Ep. 6. Healing Hashimoto's: Marc Ryan on Thyroid, Autoimmunity & Gut Health

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Welcome to Notes From Your Acupuncturist, the podcast for anyone who's interested in acupuncture, complementary medicine, holistic, health, and self care. I'm your host, Alexa Bradley Hulsey. If you enjoy this show, you can help others discover it by leaving a rating or a review, by following or subscribing on your favorite podcast listening app, or simply by telling someone about it. And if you'd like to support this show financially, you can become a paid subscriber on Substack for just a few dollars a month.

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Just head over to substac.com and search notes from your acupuncturist or click the link in the show notes. Okay, on with the show. Today on the podcast, I'm joined by licensed acupuncturist Marc Ryan to discuss Hashimoto's thyroiditis, autoimmunity and gut and microbiome health. Marc is a graduate of Cornell University, a two time Hay House author, and a licensed acupuncturist in the state of California. He's been practicing for over 20 years, and for the last eight years, he's focused principally on working with people who suffer from the autoimmune disease, Hashimoto's thyroiditis.

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In researching his books and in the subsequent years of working with Hashimoto's, Marc has had over 3000 conversations with people with Hashimoto's. Marc, welcome to the podcast. Oh, great to be here. Thank you for having me. Absolutely.

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So you bring a unique perspective on Hashimoto's, and I know for a fact that your work has far reaching effects because some of my patients in Nashville are familiar with your work. Yes, amazing. I know. Yeah, they've read your books and they actually found me through our connection via Yo San University, which is where we both attended school. I know.

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So I feel like I've sort of been keeping up with your work, even if I haven't personally been in touch with you. But your work has really helped a lot of people. So thank you for the research and the educational work you're doing. It's really helping a lot of people. Thank you for saying so.

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Yes, absolutely. So you're the author of two books, How to Heal Hashimoto's and the Hashimoto's Healing Diet. And your website, hashimotoshealing.com, has a wealth of information on how to manage Hashimoto's. And if you're listening to this episode and you're not even sure what Hashimoto's is, don't worry, we will get into all of that. But first, I'd like to hear a little bit about your story, Marc , and hear how you came to specialize in Hashimoto's.

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Yeah, well, I've been in practice, as you said, about 20 years, and I had a practice with my former partner Alicia in San Pedro, and I was just working kind of as a generalist, like some of us do. We treat a lot of different things, whatever comes into the clinic. And it was a very busy clinic, and we ended up closing it. At one point, I got pretty burned out in the process of being the manager and the practitioner and wearing all those different hats and everything. And one of my partners was really the principal person involved in the marketing.

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And so we all split up and I was looking for a new direction to go in. So I started taking some marketing training and things. I realized I had to learn a little more in order to do that myself. And one of the first things I said was choose your niche. Because if you want to be successful, you need to have a niche.

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So I thought I just went through my patient files and thinking, what do I see? A lot of what am I passionate about? And thyroid issues are one of the things that came up. So I thought, okay, I'm going to just try Hashimoto's and see, because I think this is an area that clearly needs help and attention because of the way it's treated in Western medicine. We can talk about that too in a little bit.

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Yes. So I went in that direction and then ironically, about six months later, I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's. Wow. So it became very personal. So that gave me that extra edge of like, wow, first of all, I need to figure out what to do for myself.

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And then that whole process led me as you mentioned, I talked like 3000 people with Hashimoto. I just did all these free phone calls just to talk to people like what was the experience? Like, what what were the symptoms? What did you do about it? What's the treatment?

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You know, things like that so I could learn about it. And that and that process of of studying and learning and learning about myself was what led to the books. Wow, that's so interesting because so many of us who are in this profession enter it in some way to heal ourselves. And it sort of worked in reverse for you. You plunged into this area of specialty and then it turned out to be just what you needed for yourself too, right?

