Transcript 

Hypothyroidism with Gut Health Expert Abby Hueber

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:00:01]:

I'm already dancing. Abby. I'm here with my darling friend, Abby Huber, who is an incredible functional nutritionist, dietitian. Abby, I'm so excited to have you here today.

 

Abby Hueber [00:00:11]:

I'm so pumped to be here.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:00:13]:

This is our. You know, we've had to reschedule this because I was like, Abby, having you on, there's so much that I want to talk about, and I was like, I need time to, like, feel into everything we're going to cover. So this is a big awaited moment.

 

Abby Hueber [00:00:27]:

I'm, like, so excited, and, you know, like, I'm always good, but, like, something came up. I'm like, I'm here. Don't worry. Not going anywhere.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:00:33]:

100%. So what we came to is something that we've noticed has been plaguing people recently, it seems like, which is this what looks like new onset of almost. It feels like everyone having hypothyroidism or hashimoto's and thyroid disorders and dysfunctions. Tell me what you've kind of been seeing, Abby, recently or in your work over time when it comes to thyroid dysfunction.

 

What have you been seeing with thyroid dysfunction?

Abby Hueber [00:00:58]:

Yeah, I feel like, well, I work a lot with chronic constipation, so a lot of my clients come to me with chronic conservation. The first thing I think about, you know, maybe is thyroid for them. And then I ask them, you know, have you gotten a complete thyroid panel in the past, like, one to two years? And some of them, you know, maybe got a CSH, which is just one of the arguably six plus markers that we, in fact, want to see in order to understand the whole picture of the thyroid. And we'll go deeper on that, so we don't have the information on that, which is kind of, you know, a lot of these clients have been struggling with this chronic constipation for 2510 years. And it's shocking to me that I'm like, no one's even ruled in or ruled out based on, you know, a really complete picture or on the other side. So they come kind of not knowing about thyroid and constipation connections, that gut thyroid connection, where on the other side? I have clients that come very obsessed with the thyroid and very much of, like, I think my thyroid's underperforming. Like, I think, you know, I have all the symptoms, all these things, and yet we end up not really talking about the thyroid or working on the thyroid because it's not actually the thyroid that is the actual crux of the issue. Yes, the thyroid is underperforming, but it's the holistic picture of their under eating, their chronic stress, their gut, their liver, and all the associated dynamics, organs that are influencing the thyroid.

 

Abby Hueber [00:02:24]:

And the thyroid's just simply responding because it's like, whoo, scary out there, guys. Let's slow things down. Let's be safe. We got to be safe. So it's a little bit of, like, we're missing the mark of being, like, kind of obsessed with thyroid, but not really understanding, like, how does the thyroid fit into the big picture?

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:02:39]:

I love that. And, you know, in my work, I've obviously worked with people looking to lose weight for a very long period of time. This is different than you. Which weight loss has not been a central feature of your work, which is actually really interesting to talk about, too. For the longest time, and certainly when I was in a larger body, we kind of use the thyroid to be like, oh. The reason we are not losing weight is because our thyroid is dysregulated. I almost view it in, like, kind of the reverse, which is that all the systems, including your brain, which is very involved in thyroid function, your gut and your liver are impaired, which then leads to the body slowing its systems down. And then ultimately, yes, weight loss resistance might happen, but I don't know if the weight loss resistance doesn't come before the hypothyroidism in the first place.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:03:25]:

And can you speak into that a little bit, too?

 

Is hypothyroidism the cause of weight issues, or are there other systems in our body that play a role?

Abby Hueber [00:03:27]:

Yeah, I mean, that's where I feel like there's almost this vicious cycle of, especially in that vein of, like, seeking weight loss. And, like, we are allowed to seek weight loss, like, first and foremost establish, like, weight loss friendly. However, when you look to, you know, every platform out there talking about weight loss, it's like, restrict calories and, like, increase exercise. The conversation's getting a little nuanced, thankfully more so today. So a lot of people are in this journey for weight loss for a very prolonged period of time. And then we start getting these, like, stress dynamics of under eating, which is in and of itself an independent stressor on the body. So then we can start to get cortisol in the mix, because in the absence of food, what increases blood sugar, we're going to get cortisol. So then cortisol is an independent kind of marker of suppression of the thyroid, because the thyroid's like, man, it's, like, really stressful out there.

 

Abby Hueber [00:04:26]:

So we can start to see maybe elevated tsh or anything that goes on for a long time. We could start to see kind of that hypothyroid situation. Cortisol is also a driver of the wear and tear hormones, so it starts to break down tissues and cause inflammation. And it's communicating with insulin, which then causes this inflammation. Stress roller coaster. And inflammation is an independent kind of impact on the thyroid. We can start to see the thyroid again being bullied by some of the stress and inflammation dynamics because of this central under eating seeking of weight loss. And when we do that for a prolonged period of time, maybe when the body's not ready for it, we can start to see this kind of impact.

 

Abby Hueber [00:05:08]:

And cortisol also breaks down our gut lining. So we can start to see leaky gut, we can start to see inflammation from the gut. We can start to see changes to our gut microbiome. And 20% of our thyroid hormone is activated in the gut by our beneficial microbes. So we see a lot of picture of low beneficial microbes. So we're seeing that thyroid hormone is not being activated there. Stress can be a big player in the liver, and almost 70% of our thyroid hormones activated in the liver. And so we can start to see implications there if maybe we're not turning our thyroid hormone into its active form.

 

Abby Hueber [00:05:45]:

And so we start to see just this one kind of tsunami wave kind of coming over the body and how many different dynamics it can start to implicate. But then it can be really challenging when you're like, okay, I hear you, but I still wanna lose weight. So what do I do now? Right?

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:06:02]:

And we will talk about that and solutions and what that looks like. It's funny, we didn't know we were gonna talk about weight loss, by the way. Just does that precaution.

 

Abby Hueber [00:06:10]:

I mean, that was like, that's my story, too. Like, you know, not one that I totally talk about that much, but, like, a lot of why I struggled with chronic constipation was cause I was chronically under eating. Cause I was scared of gaining weight. Cause I could never lose weight. And, like, you know, did I have an excessive amount of weight that I was holding onto? Like, no, but it was something that, again, as a young woman, it was. It, you know, felt frustrating, all these things. And then, like, so much of it started shifting when I was like, let me start to feed my body and, like, not be perpetually terrified of weight. And all of a sudden, my mate became something I didn't need to white knuckle anymore.

 

Abby Hueber [00:06:43]:

And I was like, wow, this feels so much nicer. I actually have energy.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:06:47]:

Your kind of hypothesis that we're putting forward is that if you treat your metabolism in a way where it's really like, you're fueling the body's fueling system, then weight loss may actually become easier, not harder, as opposed to going through an extremely, just hardcore restrictive model over time.

