For years, I could answer almost any health question people asked me, except when it came to the thyroid. I mean, TSH goes up, but that means your thyroid is running low? None of the numbers ever made intuitive sense to me. I read everything I could find and still felt confused every time.

Then I stopped trying to understand the thyroid as one system. I split it into two: what my thyroid needed, and what my immune system needed. Today, learn how to sort your own symptoms and root causes with the Hashimoto’s thyroid or immune framework.

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Health with Hashimoto’s is your free weekly podcast that sorts this autoimmune condition into thyroid or immune. Each episode is for informational and educational purposes. Please discuss any questions or concerns with your trusted healthcare professional. Some links may be affiliate links, marked as such, at no extra cost to you.

What the Hashimoto’s thyroid or immune framework actually means

Hashimoto’s is an autoimmune condition. Your immune system is attacking your thyroid. Knowing that fact is only the beginning.

I think about it as two buckets.

• The thyroid bucket. This is what your thyroid needs to do its job. Diet, supplements, and how well your cells can actually use thyroid hormone once it’s there.
• The immune bucket. This is what is driving your immune system to attack your thyroid in the first place. Root causes and triggers like stress, nutrient levels, food reactions, and more.

Every symptom, every lab number, every piece of advice you have collected can be sorted into one of these two buckets (or sometimes both). That sorting is the framework.

Why having more information was not the same as having a plan

Most women with Hashimoto’s already have a lot of information. What is usually missing is not more information. It is a filter, a way to decide what actually applies to them.

That is what this framework is for. It is not new information. It is a way to organize the information you already have so you can act on it.

If you want more on this, I wrote a full post on how to identify your Hashimoto’s root causes so you know what to do next.

How I sorted my own diagnosis into the two buckets

I want to walk you back to when I first got my diagnosis.

I had a horrible rash that looked like eczema, but it wasn’t eczema. I had it for a couple of winters, and it kept getting worse. I went to my chiropractor for allergy testing, trying to figure out what was causing it.

She looked at me, did an evaluation, and said she thought it was my thyroid. She ran labs.

My thyroid numbers came back borderline. I did not need medication. But my antibodies were up.

She told me I had Hashimoto’s.

At that point I knew two things. I knew there was a thyroid component (Hashimoto’s full name is Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, which means inflammation of the thyroid). I also knew there was an immune component, since it is an autoimmune condition.

Two buckets. Thyroid, and immune.

What I did in my thyroid bucket

I looked at my labs. They were borderline. I looked at what my thyroid needed to do its job well, and I made one adjustment to a supplement.

That was really it for my thyroid bucket. I did not do much more there, because my labs were not showing me a big problem in that bucket. My focus needed to go somewhere else.

What I focused on in my immune bucket

There was clearly an attack happening on my thyroid. I wanted to slow or stop it. So I needed to focus on my immune system, the second bucket.

The first thing in that bucket was already handled. I was gluten free, though it was not originally my choice. My youngest son had eczema head to toe as a baby, and since he was exclusively breastfed, I had to do an elimination diet for his sake.

Gluten ended up being fine for him. But my body appreciated the break so much that I never went back to it myself.

Even knowing that diet is hugely impactful for a lot of women with Hashimoto’s, I don’t think it would have been the first thing I tackled if I had needed to choose. Even if I had still been eating gluten at the time, I think I would have gone to sleep and stress first.

I was bone weary tired. I was slurring my words while reading a book to my kids in the middle of the day. I felt horrible, and I was trying to get good sleep, but Hashimoto’s was stealing my energy anyway.

I was also pretty sure stress was part of it. As an ER nurse, it takes a lot to fluster me.

Stressors still happen, though, even when my mind can handle them. My body was still absorbing the impact, whether I felt stressed or not.

I have written more about stress as a Hashimoto’s trigger if you want to go deeper on that piece.

So sleep and stress were the first two things I worked on in my immune bucket. Not because diet doesn’t matter. Because that is where my body was telling me to start.

I have written more about sleep as a root cause for Hashimoto’s if that is where your body is telling you to start too.

Deciding what to tackle first with your own two buckets

Here is what I want for you. I want you to be able to look at your own two buckets and know what is next.

Ask what your thyroid needs right now. Ask what your immune system needs right now. Then ask one question: what is one small thing you can do today, this week, or this month, for your whole self, body, mind, spirit, diet, and environment, sorted into those two buckets?

You do not have to fix everything in both buckets at once. Start with what your body is already telling you.

I also wrote about why knowing your Hashimoto’s root causes is not enough on its own, if you want to go deeper on that idea.

Where to go from here

You now know the two buckets. What your thyroid needs, and what your immune system needs.

You also know that having more information was never the missing piece. A filter for what applies to you is.

If you want a foundation for sorting your own root causes into these two buckets, Hashimoto’s Decoded: Thyroid or Immune walks you through it in less than an hour. Get started with Hashimoto’s Decoded.

One of my teenage sons asked me recently how the podcast is doing. What he really meant was “Mom, how much money are you making?” I turned the question around and asked how he was defining success, since I never said money was my most important metric.

I started this podcast because there was nothing simple, clear, and available when I needed it most. That is still why I teach this framework for free, every week, to anyone who needs to sort their own two buckets.

I offer Hashimoto’s Decoded for less than $30 so every person can go deeper and learn to sort their own health.