Your Thyroid Is a Barometer

Kelly, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm really excited to have a conversation that I think is meaningful and valuable, and really experienced by so many of our listeners. And just Really, really appreciate the work that you're doing. Thanks for taking the time to chat with us.

Thank you for having me, and thanks for the work that you do. Yeah.

So, you know, from your history, you kind of changed gears completely in a professional way, and you are really, really passionate about ending chronic disease. I would love for you to share a little bit about your own journey and what led you to be So impassioned to fight against chronic disease?

Yeah, absolutely. So my health journey, as many health journeys do, begins in childhood, really. I was diagnosed in high school with celiac disease and was extremely sick at that point. I, my doctor thought I had cancer. I was sleeping like 15 hours a night on the weekends. And it took, it took a while to figure out what the diagnosis was. After that, I removed gluten from my diet, um, but the Kind of health issues didn't end there, and it was about 20 years of like various different chronic illness diagnoses, a lot of autoimmune stuff. And it came to a point when I was early 30s, about like eight years ago. I remember being curious about egg freezing and going for a consult, and they said you need to do labs first because we have to check your health before we freeze your eggs. And it came back very hypothyroid at that point in time. I had previously had hypothyroid in college actually, and took Synthroid for about a year and then became super hyper. So we went off of it and I didn't need it for a while. But yeah, then after this lab, that was for me kind of a crisis point. Like, whoa, I'm 30, I'm being told I can't even freeze my eggs because of what my lab looks like. How did I get here? And why, a few years ago, my thyroid labs were okay? So something shifted. What was the shift? And just in the last, so I went on, um, Tirosint at that point in time and started experimenting around with different endocrinologists to, to kind of find one who aligned with my thinking. Like, this isn't an inevitable diagnosis and it's not like I have bad luck, like something's probably driving this. And got really curious about health, all the root causes of all of my challenges, and was able to reverse a lot of conditions. I completely got off of Synthroid. And so I am at this point now in my career where I've, I've built a couple of organizations in the past. I love to build things. What I'm most passionate about and what I've done the most research on over the last 20 years is my personal health and kind of the connection between my daily life and what my labs are looking like. And this is a point in time in our country where there's a lot of focus on this from a cultural perspective, from a policy perspective. So yeah, very excited to shift away from my kind of corporate background to now This is my number one cause, raising awareness for these issues, helping people understand kind of how their daily life impacts their biology, and then doing as much as we can to build prevention into systems from a policy perspective. I know I didn't tell too much about childhood. There's actually more to my childhood prior to celiac that I didn't understand the connection of it to my health until just a few years ago. And that is, I had a very stressful childhood. And on the surface, it wouldn't have seemed that way because I had really loving parents. They were financially secure. I had great siblings, like nothing, no abuse, no divorce, no violence or anything. I had a brother, or I have a brother who has some disabilities, and those were really acute when we were really young. He didn't have a diagnosis until he was 8 years old. He used to have dozens of seizures a day that we didn't know what were causing them. It was really scary. He was bullied a lot in school, and I went to school with him. I was always worried for his safety, worried for my own safety. And I, like I said, I didn't learn until a few years ago the links between childhood stress, often discussed as childhood trauma, but I hear the word trauma, I don't identify with it because I felt like, hey, that would suggest that my parents were abusing me or something like that. But it is more of the chronic stress response. So it's just this response that I learned in childhood Always feeling like I'm not safe. And that is something that carried through my life for a long time until more recently.

Gosh, Kelly, there are so many similarities. I think we need to become friends. So I, I was a celiac too. Unfortunately, I didn't figure out until I was 25, but I have a special needs daughter with a rare genetic condition and she has epilepsy. She started having seizures 2 and a half, 2 years ago almost. To the day. And she has a sister who I am chronically worried about because, you know, so the family dynamic when you do have a special needs medically complex kid is one, hey, this can be an emergency. Rose's sister Weston was there at one point when I even had to give Rosie CPR. You know, Rosie carries so much of the attention because she kind of needs it. And it's like, it's this constant dance in my mind of trying— To fulfill all the kids' needs. And it really is for you. I can recognize how big of a deal that is because you carry it too. Even though your parents are successfully carrying it, there's no way that you can't feel some of that intensity too. My goodness. Yeah. And even statistics, right, about kids with trauma, about kids with high stress, their likelihood of developing a chronic disease is so, so much higher. than kiddos who just don't have that experience in their, in their young life. That's such a valuable piece because I think so many of us think food, nutrition, and all the things that are so important. But I do think we, we still leave out stress to a degree.

