Have You Been Told Your Thyroid is Normal?

Dr. Brian Martin BSc, ND

What role does Thyroid Hormone play in the body?

The thyroid gland produces thyroid hormone that is used by almost every tissue in the body. It controls body temperature, maintains energy levels, and controls how our body burns fat. Imbalanced thyroid levels have been associated with increased inflammation, high cholesterol, and many chronic conditions including heart disease.

The most common medical complaints attributed to thyroid imbalance include:



• I can’t lose weight like I used to
• my body aches
• my skin is dry and rough
• I feel cold all the time
• My libido is shot
• My hair is thinning
• My nails break easily
• I get sick easily
• I’m always constipated
• I don’t feel like I used to, I have "foggy brain"
• I am being treated for depression but I’m still depressed
• I’m being treated for hypothyroidism, but I’m still tired

Many of these symptoms are related to hormonal imbalances and two of the biggest hormonal problems in men and woman are low testosterone and low thyroid respectively.



What are optimal thyroid levels?

Many women are repeatedly told that their thyroid levels are fine or ‘normal’ when in fact, this is untrue. Up to 30% of females are walking around with an undiagnosed thyroid disorder. Many people, male and female, go to their Medical Doctor feeling below par only to be told that their thyroid tests have shown them to be “within the normal reference range”. The problem is what’s normal for one person isn’t normal for another. These “normal reference ranges” are not adequate nor are they an accurate way of determining an individual’s deficiency.



It is unfortunate that current medical testing will only track the more severe cases of thyroid disease. The main reason for this is the type of testing that done; or rather the component of the thyroid that is being tested. The standard method which is used is a screening test which measures Thyroid Stimulating Hormone or TSH. This test is found to be inaccurate because it does not measure the amount of thyroid hormone you have, but rather your body’s ability to stimulate it. This test is valid only for detecting advanced disease, leaving many to suffer in silence and having to wait until their condition becomes bad enough to show up on the TSH test. The average female will suffer with thyroid related conditions for up to five years before these problems have progressed far enough to show up on standard testing.





What you can do:

The first step is education; the second step is proper testing. There is new, more precise testing that is available which can accurately determine your thyroid hormone levels. If you have been told your thyroid is normal, but you still suffer with some of the common hypothyroid symptoms then you might be suffering without even knowing it.

Your body is always doing the best it can

One of my motivations to become an anti-aging physician was my own families’ medical history. There is cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. Many years ago, as I was beginning my practice, patients would walk through my door with these same chronic conditions. As I treated these patients, I started seeing a pattern. I found that in order to successfully treat their disease (such as heart disease or diabetes), I had to start looking at them as a whole person not just a group of symptoms. In doing so, I learned that the body has wisdom to it. To really increase the overall health of the physical body we have to first get out of the way and give the body what it needs.  In fact compared to the emotions the body is the easy part. Your body has a very simple logic to it, it says "give me what I need, when I need it, and I will do the best a body can do, no matter what the conditions".

My job as far as the body goes is to be like a big gas station. I thoroughly test, and whatever is low, I fill. I don’t argue with it. If it’s a deficiency in a vitamin, mineral, essential fatty acid or hormone I optimize the levels, if it is a excess I balance it, if there is something obstruction the body from healing I help remove it. Fill, balance or remove.

All of you with a body, have been in your body longer than anyone else, and no one knows your body better than you. Most patients can sense when something is not right way before a doctor tells them, however even this knowing without awareness or understanding can still cause unnecessary delay and progression to a more serious problem or disease. I will teach you how your body talks to you, how it can give you many subtle symptoms when you are living or moving in a way that is not consistent to health. Understand that your body ultimately works for you. It is a valuable mechanism that carries supports and unconditionally loves you until it can no longer live. You body is a gift and your life is a gift, but sometimes we have to learn and become aware how to use these gifts.

To support your wonderful gift of life we will discuss the ways that you prematurely age or more correctly the way that you age faster than you where genetically pro-grammed to. In the next sections I will discuss how to decrease “damage” and in-crease “repair” to cells, tissues and organs to enhance their function, and how nutri-tional and hormones imbalances, lifestyle, environmental toxins and excessive stress all interplay to age us faster.

