Chris Kresser: Yeah, so good questions. I think so, just kind of stepping back before we get into the specifics of thyroid medication, we want to remember that in a case where someone who has, is taking thyroid medication and is not responding well to it, or it continually needs increasing doses in order to feel well or just has presentation that doesn’t totally make sense, you always want to step back and look at what the underlying triggers are. Nine times out of 10 in that case, it’s going to be something that is still present, like GI issue, inflammation, HPA axis dysregulation, nutrient imbalance, chronic infection, mold, etc., that’s triggering and dysregulating the immune system. And prescribing thyroid hormone to that patient will help, but if we go back to the leaky boat and bailing analogy I used earlier, the thyroid hormone in this case is like bailing the water out, but addressing all of the underlying causes that can trigger immune dysregulation is fixing the plugging hole. So I think that’s where your focus really needs to be. That’s where all of our focus needs to be with these thyroid patients. I think that’s the biggest mistake that’s made both in conventional medicine and even in functional and integrative medicine. In conventional medicine they might just give Synthroid, and then in functional or integrative medicine, we might do natural desiccated thyroid. But that’s not really it. We need to go much deeper than that and address all of these triggers for immune dysregulation if we’re going to help our patients get well.
In response to the question about is there natural desiccated thyroid that is lactose free, off the top of my head I’m thinking of WP Thyroid. But maybe it does have lactose. I see it’s free of corn, peanut, rice, gluten, soy, egg, or fish or shellfish, and I think that does actually have lactose because that might be one of the two ingredients. Yeah, lactose monohydrate. That’s right. We covered this, I listed all of the options for thyroid medication in the thyroid presentation and linked to the Stop the Thyroid Madness website, which has a list of all of the possible NDT options along with their ingredients. So check that list as well. And Dhalid says she’s being treated for CIRS, Lyme, and IBD. Great that’s awesome and that’s what’s going to probably lead to the best results over time.
You could also try, I’m pretty sure the Nutri-Meds Bovine ThyroidHealth capsules or tablets don’t have lactose. So I’m just looking. It’s bovine thyroid tissue, L-leucine, L-lysine, silica, does not contain any sugar, starch, salt, wheat, corn, yeast, dairy, or soy derivatives. So you could try the Bovine ThyroidHealth NDT from Nutri-Meds. It’s an over-the-counter. I’ll say that prior when they were offering desiccated thyroid from a porcine source, I think patients overall got better results, but I do have some patients that have gotten really good results with the bovine option. Unfortunately their porcine source dried up and they are no longer able to get it, but I think that given the limitations with lactose, the bovine NDT from Nutri-Meds would be worth a try.