Transcript
Speaker: When thyroid people get the right medication, the right interventions, they start feeling life-changingly better quickly. At every point you can use that as leverage. The evolution of yourself becomes like second nature and it's not such a giant hurdle anymore because you're using data to only do the things that work. It self-propagates.
Speaker: This is the Home of Healthspan podcast, where we profile health and wellness role models, sharing their stories and the tools, practices, and routines they use to live a lively life.
Speaker: McCall, it is so wonderful to see you again. it was great to meet you in person at my single favorite panel at South by Southwest, but really excited to share all your wisdom, everything you're working on with the Home of Healthspan audience. So thank you for coming today.
Speaker: Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure to meet you at South by it's such a big honor to me to hear you say that so I'm so excited and grateful to be here. Thanks for having me, Andrew. Yeah, and I think the audience will soon learn why I was such a fan of your panel once they kind of hear your story and how you communicate.
Speaker: But before we jump into that, how would you describe yourself? I would describe myself as a lively PA, mother, entrepreneur, and thyroid patient turned expert.
Speaker: Yeah, there's a lot in there, but I do want to start with that last bit. So this is a common, common story with our guests that a lot of, you know, ah physician first heal thyself, right? That so many of the people get into what they're doing because they face a problem, whether it's them personally or their children or ah their parent, right? They came in on a very personal entry point and led them into this depth of understanding,
Speaker: this is, i'm going to go off on a tangent for a second, but it's when the news covers something that we know intimately, we understand how poorly they covered it. And like, wow, they really don't know what they're talking about. Because I know somehow we assume everything else that they cover that they they get it right.
Speaker: And so it's probably the opposite. They're probably not doing a great job on everything. And I think it's a lot the same when it comes to so many health issues, right? If you think about a normal physician, both my parents were physicians.
Speaker: My dad said, it's insane med school's four years. We know so much more now than we did when I was in med school. How how could you learn everything in four years? You know, i got 15 minutes on nutrition. What am I supposed to tell a patient? And so I would love to hear your story. And I know it's now it's a happy story. It wasn't at the time. But what got you into the work you're now doing around thyroid?
Speaker: Yeah, so I was 27. I already had a medical license, already practicing medicine, and already diagnosed with a thyroid issue. I had been on levothyroxine, then I was on brand new Synthroid, and was spending 16 hours a day in bed.
Speaker: I would literally go to work in the morning, I would come home at 3 p.m. I would be flat on my back until I had to go to work the next day. Weekends were the same. I was in the cycle constantly of resting enough to recover from the day and resting enough to prepare for the next day. I was overweight. I was losing my hair. I was depressed. I was so puffy. I was unrecognizable, to be honest with you. If I showed you a picture right now, Andrew, you'd be like, that's not you.
Speaker: But it was, you know, and i knew enough. I already was practicing medicine and thought, I just need to go to my doctor. I need a dose adjustment of my medication. So that's what I did. i was quickly turned away and told my thyroid labs were normal based on the only lab he ran, which was TSH. And that in fact, he needed to reduce my thyroid medication a little bit and put me on Lipitora because by the way, I had a high cholesterol problem.
Speaker: And I broke down in his office. I'm like, if you take anything else away from me, I will no longer have a marriage. I won't have a job. I will i will have nothing left to show for in my life and got on the wait list after pushing through quite a bit of brain fog to find someone else to help me.
Speaker: Waited months to see this doctor, saw him, and I got my life back. In a few short months, I was already on my way and very, very quickly dug into every piece of thyroid research that I could. I still, to this day, get studies in my inbox every day that I read. The physician that gave me back my life became my mentor and...
Speaker: That set me on the path to start Modern Thyroid Clinic, which now is a nationwide telemedicine practice, and we can help people in 48 states. So there's my pain to purpose story.
Speaker: Yeah. And i just for those listening that are not familiar, I mean, just... McCall was on stage with very credible women. And anytime there was a question on thyroid, they're like, I don't know, ask McCall. And like McCall had the study and was citing and the author's like, she really knows her stuff. And so I'm excited to dive in.