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Exactly. Yeah. Let's start with a brief overview of Hashimoto's. For folks who don't know, what is Hashimoto's and how is it typically diagnosed? Yes.

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So Hashimoto's is an autoimmune disease of the thyroid. For most people, it eventually ends up in hypothyroidism, which means your thyroid is underactive. The reason for that is the process of your immune system. Attacking the thyroid often eventually impacts the thyroid axis and affects the production of thyroid hormone so that you're not producing enough of it. The diagnosis usually is blood tests.

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They'll do a thyroid panel. Most doctors order TSH and T four, and then some doctors will order the antibodies, the TPO or thyroid proxidase and Tgab or thyroglybulin antibodies. And those antibodies, if they're out of the laboratory range, that is considered positive for Hashimoto and autoimmunity. Interestingly though, a lot of doctors don't even bother to order the antibody tests if your TSH is out of range. They'll just say you have Hashimoto or they won't even care that you have Hashimoto, because for most Western doctors, the treatment is identical whether or not it's hypothyroidism from some other cause, or Hashimoto's autoimmunity.

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Okay, so there can be many causes of hypothyroid, and Hashimoto’s is one cause. Exactly. Can hashimoto sometimes cause hyperthyroid. It can. Some people go through periods where, because of the autoimmune attack, there's inflammation in the thyroid, and this can cause the production of excess amounts of thyroid hormone during that inflammatory process.

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And that can lead to it's usually transient periods of hyperthyroidism that eventually becomes hypo. But sometimes that's happened. Okay. And sometimes there's another autoimmune disease of the thyroid, which is Graves disease. And some people actually have both.

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Oh, wow. But that's also possible. I've seen that. Is Graves disease also an autoimmune condition? It is, yes.

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And for listeners out there who are unfamiliar with the term autoimmune, that really just means that the body's immune system is working a little too well and attacking itself. Exactly. The immune system is a little overzealous. Part of the role of the immune system is to get rid of dead and dying cells. That's a natural part of what the immune system does.

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And for whatever reason we don't know the exact reason, but for some reason, that kind of balance is lost and the body just begins to recognize its own tissue as a pathogen or something that needs to be eradicated or gotten rid of. Now, is there a genetic component to Hashimoto's? There absolutely is. Yeah. We often see it in clusters and families.

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In fact, my daughter also has Hashimoto's as well as I do, and I've seen it a number of times. So there's often genetic piece, if you are diagnosed with it, I always recommend that you have your children tested for it and also look to other members in your family who may have hypothyrosis, may have not been tested, but may have it also. Yeah. And what are the typical signs and symptoms? The three most common symptoms are fatigue, weight gain, difficulty losing weight because your metabolism is often slowed by hypothyroidism, and brain fog or cognitive issues.

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Those are the three most common. And then there are a number of sort of ancillary other symptoms like hair loss, nails becoming brittle, dry skin, cold hands and feet, and digestive issues to like bloating and gas. Interestingly, there's also like a psychological component. It seems a lot of people I've noticed have anxiety and or anxiety and depression as part of having Hashimoto. I mean, those symptoms sound like symptoms that affect a lot of people.

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Yeah, they are. They're very common. And sometimes I think people are diagnosed with other things like fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome, when in fact they have Hashimoto's or hypothyroidism. Do you think that Hashimoto's is under diagnosed?

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I think there's a lot more awareness of it now, but I do think generally, yes, it is. And again, I think part of the problem is most western doctors and endocrinologists don't really have much training in treating autoimmunity. So it doesn't really matter to them very much whether or not it's hypothyroidism from a different cause or hypothyroidism caused by autoimmunity because the treatment is the same. Maybe we should talk about what the treatment is. Yes.

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Perfect segue. So what is the typical treatment? The most common treatment is synthetic T Four, which is called Levothyroxin. The most popular brand is called Synthroid. And that is, as I said, synthetic T four.