 

Abby Hueber [00:07:09]:

Yeah. And so much of it is because when we do this, when we approach from this restrictive standpoint, not only are we impacting the thyroid in all of those ways that we spoke about, but we're also depleting the body of our minerals, which are the kind of also play a role in actually allowing the thyroid to come into the cell. So we could have cellular hypothyroid, but we're impeding our body's utilization of energy, kind of making and using energy. And so then the body essentially, in a beautiful way, is like, it's really scary out there, guys. Like, let's hold on to our most, like, amazing reserve of energy, which is our adipose tissue. So it all makes so much sense, but there's that fear and that, like, societal pressure that is, well, if I start to feed my body and do it in a robust way, like one plus one equals two, I'm absolutely gonna gain weight. And it doesn't necessarily work that way. Yes, sometimes we will have a little bit of weight gain in the, like, repairing process, but often we get to a place that it just feels, you know, the, the gold standard is we want to be able to feed the body the highest amount of calories that it will comfortably kind of function at.

 

Abby Hueber [00:08:25]:

So that we have this, like, you know, for lack of better ways, like roaring metabolism and roaring energy production, so that we have not only this metabolism that's functioning from a wheat perspective, but also this energy, this cognitive function. We have regulated body temperature. We have cellular turnover. That's appropriate. That's a big part in our metabolic process and even cancer prevention. It's so much of a bigger conversation than just weight, but we tend to.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:08:56]:

Fixate on weight, hypothyroidism and weight gain. Now, when you. We're actually talking about the functions of thyroid hormones, and we're talking about how thyroid hormones even affect metabolism when it comes to maybe fat storage or any other, you know, I'm burying the lead a little bit. Can you tell us about how our thyroid hormones, why is hypothyroidism even related to weight gain in the first place? Why is it related to under eating? Tell us, what are the functions of thyroid hormones?

 

Why is hypothyroidism even related to weight gain in the first place? Why is it related to under eating? And what are the functions of thyroid hormones?

Abby Hueber [00:09:24]:

Yeah, so our thyroid in general is the kind of sets the pace of everything in the body, and it is very much in order to establish safety. So if the body doesn't feel safe? The thyroid will decide to slow everything down in order to conserve energy for the vital organs and for survival. So that's really on the kind of the very most fundamental is, does our body feel safe? Does our thyroid feel safe? And our thyroid communicates with the gut and the liver in order to say, hey, is it safe out there? You know, are we being. Is there some sort of infection? Is there a famine? Are we being exposed to something toxic where we need to slow it down in order to process out whatever that is or put more energy to the immune system or, you know, whatever the threat from the outside might be? And that's where, you know, we're going to slow the pace down. So symptoms that kind of come from a hypothyroid place could be that regulation of body temperature. So we could feel cold more easily, we that kind of slow turnover of cells. So we could have kind of hair that's easily kind of breaking, thinning, losing a third of our eyebrows. We have nails that are very brittle, we have very dry skin.

 

Abby Hueber [00:10:37]:

We could have kind of fertility issues. We could have certainly PM's or more challenging periods, heavier periods, even or absent periods. Kind of depends on how it's presenting in the individual. Certainly wait, because the body is saying we're not safe and our adipose cells are our storage containers of energy that, you know, the only reason why the human race is still alive today is because we have this beautiful ability to store weight, to store just energy that's waiting to be used is really like what it is. And so that's where the thyroid's like, hey, not safe out there. The liver's telling me, the guts telling me, the famine's telling me, so let's slow things down and let's put more into our reserves. It's like, you know, anybody that's got a, you know, second refrigerator or second freezer, you're like, I'm just putting those away for a rainy day. And we feel safe because of it.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:11:30]:

Totally.

 

Abby Hueber [00:11:30]:

So kind of very same perspective. We can have sleeping challenges, we can have fatigue because we're slowing down energy. We can have memory issues, cognitive function. Any on that list that I'm missing that are big guys? No.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:11:44]:

I think that makes a lot of sense. I think also just drawing that picture of what hormones even are, which is that they are going to be moving through your body to communicate to different parts of the body this action to do this, this action to do this. So your thyroid hormones, the first signaling method mechanism I think of is really like, in the pituitary gland in our hypothalamus. That's where I'm actually thinking that that's starting.

 

Abby Hueber [00:12:08]:

Yeah, totally. So, I mean, when we think of the thyroid, like, so much of it is this, like, top down of the brain and the nervous system's communication to the thyroid. So that's also. Yes, very much of what's kind of signaling to, are we safe? That limbic system, that sympathetic or parasympathetic nervous system. And ideally, the balance between the both of them would be. Would be signaling safety. We don't always need to be in this deep breast nervous system. We, in fact, want to be able to kind of gently swing from both in a nice, balanced way.

 

Abby Hueber [00:12:40]:

So we will have times where cortisol is rev and we will have times we're in these more active periods of life, but we also want to kind of balance it out. And that's where our pituitary is signaling to the thyroid through hormones in order to produce our tsH, which is then signaling to the thyroid to produce our t four, and that's the inactive thyroid hormone. So we actually produce that, and then t four gets turned into its active form of t three, which is what's actually doing the cellular responses in terms of and motility of the gut is another one that I just realized I didn't connect. So that downward movement of the gut in terms of anticonstipation, bloating, all of those kind of GI symptoms. And that's where this conversion between t four and t three is one of the most nutrient driven. And then even higher up, that nervous system, kind of pituitary to speaking to the thyroid is really that kind of brain thyroid connection is really so much of that nervous system, that safety and that cortisol plays a very significant role in that conversation. So we can see there's actually two, you know, very. We've got nutrients, we've got gut liver, and we've got brain.

 

Abby Hueber [00:13:59]:

And, you know, the thyroid is definitely part of that conversation and the health of that thyroid organ. But when we look from, like, a conventional standpoint, they're only looking at the thyroid. Nobody's talking about, you know, these other organs as association to them. Even with autoimmune thyroid now we're talking about the immune system. We're actually not even really talking about the thyroid anymore when we're talking about Hashimoto's. And that's, you know, we always want to support the organ of the thyroid, but we want to be talking about these other systems and understanding how do we support the infrastructure to allow those to thrive.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:14:34]:

Absolutely. Yeah. I think, again, you go and get labs done, we get this number, this TSH, and we can talk a little bit more about the kind of numbers that doctors run, what the clinical conventional ranges are versus functional. But typically people will go to a doctor's office, get their thyroid numbers. One, it will be the TSH, which is kind of like the gold standard for thyroid function, which TSH is really a reflection of brain signaling how much thyroid you actually need to produce more than the actual active thyroid available for your body to use or to send those signals, which is really not what people would expect, I would think. Can you talk a little bit more about tshirt specifically?

 

Please explain TSH and what it means.