Speaker: Before we get to that, could you give a little background for those that may not be as familiar What is it about the thyroid that leads to all that, right that leads to the lack of energy, leads to the retention of weight, to the loss of hair? Because my ex and my ex-girlfriend had this exact issue and was constantly trying to dial it in and like have a period where she can't sleep at all and has a period. like each Just going through cycles and it's awful. It's absolutely awful for someone experiencing Yeah. You know, I heard a thyroid surgeon friend of mine yesterday on social media say something so true. He said, there is no symptom and there is no struggle physiologically that we could not trace back to your thyroid. So your thyroid impacts essentially every physiological mechanism of our body in some form or fashion. So it slows our metabolism.
Speaker: It primes us for prediabetes, for fatty liver, for high cholesterol, for heart disease, right? The number one killer of men and women. It slows our neurotransmitter production for depression.
Speaker: It slows our mitochondrial function, which are the powerhouses of our cell that produce biological energy. Uh, it just, our digestion, it slows hormone production, which causes infertility. Just the cascade of things that develop from thyroid is endless.
Speaker: You know, the hallmark of symptoms are what I was experiencing, the fatigue, the brain fog, depression, hair loss, dry skin, brittle nails, brittle hair, constipation. a lot of people are told they're pre-diabetic. a lot of people get put on cholesterol, just like they offered me lipid store. lot of people get put on antidepressants.
Speaker: Okay. Yeah. And and it your story is evidence and with modern thyroid clinic evidence, it doesn't have to be that way. So we have what is traditionally happening, which is, I feel like for centuries of not decades, that kind of gaslighting of women Hey, you're normal. This is normal. You just need to kind of muscle through it. that Take more of this medication. We don't need to listen to your body to a more enlightened, educated. no like obviously there's something, you know, your body, you know, if it's not right, there's something going on.
Speaker: What do we now need to do to truly address this? Yeah. And so can you take us through someone that comes to your clinic with Hashimoto's or something? And like, what does that look like for you?
Speaker: So there are three or four major barriers in medicine that we're still operating in that's keeping people sick. And it's exactly what you just said. It's they go to their doctor with all these thyroid symptoms and they are sure they have a thyroid condition and they're told no, or they're sure their medication isn't right. And they're told no, it's perfect. So barrier number one is we're not checking the right labs. So- We are using TSH or thyroid stimulating hormone, the lab that I was given as a screening tool and as a way to determine what to do with people's medication.
Speaker: Your TSH gets feedback, it's supposed to, from thyroid hormones because it is in fact only a brain hormone. It is a hormone your brain sends to your thyroid to say, oh gosh, work harder. Let's increase your TSH. Let's stimulate your thyroid to produce thyroid hormones.
Speaker: Or, oh no, we have plenty of thyroid hormones. Let's lower this person's TSH. There is an assumption in medicine that TSH really does actually reflect your thyroid hormones, your free T4 and free T3, which I'll talk about in a moment. The reality is, is in the vast majority of cases, that is not accurate.
Speaker: TSH does not infer and show what is happening from a thyroid hormone production. case. And it is incredibly important that we check what people's thyroid glands are doing. What are their thyroid hormones? Not just how hard your brain is asking your thyroid to work by checking your TSH. That is single-handedly keeping more people sick, millions and millions and millions of people. Would it be fair to say the equivalent is like, I i go to the restaurant, I order salmon.
Speaker: And they bring me back chicken. And I say, okay, I got chicken. They say, no, no, no, look, the recipe said salmon. And it's like, it doesn't matter what you put into the kitchen. What came out of the kitchen was not the salmon, right? And so it's the same kind of thing that the brain may be telling you this, but what's coming out isn't necessarily one-to-one.
Speaker: Oh, absolutely. Right. How hard you're pushing on the gas of the car doesn't tell you how fast you're going. You could be going a hundred miles an hour or two miles an hour, but we can't infer those two things just by how hard you're pushing down the pedal.
Speaker: Okay. right. So the first is, and so instead of just looking at TSH, we're looking at the free, said TST3, T4? Yeah.