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And there are other treatments as well. There's a synthetic t three called cytomel. There's a number of other combinations too. There's a natural desiccated thyroid hormone, which is actually a combination of T three and T four. But most Western doctors are pretty conservative, and the most common treatment is synthetic T Four in the form of Synthroida level thyroxin.

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And that's the sort of thing that a patient needs to take on an ongoing basis to manage their condition, right? Correct. If your thyroid is not functioning, I mean, thyroid hormone is so important in the body that literally every organ and every major system has thyroid hormone receptors. And if your body is not producing enough thyroid hormone, it can have really terrible effects on your ability to function. Yeah.

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You say on your website, you say that Hashimoto's is way more than just a thyroid problem, and that understanding this is really the key to managing it and getting it into remission. Right. I think it's very important, and a lot of people often who hear me as a guest or who read my content or read my books or whatever, are surprised to learn how extensive the influence of thyroid hormone is. But it's very important, I think. Is there any area of the body that it doesn't affect?

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Not really. Okay. Thyroid hormones, because thyroid hormone is like the principal influencer of our metabolism. It's really responsible for metabolic activity. So everything in your body is influenced by that.

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Right. I feel like I treat a lot of patients in my practice who have thyroid issues. A lot are hypothyroid. Do you have any theories as to why so many people have thyroid issues? That's a great question.

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Well, I think Hashimoto's in general, if you look at you talk about genetic component, I think it's like a perfect storm of things. So there is the genetic piece. I think other factors are pathogens, like people earlier encountered. They've gotten Epstein Barr virus or Arsenia or some other pathogen that they've experienced, a herpes virus. Those can all lead to Hashimoto's.

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There's the digestive components, like people's guts get broken down with leaky gut or intestinal permeability, things like that. That's another factor I think that's important. I think our diet, generally, the American diet, is not really supportive to good thyroid and digestive health. And I think environmental toxins are something that are increasingly more prevalent in our world and are also a factor. So I think it's like this perfect storm of things.

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And regardless of whether or not it is autoimmune or not, a lot of those factors are involved. In both cases, I want to get into some practical advice because you really share a lot online on your website and your books. But before we get into that, I'd really like to talk about the Traditional Chinese Medicine perspective on Hashimoto's, because you're an acupuncturist and you bring an acupuncturist's worldview and an acupuncturist set of tools to addressing this disease. So what are the typical Traditional Chinese Medicine patterns you see with Hashimoto's? Yeah, very much so.

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It's a great question. Well, one of the things I did in my first book, The How to Heal Hashimoto, is I really was looking for a way to organize how thyroid hormone impacts all the systems of the body. And with Chinese medicine, we have these great theoretical constructs that we use to look at the body and the connections within the body. That's one of the beauties of Chinese medicine, I think, is how we have this sort of unique understanding of how everything is connected. And so one of those things is the five elements.

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And the five elements are a way of looking at all the major systems of the body and how they interact and influence one another. And so in my book, that's one thing I looked at is, okay, given the fact that thyroid hormone does have this huge impact everywhere, how is it impacting the five elements? And so if we go through each one of them, firstly, we look at the earth element. Earth element is considered the spleen and stomach in Chinese medicine. And Western, if you look at the Western corollary to that, I think it's kind of a hybrid of the spleen and the pancreas.

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So both of those things are present there. The pancreas, obviously, is an endocrine gland, just like the thyroid. So they have an important connection. And the things we see there that are also really kind of in charge of blood sugar, metabolism of digestion and things like that. So those are things that we look at in terms of the influence there.

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So people who have hypoglycemia or people who have insulin resistance or some combination thereof, that's an important pattern, I think, that can really be impacted by hypothyrous and Hashimoto's earth element next is the metal element, which is the lung and large intestine. And one of the things I look forward to, that I'm fascinated by is one of the criticism of Chinese medicine sometimes is, oh, it's folk medicine, it's not really real in terms of physiology and stuff, but I don't think that's true. I think there are incredible insights into physiology and I think the metal element is one of them. What unites the long and the large intestine is the lymphatic system, which is the immune system, essentially. And interestingly, the endocrine gland of the immune system is the thyroid, the metal element.