“Hormones are not bad, bad hormones are bad”, hormones are powerful messengers that circulate through the blood stream and generate a response. Every cell in the body responds to hormones. If the main hormones decrease you will age faster and create more disease. I will talk about how important hormones are for your health, and when I use the word hormone I mean the exact biologically equivalent of what your body has genetically seen for as long as a body has been a body. That word "hormones" has been misused in the media, to describe a drug chemically made to look similar but not exactly, example Premarin, like a real biologically equivalent hormone.

Stress, we will learn a lot about stress and how chronic stress negatively affects your health and how it is related to 80-95 percent of all disease and complaints. How the average person is exposed to 100 times more types of stress then previous decade.

Throughout the blog/book, I will guide you through what test to ask for, and when to have them followed up. I will teach you the difference between tests designed to find disease and functional tests that are designed to see how healthy you are. You will also know the difference between normal range and optimal range. This will develop a personalized program of specific tools and treatments that will increase your quality of life. I want to give you the information you need to be an educated, pro-active participant in creating and sustaining your own health and happiness. I want you to be able to work with your doctor and say, “This is how I’m feeling, these are the areas I would like you to help me with, and here’s the information that shows what you’re able to do to support me.” It is time to start creating a working relationship with our doctors. The days of being led around without being able to ask questions, or have input, or following without you the patient understanding are over. Even though I have enormous respect for the conventional medical field, the bottom line is that most are overworked with crisis patients; most do not have the time or ability to think in the realm of prevention of health enhancement. You have the power and you can and must be an active participant in your health. Remember no one can really love your life more than you. It is yours.

If you can strengthen the body on a cellular and systemic level the body will heal itself. We all know that a head is connected to a body, right? So the way you feel can affect the way you think and the way you think can affect the way you feel, so ultimately it make logical sense that the way we think and feel can affect the way how you age. How much suffering you experience, how much disease you get, how fast you heal and how much fun you have in your life is more in your power than ever. I know from experience the ability of the mind to heal the body if guided toward positive living choices. The foundation of long-term health and well-being is rooted in positive lifestyle choices and effective interventions when necessary. In my clinic, I teach a scientific approach to disease prevention, treatment and health promotion by incorporating preventative and anti-aging medicine and retraining when needed the behaviors that increase disease and suffering.

My goal is to help you identify where your health is today, and take it to “optimal.” Optimal aging is about increasing your health and happiness span, not just your life span. My practice is driven primarily by the needs of women, while this blog ad-dresses many women’s issues, many men will benefit from the information as well. The most common things I hear from my female patients, especially those moving through menopause are; "I feel like an old lady, I am all dried up, I have taken care of everybody else but me, I want my life back, I want the next 50 years to be better than the first 50". These concerns all mark a time for change in the person life. Ask your self are you ready to accept that change? It has been an honor and a privilege to have seen so many women patients what I appreciate is that women on a mission for information do not rest until they find that information. They talk and they ask questions. It is this drive and determination that has kept me seeking the answers and made my clinic on the forefront of treatment and approach. I have learned so much from my patients and it is from this gratitude that I write this blog. My patients have helped teach and guide me and now I have another way to help teach and guide you. I find that my patients, whether male or female, want more from their life when they’re 60 or 70 and the people who seek out alternative care want more to have a better quality of life.

I can’t promise that just reading this blog will make you live any longer, but by doing the actions it takes, you might. You can be more productive, have increased function, experience less suffering and have less likelihood of developing common chronic diseases. You can enjoy better health and maintain an active lifestyle for years longer than you ever believed possible and you may even have more fun doing it. If you are ready for a positive change in your life, your health, your medications, your body, your weight, your energy then put the principles and practices of optimal aging to work in your life. After all it’s your life, you hold the power, and how much health you have depends entirely on you.

A Healthy and Happy Life is Called "THRIVING"

I’ve yet to meet someone who relishes the prospect of growing old. North Americans (especially women) spend untold billions of dollars every year in various combinations of cosmetic, surgical and dietary denial of what’s happening to their bodies as they enter their 50s and beyond, and that market grows larger every year.

Ninety percent of my patients are female and I see the evidence of this trend every day at my clinic. Since opening in 1993 I have introduced thousands of patients to the “from the inside out” model of healthy aging.