Speaker: free T3, free t four reverse T3 as well, which is an inhibitory hormone. So we're looking at your inactive hormone, your T4. Think about it like crude oil. If we stick with this automotive analogy, we don't put crude oil in our car to make it run, right? But we do need it to make gasoline to make it run. But we have to take that crude oil, convert it into gasoline, which is your free T3. Okay.
Speaker: okay That crude oil can activate and become gasoline, free T3, the fuel that your body runs on, or it can shunt to an inhibitory hormone called reverse T3.
Speaker: That binds, blocks the absorption of your gasoline, your free T3, and doesn't allow it to bind. So we want all of those, not just TSH, not just TSH and free t four and I'll get to why in ah in a few minutes, but people need a full thyroid panel every single time they go to the lab. Free T3 is your most important hormone. It is checked about 4% of the time in our country.
Speaker: Wow. Okay. And it is that why is it not the the default? Is it a cost thing? like How much does it cost to to add that to a lab?
Speaker: I mean, really, if someone pays cash for it, like the total of everything is like $68 in a lot of cases. So now if you run it through insurance, it's more because of that whole racket.
Speaker: But the reality is you're kind of on the right track. Number one, insurance doesn't want to pay for it. Number two, the real barrier is clinicians are not taught what these things are.
Speaker: They are literally just taught, check TSH. TSH shows you everything. And research, clinical practice, and you know the American Thyroid Association is working on the assumption, grossly, negligently, that TSH...
Speaker: is an accurate reflection of everything else. And studies show TSH shows variance in T3, your most important hormone, your gasoline hormone, about 1% of the time accurately. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, i'd I'd say, how did we get here? But obviously, like go back to the insurance companies and the financial and just follow the money and you can kind of figure out how we ended up here. So that that makes a lot of sense of...
Speaker: So needing to look at least at those four to try to identify the issue. Is it is an input signal issue so that TSH would show us that they look, no, there's some input signal problem. But then on the others of, OK, once we got the input, these different outputs are showing what may be the root cause. And so each of those, I imagine, needs to be addressed in a different way.
Speaker: Absolutely. So, you know, what is happening is let's say someone's TSH is high. Let's say they have low hormone production. They they don't produce enough t four That is the one other hormone that sometimes is tracked. About 11 to 14% of the time, they'll check free T4, your crude oil hormone, right?
Speaker: Well, it just so happens that that, you know, well, I would say let's, let's go back. The second barrier, because this is important is ranges. Okay. So we operate on what is normal.
Speaker: The strange thing is Andrew is there is no defined acceptance accepted range of normal in the world of thyroid. If you go for blood sugar, if you go for cholesterol, that's standardized. We all agree this is normal.
Speaker: This is abnormal. And it's black and white across the board medically. When you get thyroid labs, sadly, your clinician is holding up the lab sheet. They're scanning it to see if anything is in bold or off to the side. And if not,
Speaker: it's presumed normal. Now, the issue with that is it's lab dependent because every lab's definition of normal is actually different. So Quest is different than LabCorp, is different than your local hospital. Honestly, Quest by my house is different than Quest by my office. So right now we are relying on these labs to to essentially practice medicine, tell us what's normal versus not. And the crazy thing is,
Speaker: These labs define their normal based on people in their database. Okay. So they'll take out the top percent, they'll take out the bottom percent and they formulate averages. And what those averages say is presumed to be where we should be.
Speaker: And the problem with that is one, obviously it's not standard. Like it's different every lab you go to, but two, if we're basing normal on those lab results, we should probably be asking ourselves, what Who's going to the lab?
Speaker: Is it Andrew who's like, feels great and on this beautiful Monday afternoon wants to take a half day off work and go down to the lab and see what his thyroid looks like because he's just so curious? No, right? It's sick people. They're looking for answers.
Speaker: Most corporate wellness programs overwhelm employees with too much or they offer too little to be useful. Alively gets it right. We start with each employee's data and goals, then serve one clear, personalized action at a time.
Speaker: No noise, just real behavioral change. The outcome? A healthier, happier workforce. A measurable impact for your business. Visit Alively.com to see personalized wellness in action.
Speaker: This is where, whether it's cholesterol or anything else or BMI, that even normal has shifted over time because it's the same thing. So what it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago, it's it's shifting.
