receptor sites. And if you're dealing with a high toxic load, you can have the most perfect diet and your weight's not going to move. And you wonder why. Why is this not working for me? It's because there's other things that are causing your blood sugar issue or other things that are causing the symptoms that you're dealing with. So you have to have full comprehensive testing. And then the next pillar is that you have to have a comprehensive analysis and diagnosis.

So I just got off the a call with someone right before this podcast. He was a spouse of a patient and he said, I'm, I'm totally healthy. I'm doing really great. I just need to lose weight. I'm like, oh, he's like, I've looked at my labs and my iron was high, so I'm gonna go donate blood, but everything else looks good. I'm like, oh, that's interesting. So I go through his labs and his insulin is outside of the lab range. His cholesterol is high, his triglycerides are high.

He's got a UTI, he's got an underlying viral pattern. He's like, yeah, I took it to my doctor and he said everything is looking great. And I said, OK, you're on metformin, you're on a statin, you're on a Zep bound, which is, you know, a GLP, one agonist. I'm like, OK, so the difference of health, what you're thinking of is healthy and you're just saying that you're not sick. That doesn't mean that you're not over, you're over here in optimal health.

And I think that that's really important because most of the time in traditional medicine, when they're looking at your labs, they're looking to diagnose a disease that they can give you a medication for. They're not looking, are you functioning in an optimal way? Are you in complete optimal

health? And most of the time, if we have a symptom, that's not the case because the way your body communicates, indicates with you is that if there's an underlying imbalance that it can't overcome, then it's going to give you a symptom. And it's our job to figure out, okay, where is that symptom coming from? What is this underlying imbalance that's creating this issue? And once you resolve that underlying imbalance, then the symptom goes away because it no

longer has a purpose. And so really getting someone who understands what goals you have, are your goals to reach optimal health or are your goals just to suppress symptoms and slow down the progression of a disease? So if your goals are to achieve optimal health and truly get down to the root cause, you have to have someone who's trained and understands how to look at things like that, not just to diagnose disease and give you a medication.

So that is really important. And then from there, only from there can you customize treatment plans because I think a lot of people they go from symptom to treatment and when you go from symptom to treatment, you're guessing. And that's when we go into our health food stores and we say, I really think I've got an adrenal issue so give me an adrenal

supplement. I think I must have a liver issue. So let me take a detox, detox supplements and maybe it's a blood sugar thing. So they take cinnamon. But if if you're not getting down to the root cause, the of you resolving the underlying symptom is is small and and you may be lucky, but you're not going to. It's really not directed in true science and customized based on your underlying imbalances.

Yeah, it's unfortunate because so many of these tests that people are getting, you know, they've got their healthy parameter range on the, you know, desired window there, but that that parameter is based off an average population that's not a healthy population to begin with. So it's probably the furthest thing from optimal.

And do you know of any like good graphs that show what optimal is that people can measure against that as opposed to just the print out they get from their their LabCorp request diagnostic center? Well, I don't necessarily know of a graph. I know the research that I've done and all the years of experience. I have memorized all of the optimal ranges and I actually have a, a print out or a downloadable PDF of all of the

thyroid. Like the, I tell you that there's 12 markers that make up a complete thyroid panel. And I also have the optimal ranges with that, which I can certainly make available to your viewers. But I don't know of any kind of other resource that has it all put together that I'm aware of that gives you all the optimal ranges. But I think it's important too, to understand that the, you have to know which test to order to, to kind of put everything together and understand

patterns. So it's not just about like for example, many people with low thyroid and who have insulin resistance issues have a fatty liver pattern and that means that their liver cells are dying off and they're turning into fat. Now you can diagnose that by

looking at the laboratory ranges. If they're outside of the laboratory ranges. But there's a pattern like AST and ALT are those liver enzymes and they should be between 10 and 19 and the lab range is like zero to 44. But the pattern is if those liver enzymes are above 19 and triglycerides are above 100, that's the beginning signs of this fatty liver pattern. And the crazy thing is you can even see that in ultrasound before we can see that pattern on blood.