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So to me, that was a fascinating realization to see that there and so there what we're looking for is patterns of dysfunction in immune function. Yes. When you're hypothyroid, you can be more susceptible to getting sick. You can have less defenses. And again, one of the things that we found that leads to Hashimoto's is exposure to things like Epstein Bar or some other pathogen.

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Yeah, I would not have made that connection between the lungs and Hashimoto's, but the lungs are really our first line of defense. Absolutely. They circulate the way chi, which is our defensive chi on the exterior of the body, of course, there's and where's. The thyroid the thyroid is located up in the throat, like right up where the respiratory system interacts with it. So it's very much attached to that.

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Yeah, absolutely. So that's a metal element. Next is the water element. That's the kidneys and urinary bladder. Of course.

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The endocrine gland there is the adrenals. So that's an important area of influence and I think dysfunction that we see with thyroid problems, because the thyroid is so I think it's just a real connection between the entire endocrine system. The endocrine system is not like an isolated thing. Your thyroid doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's part of an endocrine system which includes the pancreas, includes the adrenals, includes the pituitary, includes the reproductive organs.

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All of that is part of a system. So when you have dysfunction in one area, like the thyroid, you can have dysfunction in any of those other areas. And vice versa is also true if you have adrenal problems, adrenal fatigue or adrenal exhaustion, that's going to also impact your thyroid and impact the way you feel. So that's an important area of connection too, I think. Next is the wood element.

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The Wood element is the liver and gallbladder. The liver is profoundly impacted by thyroid hormone. It's one of the things you see all the time with people who have hypothyroidism is elevated cholesterol. And the reason is because when you're hypothyroid, it slows cholesterol metabolism and it affects your body's ability to handle fats and cholesterol. So that is another area of really obvious connection, that sometimes people don't put those things together.

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A lot of times people come who are hypothyroid and they're like, my diet is great, I eat perfectly, I don't eat any fat. I don't understand cholesterol don't tie because of hypothyroidism. That makes sense when you think about the genetic component too, because there's a genetic component with high cholesterol. I also work with patients who say the same thing. My diet is great, every other marker of health is perfect, but I have high cholesterol and cannot get it down.

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Yeah, the Wood element, last one is the fire element. That's the heart and small intestine and also the pericardium and sanjo is something we sort of unique to Chinese medicine. And what unites those is really the circulatory system. It's the bloodstream, everything else. And hypothyroidism has a big impact on circulation.

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And one of the reasons most people who are hypothyroid have the symptom of cold hands and feet is because hypothyroidism causes blood to pool in your torso, and it makes it more difficult to get blood to your extremities. So that includes your hands and feet and your brain. And though it's not part of the five elements, the brain is another area that's really profoundly impacted by Hashimoto's hypothyroidism. In fact, when you have problems there that can really lead to things like Alzheimer's and neurodegeneration. So it's really, really important to take that seriously too.

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Hashimoto's affects or it involves all of the five elements. And so when you're working with a patient, do you assess to see what is the element that I need to focus on, what is the most out of balance? One Hashimoto's patient might be fire dominant, another might be metal dominant. Is that your approach? Yeah, I think we use what we've learned in Chinese medicines.

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It doesn't really change our overall diagnostic approach and treatment approach. So, yes, those things are still valid. I'm just fascinated with Western physiology too. So I'm always looking for, okay, if there is something in one area, so let's say it's like the liver, it's being heavily impacted, what about that? Why is the wood element impacted?

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So, in this individual? And that gets into one of to me, the great strengths of Chinese medicine is the individualization of treatment. And we don't approach to Hashimoto's patients in the same way because they're two different people with different backgrounds and different genetics, right? Very much so. I think that's one of the real weaknesses in Western treatment.

