Wired, Tired and Told You’re Fine? Let’s Talk Thyroid

Feel exhausted, cold, wired yet tired, and still told your thyroid is “fine”? We pull back the curtain on why TSH and T4 can miss what your body is clearly saying, and we break down the crucial step too many overlook: converting T4 to T3, the active hormone that powers energy, metabolism, mood, temperature, and gut motility. From midlife symptoms that get mislabelled as “just hormones” to the quiet role of stress in slamming the metabolic brakes, we map the real-world pathways that move people from stuck to steady.

We explore how the liver and gut enable T3 production, why micronutrients like selenium, zinc, iron, magnesium, and B vitamins are non-negotiable, and where iodine fits without causing flare-ups. You’ll hear how mineral patterns reveal early trends, why low potassium can stall hormone delivery, and how supporting detox and digestion often brings faster relief than chasing new diets. We also tackle the missing piece in standard care: autoimmune thyroid disease. Antibodies can simmer for years before TSH shifts, which is why fatigue, heavy periods, anxiety, and hair changes are frequently waved away until things get worse.

Along the way, we share a case where sex hormones looked balanced while stress pathways told the real story, and we outline smarter testing strategies that include free T3, antibodies, and mineral assessment. The core message is practical and hopeful: normal is not always optimal, and the thyroid is often under-supported, not broken. With targeted stress reduction, blood sugar stability, gut and liver support, and the right cofactors, conversion improves and symptoms ease.

If you’re ready to rethink your thyroid, press play and take notes. Subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with a friend who needs better answers. Your story might change when your labs and your life finally match.

Thank you for listening.

You can continue the conversation with us in the Far 2 Fabulous Facebook group. Come and connect with other women on a journey to empowered health.

For more information about Julie Clark Nutrition, click HERE
For more information about Catherine Chapman, click HERE

If you enjoy the podcast and would like to support the show, you can buy us a coffee HERE. Your support helps us continue creating episodes and improving our recording setup.

We look forward to you joining us on the next episode.

Transcript

Solo Host Sets The Stage

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to Foxy Fabulous. I should have Julie and Catherine. Join us on a mission to racial fabulousness and redefined wellness. Get ready for some twistiness, inspiration, candy chat, and humour as we journey together towards empowered wellbeing.