But most of the time it doesn't get diagnosed until those liver enzymes are above 40 and 50 in the outside of the lab ranges. So you have to be able to look at patterns. It's not just looking at like liver enzymes, but you got to be able to correlate different patterns. So it goes far beyond just getting your generic annual physical and then looking for any red markers on your print out. Yeah, exactly.

What is the typical demographic? Like the patients that you're working with, what are they typically dealing with? What what are they coming to you specifically for? When do they honestly know that there is an issue to begin with? Like who is your general avatar? Patient demographic I guess. Yeah, my patient demographic is typically somewhere between 50 and 65. Now certainly we have, we have women on the outsides of that for sure. But I think 50 and 65 is typical.

And they've all been dealing with low thyroid issues for decades. And I think they've tried every diet, just like I tried every diet. They have a diagnosis. They've been told that the reason they feel like they feel is because of their age. They say, oh, it's because of menopause. And when you get told that when it's age or menopause, what are

you going to do about that? Nothing like there's nothing we can do about our age and there's nothing you can do about the phase of life that you're in. So I think that most of these women are frustrated. They've been dealing with it for a long time. They haven't found anything that's worked. And so, you know, that is when they stumble upon me and you know, all of the women that I've I've worked with, that's when they start to get excited and they start to have hope again with.

The popularity that has arose arisen from, you know, HRT, bioidentical hormones. I mean, it seems like I haven't got a conversation around that almost on a daily basis these days, whereas you didn't really hear that at all 5-10 years ago it seems. What's, I mean, it's kind of like the Wild West in certain regards. And I feel like a lot of these doctors are prescribing HRT without a comprehensive view of what downstream effects are.

So when you are a menopausal woman that's going on HRT, what can they expect that to do to thyroid health and function if that conversation is not had and just tested for at the onset? OK, so you're right. Hormone replacement therapy right now is the wild, Wild West. There are no solid guidelines and doctors are really just trying to figure out where they start and how they manipulate this. And my biggest beef with women going on hormone replacement therapy is that they're not

tested. They are not tested thoroughly to understand what is like urine, blood and saliva, to understand free fraction form, what's at the tissue level, what's floating in the blood and how is the body metabolizing those hormones. So understanding full thyroid Physiology is extremely important. And then once women get put on these hormone replacement therapies, are we testing to make sure that they're not metabolizing this down the wrong pathway, increasing their risk

for estrogen dominant cancers? So yes, even though it's bioidentical, if they are pushing this down the four hydroxy or 16 hydroxy pathway, they're increasing their risk

for estrogen dominant cancers. The other thing that's really important is, you know, understanding that women who have an autoimmune disease, they get triggered when they have these big estrogen surges or testosterone surges. It can be a trigger for autoimmunity.

So we have to look at the person in front of us, understand the full aspects of their health history and where they're at, and then continuing to test them to make sure that they're on the right dosage, that they're metabolizing this properly. If they're not, how do we support them in that way is going to be very, very important and not just sticking them on these hormones for eternity. And I see people, women who have hormones as high, higher than a menstruating female.

I'm like, I don't think estrogen is supposed to be like 2 times higher than when we are menstruating. And then they wonder why they have a hard time losing weight. So I think that there's benefits to using hormone replacement therapy. I think that we don't have enough guidelines and understanding of how these hormones are working in the body. I always look at it like Plinko, you know, the game Plinko, you might be too young, like on the Price is Right.

So they just drop it at the top and then it kind of goes and you have no control over what the body is doing with that hormone. It's like we are going to hope for the best, but we have no idea how it's metabolizing it, how it's going to stay in the body, what it's going to do. And so it's literally just guessing and hoping for the best. And the other thing that's important is that hormones, in my opinion, are at the bottom, at the end of a metabolic

pathway. So for me, I'm not saying that hormones are all bad, but what I'm saying is why do we have low hormones in the 1st place? Because postmenopausal women are supposed to have a certain amount and a healthy amount of estrogen, progesterone and testosterone.

