I had the greatest fortune to have sat with one of India’s greatest Ayurvedic physicians, Vaidya Rama Kant Mishra. He came from a family lineage dating back 5,000 years and were Raj Vaidyas, the very few selectively picked Ayurvedic doctors worthy of treating the royalty of India. I sat with Vaidya for almost 20 years and during that time he taught me all of his family lineage secrets, and at the same time he made over 500 formulas for all the conditions we treated together.
Once he saw how successful the treatments were and how the patients were overcoming all kinds of health problems, he decided to start teaching other doctors. He started to write a course which he said would last two years: the first year he would teach the doctors all the diseases and the second year he would teach them all the herbs used to treat those diseases. So he started writing the course, but he suddenly passed away one day totally unexpectedly and never got to finish writing it up.
Suddenly all the doctors turned to me and asked how they would then gain access to the precious knowledge he had imparted to me. It was then and there that I realized that I needed to train both the doctors and the lay person all that Vaidya had taught me so this valuable knowledge wouldn’t end with me.
So I started to write a compendium book of all the diseases and the best way to treat them. When I pitched the idea to publishers they told me that while I might enjoy reading about several diseases in one book, the average person would rather read about one disease at a time. I was told to pick one disease and write on that. Within a split second I said, “Oh, then I must write about the thyroid gland.”
This is because out of all the ailments I treat, big and small, the thyroid gland is definitely something I treat more of than any disease out there.
So why is this so? And why are common treatments for the thyroid not always the best route to take in treating this very delicate and important gland?
First, let me describe why I felt so compelled to write a book on the thyroid:
There are two basic types of thyroid patients you’ll see:
The first group are those who have full-blown thyroid symptoms, such as hair loss, unexplained weight gain, constipation, high cholesterol, history of miscarriage, cold hands and feet, dry skin and hair, and depression, yet when they get their blood work done all the thyroid levels come back within the normal range. They are told nothing is wrong with them and they leave the doctor’s office feeling hopeless and frustrated.
The second group has all these symptoms and their blood work does show low thyroid hormone levels, but they still have the same symptoms even after they are put on prescription thyroid medication.
So let’s take a look at the first group: According to Vaidya Mishra’s family lineage, we go through 9 stages of a disease process as we work our way towards a disease which will show up on medical testing. In the first two stages some things may be out of balance in our bodies but there won’t be any symptoms just yet. By the second and third stages you will start to get symptoms, but at this stage you still can’t find it on any testing and you can’t yet name it as a disease. But if you let these imbalances continue to fester, by the fifth and sixth stage it will become evident on blood work and other testing, and you can now start to give a name to the disease. This is why many people might have a weak thyroid, which is giving them full-blown thyroid symptoms, but the disease process hasn’t progressed to the fifth and sixth stage yet, where anyone can find it.
Which, of course is good, but it also means that you don’t ignore the early stages of a disease process just because it doesn’t show up on blood work yet. What you have to do is to try to figure out all the reasons why the thyroid is weak. It’s usually multiple reasons, and they will be different in each patient. You must address those underlying reasons and then support the thyroid gland with proper herbal formulas, diet and proper rest. This will prevent the you from progressing to the fifth and sixth stage where a disease process develops.
I can’t tell you how many hundreds of patients I have seen where I tell them we need to fix their thyroid gland and they tell me their blood work is normal. And I have had some of them decide not to treat it, and then they called me a few years later saying how they should have listened because now they were diagnosed with thyroid disease.
Now the second group whose blood work did show a thyroid problem and they are taking medication still don’t feel well. This is because no attempt was made to try to see what the underlying problems are which are weakening the thyroid in the first place. And on top of that, when you take the prescription thyroid hormones, your thyroid gland will actually get weaker and might even disintegrate as the years go by because it is no longer called upon to make its hormones. So it just goes into a hibernation. This is why just taking the thyroid medicine without addressing all the reasons why the thyroid gland is weak isn’t always a good idea.
So here’s a list of the most common reasons the thyroid gland could be weak:
Eating tofu and/or drinking soy milk: the isoflavones in the soy products depress the thyroid gland.
Drinking fluoridated water as the fluoride is a poison to the thyroid gland. Back in the 1930’s fluoride was used to weaken the thyroid gland in cases of hyperthyroidism where the thyroid gland was overactive. But it worked too well — the fluoride killed the thyroid gland, so they had to scrap that idea. It was shortly after that they put it in a lot of the municipal drinking water throughout the United States and some other countries. And it was shortly after that the thyroid epidemic began to blossom as people unwittingly shut down their thyroid glands as they tried to prevent dental cavities.