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It's literally one treatment for everyone. It's just thyroid medication. And there are often so many of these other issues that are going on that are just being ignored. I think we really have an opportunity as practitioners of Chinese medicine, to offer a lot for people going through this, because we'll look at these other areas too. Right, well, and in your writing, you talk about with diet, there's not really a one size fits all approach to managing Hashimoto's with diet.

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It seems like there's some general guidelines, but there's no one perfect Hashimoto's diet for everyone. Right? There really isn't. And this I learned the hard way through meeting a lot of people. One of the things that was very popular, still very popular, is the autoimmune paleo diet on and paleo approach.

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And basically, this is a pretty restrictive elimination diet where you take out a lot of foods that are inflammatory and potentially are firing up the immune system. And this has been very helpful in treating people at the outset. One thing I learned the hard way was that keeping people on this diet for a long period of time can really have adverse effects. And one of those are to cause a breakdown in something called oral tolerance. And oral tolerance is your body's ability to adapt to different foods.

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And it turns out that that is really maintained by exposure. So when you eliminate that, you can some. So sometimes people who were really super compliant and really stayed on the Autumn and Paleo diet for years and did well ended up developing all these additional sensitivities and things because of that process. That was a hard thing for me to learn because I made some mistakes there and myself had made some mistakes too. So that was a really important realization, is that we can't stay on one thing forever.

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We have to be able to adapt the diet and sometimes even like that. While it's helpful to eliminate foods, maybe to calm your immune system initially, it's really important also to maintain balance. And that's again, another thing we know from Chinese medicine that balance is so important. I want to get into some of the other practical advice that you offer so you really emphasize gut health and so let's talk about gut health and why gut health is so important for managing really all autoimmune conditions, not just Hashimoto's. Well, again, we were talking about the metal element.

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What unites the metal element? The lung and large intestine. It's the lymphatic system. That's the immune system. So there's a great deal of immune activity in the digestive tract, in your intestines.

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So that is an opportunity for it's kind of a leverage point. It's an opportunity to do a lot to calm the immune system and to rebalance the immune system. And conversely, it can be a place where you can really cause a lot of problems because if you're ignoring that and your immune system is already out of whack, you could be eating foods that are firing that immune activity even further. And that's really problematic when you have autoimmunity. So, yeah, I think the gut is a very important area.

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It's a really good area of opportunity. Again, we were just talking about oral tolerance. One of the things that's so important is diversity in your diet, especially diversity of different vegetables and foods and everything. So one key, I think, for people to understand is we need diversity in our diet and not don't eat the same food every day. And I imagine that that can be challenging for people when they are trying to figure out what's making me sick, what's making me healthy.

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And if you find a diet that works, you probably want to stick with it. Right? That makes total sense. And again, that was my working assumption for number. Right.

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But then I realized that, oh, there are also unintended consequences of renting. So part of it is we have to be adaptable. We have to be able to make changes when necessary. Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think about the gut too.

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I just think about in Chinese medicine, the digestive processes create what we call the post heaven essence. And so post heaven is really important in Chinese medicine because post heaven provides fuel for our day to day processes. It's what we live on. It's our energy. Right, exactly.

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If the post heaven is insufficient, then we have to dip into our pre heaven essence, which is what we're born with, and we cannot replenish it. Post heaven essence can always be replenished, but pre heaven cannot.

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I always think of it like a bank account. You want to keep enough money in it to live day to day. And it's kind of the same with your digestion. You need to keep it healthy so that you don't dip into the reserves that can't be replenished. I think it's great analogy.

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Yeah, exactly. It's really about both. Like, with your financials, that you have to keep earning money and you have to save some money, and you have to not tap your savings too much, otherwise there's going to be consequences. That's the same basic idea. It's great.

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Same with your body. Yeah. Something that you write about, which I find fascinating, is that foods made from gluten and milk have a similar chemical structure to morphine. And so these foods definitely do not promote gut health, yet they are literally addictive. Those are proteins in both those foods.