If they're below a pre a postmenopausal range, we need to ask the question why? Right. So if we have low estrogen and testosterone, well, what does DHEA look like? Okay, DHEA is low. Well, why is DHEA low? Well, because the adrenal glands are not functioning well. So what else is going on at the adrenal level? Are they in constant fight or

fly and have high cortisol? So all of the resources are being pushed into cortisol and not into estrogen or DHEA so that it can go into estrogen and testosterone. So understanding like why we have low hormones, because if you're over supplementing with estrogen, you're going to push DHEA down, right? Like it all, there's so many

other impacts. Hormones affect, you know, the whole body and they don't just affect like it doesn't just affect estrogen, it affects DHEA and adrenal function and testosterone and everything is impacted by these hormones. So really having a better understanding of how hormones work. And also if we can keep asking the question, why, why are these hormones so low? And can we work at a root cause level? I think that that's a a better approach. Yeah. No, I totally agree.

It seems that the general consensus has just moved to them being a pro, you know, through and through without much thought given towards any repercussions downstream, which has been frustrating for me because I'd like to take a more holistic, comprehensive approach. So of the, you know, 50 to 65 year demographic that you're typically working with over the past five years, is there any idea, general thought as to what percentage of those patients have been prescribed HRT before

coming to you? You know, if I was just to guess, I would probably say 50% of them have. And I think that the reason that they're coming to me is that they may be same thing with thyroid hormones, right? So they felt good for a little bit and then they went back to not feeling good and then they got on HRT and they felt good for a little bit, but now they don't feel so good or they got

on HRT and they all fell apart. When they fall apart after getting on HRT, I know it's just they had an immune response, right? So that that doctor didn't understand that estrogen and testosterone surges can cause an immune attack on the body. So I would say a good percentage of them have been on hormone replacement. And then from what I do is just do the testing. Do they do well on hormone replacement it are they

metabolizing it properly? You know, what are their adrenal glands looking like and making sure that they're good. Some of them are doing great. Others I'm like, Oh my God, they have you on like, you know, a 16 year old dose of estrogen when you are 65, you probably don't need that much estrogen and your estrogen dominant, your progesterone's all out of

balance with your estrogen. So it's, it's really trying to, you know, give see the patient for where they're at and then make the appropriate changes based on how they're doing and their Physiology. Totally agree. Totally agree. What about, I forget the name of it, but there's that popular, you know, pig thyroid medication that's supposed to improve are you know, natural up regulation of thyroid function. Do you have a thought towards

that at all? Yeah. So that is Armor thyroid and Armor thyroid is a natural like desiccated pig thyroid and it has T4 and T3 in it. And I would say this, I don't necessarily have any major preference to what thyroid medication a patient is on. It all depends on how their body is absorbing it and processing it. So you will find some doctors who are like I only use Armor Thyroid, but some patients don't do well on Armor thyroid like they need more T4.

So I just look at it like, OK, how is a patient doing?

They already mostly come on prescription thyroid medication. Sometimes they have issues with Armor thyroid. They may have issues with Thinthroid or levothyroxine. They have an under conversion issue maybe from T4 to T3, so they're not converting it properly. So it's just looking and evaluating where the person is and not getting too hung up on a specific thyroid medication because again, it's important that we have enough thyroid

hormones. But most of the issue that they're having is from all the other underlying triggers that haven't been addressed. Now there's other better, in my opinion, T4 hormones, which is tyrosine because it's super clean, like the Levothyroid toxin and Synthroid have cornstarch in it and some dairy in it. And you know, I've looked at it, but there's some rumors that it has gluten in it, but I couldn't be super clear about that. So some people just do not do well on that medication.

And then tyrosin is super clean. I think it's a MCT oil with T4 and a gel cap. So if somebody needs AT 4, that's a really good option. And then other people do really well on Armor and some don't. So it's not necessarily about the thyroid medication. Sometimes it is, but not always, and usually it's the underlying triggers that are the biggest issue. Totally. How often should someone get these comprehensive panels?