Life is not about surviving, life is about thriving. We all have the innate reflex or program to survive, however beyond our reflex is the wonderful power of choice that allows us to thrive. Life is a gift and every one of us has the power to change. Hello I am Dr. Brian Martin, I am documenting what I’ve demonstrated over the past 15 years with my clients -- how an increasingly large segment of society can becomes happier, feel better, stay healthier and live better and even longer. Typically the term "anti-aging" focused on one aspect of aging or disease prevention the oustide cosmetic, but true optimal aging uses the inside-out, both physically (anti-oxidants, bio-identical hormones , diet), and the emotional (stress, peace, joy, feeling, choice). I describe and recommend a whole-life approach that takes into account not only the physical aspects of living and aging but the emotional and lifestyle programs that can be changed . This stems from the simple observation that, a body in survival mode or conflict increases disease and a body in thrive mode or at peace promotes health.

Healthy people tend to be less sick, happy people tend to be less depressed and happy and healthy people move and change the world. The book focus is on promoting this basic philosophy.

The head is connected to a body - We will see how a person’s mental and emotional stress, environmental exposure, genetic predisposition and nutrient or hormonal deficiencies cause them to age faster than their potential. The treatments I describe also look at optimizing the person’s hormonal balance, restoring their immune system, eliminating toxins in their body, building their exercise capacity, increasing happiness, reducing stress and improving healthy eating habits and nutrition. Weight loss, increased energy and overall “wellness” are just two of the side-effects of engaging in a healthy-aging program, and are described in the blog, but the primary focus and selling point of the book is looking, feeling and doing well through menopause and beyond.

2. Healthcare needs to be aimed at Health

We have a medical system that has spent trillions of dollars, massive man hours all aimed at eliminating disease. We have "wars" on cancer, diabetes, heart disease but still these chronic conditions persit. Too often we are lead to believe that health is merely the absence of disease. The concept of removing disease to create health sounds nice in theroy but thats where it ends. this has been a over eighty year experiement that has not benefit the overall health of a person. but removing disease does not always mean that you have created health. One example is cancer, I have so many patients that did massive amount of chemotherapy and radiation that damaged their health and immune system leaving them even more susceptible to have another cancer arise several years later. No I am not saying that those treatments are not valuable in some situation I am saying that we need to focus on disease prevention through health enhancement and also do treatments that assist in the bodies healing. Health is created by health, happiness is created by happiness. It is like the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff story,

How many healthy sick people do you know? When you see someone taking medications do you typically think of them as a healthy person? Is a healthy person someone that needs more and more medications and surgeries as they age or less to no medications? Why is it that every time we use the word "healthcare", it really means "disease care" or "disease management". How much health-care is really in our current health care model? Why are we only using the 'bandaid to body-parts” approach.

We currently have no health system that merges the disease based model of lowering down symptoms (medications and surgeries), with a health enhancement model. We have a system that treats “DISEASE” without promoting "HEALTH". Most conventional medical doctors and the current medical system address a person when their health has declined enough to create a definable disease. It is then at the “diseased state” that the system can justify spending funds on the person. In other words, “you have to be sick to get a test or treatment”.

Contributing factors like; the aging population with poor lifestyle choices, decreased fitness and increased obesity has created an expensive and overburdened “disease care” system and not a proactive less expensive “healthcare” system. Unfortunately what this translates into for a person, is that you have to be noticeably “sick” or “diseased” (by the systems approved testing) to qualify for treatment. This has caused the public to seek out more alternatives.

Patients constantly say statements like; my doctor does not do any prevention and does not have the time to talk about more than one problem a visit. My doctors only does tests to see if I am sick, they do not do tests to see how healthy I am. Why do I have to be sick to get a test? Why doesn’t my medical doctor teach me about diet, fitness, lifestyle and stress reduction? Why does my medical doctor only treat symptoms? Why does my medical doctor always give me a new drug prescription for every problem?

Believe it or not, it’s hard to be a medical doctor; your medical doctor is doing the best job that they can. The problem lies in how they have been trained to look at a patient. It’s that old saying “if all you have is a hammer than everyone is a nail”. Most of the population would agree that medical doctors are essential and have a definite place in a medical system; they excel in “crisis management”, for instance, broken legs, accidents, heart attacks, gun shots, etc. Most conventional medical doctors are highly trained in disease management via decreasing the physical signs and symptoms of disease using treatments that include drugs and surgery. However most of the population is not aware that the treatments necessary to save a life in “crisis” are totally different than those needed to prevent and reverse chronic disease which is ninety percent of all disease. When I was doing a minor surgery shift in Portland, I would stand back in admiration of how amazing the medical doctor was in saving a person life suffering from a heart attack. I soon realized after several shifts that sometimes the same person had to be saved over and over and that in order to really make a difference, how doctors see their patient had to change.