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Yeah, that's why they call it comfort food. Yes. Because it is, in a very real sense, like, gives you kind of comforting buzz. Right. But yet it makes us sicker.

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Right. I think the problem with those two foods with regard to immune function, with hashimoto and everything, is that the immune system reacts to those proteins and some of those proteins, because there's only a finite number of proteins in nature. Proteins are made of amino acid sequences, and those amino acid sequences repeat all over the place, including in the tissues of our body. So sometimes we can have our own tissue be very similar in amino acid sequence and protein structure, and consequently, that just makes the attack worse. Right.

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I want to talk about lectins for a minute. You say that people with autoimmune issues should really absolutely avoid lectins, right? Yeah. I mean, I think we got to be cautious with them, for sure. So what exactly are lectins and why are they so detrimental to gut health?

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Yeah, lectins are substances that basically are protective to plants and in that protection makes them more difficult to digest and more immune reactive. So the reason we have to be careful with them is because they can be very inflammatory and they can cause further part of the whole process here when dealing with all immunity, is we have to balance and calm the immune system and not exacerbate it. So they're another area that can potentially cause that as night shades is something else that can also do that. And are lectins found in all plant foods? I don't think they're found in all plants.

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I think primarily in, like, beans and legumes and things of that nature. And then the night shades are things. Like tomatoes, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers and white potatoes. Yeah. So things like beans and tomatoes and peppers sound like foods that are good for you, which we all love too.

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Yeah, like Mexican food. Exactly. So I can imagine that it can be really difficult for people to figure out what is a healthy diet, what's going to make an autoimmune condition worse when you think you're eating something healthy, but it's actually not. And this is part of the thing too, that I was trying to say earlier.

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In the beginning when I was doing this, I was really very strict and trying to get people to be very strict. And now I have more of a nuanced approach to it because I think diversity is so important. So I think a way to think about it, it's not like all or nothing. It's just that some foods you can't have as often. Some of these foods you can have once or twice a month maybe, and won't be that big a deal.

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And some foods you can have once a week, and some foods maybe you can have every day. But there are some foods, like gluten and dairy, we want to avoid entirely. But the rest of them, I think there's sort of this nuanced spectrum of how often you can have them. And that's something we need to constantly sort of be testing and trying. And I'm sure it's different for every individual.

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So other than diet, obviously, diet is really important for gut health, and gut health is important for managing autoimmune conditions. Other than diet, though, what are some keys to managing Hashimoto's and other autoimmune conditions? Yeah, somebody else that we were talking about, the perfect storm of things I forgot to mention was stress. Oh yes. Can't forget about stress.

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So managing stress and taking stress seriously, I think is a really important thing. I think a lot of us, especially in our culture, where it's like type A personality and push on ahead and fight through. And there's so many tropes and cliches about that. It's like we tend to not really we know that stress abstractly is a problem, but a lot of people just ignore really what's happening. So I think that's a really important area where you have to actively I mean, I found this myself, I have to actively plan stress relieving things, have stress relieving hobbies, have stress relieving activities, make sure that's part of my everyday plan for health, because that's how important stress is.

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One of the things, too, I observed with people, with autoimmunities in general is that when you have autoimmunity, you have you're under a tremendous amount of physiological stress. Like it's really stressful to have your body being attacked all the time. Right. So what people don't I think this is maybe one of the reasons why people, so many people have anxiety on top of that, because it's like. Emotional stressors.

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On top of all that, physiological stress is really, really hard to handle. And one of the most common complaints I have from people is like, I just get overwhelmed. My family, other people don't understand why I freak out when something happens, but I just get completely overwhelmed. Well, that's one of the reasons you get completely overwhelmed. Because back to the financial analogy, it was like your stress credit card is maxed out.