It's going to be kind of case dependent based off of what manipulations you're making, but as a general of them, how frequently should someone get these comprehensive lab panels drawn to see to give it enough time to actually see measurable change but not wait too long between testing? Yeah, like I just saw a patient this morning. Her doctor sees her once a year and she lowered her medication because she was in way over medicated.

She lowered her medication and I'm like, when are you going to

go back to see her? Cuz this isn't, this is definitely not low enough because you're still in hyperthyroid. She's like, oh, I'm not going to, I'm not due to see her for another six months. I'm like, Oh my gosh. So definitely not a year, but that is typical. So most people get their, their thyroid checked once a year, regardless if they're changing

or not. My patients, when I have them in care, I do their labs every 45 to 60 days because when you're treating the underlying root cause, the body heals pretty quickly. And so I should expect to see pretty significant changes within 45 to 60 days. And then we continue that pattern until you know someone has reached balance and and they're doing really well. And then? And then after that, I would say like every six months it would be appropriate.

That's about what I do. Every six months I do a a full big blood panel. And you probably don't want to make drastic shifts into your thyroid medication based off of how you're feeling on a given day. Like you kind of want to get it dialed in, hold a steady baseline and then let that data come in 4560 days later and then make a shift as necessary, not just, you know, change based off

of how you're feeling that day. Because I have had some patients or some clients that have done that and I'm not their thyroid, you know, doctor. So I'm, you know, not prescribing them anything. But I'm like, if you're messing with anything hormone related or thyroid related, you probably don't want to shift on a regular recurring basis like that. Yeah, I had a patient just the other day doing that and I said, does your doctor know that you're doing this?

Like one day you take this and the next day if you don't feel like it, you don't take that. She goes, yeah, she told me to self medicate because my symptoms are so up and down. So it is better to have consistent amount of thyroid hormone in the body so that your your body is maintaining the metabolic rate. And I will almost, it's almost always that if you're having these big fluctuations in the way that you feel, it's probably your blood sugar and not your

thyroid. And so then they're increasing and decreasing, increasing their thyroid medication. And that really isn't. That's not how the body typically works. Yeah, cuz there's like a lag time to everything. And if you don't give your body the adequate time to acclimate to whatever changes you're making, then you're making feedback that's based off of inputs that were taking place, you know, weeks or months prior, which is just, it's like shooting in the dark.

It's not gonna really work out well for you. That's right. The only thing that you know changes pretty quickly is your blood sugar, right? Like your blood sugar can go up and down pretty quickly. But like when you're dealing with Hashimoto's, I can tell I have Hashimoto's. I can tell when I kind of am over where I should because my heart rate will speed up or I'll have like a heart palpitation. So to me, that means the immune system just attacked the thyroid.

And I just got a little shot of, you know, thyroid hormones because those thyroid cells died. So I'd take a step back and I say, OK, how's my blood sugar? How's my stress level? Do I feel like I have some kind of infection? Like, where am I at? And then a lot of people take that as like, oh, I need to decrease my meds right now, but that it already happened, Like, and it's not because they're usually over medicated. It's because they just, you know, ate something.

Or did you get into gluten or dairy or some kind of food sensitivity or some trigger that caused your immune system to attack the thyroid And you're going to feel like you're you're over medicated. But it shouldn't last that long. And you should go back and look at the underlying trigger.

What? What do you do for stress? Would you consider yourself a stressed person in general? I don't have the personality of being stressed, but I will tell you I am running a business. I've got two kids, I've got a marriage, I have a farm, a regenerative farm. I I'm always doing something, writing a book, developing an app. I have I always over commit. So do I stress my body out? Absolutely.

So but you. You have to balance that so that you don't really, you're not stuck in this sympathetic OverDrive. So for me, I'm always out with my animals whenever I can. That will, that actually will put you more into a parasympathetic state. I'm always walking in nature. I meditate almost every single day for at least an hour. I get into the sauna and I eat

really well. So I try to manage that stress and I can always tell like when my when I'm tipping into that distress instead of being in eustress, I always just take a break and I have everybody around me to support me in that way. So I've created that environment. So when I need a break, I'm like, I'm out. I am just taking a few hours off or a day off and I just need to recuperate.

