My Story Recovering From Hashimoto's Hypothyroidism
In this episode of #AskSonia I talk about my 20 year journey with Hashimoto's hypothyroidism.
How it took over 10 years to work out why I was so freaking tired all the time, foggy in the brain and aching in my joints and muscles. Then once I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's hypothyroidism how the medication I took failed miserably to gift me my energy & quality of life back. I continued to feel exhausted, gained weight, lost my memory and was sleeping 5 days a week just to be able to go to work for 2 days.
And now brimming with energy, vitality and my lust for life returned I am passionate about no one ever having to suffer through what I experienced with Hashimoto's hypothyroidism. Especially because there are a wealth of solutions based on high quality scientific research drawn from nutrition and natural remedies.
This channel came into being because as a clinical nutritionist and naturopath, more often than not I've quite a long waiting list and I would find that you know it might take someone six weeks before they saw me and when they did they had some pretty straightforward questions that I could have actually answered not even by meeting them by but just by having some information that was freely available so that kind of made me very passionate about creating this channel. I want to tell you a little bit about my story and how I came to specialise in thyroid and women’s hormones.
20 years ago I was at the absolute peak of my career. I was thriving in an international luxury goods company and loving my life. I had the partner that I wanted, the job that I wanted and a lifestyle that I just adored and yet every day I was waking up exhausted. I was crying at the drop of a hat, I really struggled to remember things. I actually think that was probably the most important symptom for me was really struggling with memory. I just would forget to turn up to meetings even if it was in my diary and whenever I tried to exercise I seem to get injured almost immediately and it was really disturbing. So I went off to see a local medical practitioner or a general practitioner, a GP and he ran some tests and he told me there was nothing wrong and I spoke to a few people and they said, “Oh it sounds like you've got a thyroid condition.” So I went back and said, “Would you mind testing my thyroid?” and he did and he said, “Look there is nothing wrong with you. You are a perfectly healthy young lady. It's just that you've got a busy life and lifestyle and you have to accept that you're starting to age now.”
I was in my late 20s at that time and it was a real shock to me to hear the word ageing because I'd never thought about it before and I actually felt fit and healthy and apart from this constant bad memory and just getting injured a little bit, I didn't realize that it could be related to an underlying condition so what I heard really was someone tell me that I was being a princess, that I was being a little bit too snow flaky, a little bit too fragile and what I needed was to just toughen up and get on with life; that everyone around me was feeling just the same way I was, it's just they weren't complaining about it and I was so like the good girl that I decided to do that head down, tail up and just ignore how I felt, drink some more coffee, eat whatever I had to eat just get through the day and I did that for almost a decade. It wasn't until my weight rapidly increased and I put on about 50 pounds / 20 kilos in a very short period of time with no change in my food or exercise. In fact, I was kind of less hungry than usual so I thought I was actually eating less and couldn't believe that would be happening and this time because the sign was so clear this weight gain, it drove me back to the medical professional and I ended up being diagnosed with a thyroid condition caused by an immune condition called Hashimoto's Hyperthyroidism.
I was put on thyroid medication and to be honest I was euphoric because there was a reason why I was tired, there was a reason why I was gaining weight, there was a reason why my brain was foggy and I had so much hope for the medication that I was on I really thought that this was going to cure me of all ills. Unfortunately, a few years went on and I felt no better.
I appreciate and recognise that the thyroid medication I was on kept me alive but unfortunately it didn't help with the weight gain which continued, the fatigue or the brain fog and by the time that I decided to take control of my health I was only working two days a week and I would have to sleep for five days to kind of drag my sorry carcass through a workday two days a week. Things were pretty bad and so I went back to my doctor, again and again, saying, “Hang on, I'm not feeling any better,” and I was referred to some amazing specialists. I was referred to an endocrinologist and immunologist, a rheumatologist and I ended up on a whole host of medications and still not feeling any better.
I went back to my GP and he said you know what now we need a psychiatrist because quite frankly there's nothing wrong with you you're being treated well this is now just all in your head and actually I'm grateful for that conversation because that finally woke me up after all those years. I started to think, hang on there must be something I can do to take some control back there must be something I can do to make myself feel better so I decided to start researching the natural health world and I saw nutritionists and naturopaths and kinesiologists and crystal healers and Reiki therapists. I spent a lot of money and a lot of time and I don't know that I really felt that much different, maybe a little better I'm not sure and it wasn't really until I decided to find out why I was feeling the way I was and what I could do and I started researching that I actually started to get a sense that it could get better. So I was on the internet researching thyroid conditions and the other autoimmune conditions that I've been diagnosed with by this stage and I found that there was a wealth of information on the Internet, you know lots and lots of information way more than what I was getting when I was going off to therapists and doctors and specialists but it was confusing. I’d see one post and they'd say, ‘oh my goodness if you've got a thyroid condition you must have iodine in huge quantities’ and then I'd read another post and they go, ‘oh for goodness sake don't have iodine, it could kill you if you have a thyroid condition, it's appalling you know it's you should never have too much it could make your thyroid condition worse.’
I was so confused — I mean I already had brain fog — so it was really hard to wade through it and I just thought to myself hang on these posts or these comments must be based on something you know, there must be something underlying them and I found that there were websites devoted to scientific research and that thyroid conditions and Hashimoto's hypothyroidism and hormonal conditions and other autoimmune conditions had all been extensively studied and there were nutritional solutions and herbal solutions that worked well with medications that helped people feel better and so it was like mind-blowing.
I come from the corporate world, and my background was in human resource management. I don't know how to read a scientific journal so I decided to go back and study and so I signed up for a four-year course on nutrition and naturopathy and I learnt evidence-based solutions based on high-quality scientific research. I learned how to read journal articles, how to evaluate statistics and when I started to make some really small simple changes in my own life, I had enormous payoffs. I just did them gradually one by one and it felt like every six weeks I would feel a dramatic improvement in my energy or my brain fog or my muscle aches and pain and after having felt increasingly more miserable for over 15 to 20 years, it was honestly like a miracle so I finished my four-year course, having won all sorts of awards but more important with than that was the fact that I had my health back.
I became really passionate about making sure that no one ever lives through what I lived through, no one ever loses the years and the decades of their life - wandering in a fog and a maze of ill-health when there are solutions out there that you can try.
The things I'm gonna talk about on this channel are going to be very straightforward. They will only be general because I can't give individual prescriptions but I'm really here for the purpose of education so I want you to enjoy this channel I want you to learn from it. Please let me know if there's something that you want to hear about because this channel is for you this is to make sure that the information that is available in the world is actually given to the thyroid communities where we really desperately need it.
Yours in good health,
Sonia x