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Yes, totally. So I think that's a really, really important area. Yeah. And also it's no wonder that fatigue is one of the primary symptoms because your body is constantly under attack right. Constant attack and constantly rubbed up and right.

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Yeah, yeah. Where your body is like, okay. Yeah. So managing diet yeah, managing managing stress. Exercise, I think is another important area.

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But this is one that I found that, again, it's kind of like we have to recalibrate our understanding of of exercise. Like, I think this is bell curve of exercise benefit. So if you're not doing enough, you're not really getting the benefit. But really, if you're doing too much, there are diminishing returns again, where you're like you're just kind of hurting yourself by overdoing it. So particularly when you have autoimmunity.

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And this is hard for people too. I have some people who are like first world class athletes who ended up developing Hashimoto's or autoimmunity, and all of a sudden they have to come to the realization that they can't work out like they used to. And that's really important too. So again, balance is key. We have to find an area of balance.

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We have to moderate our exercise. We have to do it, but we have to make sure we're not overdoing it. That's really critical. And I imagine that that can contribute to the emotional strain of something like this. It's just not being able to do the activities that you were once able to do.

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Right. It's really humbling. Yeah. Very humble. So I can imagine that someone who is maybe newly diagnosed with Hashimoto's or another autoimmune condition or just starting to experience some of these symptoms, all of this might seem overwhelming, it might involve a lot of lifestyle changes, and it's hard to change everything in your life at once.

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So what do you think is the best starting point for someone who's ready to address autoimmune disorders naturally but not sure where to start? That's a great question. Yeah. I think though it is really true for myself, I had to completely reinvent my life. Wow.

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But it took me two years to do that. It's not something just like just because I had a big business, I had all this time invested and money invested and energy invested, and I came to the realization that it wasn't serving me any longer. But it took me two years to make that change. So I totally agree with that. I totally identify with that feeling of being overwhelmed too.

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So I think that the first place to start is with your diet, because diet is really foundational, and right away we can do something like the autoimmune paleo protocol for a short period of time, for a month to 60 days, where we can calm the immune system that's critical. So I would start there. I would start really, I would take inventory of how much stress is in your life and how much of that stress is in your job and how much of that stress is in your relationships and what have you, and do something about it. You have to take steps towards that too. You can't ignore that.

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I think those are the two number one most critical things that I would do to start out. And then we want to hopefully work with someone like you or myself or someone else who has experience in this area and they can do a proper valuation work up and evaluate what other areas your body are impacted and get those healing as well. Yeah, that's a great segue because I do want to bring up your website, hashimotoshealing.com, and we'll put a link to that in the show notes. This website is a great resource. There is so much information.

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I mean, there's information about diet, there's information about blood work and what to look for on your blood work. There's just a wealth of information there. Through your website, people can get in touch with you and find out how to work with you. You work with people one on one. And you also have group programs, right?

[00:36:48]

Yeah, I do. I haven't really been doing the group programs that much lately because I've gone back to during the pandemic and stuff, I was doing a lot more virtual stuff, and now post pandemic, I'm practicing again. So most of what I'm doing these days is one on one. Though I'm currently re evaluating. I want to do the group programs again, but in lieu of that, I have Instagram account and I have a Facebook page where I post lots of information and I'm totally accessible.

[00:37:22]

So if anyone has a question for me and they want answers, I also offer a free 30 minutes strategy session. I'm totally accessible if anyone wants to reach out and chat with me. That's great. And you have also published two books, so why don't you talk about your two books real quick? Yeah.

[00:37:42]

So I have two books published by Hay Houses. And one is called How to Heal Hashimoto’s: An Integrative Roadmap. Permission. That's really the one that looks into this five element idea of how the thyroid impacts all the systems of the body.

[00:37:53]

And I look at both the Chinese medical physiology and Western medical physiology and where they overlap and where they're a little bit different. And it really is a wealth of information there that gives you a real in depth understanding of what's going on with your body. So that book I highly recommend. The next book is called The Hashimoto’s Healing Diet. And that book is really a kind of summation of a lot of stuff I learned working with people and their diet and how important it is to have an adaptable approach to diet.