I prioritize sleep. I was just telling my husband he woke up today and he's like, God, I really slept well last night said me too. I'm like, I've been sleeping for 9 hours a night, which is very unusual. And he goes, you're, you're recovering. It's OK. I'm like, OK, you're right, you're right. I that's OK for me to sleep for

9 hours a night. So I'd really try to manage the stress that I pile on and what am I going to do to kind of counterbalance that so that I'm also supporting parasympathetic. Yeah, it's, it's a fine dance to make for sure, because I'm, I'm in the same boat. Like I've got some my nutritions dialed in, my training's optimized, but I just bring so

much to my plate. I mean, I own multiple businesses, I've got clients. It's just like I love everything I do too. And that makes it even trickier because when you love everything you do, you just keep adding to it. I'm burning my candle. It all ends without a doubt. But I don't know that that that's my Achilles heel for sure. It's just being stressed. It's always a good stressed mentally but like physiologically it probably

still wears on me just the same. Yeah, I think it's, you know, for me, I have a huge mission, which is to truly change the face of healthcare. And I really emphasize Women's Health because I think women have the biggest circle of influence. And so when you have that huge mission, probably like you too, there's so many opportunities. There's so many ways that people can be helped. And so in order to do that at maximum productivity, your health has to be your number one priority.

And I find that business owners and moms, a lot of times we aren't prioritizing our health. And so all of our efforts and our productivity and our brain function really suffers. And so I made a commitment a long time ago that my health was always going to be my number one priority. And so that is, you know, how I can prioritize eating, working out. I don't start my day until 10:00. I said nobody talk business to me until after 10:00. Why? Because I write my goals in the morning.

I have a good breakfast, I work out, I go talk to my animals, I go harvest stuff in the garden. And then at 10:00, I'm ready to go. And then I'm usually done by 7:00 PM, which I also go walk outside and do all of those things. But you have to set your boundaries and you have to set your priorities.

And I know for sure that if your health isn't your number one priority, whatever it is that you do, whether you're an entrepreneur and you're crazy like us or you're a crazy like us mom or or whatever it is that you do, if your health isn't your number one priority, everything else suffers. Yeah. No, I completely agree, Completely agree. I got another question for you. This one's definitely a tangent, but what type of regenerative

farm you operate in there? Well, we decided in 2021 that we were going to start a regenerative farm. My husband really just wanted to be on land. And then I was like, OK, let's go. And so, you know, for us understanding and knowing that there's a saying you are what you eat, but it goes way deeper because you are what you eat eats. And so the more that we are understanding what they're doing to the animals that we're eating.

And I, I just remember in COVID, like reading something, seeing an article or some post on Facebook or Instagram where the slaughterhouses, no, the, the feedlots were killing hundreds of cows. And I'm like, that's weird. Why would they kill all of those cows? Why don't they just wait a couple months and then process them when when the processors open again? Like that made no sense to me. But the more that I dug into that story is that these cows are diabetic.

They literally would not have lived that long and they would have these cows like dying and they wouldn't have any control over that. So they went ahead and just killed all of those cows. And I was like, I knew that cows that ate grains were not great and I knew it was better if it was grass fed because of the the omegas, right? The Omega threes, nines, sixes that balance. But I didn't realize that those cows were diabetic. And if you're eating cows that are diabetic, it cannot be good

for you. You eating like sick animals with chronic degenerative disease and then learning more about all the pesticides and all the things that they put. So I'm like, OK, if we're gonna move to land, great.

I'm gonna start a regenerative farm. And my husband's like, Oh my God, what are we gonna do? So I have cows. All of our animals are heritage breeds, so they take longer to grow. And they have been less genetically modified. They're not really genetically modified, but less hybridized. And when you learn that the the turkeys that we are eating can't even procreate and they're artificially inseminated because it makes a bigger breast and there's more meat, you're like,

Oh my gosh, that's crazy. So we have heritage turkeys, heritage chickens, Highland cows. We have sheep and pigs and, and a huge garden. So we have all of that. I'm in the process of maybe doing bees and goats, but I got to hire a a ranch manager to help me because I can't do all of that. No, this is this is super cool because we have we have chickens, we raised lamb and I'm doing it all rotational grazing as well. So like this is we're speaking

the same language here. I had a little hair sometime for another. Hour. Go ahead. Yeah, totally, totally. I had Will Harris on the podcast. I went and did a seminar at his ranch in in Georgia. That was awesome. But yeah, I mean, we got bees. Like I'm just going super deep in this as well. We actually had a guy over this morning. I'm probably going to buy some pigs from him to raise the pigs.