Speaker: And so normal means sicker and sicker. So in almost anything, you don't want to shoot for normal now. But the I guess the difficult thing is for certain markers, especially for a layperson, they don't know, is it something where above normal is better, below normal is better, or with a lot, no, it needs to be in this range, like above is bad and so is below bad, right? So you need to be in this range and what what is that range?
Speaker: Yeah. So, you know, modern thyroid clinics started 10 years ago with ranges that were used like in functional medicine practices and by institutes, which were just more narrow. And that's what we started with. And I quickly found it wasn't good enough. So every 12 to 18 months based on our in-house data, where do our patients feel good? Where are their labs when they feel good versus not? Every 12 to 18 months since then, we've narrowed them down more and more and more.
Speaker: for almost a decade at this point. And we're left with ranges that are incredibly, incredibly narrow. Think perfect, like no margin of error compared to ranges that are quote normal, that are as wide as the rooms that we're sitting in. But we find, look, if we can get our patients into those ranges, their symptoms go away. They get their lives back. Their prediabetes starts reversing. And so I freely actually share those ranges with everyone so that they can look at their own lab data. They can compare it to optimal ranges so they can be educated, informed, empowered consumers of their healthcare.
Speaker: Because in the world of thyroid, it takes nothing less than that to get your life back ultimately. And I'm happy to share the link with our thyroid lab guide with you to to share to your audience. We'll definitely put that in the show notes. That's going to be an incredibly impactful tool. So, okay. Someone's coming in with this hypothetical Hashimoto's patient. First, we get our labs. And so we don't just have the TSH. We have free t three free T4, free reverse T3. And then that shows us what is off and in which direction.
Speaker: and then from there, what are the typical ways that we then start addressing it to get it in those ideal ranges? Yeah. I love it. Okay. So I want to tease out two separate things, hypothyroidism and Hashimoto's. I'll first talk about hypothyroidism.
Speaker: So that is a hormone deficiency, meaning your body does not produce enough hormone, which means we actually need to supplement you with a hormone different than Hashimoto's, which we influence much, much more with lifestyle.
Speaker: So if we have to really replace a deficiency, Medicine's approach is to put everyone on crude oil. So levothyroxine-based meds or T4-based meds, as those are pretty much the ones that everyone would think about. Levo, Synthroid, T-Rosin, Unithroid, Lavoxyl, that's what 91% of the population gets put on, and that's it, okay?
Speaker: ah The problem is the vast majority of Americans, I can't speak to and extrapolate worldwide because those are not, I don't have as many patients worldwide. They are what I call poor converters. So we're giving everyone crude oil and guess what? They're not converting it to gasoline. So essentially they're stockpiling a bunch of crude oil in their garage and their gas tank is on empty.
Speaker: We don't know that because T3, your gasoline hormone is only being checked in labs 4% of the time. So with someone on levothyroxine based med,
Speaker: What's fascinating is the worse they are at using that medication, the better their labs will look if you don't do a full thyroid panel, because think about it.
Speaker: They've got all this crude oil sitting in their garage. That crude oil is a very powerful way to send a message back to your brain and say, we have way too much thyroid hormone. good. We're good. reduce Andrew's TSH.
Speaker: Your TSH goes low. If they happen to check the only other hormone that they check 11 to 14% of the time, your free T4, how will that look? It'll look awesome because it's all just sitting in your garage unused.
Speaker: Meanwhile, no one's checking your gas. No one's checking your free T3 and your reverse T3. We have a big, big issue of poor conversion. You can improve that with lifestyle, stress reduction, micronutrient depletion, inflammatory reduction, good sleep, you know a lot of micronutrients and protein, but most people can't reverse that enough to make an impact in how they feel.
Speaker: They need some form of T3 gasoline medication added in to what they're already taking. Okay. Those are meds like Cytomel, Liothyronine, those pair very well with Synthroid.
Speaker: may So is that helping convert the stored ah crude oil or is that actually just straight up generating the gasoline? What is the mechanism there?
Speaker: So that is actually actually just giving your body gasoline. It's putting gas in the tank, right? And it's interesting. Some people don't like the concept of medication, especially like our people, because they are willing and able to work for their health.