Mm-hmm.

And I think you're so right. We're finally entering this era in medicine where I think people may be realizing medicine doesn't make me healthy, right? It fixes problems. But it will never make you healthy. And being healthy is this whole other world we have to unlock. One of my— well, tell me too, like, what role do you feel like the things that we can control in our life, right? How we sleep, how we eat, how we manage stress, how we exercise. How much do you feel like that impacts the future of someone's health outcomes in a positive way, in a negative way, even from, you know, an environmental exposure standpoint? How much control can we have?

Yeah, I think depends on the illness, um, and, you know, your genetic predisposition. But I— the more and more and more research I read and stories I hear, and given my personal experience, really, like, your— I think I said it earlier— your labs, you know, your biology is like the story of your daily life. It's not like there's this random thing that transports from the sky into your body one day that all of a sudden, like, oh, this thing isn't working, or I have this major imbalance or illness. Generally, it's explained by the daily decisions, the daily environments, what kind of access to care do you have. As you said, some of that's in your control. Some of it is not. I think the more that we can make people aware of that— and so the numbers that we see, like chronic disease can be as much as 80% preventable. Right now, 76% of US adults are living with at least one chronic disease. That sounds scary. I think it's also somewhat empowering because it's like, oh, I'm not alone. Like, most people have something. And what I'm excited about with our mission— sometimes I feel a lot of pressure that our mission is to end chronic disease. It's a big thing to do. But like, they all have similarities. They all tie back to those root causes. Like I said, and as you know, different root causes may be to some extent for different diseases. Like Parkinson's disease, we know 85 to 90% of patients don't have Gene. A lot of environmental exposures are a big driver there, especially paraquats, herbicide. We're seeing a lot in the news lately. You know, if you're living within 3 miles of where paraquat is sprayed, you're more than twice as likely to have Parkinson's. If you're not living there, you, you're not more than twice as likely necessarily.

So— 3 miles?

Yeah. Wow. Okay.

Yeah.

So it's not just like if you inhale it personally, and paraquat is one that it doesn't get on the foods. It's the exposure and inhalation. But yeah, you, you, how would you know if it's being sprayed within 3 miles of you?

So talk with me more about this herbicide, this pesticide that's linked to Parkinson's. Is there any other data that it's linked to other things? Because I feel like we always find out about this stuff way too far down the road.

So there is a lot of research about paraquat, and if you were to Google it right now, you'd see a lot of recent Hits and news stories. There actually is also potential link with hypothyroid. Some research that I came across in looking into paraquat was that some observations and studies showed that women, wives of workers who use paraquat, had an almost 2 times higher rate of hypothyroid. So we can't say right now based on that study that it definitively causes it. But it's definitely an indication that there's an association there. And given what we know about its link to Parkinson's, it's banned in these other countries in some cases because people use it to commit suicide. That's how toxic it is.

Oh my goodness. Okay.

So yeah, but I thought that was very interesting, the thyroid connection.

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm not surprised. A few times a month I get studies in my inbox that talk about usually some form of an environmental exposure similar to this that we are just doing, creating, utilizing, and it's linked to both Hashi and hypothyroidism. So thank you so much for that. That's incredibly important.

Yeah, thank you. When I talk to people about— and this is one reason I came in, wanted to do this job, because like so many of my friends now are saying like, oh yeah, I'm starting to have a thyroid issue, or I'm having these digestive problems, or I'm having rashes all over my skin. It's like the same story that I tell all of them. Like, what are you eating? How much are you sleeping? Are you stressed? Are you seeing your friends? What is your— like, are there chemicals around you? Are you spending time outside? Seem to be root causes of each one of these. So I hope that answers your question.

No, that was great. And that was such a broad question. I probably shouldn't have thrown it all out there. But no, that, that is— I mean, even the fact that You know, 80% potentially can be modifiable is an incredibly powerful thing. Have you seen, and I'm just for my own curiosity, have you seen any stats on European countries or South American countries and their rates of chronic disease compared to ours?