[00:38:21]

So it's really not a single diet. It's more like strategies for different circumstances when they come up. How to change your diet in those different circumstances. Yeah, and I think that these would be great books for practitioners as well, practitioners who are wanting to do more of this work and help more of these patients. So you and I are both trained in Chinese medicine, which emphasizes prevention of disease progression.

[00:38:50]

So in Chinese medicine, we try to prevent a disease from progressing further, progressing deeper into the body and causing more damage. So what advice do you have for people who are healthy now and just want to maintain thyroid health and prevent autoimmune issues? How do we keep our immune systems balanced and our thyroids healthy? Yeah, that's a great question. Really?

[00:39:20]

I think behave like you already have it. Yeah. That's the key to preventing don't wait. So all things we talk about, look at your diet. You got to make those dietary changes in a simple sense.

[00:39:33]

I would just cut out gluten and dairy because they're problematic. Gluten in particular. I would take stress seriously. Like, just like we were talking about, you're overwhelmed and stress is a real important factor. It's like looking at these issues and just being proactive and behaving like it's already there.

[00:39:52]

Yeah, that's the key. Prevention, in my opinion, because otherwise we wait. And it's like you said, there's one of those famous expression of Chinese medicine treating disease efforts. Form is like digging a well after you become thirsty. Right, exactly.

[00:40:07]

Way too late when it's already come on. But you can take some of these actions in these simple ways which will benefit you regardless. Absolutely. That's the path you go down. They're still beneficial for you to take those actions now.

[00:40:22]

Yeah, absolutely. Is there anything that we haven't covered, anything else that you would like to say before we close up? Chinese medicine has grown within our culture and our society and it's so much more accepted than it was, and I think it's because it really works. Yeah, absolutely. We have covered a lot of ground today and I just hope that people listening come away with the message that Hashimoto's and other autoimmune diseases are conditions that can be managed and the most powerful tools for managing them are things that you can do yourself.

[00:41:00]

It's like you said, managing stress. It is adopting a diet that benefits the immune system. Yeah, I think it's really just adopting a supportive lifestyle. Yeah, absolutely. It's not necessarily easy or simple and it doesn't happen overnight.

[00:41:17]

Like you said. It really took you two years, but it is something that you can do, and it's within your power. And good information is key. And it's really helpful to have a great guide to someone who knows what they're talking about, like Marc. So thank you for all this great information.

[00:41:35]

Thank you. My pleasure. Absolutely. If you are interested in working with Marc or learning more from him, check out hashimotoshealing.com. It's a great resource center for all things hashimoto's with lots of free resources.

[00:41:49]

And it's also where you can learn more about his individual and group programs. You can also order his books at any online retailer he's written two: How to Heal Hashimoto's and the Hashimoto's Healing Diet. You can also follow Marc on Facebook at Hashimoto's Healing and on Instagram at hashimoto's Healer, and we will put links to everything in the Show Notes. Marc, I have learned so much from you just during the course of this conversation. Great.

[00:42:17]

Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me today. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thank you for listening to today's episode of Notes From Your Acupuncturist.

[00:42:26]

If you liked what you heard, please follow this show, leave a rating, a review, or just tell someone about it. And if you want to join the conversation, you can subscribe to Notes From Your Acupuncturist on Substack, where you can comment, ask questions, participate in discussion threads, watch videos, and read more of my reflections on acupuncture and healing. Huge thanks as always to our paid subscribers for helping keep this work sustainable. You too can become a paid subscriber for just a few dollars a month. Just head over to substac.com and search notes from your acupuncturist.

[00:42:59]

Or click the link in the show notes. Until next time, this is Alexa Bradley Hulsey, your Acupuncturist, signing off with love and gratitude.