Speaker: The problem is, is... Most people are too tired to do all the things they need to do to reverse prediabetes and metabolic dysfunction and you know inflammation. Your body needs that fuel to function. So giving it actually allows people to work better, more efficiently on their lifestyle.
Speaker: Yeah, this this has been something in the last 12 months I've really come around on, right? I used to think, don't go to the pills and micro until you address the macro. Sleep better, move your body more, eat the right food.
Speaker: And then I saw more data on what GLP-1s are doing, which was the the panel you were on was discussing that and seeing gym memberships up, gym retentions up. Like, oh, wait a minute. So...
Speaker: If it's painful and you're embarrassed to go to the gym, you're less likely to do so. But if all of a sudden my inflammation's down, my knees and ankles don't hurt, I i want to go. I'd rather move my body. It feels better to move my body. I'm going to start doing it. So the kindling or the spark that starts your health journey It could be this, right? Like if you don't have any energy telling you to go move your body more, if if you can't sleep at night because your hormones are off telling you to sleep more, it's not helpful. We have to address the thing that's holding you back from doing the thing you need to do. So, yeah. Amen. Thank you for that. You know, because as much as I would love for it not to be that way, it's it's not realistic and it's the leverage point. And also i say kind of similar to you, they can do all those things and it's not going to help if we don't actually fix the hormone. And what will end up happening is honestly, they will get prediabetes. They will get heart disease. They're at increased risk for dementia. You are at a 37% increased risk of dying of a heart attack.
Speaker: If you have mild thyroid issues that medicine doesn't even advocate for treating. 68% if you do nothing. Yeah. so Sorry, go back again. So 68% increase in a cardiovascular event, you said?
Speaker: In cardiovascular disease, 37% for cardiovascular death. So we're already talking the number one killer in men and women. And then this is increasing your rate that much more. So if you're listening, anyone in your life, which you do, you that you love, that has these issues, like, please listen, the impact you can have on their lives by doing this properly is tremendous. Okay.
Speaker: Right. So I always advocate, give them the fuel and then they'll take that fuel. And most of them will put, put that fuel, that energy back into their body to create more energy and better health outcomes. One other class of medication I want to touch on before I move more to the Hashimoto's pieces, we talked about Cytomel. We talked about lyothyronine. Those are pure gasoline hormone medications. There also are natural desiccated thyroid medications. These are drugs like Ren Thyroid, Armor, NP Thyroid. They come from pig thyroid glands. And they're actually a blend. They're a blend of inactive T4 and a blend of active T3. And these two can be really, really useful in a lot of cases.
Speaker: So that kind of closes out the medication part. My biggest underlying message there is, look, 100% of patients at Modern Thyroid Clinic are not on T4-based medications alone. 100% of them are on some form of T3. And medicine at large does not incorporate that into treatment options. And even if they do, I can tell you 99.9% of the time, they are not being used correctly. And so it's so important to find someone that actually has experience harnessing the power of these medications,
Speaker: Not just like talking your doctor into giving them to you just casually because they're not they're not trained. We are not trained how to use these drugs. So you need to find someone that's invested in that treatment modality.
Speaker: I did want to touch on Hashimoto's. yeah So these Hashimoto's is an autoimmune disease. where your body attacks itself and it mounts that attack on your thyroid.
Speaker: It erodes away your thyroid hormone secreting tissue and replaces it with like scurry inflammatory tissue. It doesn't work as well. It doesn't secrete hormones, which leads to hypothyroidism, okay? Which you treat with medication, but medicine views Hashimoto's as...
Speaker: the reverse lottery. Like there's nothing you can do about it. You just need to sit back, wait, eventually we'll treat you with medication. And that's that. But in in reality, you can reverse Hashimoto's. You can even in some cases get into remission or minimally reduce your antibodies, which are measurable in your blood, TPO, thyroglobulin. Those are what we're looking for.
Speaker: And you do that largely with lifestyle. I'm in remission for over 12 years now. It's very, very possible. Okay. And can we talk about what what are the life? Is it the things you think like sleep, eat whole foods and move your body? What are what are the things you need to do?