Yes, definitely. We know that as a nation, the US spends more than any G7 country on healthcare. and has the worst chronic disease outcomes. A lot of these countries have much more regulated food supplies. Paraquat, this herbicide that I was just talking about, is banned in more than 80 countries. It's also banned in the countries that manufacture it, but we use it here. It's made in China and it's banned in China, but they sell it to us all day long. So there is better chemical regulation. And then the school systems too, a lot of my policy work that my organization does is focused on K through 12. A, because as I was saying, a lot of chronic disease starts in childhood. Kids spend, you know, 1,200+ hours at school every year. What happens at school definitely matters. And there's a lot of research to show that patterns or habits that children practice early on— are they eating healthy, are they spending time outside— high association carrying into adulthood one way or the other. So other countries, oftentimes in school, they're getting more More recess. Recess is a big thing that my organization works on. There's only 12 states that mandate daily recess. 38 states don't require schools to offer recess. So there's a pretty wide disparity in depending on where you go to school and whether or not you're getting it. It's often used as punishment if there's behavioral challenges, but those students who often get punished need it the most. So better, usually better recess in other countries. Less consumption of ultra-processed foods. You're seeing stricter international regulation on kind of social media and screens. So the good news is though, there are communities in our country too that are doing things well and districts and states that are adopting more and more preventive practices. So one thing that we like to do with our organization is highlight the good work that's happening. here too. So we don't want to make people think like you have to move to Europe to get healthier. Like on average, if you live there, given the way the systems are right now, you're probably less likely to, you are less likely to have chronic disease, but we're hopeful that our country is moving in that direction and we're doing everything we can to help.

And I almost, it's exciting too. I know this is such an early journey. I think all of this is so early because it wasn't until kind of recently that we started eating all of these boxed foods and inflammatory foods and all of these chemicals. But I'm so curious how, you know, the data will turn out for these communities or states who are investing in preventative health and encouraging people to do the things they need to do. It'll be cool to look back at the differential between them and the states that really aren't invested in that conversation and action. And I'm sure that's not Too, too far away.

Yeah, I don't think it is. And I completely agree with you. There's actually a fun, um, just anecdote I want to share. And I think it's Louisville, Kentucky. The government has invested in planting trees, lots and lots of trees in the area, especially in lower-income communities. And they've then measured blood labs of the population and see, like, statistically significant shifts just from having planted the trees. So lower inflammation, et cetera. So yeah, hoping more. And part of our mission with our group is to share more examples like this so we can inspire other communities to do this or inspire individuals to step up in their own communities and say, hey, we should do something like that too.

That is so cool. Like, yeah, I'm sure there's going to be so much fascinating, incredible data. And I do think society is finally at large almost ready for that data and will, you know, buy in once it's presented. How— one of my favorite topics is how thyroid impacts long-term health. And I would love to know in your thoughts how you see thyroid, thyroid dysfunction, or Hashimoto's, whatever it is, fitting into the larger conversation of chronic disease.

Yeah, this one is the one where my personal experience, I feel like, is the easiest way to talk about it. You know, this, this little tiny thing in your throat that most people have never heard of the word thyroid. I only had heard it. My mom had a goiter when I was young and has had hypothyroid as well. So from her, I knew what it was. But I, like most people, don't even know that word until you hear about a friend who has a thyroid challenge or whatever. But anyway, this tiny little thing in your throat, I think it weighs an ounce, the size of 2 walnuts. When I was early 30s and I was rediagnosed with Hashimoto's, Like I said, I found this endocrinologist who was really on board with helping me find root cause. She actually measured my labs once a week.

Oh my gosh.

So that we could, and now looking back, it's like, maybe it could have done every other week, but I was like so interested in understanding how any sort of shift I was making in my daily life would flow into the labs. And this was a time too when I was having all sorts of symptoms that seemed like all sorts of different body parts, like Skin rashes, acne, digestion, tired, you know, thyroid's off, congestion. And like what I came to learn from documenting all of it and reading a lot of research is that like it was all connected. So I started to see that like as I took more care to sleep more, I took a medical leave of absence from my job, making sure one thing that this endocrinologist pointed out early on is like, let's check your nutrient levels. Like your iodine and your selenium and your D and iron. And I always checked iron because I do have a separate blood condition, thalassemia. I run anemic just baseline, and that's a— it's not preventable. It's just genetic. It's like similar to sickle cell, but much less severe. And because of celiac, you know, I tend to malabsorb. It's harder for me to absorb nutrients, and that biopsies will still show that for me. So iron is one I'd always checked, but no one had ever mentioned iodine or selenium or vitamin A. So we started supplementing those, checking those levels, sleeping more, you know. And I, I haven't mentioned this yet, I also got really experimental with my diet. And diet is something that's always been interesting to me, and I've always thought of prevention— that as an approach to treatment. So my brother's seizures stopped from a ketogenic diet. And that was over 30 years ago.