Abby Hueber [00:15:16]:

Yeah. So we're really just talking about, like, how's your brain's conversation with the thyroid? Is it, you know, is it a nice talking? Like, it's talking at the level of Michelle and I right now, like, comfortable conversation. We're like having a good time. Everybody feels safe, everyone feels supported. And that's where we would get a tsh of like, under, under a two, ideally, and not too low. So between like a 0.7 and a two probably would be maybe like a one and a two is kind of where we want to, like, optimally see that conversation. So it's telling us we're not, the brain's not yelling at the thyroid, but it's not ignoring the thyroid. And as the volume of that brain conversation to the thyroid starts to increase and we start to have the brain be like, hey, listen, thyroid, you gotta, you gotta do your job, because we're, we're struggling down here.

 

Abby Hueber [00:16:05]:

That TSH marker is gonna start to increase. And that essentially we can think of as like the volume of the brain, like talking more loudly. And one of the big differences in the conventional and functional roles kind of world is that we start in the functional world, we start to get more curious about that brain thyroid conversation, when that marker is going over a two, over a 2.5, and there's present thyroid symptoms. So we've got that constipation, that cold, that loss of third of eyebrow, or that thinning hair. We've got a couple, maybe three plus five plus of those kind of hypothyroid symptoms. Most of the time, conventional medicine doesn't even start to get questioning of the thyroid until it's over a five. The brain's pretty much screaming at the thyroid at that point. Unfortunately, the very conventional treatment is, is very much the same, is really just okay.

 

Abby Hueber [00:17:05]:

Thyroid hormone, like, they're not really even concerned with what the rest of the markers are because the treatment never changes. It doesn't change if there's antibodies, it doesn't change. If t three is low, it doesn't change. If reverse t three is high, it doesn't change if any of these other markers are giving us actually a tremendous amount more of information as to how we can more eloquently support the body so that we don't need to rely on this outside medication, we can actually get the body back online and make it so that we can actually have this endogenous hormone production in the very way that we're put together. And sometimes thyroid hormones can be, you know, helpful, especially in the healing process for some people. So we're not saying never take thyroid hormone, but we always want to know, like, what's the why that's going on? That's always the question that we kind of want to be a little obsessed with.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:18:00]:

Totally. And by the time your thyroid, your Tsh, is altered over, you know, sometimes when you get those labs on also, your Tsh can swing a little bit. So I don't want people to, like, get overly obsessed with those thyroid numbers, like you're saying, because your thyroid hormones can change on a daily basis, your numbers can change on a daily basis, but when it's consistently over that 2.5 number, your TSh, it kind of invites us to ask the question, well, why did that happen? The kind of conventional, working with the thyroid is, okay, your thyroid function seems low because your TSh, your thyroid stimulating hormone, this brain signal hormone, basically is saying that the body needs to produce more for some reason, because it's either out of whack or something's not communicating well. Right. So they will give exogenous hormones, usually from a pig. It's literally like their thyroid goes into us. That's. That's kind of the conventional treatment for thyroid function.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:18:56]:

What I think you're so beautifully laying out is that knowing that your thyroid isn't functioning is not an answer to why your thyroid isn't functioning well. Right?

 

Abby Hueber [00:19:05]:

Yes.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:19:05]:

The other labs we can look at and we will talk about right now will tell us kind of what is going on with your thyroid. Is this a brain issue? Is this a gut issue? Is this an autoimmunity issue? Just knowing that your thyroid is altered tells you nothing about why your thyroid is altered. And since, like you're saying, abby, the treatment in conventional medicine is you're just going to take levothyroxine or synthroid anyway, it doesn't really matter to the practitioners, usually, why it's dysfunctioning, but it matters so much to us. So let's talk about those other thyroid markers and what we see in them and what they kind of lead us to analyze and believe.

 

What are other thyroid markers and what do they lead us to analyze and believe?

Abby Hueber [00:19:43]:

Yep. So we've got our tsh as we've talked about, and that's just so if you're sitting at home and you're like, I've got that tsh. And it's, you know, above a two, it's above a 2.5 and you're like, oh, my gosh, I'm kind of freaking out. It's like, this is really just like empowerment for us to understand and really tell the picture. Like, there's always a why. And when we understand the why, usually it's like, let's strengthen the foundations, let's put, like, 1ft in front of the other and, like, let's hope to empower you and support the body. So that TSH is kind of our brain to thyroid conversation. Then we get the production of t four, which is our inactive thyroid hormone.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:20:20]:

What do you mean when you say inactive also?

 

Abby Hueber [00:20:22]:

So that hormone is not acting on the level of the cells and tissues, so it's not telling the body to do anything, essentially. It's kind of waiting to be a little intermediate.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:20:34]:

Intermediate.

 

Abby Hueber [00:20:35]:

Intermediate would be a perfect way to describe it. I'm like, it's a waiting zone. So it's an intermediate. We have both free and bound. So the bound is kind of bound up in terms of storage form and we have free that's circulating in the blood in order to then turn into the next down the path is t three, and that's our active thyroid hormone. And by active we mean this is actually the thyroid hormone that is doing the actions at the levels of the cells and tissues. So it's a actually communicating what the thyroid wants is really that energy production, that promotility, pro body temperature, pro hair growth, pro cell turnover, pro all of those things. Again with that t three, we have both a free and a bound.

 

Abby Hueber [00:21:24]:

Really, the number that we're looking at most is really that free, t three, because it's telling us very much, is there enough of that active hormone that's allowing the body to experience the effects of robust thyroid support?

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:21:41]:

I want to add one thing in, because what you just said is so important. So, again, it's not only that when looking at conventional lab ranges, the numbers are going to be different than looking from a functional perspective. We're actually looking at different numbers usually as well, and different markers. So whereby when getting a kind of non comprehensive thyroid panel, you might be getting your TSH and then you might be getting your total t four. Like you're saying bound versus unbound or your total t three. A lot of functional dietitians, we're not so interested in that information because we really want to understand, again, that free t three or that free t four to understand what is actually active, unbound and communicating with the rest of your body, essentially. Um, so it's not only, again, that those ranges might be different, but we're looking at totally different numbers. And I say this to clients a lot.

 

What are some common patterns in thyroid labs and what they indicate about stress, nutrient deficiencies, and overall health?

Michelle Shapiro [00:22:35]:

I'm like, if you give me just a TSh without the context of a lot of other numbers, it doesn't mean that much to me. Like, these labs are so important to have in context. So even if your TSh was a three or something and you started freaking out, it doesn't, you still don't know where it's from and you still don't know the context. So free t three is definitely a number that we're looking at in this thyroid context amongst many, many others. So, Abby, if you saw someone's, let's call it total t four or even free t four was very low or very high, and then you saw someone's total t three or free t three was low or high. What information can you get from the comparison between those two numbers?

 

Abby Hueber [00:23:19]:

Yep. So that's going to be telling us, like, are we based on t four? So let's just talk about free t four for the moment. So free t four. So that's the intermediary hanging out, kind of waiting to be turned in that active form. Let's say that's low. We'd be thinking, okay, well, now we need to look above the chain. So we're talking about the thyroids producing t four. So I'm going to look up to the brain and I'm going to say, hey, what's that? Tsh? Is that tsh, like, high? So it's talking in that kind of like almost a yell to that thyroid hormone.