Speaker: Great. I'll start with like the basics and then we'll build out from there. So definitely like nutrient dense, low inflammatory foods. I don't generalize usually like what kind of diet to go on. We we actually test people what foods are causing inflammation in your body versus what isn't. But I will tell you, we've tested like probably 10,000 people at this point. And there are patterns like the number one most inflammatory food group for people with Hashimoto's is dairy. I know we all thought it was gluten.
Speaker: We were wrong. Number two is gluten. Number three is legumes. Number four is grains. Number five is eggs. And number six is nuts and seeds. And by the time you get to nuts and seeds, it's like 5% of people. So most people do not need to do that. Okay. So it's like you're you're really stripping now what people can eat. yeah Right. No, no. And I tell people, look, only take away one, like test your TPO and thyroglobulin antibodies on day zero. Okay.
Speaker: Go dairy free or gluten free for 90 days. I would pick one or the other. I wouldn't do both. Recheck your antibodies in 90 days. And for most people, they will have significantly reduced. So that's like diet.
Speaker: And I tell people, look, be realistic. Don't over restrict yourself. Like just test and retest and figure out what's working for your body. can Can I ask on that on on the overly restrictive? So there are a lot of people, if I can't do it perfectly, it's not worth doing it all, right? Like, oh, ate a cookie, so my diet's off, so going to eat terribly the rest of the day or week or whatever it is. And with something like dairy, so say your number one reactive is dairy.
Speaker: And then you let it slip and you had some butter on bread at um at like dinner. Is it, the fact that you cut back 90%, are you still better off? Like, is it really this zero and one or is it, no, like anything below where you were is going to be better?
Speaker: I love that freaking question. So I'm going to give you an analogy because I'm the queen of analogies over here and I'm going to use my little green juice. Okay. So our body is made to deal with a cup's height of green juice or water, whatever it is of inflammation.
Speaker: We do not experience ah symptoms or autoimmunity until that water or green juice overflows at the top of the cup. Okay. Every bit of inflammation we get is a drop of water in that cup.
Speaker: So let's say for three months, you're like 90% dairy free. Well, guess what? The water level in your cup is dropping, dropping, dropping. So if you go out for your birthday and you have a piece of cake and icing and you get a drop of water in that cup, guess what? It's a drop of water in the cup. Your cup is not overflowing. Okay.
Speaker: So the goal is to find strategies to take the water level of your cup from the very top where one drop of water creates an inappropriate eruption of overflow down to a manageable level where you can deal with these inevitable amounts of inflammation because people should not live perfectly to get to to thrive.
Speaker: Yeah. You need to be resilient, not perfect, but resilient. Yeah. And that builds up resilience. Okay. Okay. So diet, nutrition is a big piece. Well, so there's the anti-inflammatory side. One other thing that you touched on, i would like to double click on because I feel like most people I've engaged with are terrible at this because they think calories in, calories out. But nutrients are really important. And i watch what people eat.
Speaker: Especially when they're on something like a GLP one, they're like, well, because I don't have many calories, I can just eat Oreos and terrible food. And like, but you're getting no nutrition. Like all, all the microbes that you need in your life are not in the food you're eating. So what role does nutrition in terms of like actually nourishment play? Yeah.
Speaker: So bait, like so many micro minerals, micronutrients literally can reverse Hashimoto's antibodies. Like selenium is the most famous one. Selenomethionine too, especially. so when you eat whole foods that are nutrient dense, not only Can you actually reduce your Hashimoto's antibodies?
Speaker: They also help propagate the activation of your thyroid hormones. And that's just like one snapshot for thyroid that extrapolates to every system in your body. And in fact, I always, I mean, I'm sure you know this just from my South by Southwest chat, but I would never ask someone to count their calories. The only thing I think about is how many nutrients can you fit in on a daily basis? More even than thinking about what to take out.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, yeah that's the other thing. If, if you eat nutrient dense food and get the right amount, you're just not hungry for that much crap. And so then if you have a cookie, you're not eating 12 because you're just not hungry enough to eat 12. And so it it totally works. Like the whole system works as long as on the front end, you're front loading right nutritional. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker: It does because your body's scouring in the environment to fill its void, not of calories, of like nutrients. So you're just craving more and more and more. And when you eat nutrient depleted foods, you're never going to fulfill that nutrient craving. So it's just empty.