Now, has he not had a seizure for 30 years?

Hardly. If he cheats on his diet, he will, but it pretty much stopped everything. His IQ went up like 30 points or something very like statistically almost impossible because his brain was starved.

Working right now. Yeah.

So he had a complete life transformation. He was not originally anticipated to Develop beyond a mid-grade, like, grade school level, 4th or 5th grade intelligence, whatever that means. He graduated college with honors. And so, but that was like just—

Stop.

Yeah. It's from a diet change. So I, my family's always been interested in food as medicine. And I learned about autoimmune paleo diet and started experimenting with that. That was actually a huge game changer in not only my thyroid health, but in so many other Symptoms I was having. I maintain close to that diet now. There's I eat rice, I eat nightshades. Pretty much everything else is I still react to. But I started to see as I was making these changes in my life, like not only were my thyroid numbers improving, but like everything else systemically was improving. And then I also had emergency gallbladder surgery that like probably right before COVID Because as I was able to walk, you know, I had to recover from the surgery and then I could go see my friends again. Then COVID happened. That actually really helped my thyroid as well.

Fascinating.

Wow. During that infection, that was like when they took it out, they were like fangirling over how it was like black basically. They were showing me photos. They like had it should have come out a long time ago. That helped the thyroid. But I have felt like my thyroid is my barometer for Mm-hmm. My whole body. And it's usually one of the first things to let me know that I need to slow down. I, I check my, my thyroid labs quarterly essentially, and I can tell when I'm feeling more tired and slower, a little more pale, like, hey, the TSH probably gonna be a little bit up and then I'll have other symptoms too. So I, yeah, I, it's like, I love that this little tiny mighty thing has so much impact. on the whole body. And I've learned to like look at it as my friend, like it's going to give me the warning signs. And I think symbolically, especially if I think of hypothyroid Hashimoto's, it's like slow. It's like, to me, it's my body telling me like, let's slow down because we can't, we can't do our job at this rate.

And yeah, I mean, that's part of, you know, even the built-in biochemistry will, you know, stop the activation of your hormones so that you're tired so that you lay down. that you rest, you recover, right? Our body has these built-in safety mechanisms. We don't always listen. I'm guilty of that for sure. But it does try to warn us. And I love the idea that you've built that in almost to your toolbox to recognize, okay, my body's telling me something. And I think that's such an important part of the process of healing is learning the telltale signs before they get so big and debilitating that you can reel in whatever you need to, to protect your health. Talk with me a little bit about your work in implementing some ways for chronic disease prevention. I'll tell you, I have this special place in my heart for women who come in and they're so tired, they can't do everything, right? They can do little incremental steps. To get more energy and then leverage that and continue their, their work. What are some early on ways for people who maybe have limited energy, are foggy, are not their best selves, that they can start the process of disease prevention in a realistic and implementable way?

Yeah, I love this question. And I actually, I spoke at a conference in Amish country earlier this summer.

I love that.

