My appointment book is almost completely full thanks to such a big response from my letter asking patients to come see me before my busy few months start…
And I had a patient come see me this week that I want to tell you about because I’m seeing more of this kind of thing lately.
A young man came to me with a surprising thyroid problem.
He’s very young, and didn’t have any hypothyroid symptoms. All he had was a lab report that said his T4 – a thyroid hormone called thyroxine – was a bit low.
Right away the doctors who looked at the report put him on thyroid medication.
He felt no different on the synthetic prescription drug than he did before, so they quickly increased the dosage from 30 to 60 to 120 mg.
But he still doesn’t feel any different.
And he still doesn’t have any symptoms. I’m seeing more of this… doctors treating a lab report instead of a human being.
Just to give him a drug and raise his T4 artificially and think the problem is solved goes against my instinct. He’s only 33 and very healthy looking.
He’s got low T4 by labs, but he has no symptoms … and he’s too young to be taking a drug every day of his life.
So I told him, “I’m worried about your adaptive response from stimulating thyroid hormone production from the outside with a drug. It’s going to decrease your natural production of T4 when we don’t know what’s causing the overall decreased production."
“So let’s stop the drug, let the dust settle and see what happens.”
Besides, if he really had hypothyroid, he would feel it. Plus, he would feel better if what they had given him was the solution.
Not having any symptoms and not feeling any different after medication wasn’t adding up to me but I had a suspicion. So we measured his heavy metals.
We found that his lead was slightly elevated… but his mercury was 10 times the upper limit of normal. So it appears he has mercury poisoning. We don’t know how he got it but it’s probably the reason his thyroid hormones haven’t increased.
Most doctors don’t know this but even so-called “normal” or acceptable amounts of mercury can be toxic to your endocrine system and especially your thyroid.
A brand new analysis of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) estimates almost 10% of all Americans have low T4. And when they’re tested for heavy metals, mercury and cadmium are the metals closely associated with low T4.1
Another recent study in the journal Biological Trace Element Research found that people with amalgam in their teeth – the fillings made with mercury that modern medicine is telling you don’t affect your health at all – had significantly lower T4 levels.2
This is why heavy metal testing is going to be one of the most important things we do in my new anti-aging and wellness center.
Metals like lead, cadmium, aluminum and mercury accumulate in us from everyday things in our environment like fumes from burning waste and mercury in fillings.
I put my patient on oral chelation. It takes five weeks to complete, and then we’ll repeat the lab test and see how he’s doing…
But my advice if you can’t come to a clinic like mine is to do three things:
- Fight toxic metal with good metal: Selenium is a metal, too, but one your body needs. And it’s a potent mercury detoxifier. For most people, I recommend fresh, freeze-dried, or aged garlic, which contains a bioactive form of selenium. Start with one capsule or one clove and slowly increase to three capsules or cloves after each meal. You can also eat one Brazil nut every day. Each has around 100 mcg of selenium.
- Use the oldest detoxifier: Chlorella is maybe the oldest food in the world. It’s an edible algae. Chlorella pyreneidosa is the form with the best metal absorbing properties. Most people can tolerate high doses of it. Take 1 gram with breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You can increase the dose to up to 3 grams three to four times a day.
- Sleep secret is a thyroid protector: You probably know melatonin as the sleep hormone. But it’s an extremely powerful antioxidant that research shows can protect your thyroid from the effects of mercury.3 You don’t need very much. I recommend a small dose of 0.3 mg about a half hour before bedtime. You may have to break a tablet into pieces to find this appropriately small dose.
1.Yorita Christensen K. “Metals in blood and urine, and thyroid function among adults in the United States 2007-2008.” Int J Hyg Environ Health. 2012 Oct 5. pii: S1438-4639(12)00108-3.
2. Ursinyova M, Uhnakova I, Serbin R, Masanova V, Husekova Z, Wsolova L. “The relation between human exposure to mercury and thyroid hormone status.” Biol Trace Elem Res. 2012 Sep;148(3):281-91.
3.Rao M, Chhunchha B. “Protective role of melatonin against the mercury induced oxidative stress in the rat thyroid.” Food Chem Toxicol. 2010 Jan;48(1):7-10.