Speaker: Yeah. Okay. So that's, that's for Hashimoto's. So were we're starting at eight. Let's start with food, pulling out inflammatory things. Let's figure out what is inflamm inflammatory for you by stripping out and testing. There's also making sure you're getting the right nutrients. What else kind of for those patients?
Speaker: So think about making yourself more resilient to inflammation. So antioxidants, glutathione is an incredibly powerful one. Glutathione is our body's most potent antioxidant, anti-inflammatory agent that we make ourselves. Most people with autoimmune disease have poor glutathione reserves. Those two things correlate with one another. They often genetically don't make enough glutathione. Ask me how I know I am one. So You know, supplementing with that orally. Sometimes I even honestly have people place cream on their thyroid gland twice a day to calm that inflammation locally, absorb transdermally, reducing other toxins, reducing your plastic exposure, stop eating, heating your food in plastic, drinking out of plastic water bottles.
Speaker: Get an air filtration device for your home. That is one of the most powerful things people can do for their health. We hyper-focus on food, which is important. The air we breathe is even more important. And the air in our home is often 80% to 90% more toxic than outdoor air.
Speaker: So it's incredibly, and it's passive, right? You just put one in your room. So while you're sleeping all night, you breathe clean air. Red light therapy is a fun one my patients love. you know, 10 minutes, once or twice a day, about six inches from your thyroid is incredibly powerful. um It reduces antibodies. It also helps convert crude oil to gasoline.
Speaker: Is that it? It's stimulating the mitochondria to be more at like, what, what all do we know the mechanism? Good question. So I think a lot of it is reduction of inflammation. Like when you reduce inflammation, you reduce antibodies. When you reduce inflammation, you improve conversion of your thyroid hormones. So that's my suspicion, but it probably has multiple effects.
Speaker: Another one is medication, low-dose naltrexone or LDN that people are always you know really interested in. It shifts your body in a natural way. Your own body changes the way your immune system is working to make you more resilient against inflammation. And then you know too, one of my favorites, especially for people who are metabolically very compromised is GLPs. GLPs undeniably reduce Hashimoto's antibodies.
Speaker: is that a starting entry point? I mean, is, is it personalized? Is it, Hey, we just go through steps like, okay, that got us part of the way there. We're not quite there. now we go to the next step. Now we we go to the next step. Cause totally like a lot with health.
Speaker: it can be super overwhelming. The list is here, here are 36 things and so people are like, well, I guess I'm just not going to do anything. But you also, if it's going to be the same effort, right? Of, okay, I got to go play, throw out every single plastic thing in my house and buy new glass ones for that. And like, okay, here's the amount of improvement you'd get for that versus and go on Amazon and buy this really good air filter and I'm going to get 4x the improvement and I just pop it in once. So is there a relative benefit? Yeah.
Speaker: So it's such a good question. So our goal at Modern Thyroid Clinic is to make it like realistic for people. We don't, people don't come to see us and we're like, so you're going to be paleo forever and you're going to throw out all the chemicals in your entire, like, that's just not how we do it. We're all about realistic expectations. And what I tell people is pick one and then test and retest and see how it does.
Speaker: Then if that works, you keep that in your toolbox. And so in the future, if you go into a flare, you know, oh gosh, when I went and did red light 10 minutes twice a day, it reduced my antibodies by 30%, right? And then after that stabilizes, you layer in another one.
Speaker: Only do what is not overwhelming for you. Like truly, there is no reason to do all the things. Do I do all the things every day? Goodness, no. Am I still in remission after 12 years? Yes, I am. And the longer you go with those tools in your toolbox,
Speaker: the more resilient your body is going to be when you don't live in this tiny little bubble trying to control everything all the time. And not just necessarily that you don't do all the things, but say, I mean, again, you've been doing it 20 years, whatever the period of time is.
