My Hashimoto’s Remission and Learnings

In this post, I am telling about my Hashimoto’s journey and share my learnings with you that might inspire you to take action.

My personal success story will explain why I am such a tireless advocate of conscious eating, taking supplements, and resolving psychological root causes of chronic diseases.

A Bolt from the Blue Sky

From my childhood, I had good health. From the age of about ten till the late twenties I didn’t go to the doctors and didn’t take any medicines. Moreover, I was and am a person avoiding any drugs when possible.

In 2007, in my early thirties, after I had my first daughter, I went for a medical check-up.

The doctor was very thorough and did an extensive blood check. After that, she announced that I have an autoimmune disease, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. Also, she explained that I have to take thyroid hormone meds for the rest of my life.

Just imagine how shocked I was! I never went to that doctor again being angry about her verdict.

What is Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis

But as I learned later, this doctor actually did a brilliant job. It is because Hashimoto’s is very difficult to diagnose and often doctors do not perform a specific test.

Hashimoto’s is an autoimmune disease of the thyroid gland. Meaning that my immune system was attacking and destroying my thyroid causing a lack of thyroid hormones, or hypothyroidism.

The proof of Hashimoto thyroiditis is the presence of the specific thyroid antibodies in blood above the norm of 34 IU/ml. I had about 640 IU/ml when I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s.

Symptoms of Hashimoto’s Disease

Hashimoto’s thyroiditis does not have any symptoms in the thyroid gland itself.

Instead, it can show up as multiple non-specific symptoms because the thyroid hormones, Thyroxin regulate the metabolism rate in our body.

Hashimoto hypothyroidism develops over years. As it progresses, one or more of the following symptoms can manifest:

• Poor appetite, gut mobility, and uptake of nutrients from food
• a slowed heart rate
• fatigue
• weight gain
• intolerance for cold
• dry skin; dry, thinning hair
• heavy or irregular menstrual periods and problems becoming pregnant
• brain fog and memory problems
• depression
• joint and muscle pain
• constipation

Conventional medicine claims that Hashimoto’s thyroiditis is incurable. The only way to deal with it to replace the missing thyroid hormones with medication.

Over 10 years of trials

Well, I decided not to believe this claim and started searching for solutions.

The first solution I found pretty soon. It was selenium — an element that is used by our immune system.

Therapeutic doses of supplements are often not related to the recommended daily intake, but are much higher.

For over ten years I take 364% of the daily recommended dose and this alone decreased the thyroid antibodies from 640 IU (international units) to the stable 200 IU (the norm is ❤5 IU/ml).

Food Sensitivities

Then I discovered about food sensitivities. I purchased a FoodDetectivetm test and did it at home. This showed me that I need to exclude grains (wheat and rye) and milk products from my diet.

Consuming products that you are sensitive to affects your digestion and health in general.

Gluten sensitivity (wheat, rye) specifically is meanwhile known to be closely related to autoimmune diseases.

Eliminating grains and milk products helped me to restore my gut health.

Experts

Later I discovered the books by Izabela Wentz. She calls herself a thyroid pharmacist.

She is an author of several bestselling books and programs which helped thousands of people to deal with the disease and even go into remission.

Uncontrolled Consumption of Iodine

Iodine is an important constituent of thyroid hormones. As you know Iodine is a scarce element in soils and therefore added to foods.

Unfortunately, since Iodine is added to salt it can be found in many of our products — bread, pasta, cheese, etc. This led to uncontrolled excessive consumption of iodine.

There is scientific evidence that uncontrolled intake of iodine is one of the important triggers of Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and led to an epidemic of Hashimoto’s disease.

Supplements

Using Wentz protocol, I tried out different supplements. I believe that some of them were especially useful for me — namely, selenium, vitamin D, and turmeric.

Allies

When I started trying out different interventions from the Wentz protocol I needed to evaluate how they help. For that, I needed actually to directly measure the thyroid antibodies in my blood.

I asked my family doctor to perform blood tests. At that time I already lived in the Netherlands. The doctor was convinced that Hashimoto’s is an incurable disease. Moreover, the Dutch medical system is known as economical. The answer to my requests to measure antibodies repeatedly was a plain “No”.

I found a different specialist who was open to collaborating with me, responding to my needs and requests. Such doctors are still rather an exception but it is worth finding one.

Impossible Becomes Possible

In 2017, I went for another blood test which showed that thyroid antibodies were in the norm (< 35 IU/ml). The comment of the responsible immunologist was saying that the diagnosis of Hashimoto’s is not confirmed.

The test was repeated. Two months, two years, and even three years later it was still negative.

The antibody count dropped within ten years from about 640 to 200, to 100, and finally to below 30 IU/ml.

Psychological Root Causes

I am a great believer that every chronic or autoimmune disease has a psychological root cause besides the genetics and environmental causes like toxicity.

It is known that Hashimoto thyroiditis affects women more often than men. And there are different studies indicating that Hashimoto’s disease can serve as an adjustment and protection mechanism of the body.

The psychological factors causing such protection mechanism can be an unfavorable environment in childhood like violence, verbal, physical, or sexual abuse between parents or towards the child, addictions of parents, loss of a family member, etc.

I used Rapid Transformational Therapy to deal with my insecurities. RTT therapy offers powerful tools to resolve a load of emotional hurt from the past.

The Journey Continues

I do though believe that my immune system would flare up and start again its fight against my own thyroid if I go back to consuming wheat and milk products, iodine salt, and stop using supplements.

Also, the function of the thyroid was restored through the interventions only to some extent.

So, I will continue my search for solutions to be fit and vital.

Many people would say that those are too many life-style restrictions, too much sacrifice.

But for me these restrictions are only the means to be able to live better and enjoy my life more, to be a better mother for my daughters, to be there for my clients.

I choose a long term, sustainable life pleasure over the short term pleasure.

Conclusions

These are the learnings from my Hashimoto’s journey that I wanted to share with you:

• Let the quality of your life be the priority over instant pleasures.
• Take full accountability not relying on specialists treating you or medicines that you are prescribed. Doctors might not be up-to-date about your specific condition. And most medicines for very rare exceptions will have some side effects.
• Resolve the psychological root cause of your condition.
• Look for knowledge and experts that can help.
• Adopt the lifestyle, nutrition that helps with your condition.
• Test and exclude foods that you are sensitive to.
• Take supplements that help your condition.
• Control your Iodine intake

Have you or someone in your family had symptoms that could not be explained by your doctor?