I was able to stand back and see the best of both worlds; I realized that they must be merged. If you have a heart attack you definitely want to see a crisis doctor specialized in disease, however if you want to prevent a heart attack you must seek out a doctor trained in health, and both of these must overlap and be supported. One reality for patients is that chronic disease is increasing, and that the system of treating these chronic diseases with drugs and surgery instead of enhancing health (called prevention) maybe life saving in the short term but it is very be ineffective and extremely costly in both money and quality of life in the long term. Most of the population unfortunately is not fully informed of the current deficiencies in the medical system and even more so are not encouraged to explore viable alternatives (Chiropractic, Naturopathic, Anti-aging, Osteopathic, Acupuncture, Nutritional, Lifestyle and Emotional counseling) Because of this, patients tend to go to what they know and what is available. They seek out alternative or non-conventional medical information from their conventional medical doctor or pharmacist with the assumption that they will also be experts in this field and in realty they are not (image vs. reality). The obvious problem is that currently most medical doctors have only minimal or no training in prevention, nutrition, vitamins, hormones, anti-aging, stress coping and happiness enhancement and therefore leaving the patient without options. This hunger for viable preventable options is what has fueled the rapid growth of patients seeking viable options that carry less side effects, improve the quality and quantity of life and give more power of choice to the patient.

Optimal Aging

As a population, we are not a healthy lot. We are overweight; we suffer with chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, digestive disorders and dozens of other debilitating conditions which lessen not only the quality but the quantity of our lives. We eat poorly. We don’t drink enough pure water. We don’t exercise correctly (if at all). We fail to get enough sleep and expose ourselves to hundreds of toxins and pollutants on a daily basis. To make matters worse, most of us have and hold too much stress, we live in a constant state of conflict or survival. Disease is a result and reaction of how we live. In other words, our lack of consistent positive lifestyle choices results in a progressive breakdown of the body, that we label disease. This is what makes us look and feel older way before our time.

Some of these circumstances are beyond our direct control. For example, it’s impossible to eliminate all of the toxins found in our food and air. Similarly, it’s impossible to stop the body from getting older (as compared to debilitating aging). By taking steps to optimize and extend our health, however, it is very possible to stop if from aging too quickly and of course lowering of eliminating chronic disease.

How does the aging process begin? The body can recover very fast from almost any form of stress or neglect until about the age of 30. After this, however, things change. The immune and hormonal system that have been used to "build and repair" starts to decline, digestion and assimilation starts to decrease, the adrenal "stress coping system" become overworked, our liver and detoxification system become over burdened. Insidious little symptoms of illness—the first sign posts of aging—start to appear. Throughout the coming years, some of these symptoms intensify and multiply. Although they are rarely severe enough to be classified as a disease, they work together against the body establishing a sort of suffering zone in which the body isn’t sick, but certainly isn’t well.

It is important to realize that our bodies do not sabotage us; we sabotage our bodies. Your body is designed to survive and you are designed to thrive. Our bodies are functioning to the best of their ability under the circumstances and within the environment we have placed them in. Our body is genetically programmed to function as well as it can for as long as it can. Research indicates that the human body has the potential to function for 130 years. This surprising resiliency may be difficult to believe given the current health status of the typical North American.

Preventing or reversing the onset of these symptoms is what optimal aging is really all about. It’s a process that requires making a firm and persistent commitment to pursuing health. This is quite different than making a commitment to fighting disease, which is the basis of our “modern” medical system. The absence of health results in disease. But by taking proactive steps to prolong health, disease and even medications can be reduced and in many instances, completely eliminated.

Anti-Aging, Optimal Aging, Preventative Medicine: is the increased quality and quantity of life from the incorporation of therapies and or consistent positive lifestyle changes. True anti-aging looks at the person’s mental emotional stress, environmental toxin exposure, genetic predisposition and nutrient or hormonal deficiencies. Treatments are aimed at increasing the person’s immune system, elimination of toxins, exercise capacity, hormonal balance, improving eating habits and nutrition.

Chronic Diesease are the most expensive to treat in the current medical system and the most costly on human sufferring. Extensive scientific research has demonstrated that many of the chronic diseases associated with aging are largely caused by lifestyle choices and could be improved with preventative medicine. These diseases include: Heart disease, Diabetes, High blood pressure, High cholesterol, Stroke, Osteoarthritis, Osteoporosis, Cancer , Alzheimer’s disease.