 

Abby Hueber [00:23:52]:

And then we're thinking of like, oh, what's the nervous system doing? What's the cortisol doing? This is like, might be a stress dynamic because there's a loud, you know, kind of brain conversation trying to get the thyroid to produce more t four and we're really not getting much production. So we also are thinking about undereating there, too. Is that a stressor there? Is there a over exercise, under eating pattern? Is there, like again, stress nervous system pattern, like, so we always want to look up. And then we start to look down, too, to say, okay, if we've got this kind of low free t four, that intermediary hormone, let's look down to the t three and see is it being converted? Is t three even being produced in a yemenite efficient manner? And let's say that's also low, because that's a picture I see quite often. Low free t four and low free t three. That's telling us that, well, a, we don't have a lot of the intermediary to convert from. So that makes sense. And then we don't have a lot of this active thyroid hormone.

 

Abby Hueber [00:24:56]:

So we're thinking, okay, maybe there's some, you know, overall lack of calories coming in or lack of macronutrients, particularly our proteins and our carbohydrates. Those are kind of the two macronutrients, I think, the most, and then lots of minerals that are really imperative to that kind of spark plug energy turning on and play a big role in that kind of conversion process. So there's different patterns that we can see in those. Tsh, free t four, free t three. And that's going to help us to then kind of understand a little bit more of, like, where in this chain of command are we looking? And, you know, are. And what is it that we then get to look at from the client's perspective? Because we've got the food logs, we've got the, you know, in depth conversation that we've had with them. We understand our clients because we spend, you know, a tremendous amount of time taking the time and the energy, and we're able to put a bigger picture together of not just jumping to, hey, let's give you thyroid hormone, but it's like, hey, let's actually start to shift some lifestyle. Let's start to shift some nutrition.

 

Abby Hueber [00:26:06]:

Let's start to maybe bring in some food based support and maybe some targeted supplements, too, in order to reinspire the safety that is lacking in that low production in this example.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:26:19]:

Yeah. So if you guys are watching this on YouTube, you'll see what Abby's doing, which is really cool, which is that she's starting in the brain with her hands, and then she's moving to her thyroid in her throat, and then she's moving down to her gut when she's talking about it. So what's really cool about getting thyroid labs that are more comprehensive? If you're having reverse t three, free t three tsh, and then you're running some antibody tests is we can kind of see in it what step in the process. Things are getting a little funky, usually. So that's what's really, I think, special about running these more comprehensive labs is that a well trained practitioner can see, oh, you're not actually converting your free t four to your free t three. We got to look in the liver or, you know, so it's like, we can actually see where that step in the process is. And it is this really top down thing with our thyroid. It literally starts in the brain, and then it's moving down to our thyroid.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:27:13]:

And then, like, that signaling mechanism is going in this very specific way. And based on where the issues are in your labs, you can actually see where the dysfunction is in the body.

 

Abby Hueber [00:27:23]:

Yeah. And with that, we often run additional, like, micronutrients that kind of, like, help to tell us, you know, is there a. Is there a lack of some of those key micronutrients? And exactly which ones are they, and are they suboptimal? Are they actually deficient? Are the ratios out of balance? And that's kind of. We often like to, in a perfect world, run those both from, like, serum bloods and from hair testing. We can kind of see, like, serum and intracellular and then kind of put a bigger picture together. But then it's really helping us to kind of select specific foods as well as kind of understand. All right, do we need some supplements to help us to, like, get up and running a little bit more quickly and efficiently, especially if this person is struggling with chronic constipation or chronic GI symptoms where we're thinking, well, hey, I could feed them all I want, but is there a challenge with us actually digesting and absorbing and assimilating those nutrients? And is that part of what maybe got us here in the first place, or a little, you know, piece of that? So sometimes we actually have to say, like, okay, now we've got an idea of what's going on in the thyroid, but now we need to actually spend some time working on the gut so that this client can actually start eating enough food. Because certainly anybody that I'm talking to out there who's like, yeah, I'm chronically concentrated.

 

Abby Hueber [00:28:41]:

And the idea of eating a full day of food, like, feels really challenging, or someone that's chronically bloated or has chronic loose stool or, like, you know, any of these dynamics where it's like, food's not fun, food feels painful, uncomfortable. And then we kind of, again, have this vicious cycle of, we're not getting the nutrients, we're not getting the calories, because we have to spend. Spend some time getting a little bit more micro on the gut or a little bit more micro on the liver, if it's maybe some gallbladder kind of liver drainage dynamic. So then we kind of also see, like, maybe where some of that womp womp conversions coming from, because, again, like, 80, 90% is really converted from that inactive to active in that liver and that gut. So we're starting to see, wow, a lot of the thyroid's actually not happening in the thyroid.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:29:30]:

It's not. It's so interesting. Yeah. But this is kind of the nature of all hormones, really, is that they are really traveling and communicating with the rest of the body. So it's much more about where they're acting on the cells than where they're derived, which is interesting. I kind of think of that with, like, adrenal glands, with, I guess, our glands. I kind of think of that as well, and it's true. And hormones in general.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:29:51]:

So I promise the two things I promise the listeners that we're going to talk about, and I promise you, Abby, we are going to do is, I promise, constipation and undereating and how they relate so deeply to this. I just want to do one more quick thing.

 

Abby Hueber [00:30:03]:

Oh, I love a deep dive on the thyroid. Yeah. It's important because I feel like this is really overwhelming.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:30:10]:

It is really overwhelming, and I think we have a lot of untraining to do when it comes to our understanding of thyroid. And I think, again, where most people think of it as, ooh, look, I have hypothyroidism. This is why I haven't been able to lose weight. I'm really looking at it in the exact reverse way, which is what has happened to the body to get it to this point where it's now unable to lose weight. Because I bet you the weight loss resistance from hypothyroidism is real. It has to do with energy metabolism. So of course, the thyroid has to do with energy metabolism. Of course it's going to influence, and it has to with adiposity and muscle growth.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:30:43]:

So there is going to be some consequences of that. However, the majority of people believe that hypothyroidism is purely genetic, when, in reality, I would argue that a majority of cases are not purely genetic when it comes to hypothyroidism. So that's really what we're uncovering a little bit, too, is that once your Tsh is altered, the jump is not, oh, my God, this is why, you know, the weight loss hasn't been happening. It's kind of like the opposite. It's like, well, where did my body need that support? And maybe I wasn't able to give it that support over time. So when it comes to chronic under eating, I'm going to ask you this question, and it's very controversial, but do you think people are ever overeating calories but under eating nutrients, and that is driving hypothyroidism, or do you see it as classically under eating calories as the reason why people have hypothyroid activity?

 

Do you think people are ever overeating calories but under eating nutrients, and that is driving hypothyroidism? Or do you see it as classically under eating calories as the reason why people have hypothyroid activity?