Mercury in the flu shots, fish, air pollution and old dental fillings. The thyroid gland is the only gland that uses iodine, so whenever any iodine comes into the body it goes immediately to the thyroid gland to be used to make its hormones. The problem is this: mercury looks very similar to fluoride on the periodic chart, and the thyroid gland actually prefers the mercury over the iodine, so when that comes into the body, it lands on the thyroid gland and upsets its normal function.
Going to bed past 10:00 PM: The thyroid gland is a very delicate gland, kind of like a little princess. She needs at least 2 hours of sleep before midnight in order to function properly, so if you decide you want to stay up late on a regular basis, you are inviting lots of thyroid problems.
A diet too low in animal protein: The thyroid gland makes its hormones primarily out of animal protein, so if you have decided to go on a plant-based diet, and are misinterpreting this to mean no animal products at all in the diet and ONLY plants instead of plant-BASED, then your thyroid gland will struggle to make its hormones.
The birth control pill: if you are on the birth control pill for any length of time, you run the risk of developing thyroid problems for many reasons, but here are a few: the birth control pill depletes selenium, zinc and tyrosine which your thyroid gland needs to make its hormones.
Another reason is because the high doses of estrogen contained in birth control pills increase the activity of Thyroxine Binding Globulin (TBG) which binds thyroid hormone. When you have too much TBG in the bloodstream it leads to lower levels of free thyroid hormone available for use by the body. The thyroid hormone is there, but it is bound to this protein. In order for it to have any effects on the body, it has to let go of this protein and travel in the bloodstream to its destination sites. If there is too much TBG, the thyroid gland is bound up and can’t get free to go where it has to go.
And the birth control pill indirectly affects the thyroid by destroying the friendly bacteria in the gut and at the same creating tremendous amounts of toxicity in the liver as it struggles to deal with these terrible chemicals coming into it every day. Both the friendly bacteria in the gut and the liver activate the thyroid hormones so they can be used by the body. It works like this: you make the thyroid hormones, but they really can’t exert their influence until they are activated and carried into the inside of your cells. Eighty percent of this activation occurs by the liver and twenty percent occurs by the friendly bacteria in the gut. So if you upset the function of these two very important areas, you will develop thyroid problems.
And one of the largest reasons for thyroid problems come from too much rushing, or as we call it in Ayurvedic terminology: high Vata. Vata is that governing principle inside of our bodies that controls the movement of things throughout the body, such as the movement of food through the digestive tract, or the movement of blood as it circulates throughout the body. Even the movement of thoughts in the mind are under the control of Vata. So while we may want to be physically active and use our brains efficiently every day, if we have too much physical movement, or too many thoughts in the mind our Vata can go high.
In other words, if we rush too much through the day it will definitely weaken both our thyroid glands and adrenal glands as they try to accommodate this high level of stress that you are putting on your body. Yes, we were made to move and think throughout the day, but like everything else, we want a balanced amount of movement in our bodies and minds. We all know that burnt out feeling that comes from worrying too much about something or from burning the candle at both ends. After a while we become so fatigued, and the best thing at that point is to allow the body to rest and figure out ways to calm down the mind so we don’t wear out our thyroid glands.
So the point of my book was this: the thyroid gland is more the victim of all these problems that we might experience in our lives. In other words, a problem with the thyroid gland doesn’t lie in the thyroid gland per se, but instead is being caused by all these various influences which can upset its normal function. So we want to redirect our treatment away from reflexively taking thyroid hormones and instead address all the things that wreak havoc on the thyroid gland. Sometimes you might need to take some herbal formulas to help strengthen the thyroid again if it has become too weakened.
So if you feel you have a thyroid problem, try to think outside the box and think more in terms of WHY you might have a thyroid problem. Stop doing those things that weaken it: go to bed no later than 10 PM, stop taking the birth control pill, make sure you get sufficient amounts of animal protein in the diet along with your vegetables, grains and beans, ask for the flu shot without the mercury, stop drinking the fluoridated tap water, and if you do feel you have mercury and/or fluoride in your body then learn the Ayurvedic ways of chelating it out using our cilantro-based remedies. Fix your gut and liver, and by all means stop rushing and multitasking all day: your thyroid gland can’t handle it.
Once you learn how to pamper this very important gland you will be amazed at how many of your symptoms clear up, and in the long run you will have prevented both thyroid disease and all the problems associated with it.
Thank you.