Interview with Dr. Jess Armine
Your thyroid did not fail on its own. It is a victim, not the cause. Your thyroid and your immune system are both struggling for the same reason. Your cells are running low on energy. When you support the cell, you support both systems at once. This post breaks down why that happens and what you can do about it.
You got your diagnosis. You got a prescription. You got told to come back in six weeks. Nobody explained why your thyroid decided to do this in the first place.
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Why your thyroid stopped working
Here is what nobody explained in that appointment. Your thyroid did not decide to stop working. Something else wore it down first.
My guest this week is Dr. Jess Armine. He has worked in healthcare for close to 50 years, first as a nurse in emergency and intensive care, then as a chiropractor who specializes in complex health problems that have not resolved anywhere else.
He said something on this episode that reframes the whole conversation. Your thyroid is a victim. It is not the cause. It is a downstream effect.
Dr. Jess put together his own visual to walk through this, and it lays out the whole framework in one place.
Your thyroid is a victim, not the cause
Dr. Jess believes the thyroid is a victim. It is not the cause.
That means something happened first, and your thyroid is showing you the result of it. The antibodies attacking your thyroid are proof your immune system was already struggling before your thyroid symptoms ever showed up.
Dr. Jess does not treat your thyroid, your immune system, and the rest of your body as separate problems to solve one at a time. He looks at the whole picture, because every system in your body is built out of the same basic unit: the cell.
What a cellular energy crisis actually means
Dr. Jess used a phrase that stuck with me. He calls it a cellular energy crisis.
Here is the plain language version. Every cell in your body has a tiny part inside it whose job is to make energy so the cell can do its work: repair itself, communicate with other cells, and function the way it is supposed to.
Dr. Jess said this is not an on and off switch. It is a matter of degree. A cell running at 70 percent instead of 95 percent will still work, but everything gets a little slower and a little harder.
Your fatigue is not laziness. It is your cells running on less fuel than they need.
Why your immune system is caught in the same crisis
This is why Dr. Jess does not sort thyroid and immune into two totally separate problems when he is looking for root causes. Both are made of cells. Both need the same fuel to function.
He also talked about how your nervous system, hormone system, and immune system are constantly communicating with each other. When one system is struggling, Dr. Jess said, the others tend to get pulled into it too.
That is part of why Hashimoto’s rarely shows up by itself. If your cells are depleted across the board, it shows up in more than one system at once.
What actually causes a cellular energy crisis
Dr. Jess looks at a timeline with every person he works with. He starts as early as possible, sometimes back to before birth, using family history to find what wore the cells down over time.
A few of the root causes he named on this episode:
- Chronic infections, like Lyme disease or the lingering aftermath of a virus such as Covid
- Long term exposure to things like mold
- Leaky gut, when the lining of your gut develops small gaps and lets undigested particles cross into your bloodstream where they do not belong
- Unresolved stress, including emotional and psychological stress that never fully settled
Dr. Jess says that leaky gut is one of the most common (and damaging) root causes he sees. When protein is not fully broken down, small fragments can leak through the gut lining. Your immune system treats those fragments like invaders and reacts to them. Over time, that reaction turns into chronic inflammation, and chronic inflammation is what wears down your cells.
Dr. Jess also flagged gluten specifically. He said gluten tends to affect the thyroid directly, but avoiding gluten alone will not fix things if the leaky gut underneath it never gets addressed. If you want a deeper look at how your gut and thyroid affect each other, I walked through that in The gut-thyroid connection in Hashimoto’s.
If you have ever wondered whether you caused any of this yourself, I already answered that directly in a separate episode, “Hashimoto’s is not your fault.” Dr. Jess is talking about the mechanism behind autoimmune problems, not the blame.
What Dr. Jess does first to support the cell
When Dr. Jess starts working with someone, his first move is not a long list of tests. It is feeding the cell what it needs.
Every cell needs vitamins and minerals to run its basic chemistry. Without them, your body’s normal processes slow down. If you are curious what a deeper mineral picture can show that blood work sometimes misses, I covered that in the hair mineral test episode.
He also pointed out something important about absorption. Something you swallow has to survive digestion, pass through your liver, get released into your bloodstream, and then actually get inside the cell. If your gut is already struggling, that whole chain gets harder.
Dr. Jess mentioned liposomal vitamins as one way around that, since they are absorbed differently and get into the cell more directly.
I want to be clear here. Dr. Jess was describing his general approach with patients, not giving you individual medical advice. If you are looking into something like this for yourself, I do not recommend shopping on Amazon. Too many counterfeit supplements get sold there, even ones that look like they are from trustworthy brands. I use Fullscript instead. The “Platinum Women’s Multivitamin” I found there that matches what Dr. Jess described is from a company called Codeage. I have not tried it myself, nor have I looked into what third party testing it has, it is just what turned up in that category and honestly it looks incredible.
Dr. Jess also treats leaky gut directly with his patients, using digestive support to help the gut lining do its job again. That is a bigger topic than one blog post can cover.
What you can start doing this week
You do not need to fix everything Dr. Jess talked about today. Start smaller.
- Ask your doctor whether a broader nutrient panel makes sense for you, not just thyroid labs
- Pay attention to how you feel after meals with gluten or dairy, since gut reactions were named as a common root cause
- Think about where unresolved stress might still be sitting in the background of your life
- Remember that supporting the cell is the starting point, not the whole plan
None of this replaces your medication. Dr. Jess was clear about that too. Your thyroid needs the support your medication gives it right now. What this adds is the missing piece: the reason it became a target in the first place.