Abby Hueber [00:31:42]:

That's a very good question. I would say it's definitely cases of both, you know, different people. Different. Like, some might be kind of just all across the board under eating others, you know, I can definitely see a tremendous amount of women who are just under eating carbohydrates. And we're seeing, you know, not only are those carbohydrates a very positive stimulator for the thyroid, but those carbohydrates are also some of our richest potassium sources in our mineral needs. We're talking about potassium, magnesium, sodium. Those are really key nervous system and blood sugar supports, and thyroid supports especially kind of at the cellular level. So even in just that one example, we can see that even if we're taking in enough calories and maybe you're eating enough fiber, if you're under eating one of the big macronutrients, like carbohydrates, which is, you know, we are not small men, but every kind of weight loss perspective is take the carbohydrates out and then, like, poof, we're going to lose weight.

 

Abby Hueber [00:32:47]:

And yes, that does happen for some people, but typically, like, over time, we're going to see some of the fallout from the women who take that approach because of the thyroid, saying at a certain point, like, we're no longer safe and we don't have this incredibly vital macronutrient and the associated micronutrients that come with it in order to continue to thrive. So we can really see both perspectives, and that's where it can be challenging because there's a lot of clients that, you know, we might kind of start to do some, like, looking at their kind of food logs, looking at some food tracking just to really get the data of, like, are, you know, is there a caloric reduction here? Is there a macronutrient reduction? And they're like, but I'm not hungry, so I don't feel like I'm under eating and that's, you know, in a way, the beauty of the body and the thyroid, too, is it's going to turn down our hunger cues in order to conserve the energy so that it's not wasting the signaling and the energy and all of that, you know, symphony of conversation in order to get us to be hungry in the morning. But we want to be hungry in the morning. That is a big sign of metabolism and a positive sense to wake up and within, you know, an hour or two of waking or even immediately be like, man, breakfast sounds great.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:34:02]:

Totally. So you've seen really both. You've seen that there are people who are just not eating enough calories, there are people who are not eating enough carbs or protein, and there are people who are not eating enough minerals. So it's actually, it could be a combination of all three. It could be you're actually eating 400 grams of carbohydrates a day, but you're eating no protein. And the imbalance of macronutrients or the imbalance of micronutrients like vitamins and minerals could actually be what's throwing you off.

 

Abby Hueber [00:34:31]:

Yes, definitely. And I think that there's also the piece of, you know, are you demanding movement and exercise that then is increasing that? And so you might be eating, like, I'm eating, you know, three meals a day and a snack, but I'm at the gym 2 hours a day, or I'm, like, walking a crazy amount, and then I'm doing, you know, we're just asking the body for so much output from an exercise movement standpoint that we're creating this imbalance. So we always have to be mindful of, like, looking at that whole picture, too.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:35:05]:

And carbohydrates are just essential for thyroid function. Can you tell us a little bit more? We talked about how minerals are connected to the thyroid a little bit. Tell us literally how minerals are connected to our thyroid and our thyroid function.

 

How are minerals connected to our thyroid and our thyroid function?

Abby Hueber [00:35:18]:

We are not only from a very kind of foundation standpoint of, like, turning on energy production, turning on the production of. And when we think of energy production, we might be thinking of, like, oh, energy for me to, like, run up the stairs. That's true. Yes. But it's also energy production from a, like, running our immune system, from running the actual creation of our hormones and our kind of gland function and that kind of nervous system and safety. Like, there is so much of a role of, you know, I almost think that, you know, do we eat not only from a caloric macronutrient, but really, are we actually eating just to replete our mineral levels is that, you know, really foundationally, one of the most important things that we are doing in order to eat, I think about it, like, so often. And the more we work on those, like, deep mineral foods, which a lot are these animal protein foods, which are these kind of carbohydrate foods, especially our starchy, whole food carbohydrates. So we're talking about our, you know, potatoes and sweet potatoes and carrots and beets and, like, beans and legumes and things that are really, like, great carbohydrate sources and great mineral sources kind of all packed in together.

 

Abby Hueber [00:36:34]:

Because those are not only starting at the top of this system that we've been talking about, they're very soothing to the nervous system, and they're very supportive to that ability to move from our active sympathetic into our parasympathetic a, from a, you know, the nervous system saying, like, okay, we're not in a famine. We've got enough resources, like, on hand, particularly in that potassium and those carbohydrates. Those are very soothing from a nervous system perspective and from a blood sugar perspective, too. I feel like there's this picture of blood sugar. Ah, carbs are bad. Like, I posted a date the other day on my story. I love, like, dates and almond butter with chocolate chips in theme. Literally my favorite thing ever.

 

Abby Hueber [00:37:16]:

And I have them love them before the gym, but then also just, like, in the middle of the day, I'm like, sweet treat. And I've got so many DM's of, like, the question basically was, are we allowed to eat those? I thought those were too high carb.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:37:29]:

Wow. Wow.

 

Abby Hueber [00:37:30]:

And I was, like, allowed to eat them. Like, who's telling you not to? Like, you're allowed to eat whatever you want.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:37:36]:

Who's your overlord? Who's.

 

Abby Hueber [00:37:37]:

Who says, well, exactly. I was like, who's talking about no dates? And, like, yeah, who's, like, governing this, this date piece?

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:37:45]:

Who's governing the, like, overall messaging? We get, who's the boss here? We'd love to talk to the boss.

 

Abby Hueber [00:37:50]:

Yeah, seriously. I was like, he's fired. He's definitely a man, and he's fired.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:37:57]:

Literally. Yeah, he's done the guy. Yeah, exactly. It's a fitness bro, and we know who it is. Okay, let's.

 

Abby Hueber [00:38:02]:

Seriously. And so this idea that, like, carbohydrates mean high blood sugar mean, like, all of these things, and it's like, that's just not true. Like, we actually see a lot more of this imbalance in blood sugar with this low carb approach, particularly in women.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:38:18]:

I see that all the time, by the way, I see people who engage in intermittent fasting and very low carb diets having, like, horrific blood sugar. And I'm like, it really is like if your carbs do go too low, it's just that the body can't anticipate its own needs. And can't your insulin signaling pathways become actually more metabolically inflexible if you have persistent, extremely low carb diets in the presence of a body that requires carbohydrates? It certainly, I've seen that time and time again. I really do agree with you. I've also seen persistent low carb diets definitely cause hypothyroid concerns. And I have to be honest with you, I've seen mineral and nutrient low diets that are high in calories also cause hypothyroid. Listen, Abby, you know, when it comes to calories and it comes to all this, this is like the most tricky, nuanced, sticky, icky conversation ever. And I will tell you all honestly, you know, to all of our listeners, that over time, what I really realized is I used to believe that every woman was under eating everything, and that was just how I felt.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:39:27]:

I was like, diet, culture. We're all under eating everything. And then when I started to really look at clients and really take any societal bias out of it, I do see that pattern quite a bit, which is drastic, low carb diets, which then, and this isn't everyone, but I've seen patterns. Right. We're just talking about patterns that actually result in, to be honest with you, quite high calorie diets, but that are lacking a lot of nutrients and they're lacking a lot of micro. And even, again, that carbohydrate being a vital nutrient in my head for the thyroid function.