It was pretty cool. And they're, let's say like a population that has much lower rates of chronic disease. And so when I went to speak to them, I actually was like, what am I going to tell them? Because they already eat well and they move a lot and they have community. So I did talk about childhood stress as one thing that they may not be aware of. And I talked about my personal story. And afterward, a number of people came up to me saying, thanks so much for sharing that. Now I'm looking at my childhood and it's not, and I'm not saying everyone should look at their childhood. But the, some of the people, a number of them said to me, I'm at a point right now. I'm so tired. I can't do anything. It feels so overwhelming. What do I do to just like kind of get more juice back in my step? And I've, I've been in that situation all the time. And it's like, like I said, I've befriended my sort of autoimmunity and I still have just 2 weeks ago. I was like, couldn't get out of bed the entire weekend sleeping. What I find really super helpful is like going to your body. So for me, it's like putting my legs up against the wall, doing restorative yoga poses, which can help you breathe better and help you sleep better at night. Then, then you're maybe getting more restoration. Go back to basics with eating because digesting takes a lot of energy. So I've done an Not for everyone, but like two-day bone broth diet. Kind of do bone broth with coconut milk and salt and lemon, and listen your body if you're starving. Eat calories, but the the like the less processed you can eat. And then sometimes too, I I did run into this in my journey in my mid-thirties. You know, trying to eat paleo, realizing that actually avocados and Eggs and nuts are— it's a lot to digest, especially if you don't have a gallbladder. And so recognizing that not every single healthy food is always the best thing right now to eat. And that's where autoimmune— the autoimmune paleo diet has helped me a lot. But yeah, simplify your diet, spend— and then like listen to songs that you love. Like I had a couple months ago was having one of these bouts where I would just like for a few days, like completely zapped, couldn't do anything. And I had been invited to go see John Fogerty in concert, who played in Clearwater. And I like, it's a lifetime dream and I didn't want to miss it, but I was like, I don't know if I can even get out of bed. Got enough energy to go. And that was like very healing for me that actually like the energy of being there. I went with a close friend. I didn't stay out too late. So don't underestimate just like How a really positive emotional experience can be a boost. Acupuncture helps me a lot too when I'm wiped out, and we're seeing more and more that insurance plans will cover that. And I try not to give advice. It's like, oh, if you just spend a lot of money, then it'll be fine. But yeah, acupuncture. And I— what I learned from acupuncture too is like, it's subtle going from point A to point B. You can have a dramatic shift and they're just Putting a needle in for a short amount of time. I also have a dog that helps me a lot, like forces me to get up and walk each day, but don't have to be if I'm too tired. Doesn't have to be strenuous exercise, but a companion. Trying to think and just yeah, like just be super mindful too of what might be contributing to this like total drain on your energy. It's usually something. It may not be obvious, but. Have you been having a hard time with a friend or have you been wanting to set a boundary, but it feels too hard, but then you're spending a lot of mental and emotional energy trying to maintain a certain dynamic that isn't serving you. That may seem, I think those things have a bigger impact in my experience than we might realize or than a doctor might tell us. But those are kind of my go-tos when I'm beside myself on the ground.

Yeah. And I think again, it just echoes the importance of, look, like we spend more time in our bodies. than we could ever, you know, share with a clinician how we're feeling. And so learning the cues of I'm not doing well and then building the toolbox of tools you can go back to month over month, year over year to just rehabilitate yourself when you go into a flare or a slump or whatever it is, is incredibly, incredibly powerful. And it's something that I encourage my own patients to do. too. You know, we try a few different things. And when we find something that works, it doesn't mean you have to do it forever. But it does mean, hey, in the future, if you flare again, you could go back to this and it can be incredibly useful. Tell listeners, I have one more question, but I would love for you to share first with listeners where they can find out more about you, your advocacy work, follow along on this adventure.

Yeah, thank you. Our website is just endchronicdisease.org. It's a work in progress. You can read all of our news stories. We're very active with kind of media and journalism. We write a lot of op-eds, do a lot of TV interviews. So go to our news page. You can see more about what we're putting out there. Our Instagram, just end.chronic.disease, or you can reach out either kelly@endchronicdisease.org or info@endchronicdisease.org. Yeah, we'd love to hear from you.

Love it. Well, thank you so much for your work. And I Would love it if you would share maybe one closing thought that you hope or want to share with every person that they should know.

Yeah, I want everyone to know that like your health is not your fault. Even though we say it, like your, your conditions might be preventable, I strongly believe that this health crisis that we're in is just as much an education and awareness crisis as it is anything else. And so one thing that our organization's fighting really hard I should— I don't like to use the word fight. Language matters too. I haven't said that, but like part of my healing journey came when I stopped talking about like my Hashimoto's, my celiac. It's just like, oh, I have this imbalance right now. It's part of who I am. Let's love it and say kind words to it. Anyway, so I won't say that we're fighting policies, but we're passionately advocating to make sure that kids learn about this stuff in school. school early on. So we've passed a bill in Texas last year, starting with nutrition, that will mandate nutrition ed in K-12 public schools. We just passed one in California. As long as the governor signs it, the legislature passed it unanimously, that will add preventive health education into the frame, the public school curriculum framework. So nutrition, stress, sleep, environmental exposures.

So it was the one final thought that our Health is not necessarily our fault.

It's not your fault. Yeah. So don't be a victim. Keep learning. If you're listening to this interview, you're probably a curious person who's trying to learn more. So that's a great thing. And then, yeah, your language matters a lot too. So say kind words to yourself.

Well, thank you, Kelly. I so appreciate you taking the time to share your message with us, but also all the time that you put forward to really shift the way things are headed in our country. And yeah, I just appreciate you. Thank you so much.

Thank you, McCall. Appreciate you as well.