So yeah, this, I mean, we could definitely talk about this for another hour because I love this. What kind of pigs are you raising? We haven't gotten him yet, so he's got a couple different strains. I'm kind of leaning towards like the Cooney Cooney's or something. But I've you mentioned Highland cows. How much land are y'all on that you're raising the cows on? 60 acres. So I don't have a lot of cows. I have, yeah, I have like 6 or 7 cows. We probably can't handle much more.

What I've learned, like the sheep and the goats, you can

have 10 sheep or 10 goats to one cow. So, you know, it's, it's more efficient on smaller amounts of land to have sheep and goats versus cows. So we can't handle that much more cows than what we have by and, and letting the grass rest for at least 60 days in between when they graze. So we're we're trying to manage that. But I have Cooney Cooney's also and they are so great. I had old spots too, but we are

getting rid of the old spots. They're just not as friendly and I don't know, I just, I feel like they would knock me over and eat me if I fell in the paddock with them. But the coonies, they get on your lap when they're babies and they are just the most precious things. Then we're actually processing our first kind of round of them. But you know, I haven't ever had their meat, but I heard the meat's great. But they're amazing, almost like dogs. They're so amazing.

Yeah, and they're, they're, I mean, I've only heard good things about that that breed as well. I've heard really good things about the Highland cows. There's like super Hardy from what I've read up on, like I've never raised the cows. My uncle did way back in the day. So I'm excited to get back into it. But the lamb that we raised were super easy. I mean, they were the easiest by far. And we we, we kept them for an

additional year. So they kind of were more so mutton than than than lamb, but they had more fat on them. That was delicious. It was just super breezy. And I feel like the more significance and importance you put on the foods you eat, the more by default you care about what that animal consumed. And it just makes sense that you

raise them if possible. I mean, I do a lot of hunting too, but knowing your local rancher, if you're not raising them yourself, just like becoming more connected with the foods you eat so that circle of life is more complete and transparent, I think is just incredibly important. It is. And I think from an energetic perspective, these animals are, you know, treated with love every single day and they have great, amazing food and they're in a no stress whatsoever environment.

I think that that also really infiltrates the food that we're eating. 100% what state are you located in? Texas Oh, and so Highlands, they told me Texas Highlands don't do that great with the heat, but mine do really well. But they do have access to water and they literally sit in the pond all day long whenever it's hot. But they they do, they do really well. Well, I'm in Arkansas, so I mean pretty similar climate to Texas. So yeah, I'm kind of leaning towards Highlands as our

accounts for sure. They're so sweet. They let me brush them and they're really friendly. I have one that's kind of bitchy, but all the other ones are are super sweet. And we have a bull who is like, oh, you could go sit on him and he would not care. So they're all very docile, pretty sweet animals. Love it, love it. Well, we could probably, like I said, talk forever on homesteading. We'll have to do a round two podcast dedicated to to homesteading, raising your own meat.

But Doctor Heather Stone, I truly appreciate the time and all the expertise on thyroid function. If there's everything I can do to help you in any way, you just let me know. What can people go to find out more about you, dive deeper into your work, all that good stuff? Yeah, they can go to my Facebook group called Happy, Healthy and Lean. Every month I do a master class there and that's how people would be available to get testing or even to enter into care.

So that's it really the only place that they can go to get more access. Now I do have a book that's out on Amazon called the Thyroid Transformation Blueprint, so

they can always get more information there. Awesome, well I'll link out. Make it easy people to find you for sure. OK. Thanks for having me on. It was great. Thank you. Appreciate it. Take care.