 

Abby Hueber [00:39:58]:

Yeah, I see a lot of that picture.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:40:02]:

High fat, high fat, very high fat diet.

 

Abby Hueber [00:40:05]:

Very high fat.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:40:05]:

Yes. And the thyroid desperately needs protein and carbs to function. So if you end up going like keto, and I would say, like, my not favorites for thyroid function would be any of those more extreme diets, keto, carnivore or vegan. I mean, and again, this is, everyone has to eat in a diet that suits them. This is not, you know, medical nutrition advice, but very high level. You're going to be missing one of those categories for thyroid support, which is getting enough calories, enough macronutrients in the right balance, and enough micronutrients.

 

Abby Hueber [00:40:33]:

Yeah. And then when I see that, like, high fat picture, too. And this person's coming with, like, chronic bloating, chronic, like, slow motility in the gut, like, or maybe even loose stools that are, you know, overwhelming the amount of, like, bile production. That's a key digestive for dietary fat, but it's also part of our, you know, very robust liver function. Um, then we're kind of seeing, like, oh, this, you know, this. A lot of the imbalance in these, like, macronutrients are what maybe are driving a lot of this gut challenge. And we start to kind of see the fallout from there, too. And then, you know, we start to see the body not digesting, absorbing, and assimilating the minerals and all that kind of conversation from it.

 

Abby Hueber [00:41:17]:

So, you know, very the foundations of, you know, how we're eating, what we're eating. But to your point, we need to be looking at the person looking at, like, what. What their lifestyle is, like, how they like to eat, and, like, helping to put those pieces together in a way that, like, makes sense. I see a lot of very low carbohydrate intake and anxiety, too.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:41:40]:

Me too. Absolutely.

 

Abby Hueber [00:41:41]:

Yeah, that's.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:41:41]:

That is, like, I think if we've had, you know, however many episodes, I would say 50% of the episodes, low carbohydrate diets being equivalent to literally not only correlative, causative in some cases for anxiety and panic attacks, it's gotta come up in at least 50% of our episodes. So, yeah, in addition to all this, if you had someone who was looking to lose weight, and, man, I did not think we were going this way, but I have to. This is really what people. I remember being a teenager and being like, I need to go to the doctor so they can tell me I have hypothyroidism. Cause then they're gonna give me that pill that's gonna, you know, I mean, whatever medication that's gonna make me lose weight. If someone was looking to lose weight and had hypothyroidism, it doesn't sound like, and I would agree with you, calorie restriction is the first place you're going. What's that kind of process? What does that look like for you if you were working with a client? And again, weight loss doesn't even have to be a primary goal, but it's somewhere in their head, and they have hypothyroidism. Which direction do you go in a hypothyroid treatment plan? And, of course, you can't give, like, it has to be general, of course, because we don't have person in front.

 

Which direction do you go in a hypothyroid treatment plan?

Abby Hueber [00:42:45]:

Of us, of course. Yeah. And we have a lot of clients that come to us with one of their goals is weight loss. We're just very straightforward of saying, like, during our more acute work together, like, you might lose weight during the process eventually we know your body, like, our goal is for. Your body's just going to kind of, like, figure it out and you're not going to have to white knuckle this, you know? Is that time period going to be three months? No. So, like, first setting the time of saying, like, this is going to be like six months to a year. And maybe at that six month or maybe at that year mark, you're going to start to see weight shifts in the direction that you're, you know, aiming. But, like, leading up to that, we're not looking at that as a marker of our success.

 

Abby Hueber [00:43:25]:

We're going to be looking at your energy, your bowel movements, your, you know, skin your. And that skins more on, like a six month basis. We're going to be looking at, you know, your sleep patterns, your pm's. Like, those are actually going to be the indicators that are going to be telling us that we're getting success in your treatment protocol way earlier than any changes in weight. And we really want to work with clients who get that. And we have spend a fair amount of time in our initial conversations, even before someone becomes a client, to say, this is what we're looking at, this is what's going to be our conversation. We're not going to be having you step on the scale and then, you know, throw yourself into a tizzy because maybe it's not moving. Um, because initially, first, well, it kind of depends.

 

Abby Hueber [00:44:13]:

Since we specialize so much in gut symptoms. Sometimes we, like, identify that the thyroid is a piece, and we're kind of. We're looking at all those thyroid markers. We're starting to figure out, okay, there's some undernutrition patterns here. We look at their food logs. We do some like, a little bit more like short term, like couple days of food tracking to get some numbers. And then we start to kind of put our plan into action before we actually start to refeed. Sometimes we have to work on the gut and we, you know, we run a lot of comprehensive stool tests to kind of figure out, like, what are those unique areas in that person's gut.

 

Abby Hueber [00:44:49]:

Symptoms do tell us a lot, too, so that we can feed this person and make it much more a comfortable, get them to be, like, having the bowel movements if they're not. And maybe, you know, that's where, like, some targeted supplements can come in. As we start to get the top of the thyroid picture, that's actually causing the slow motility and start to move that picture a little bit more so that we can pull them off of those short term supplements. And then we've just got beautiful, robust bowel movements happening. So we kind of start to figure out which one do we need to be working on kind of first, as we gently start to turn the volume up on the eating enough. And depending upon where they are in terms of that under eating, we're going to slowly start to increase, you know, calories in that balance of macronutrients. We always start with breakfast, then it start with that beginning of the day. And then sometimes we don't even change lunch and dinner until, like, later.

 

Abby Hueber [00:45:44]:

And we kind of are just like, okay, we're going to get your, you know, 100 calories every week by increasing that breakfast. And then once that's at a good place and they're feeling really comfortable and, like, excited about the foods, then we start to kind of move on to, you know, maybe starting to tweak our lunch or our dinner and start to make it so that the whole rug doesn't get pulled out from under. And it wants to be a gradual, slow, like, increase in calories or macronutrients just because going from, if somebody's in like a 500 calorie deficit from where we ideally want them to be, based on some of the calculations that we do for, like, their body and their movement and their age and weight and all of those pieces, if we jump too quickly, it's just pretty uncomfy. And we always want, you know, our clients to be, like, feeling really confident in the things that they're doing with us, feeling, you know, ideally some positive symptom shifts, even in those short term particular, like headaches, bowel movements, bloating, like some of the things that we can get some pretty good traction on early so that they're, you know, feeling better and then they're, you know, more in trust with some of the big scary things that we might be doing in terms of their, like, wait, you want me to eat more? I've been on a weight loss journey for 15 years. Like, that's like blasphemy.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:46:54]:

