There was something for the fatigue. Then the hair thinning started, and there was something for that too. If you have ever looked at a cabinet full of things that each worked for a little while, that is not a discipline problem. That is what happens when you are standing in the water, scooping rubber ducks.
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Picture a stream full of rubber ducks
You are walking down a creek. A little rubber ducky comes floating toward you. It is cute, and you scoop it out because you do not want pollution in the water.
Then you see another one. You scoop that one out too.
Pretty soon you are seeing five. Then ten. Then fifteen.
You can stand there and keep scooping. It works. You are doing what you can with what is in front of you.
You are also going to get tired and cold.
So what is more effective? Standing in the water scooping, or walking upstream to find out who is throwing them all in?
The rubber ducks are your symptoms. A lot of people spend a lot of time attacking symptoms and trying to remove them.
It works for a while. You find solutions for some things and others are harder to get rid of.
But the ducks keep coming, because nobody went upstream.
Why your thyroid is not actually the problem
Hashimoto’s is an autoimmune problem. That means you have two different things going on at the same time.
You have the autoimmune problem. And you have the attack on the thyroid.
A lot of your symptoms are showing up because of the thyroid issue. But it is not really your thyroid that is the problem. It is the immune system attacking it.
That distinction changes where you put your effort. If you only work on the thyroid, you are working in the middle of the stream. The thing sending ducks down the water is still doing it.
What root cause medicine for Hashimoto’s asks instead
It asks WHY.
Why is your immune system going haywire and starting to attack you? What is triggering it to go on attack, and to attack the wrong things?
And then it asks HOW. How do you calm your immune system down and help it work like it was designed to work?
Those are different questions than the one most of us get handed. And they are the questions that take you upstream.
Stress is one of the biggest ones. It is not the only one. There are other things that can trigger or cause autoimmune problems, and most women have more than one thing throwing ducks in the water.
Stress is one of the ones dumping ducks in the stream
If you have not listened to any of the stress episodes, that is a good place to spend your next few minutes.
Episode 7 is all about stress, your thyroid, and Hashimoto’s. Episode 24 covers your adrenal glands and chronic stress.
Episode 34 is about halting the damage caused by stress, and it covers your lymphatic system, which is huge in stress. Your lymphatic system is the garbage disposal system of your body. Under stress it can turn into almost a molten lava type situation, and you want things moving well instead.
Episode 36 is about using art to de-stress. (One of my favorites, because there are so many fun things we do not really think about for health.) Episode 40 covers spiritual stress and how it can be related to inflammation and autoimmune diseases.
Stress is huge when you are talking about autoimmune problems. It is one person standing on the bank throwing ducks in.
Finding out whether it is one of yours is upstream work.
Your doctor cannot go upstream for you
Your doctor can only do so much. They can give you the best advice they have. They can prescribe medications.
What they cannot do is make your choices for you.
They also probably do not have the time to dig into your root causes. Your doctor is not going to walk upstream with you and figure out what is throwing the ducks into the river.
That part is your job. (It is also why walking into your appointment with real questions matters so much. You want to invite your doctor to help you figure out how to help yourself.)
Why I left the emergency department
I spent 17 years in the emergency department before I went back to school for holistic health education.
I left because I felt like I was always just scooping rubber ducks. I was always helping people with their most urgent symptom. I was not helping them live a better and more healthy life.
I felt like I was always just scooping rubber ducks.
Esther Yunkin, RN
It is tiring to keep scooping. It is tiring to keep addressing symptoms and never feel like you are making any actual difference.
That is the thing about upstream work. It is slower to start, and it is the only thing that changes how many ducks show up tomorrow.
Common questions about root cause medicine for Hashimoto’s
You can stop standing in the water
You now know the difference between a duck and the person throwing it. Your symptoms are real, and they are downstream of an immune system that needs a different kind of attention than your thyroid does.
The next step is not a new supplement. It is understanding which system you are actually dealing with, so you stop spending energy in the middle of the stream. That is exactly what Hashimoto’s Decoded: Thyroid or Immune walks you through for $27, so you can finally understand what is actually happening in your body before you decide what to do about it.