Speaker: And maybe you have 12 things you do now or some count. It didn't start at 12, right? Like there was one and then tested like that's not the right one. Then it was a new one and that went for months and then you got two. And so it's not where you start. It's where you finish. It's this ongoing journey. And what Dr. Tommy Wood said when he was on our show, was like anything greater than one,
Speaker: typically means zero. So really just find the one you're going to do. And that's going to be the most impactful one because you're actually doing it right? And if you're really tired, go buy an air filter and don't do anything, you know, start there and just leverage the improvement. The nice thing is, is when thyroid people get the right medication, the right interventions, they start feeling life-changingly better quickly.
Speaker: And so at every point you can use that as leverage and it just becomes like the evolution of yourself becomes like second nature. And it's not, such a giant hurdle anymore, because you're using data to only do the things that work. And the things that work will make you feel better. So it's self propagates.
Speaker: Well, I think this is a unique area versus a lot in kind of the health span longevity spaces is this optimization, and maybe this is going to help decades down the line. And so maybe like with fasting,
Speaker: maybe you're not seeing the benefits today, but you're buying that autophagy is going to help you on the cancer treatment down the line, right? Whereas this, you're starting in such a deficit. You you you started this saying, i was in bed 16 hours a day.
Speaker: So if you do something and all of a sudden you got two extra hours a day, okay actually I can add more things because I have more energy. I can put more in. And so it's a unique problem here where the more you add, the more you can add because you have more energy, you have more motivation, i would think.
Speaker: I'm so happy that my field is thyroid because selfishly, like one, we get to change people's lives every day, but two, we get to see our work manifest in almost real time. And it's incredibly, incredibly rewarding for myself and our clinicians because in most aspects of medicine, you don't in most aspects of functional medicine, you still don't. It's like people put in crazy amounts of work and they might change 10%. Whereas people put in no work and they change like 70, 80%. And then they put in a little work and they massively, you know, up level their life. So it's like selfishly, it's a win for me and it's a win for patients. You're spot on.
Speaker: Yeah, and I mean, thank you. This is just amazing. I'm sorry for what you went through, but like so many others, like I'm so grateful for what you went through and that where it led today and the number of lives that are already benefiting from your work.
Speaker: And very exciting. So this is, as hopefully anyone listening can tell, like McCall is a fountain of knowledge that's just constantly bringing in more. And we just touched the iceberg.
Speaker: You have a book coming out for those that want to dive deeper. Can you share more about that? I absolutely can. this is the first time I've talked about this on a podcast. So yay, Andrew, how fun. ah My book is going to be published February 9th, 2027. It's called Take Back Your Thyroid. It's with Penguin Random House. We actually are offering some pretty incredible opportunities to people who pre-order. I have a course called Thyroid Empowered. I've offered it for years. It's $400.
Speaker: We are selling it for $39. And with that, when the book comes out, you get it for free. So we're really trying to take people through the whole journey and give them everything they need from a to Z so that they understand their thyroid, but actionable steps that they can do and incorporate into their everyday life. Because again, like we are not in an era still, unfortunately, where patients and people can sit back and be passive participants in the care of their thyroid issues. They need to be knowledgeable. They need to be educated and empowered. And this book is my way of giving people everything they need to have in their hands and in their brains to get their lives back.
Speaker: It's incredible. Yeah. Thank you. I know how much work goes in into creating a book and publishing a book. And so I am grateful and everybody who's going to get access to it is going to be as well. So thank you for that. We'll certainly put a link to the pre-order link ah in the show notes, as well as, you know, for those that want to follow you, i know you're active on social media. Where can people find you if they want to learn more other than the book?
Speaker: Yeah. So of course you can always find me at our practice, modern thyroid clinic.com. I love being on social and like educating people. So I'm McCall McPherson PA on Instagram, McCall McPherson on Tik TOK. And then I have a podcast where you are going to have to come on as a guest, Andrew, it's called modern thyroid and wellness. We don't just talk about thyroid. We talk about everything that helps you thrive and just build your life back ah to the highest possible level. So you can find me there for long form content. Amazing.
Speaker: Thank you for joining us on today's episode of the Home of Healthspan podcast. And remember, you can always find the products, practices, and routines mentioned by today's guests, as well as many other Healthspan role models on Alively.com.
Speaker: Enjoy a lively day.