Totally. And, like, I like how you're saying you would slowly titrate into that and then ultimately you, you know, because hormones are this downstream effect, and weight loss resistance is the downstream effect of hormones. Weight loss naturally is going to be the last thing that happens because you. If you do the foundational work first, what I don't like to see is a lot of people saying, you, I corrected my thyroid and I instantly kind of lost 30 pounds. And, like, that's really not how this goes at all. If the ultimate symptom of what's going on is weight gain, you don't treat the symptom first. You treat the system first. And that's where you're looking like, you're looking at the brain when you're looking at thyroid function, you're looking at the liver, you're looking at the gut.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:47:43]:

And I think a lot of people would be disheartened to hear that, obviously, because they're like, I want to work on the weight loss first, but the system, feeling like it has enough nutrients and fuel and safety to run properly, really does have to come first for the downstream effect of that corrective mechanism, unfortunately, of your metabolism being corrected. Uh, which I am saying, unfortunately, because I'm aware that people do not want that process. Have you seen people just only take, like, level thyroxine or synthroid or any of those thyroid medications and lose weight? I've never seen that happen before.

 

Abby Hueber [00:48:17]:

I think it's very temporary.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:48:19]:

And if fluid retention comes off or something.

 

Abby Hueber [00:48:23]:

Yeah, definitely. Like, I mean, there are some, like, very straightforward thyroid patterns that will positively respond to, like, a t four, which is like the synthroid or the levo or whatever someone's, like, taking. But it's kind of hacking the system in, like, not a positive way because it's like, when we are giving a hormone, we are kind of taking offline some of our body's, like, beautiful symphony that ideally, like, we want to be, you know, in this very, like, tight communication and short term use of a thyroid hormone in order to kind of, like, get some energy back in someone. Orlando, you know, certainly we could see that a lot in, like, pregnancy.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:49:12]:

Yes.

 

Abby Hueber [00:49:13]:

Where, you know, where, like, using it for the short term. Maybe they're using it through, like, postpartum because needing some of that support. And there's a lot of dynamics that can happen after. After pregnancy again, the stress in the women's body, things like that. But the goal is to eventually be able to transition off of it and have that be a nice, like, gradual step down as we're working on, like, calories and minerals and macronutrients and all that. And so we're kind of just gradually and we're not taking one off of thyroid medication. That would be something they do with their prescribing physician. Just gotta say all the detail.

 

Abby Hueber [00:49:46]:

But, like, I think that's where, you know, a lot of these prescribing physicians, like, have no intention of taking people off of these thyroid medications. And they're kind of like, no, that's just. We're just gonna keep turning it up and increasing your dosage, and that's just the rest of your life. Like, that's just the way that it is, the way you were put together.

 

Tell us about how people's thyroid corrects and changes course after doing foundational support.

Michelle Shapiro [00:50:06]:

The brain, it doesn't speak to the gut. It doesn't speak to the liver. It doesn't speak to stress patterns, doesn't speak to other hormones in their communication. You are just. You are in, of course, correcting some sort of the symptomatic problem, but of course, not addressing the root, which is what's going to give you lasting support and relief, too. Have you seen people's thyroid? Correct. After doing foundational support and. And change course.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:50:35]:

Tell us about that.

 

Abby Hueber [00:50:37]:

That's, like, the coolest and even to this day, I mean, labs make me feel so excited. Like, I'm like, oh, it's like Christmas morning, like, every time we get, like, first labs or repeat labs. But we. I mean, a client that we had, like, just a couple months ago graduated with us, came to us and had, you know, a very high tsh and a very low, like, t four and t three pattern. So we had that kind of, like, stress dynamic. We had some undereating dynamic. She was under eating a lot because of her, like, chronic constipation, or she would swing between constipation and loose stools.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:51:10]:

Constipation and its relationship to thyroid really briefly talk about that, because we didn't get to cover that, and it's really important.

 

Abby Hueber [00:51:16]:

Yeah, yeah. So the thyroid is the pacemaker in the body. It's controlling the speed of everything, including the speed of the motility of the gut. So when we have a lack of active t three thyroid hormone in the body, we're going to have a lack of that downward peristalsis, that movement that's pushing waste and food and stool down and out. So we are more likely to experience constipation in a hypothyroid dynamic. Not everyone experiences that, but that was part of my personal story and definitely part of this client's story. And when we actually looked at her stool test, we saw her actual liver was a big part of it, and particularly in her bile production, which is where we see the liver and the gut connected. And that has a big role in that kind of activation of that t four to that t three, as we talked about, to that active cellular energy, all the lovely stuff that we want thyroid hormone for, even libido, is a big, like, symptom of a thriving thyroid.

 

Abby Hueber [00:52:23]:

And so we really had to work backwards for her starting to support the gut and getting, you know, some of that, like, bile support we like to call those drainage pathways. So kind of opening up her drainage pathway. There was a lot of imbalance and some bullies on her playground, some opportunistic bacteria. We had very low beneficial bacteria on her testing, too. So that is a big role in how we activate thyroid hormone in the gut. And those beneficial bacteria are like, one of the most important roles in our immune system, in our skin health, in our brain health, especially with that kind of anxiety picture in anti inflammatory actions in the body. And that's a picture that we see so often, particularly in those low carb people, because those starchy carbohydrates are such robust food sources for our beneficial bacteria. And so we're starting to see again that vicious cycle of the under eating and all of those things kind of play out.

 

Abby Hueber [00:53:24]:

She had a lot of mineral needs, too. She was a low carb eater because that was what she was told from her prescribing physician.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:53:32]:

Well, so, Abby, really quick, when you say low carb, I have a number in mind for what I consider to be, like, a low carb diet. Do you have a number in mind? What is it?

 

Abby Hueber [00:53:39]:

Yeah. 150 and under what's yours?

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:53:41]:

Like 100 and 3140. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And anything under that, which, like, if you're on a. Just for people to understand, if you're on like a. I'm just not going to eat foods that are made of carbohydrates and see what happens kind of diet, and you end up being like fake keto and you're at like 30 grams. You are on a very low carb diet. It's actually considered a low carb diet, under 130 grams of carbohydrates per day, which most people would think is like a high carb diet.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:54:05]:

So it's really, it's quite, quite easy to be in a carb deficit if you're intentionally limiting carbohydrates. So I just wanted to mention that just for numbers for people in their head.

 

Abby Hueber [00:54:14]:

Yeah, I think that's one of the most helpful numbers. And then I don't talk tons of numbers with clients because I think, you know, some are helpful, most are not. But that is a number where I'm like, four perspective, because you could be eating a carbohydrate at every meal and still be under that 100. 5130. And, like, I think over 175 is magic for constipation people.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:54:34]:

You definitely. I would absolutely agree, and you definitely need to, like. And even if you were on a very low calorie diet, which we would not be recommending, um, that would still be, like, getting only probably, like, let's say you were on a ridiculously low carb diet that would. We would never advise, like, a 1200 calorie repeated diet of 1200 calories a day or something, even eating a hundred. And I'm doing the math on my calculator really quick. But even if you were eating 175 grams of carbs per day, that would still be, like, 40% to 50% of the calories coming from carbs, which is not that crazy. So even on the lowest calorie diet, 175 grams of carbs is not an extreme amount of carbohydrates. Now, everyone has different carbohydrate tolerance, but in my opinion, for what you're, from, all of the ten years of information that I've gathered, all of my client experience, there kind of is a number, and it's like, I would say 130 and Abby would say 150.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:55:26]:

For just the minimum for your thyroid to function, especially as a menstruating woman.

 

Abby Hueber [00:55:31]:

Yes. I think that's actually, like, I'm so glad you brought that up, because it is, like, such a foundational point and puts a lot of things into perspective. And that's where, like, I, you know, a little bit of food tracking, like, three to five days, like, helpful. I don't love long term food tracking because I think it, like, gets a lot of us, maybe not in a healthy place around food, but, like, sometimes we got to look at the numbers more. So from a protection of the under, not an obsessive of the over.

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:55:58]:

Yeah, I would say especially if you're looking at it from an undereating perspective and you're just tracking one macro. It really depends. Listen, everyone has at a different point in their relationship with food. If you have a disordered relationship with food, and tracking completely triggers you, of course, that would not be the correct pathway for you. But if you're really looking at your thyroid and really wondering what is going on here, I feel like I'm eating, you know, way more than I should be. Even you actually might not be, and it actually very well might be worth it for you to investigate that, too. Okay, now tell us what happened with your client. Yeah.

 

Abby Hueber [00:56:29]:

So she was working with us for about, like, six months, and not only. We kind of corrected, like, all of her constipation and her bloating got her, like, bile flowing, and her. I'm trying to remember her exact tsh was. I think she was in, like, the fours and within. And I think this testing was only a couple months apart because I. She messaged us, like, so excited, and that her physician, who was running some of her bloods at that point because we were just doing, like, follow up markers, was like, this is, like, they. Like, he. We wanted to retest because he was like, this has gone down too fast.

 

Abby Hueber [00:57:02]:

Like. Like, I didn't expect it to go down this fast. And she's like, I'm not just working with you, bud. Like, I'm working with some other people. And, yeah, it went down until I think it was. It's still now in, like, the high twos, but to go down, like, two full, like, units, two full marks on a thyroid for a Tsh is pretty, like, significant in. I think it was like, a three. Like, a three month period where it was, like, a lot of, you know, and she had a pretty stressful job and would go long periods without eating.

 

Abby Hueber [00:57:30]:

So it was a lot of, like, helping to, you know, a brainstorm. Like, okay, I know your days are busy. Like, how do we get lunch? So we started doing some meal prep. We started, you know, really simplifying some of her meals to say, like, they don't all need to be these, like, grandiose, beautiful, like, perf. You know, like, meals. It's like, let's just get some, like, ground beef and rice and, like, let's just, you know, it's like, something that. It's like, okay, like, if that's a lunch, because you can prep those two things on a Sunday, and, like, that doesn't take up your whole Sunday because she didn't love the meal prep idea. It's like, let's just go, like, let's just go, like, actually feeding your body and that.

 

Abby Hueber [00:58:11]:

I think, like, for. Even in my own life, when things get busy, I'm like, we're going simple, and it's like, I mean, I'm a foodie. I love all the things. I would love my meals to be these, like, extravagant, beautiful things, but sometimes in, like, the weekdays, I'm like, they're. They're delicious because I, like, love me a bone broth and, like, ground beef or something with some, like, micro greens on there. But it's like, it's, you know, very, like, gonna hit all of the needs. I'm gonna be satisfied after. And it's, like, also going to, like, fuel me through my day.

 

Abby Hueber [00:58:41]:

So I feel like that's a lot of conversation that we had with her, and it was like, she was like, oh, I'm, again, kind of, oh, I'm allowed to do that. Like, I'm allowed to have some really, like, simple looking meals. And we were like, yeah, if they're gonna hit, like, the things that we're going for. And it was a lot of freedom that she got of, like, I'm allowed to do these things. And then it was at the end, like, oh, I'm allowed to, like, listen to my body and, like, eat when I'm hungry and, like, do just a lot of, like, I can, like, stop playing the role of all of these, like, weird little things that we've picked up throughout our life of what we're, like, allowed to do and not allowed to do as, like, women in this society. I'm like, isn't it always?

 

Michelle Shapiro [00:59:18]:

I would love to meet the grand wizard of not being allowed to eat certain things. This idea of being allowed is something that is very, very hard for me as a fiercely independent, aggressive New Yorker to. I don't like being allowed or not allowed. And that word, even I have to be honest, triggers me when we're talking about it. I'm like, oh, my God, of course you're allowed. Who said? Who said? It's always the question. Who literally said you weren't allowed? You know? So I love that beautiful work you're doing, Abby. If other amazing people wanted to work with you, how would they work with you? How can they find you and your amazing, gorgeous, fabulous self?

 

How can people work with you, Abby?

Abby Hueber [00:59:53]:

Thank you. So our website is a great landing page. So abovehealthnutrition.com, we'll share all the links. We do complimentary strategy calls, so they are kind of 30 minutes free calls with me to really understand, like, more about your story, more about your goals and ability to really see, you know, are we a good fit and can we support you? And then kind of, we, like, tell you the rest of the story from there. We do a lot of work on Instagram, so, abovehealth, follow us there. If you're especially in, like, the gut health world, that's kind of where we. We focus. But as you're hearing, the gut is not just about the gut, too.

 

Abby Hueber [01:00:29]:

The guts about the thyroid, the guts about the skin, the guts about the liver, certainly. So, you know, we. We work on a. Yeah. Brain. Very much so. Yeah. So we work on a lot outside of gut, but our gut people tend to.

 

Abby Hueber [01:00:42]:

Tend to find us.

 

Michelle Shapiro [01:00:43]:

Well, I am so excited to share you with my audience because you are such a wealth of knowledge. You always have been so funny when you were. We've known each other for, I think it's, like, five years now, probably.

 

Abby Hueber [01:00:55]:

Yeah.

 

Michelle Shapiro [01:00:55]:

And when you were talking about, like, how you love bone broth, I'm like, it's just Abby is so Abby still. I love when people are like, you're. Abby is almost like a caricature of Abby. Cause you're the most true, authentic, always been the same, but still very spiritually evolved and, like, amazing person. And I just love how Abby you are. I have to be honest with you, and I know that there's so many people listening who could benefit, benefit so much from your services. So please check Abby out. The fact that she has a free strategy call is, like, insane and amazing.

 

Michelle Shapiro [01:01:22]:

To really determine if you guys are a fit, you will be obsessed with Abby like I am. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your wealth of knowledge.

 

Abby Hueber [01:01:29]:

Thanks so much for having me.