Why Thyroid Is Misunderstood

TSH And T4: What They Miss

T3: The Active Game Changer

Symptoms Beyond Weight And Myths

Autoimmune Thyroid And Missed Antibodies

Hair Testing, Minerals, And Stress Links

Iodine Nuance And Cofactors

Case Insights And Better Testing

From “Normal” To Optimal Support

Closing And Community Invitation

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Let's dive in! Hello everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of the Far Too Fabulous podcast. Now there's no singing today because I'm on my own, so I haven't got Catherine to do her bum bum bum bum bum. Oh my god, I said I wasn't singing and then I've started singing. Anyway, as ever, we are super busy ladies, and it can be a struggle for us to get together at the same time. I'm sure you can appreciate there's quite a lot of time and effort that goes into recording the podcast. So I am doing a solo episode today, and I really want to talk about the thyroid. Now, the reason why I want to talk about the thyroid is because it's because it is one of the most misunderstood, oversimplified, and quite frankly, frustrating areas of health that I see in my practice. So if you've ever been told your thyroid blood tests are normal, your TSH is fine, or we keep an eye on things, but you feel I always I've got my fingers up, I always um ask the person, do you feel thyroidy? It's not even a word, right? But when you're feeling tired and anxious and cold, or you're gaining weight, you're losing your hair, your hormones all over the place, your digestion's affected, you're constipated or the other way, and your mood and focus is also having issues, it might not. I think sometimes, especially at this age, it can everything can be put down to the sex hormones, or it's that age where your estrogen and progesterone are changing. But I've often spoken about this orchestra of the endocrine system, all the hormones working together. But whereas the adrenal hormones tend to be the boss of the system, the thyroid is like adrenal's best mate, the thyroid will slam the brakes on if it sees that your system is too stressed, is struggling. If there's something going on somewhere else in the endocrine system, the thyroid will often try and compensate, and so a lot of the time it can be helping you, it is a natural response by the body to put the brakes on or slow things down, conserve energy, save nutrients. But if you feel like you've got those thyroid type symptoms, but your GP is telling you that your TSH and your T4 levels are fine, there's more to it than that, which is why I wanted to discuss it because in my clinic I deal with so many thyroid issues, and not just underactive, overactive, but on the autoimmune spectrum as well. So, what most people are tested for, if you go to the doctor and you say, I feel really tired all the time, and a lot of the time when I'm seeing people, you'll be telling me, I haven't changed anything, I've not I'm not changing my diet, I'm still doing my level of exercise, etc. But I just feel tired all the time, and where is this weight coming from? And why is my hair falling out? And I'm I'm experiencing mood issues, and I've never had that before. This is why often ends up you end up being told it's due to your your sex hormone, so it's perimenopause. But the thyroid, when we test for it through a normal GP route, we're looking at two particular markers TSH, which is the thyroid stimulating hormone, and T4, which is known as thyroxine. So before I go into detail, I don't want to say that these tests are irrelevant or they don't have a place, and I'm not dismissing the doctors or medicine, but they give a very, very narrow snapshot of a much bigger system, and TSH and T4 is really limited. So, to understand what this is, a thyroid stimulating hormone is a message from the brain to the thyroid saying, I'd like some more thyroid hormone, please. The higher the TSH, the more the body, the brain, is shouting to produce the thyroxine. There's a feedback mechanism which looks in the blood and it will see if there's sufficient thyroxine T4, and maybe it doesn't need to shout as much or not at all. And so the TSH has a range, and you could be someone because we're all different, you could be someone that is more comfortable at the top end of that range, and when it drops at the low end, even though it's within range, it can cause you problems. You might be someone that's the other way around, but anyway, what happens is TSH is like the brain email in the thyroid to say, could you just produce some more thyroid? I've checked the blood and we're a little bit low on reserves. That's basically what happens. Now, T4 tells us how much thyroid hormone is being produced. So the thyroid produces thyroxine T4 into the blood, and that's great, but here's what most people don't know: T4 thyroxine in the blood is completely inactive and it doesn't do anything, it has to be converted. So the blood often is like the store cupboard. You're gonna make something with the ingredients in your store cupboard, but until you've actually made something using those ingredients, then the best the best way I explain it to my clients is that you've got all the ingredients for an egg, not an egg, a cake, but until you put everything together and bake it, you haven't got a cake. So that's that's basically what's happening here. So we've got the the the brain checking the blood. Well, how much T4 have we got? Oh, that's great. I don't need to shout the thyroid. Then we've got the T4 telling us how much is actually in the store cupboard, but T4 is a storage hormone, so it only becomes useful when it's converted into T3, which is the active thyroid hormone. This is the one that drives metabolism, supports energy production, regulates body temperature, influences mood and anxiety, affects digestion and the speed at which food goes through gut motility, it supports menstrual cycles, fertility, and hormone balance, so it's involved in that orchestra, of course, it impacts cholesterol, muscle recovery, and brain function, and there's also a link with the heart. So you can start to see that if you've got these symptoms, the thyroid should be checked properly because if you just say it's the sex hormones and you're put on HRT, for example, and it is a thyroid issue, then that's not going to help, and this is what I see a lot of the time. The other thing I see is people are put on thyroxine and they don't feel any different, and this is why we have to convert the T4 into T3. And if you can't convert properly, and there's lots of reasons which we'll go on to in a minute, you will still feel like your hypothyroid, you'll still feel that you've got an underactive thyroid going on, and the most common, to be honest, is underactive that I would see in my clinic. Overactive thyroid is often a medical situation, and it's normally dealt with that route, but the underactive thyroid is completely different. So the conversion from T4 to T3 doesn't just happen with a magic wand automatically, it relies on the liver, the gut, and specific nutrients, cofactors. The cofactors include selenium, zinc, iron, magnesium, B vitamins, and iodine is also a factor which we'll talk about in a minute. So, what I often see, and I can see this really well on the hair test, which is why I love it, a lot of people that have the hair test done will come with thyroid type symptoms, and then when we do the hair test, we can see that the thyroid's got the brakes on, and we can see that the cofactors are low. Therefore, you could have all the thyroxine T4 you want in your blood, but unless you can convert it to T3 and get it in the cell where it's needed, you're going to still have those symptoms, and it frustrates me so much that if you've got if you've had TSH and T4 tested by the GP and they look at your results and they say they're normal, but you still feel like you've got all these symptoms, it often goes ignored, and this is yeah, this is why these people end up in my clinic. So these nutrients are often low, particularly in women, because of chronic stress, digestive issues, inflammation, autoimmune activity does play into this for sure, restrictive dieting, long-term under-eating or over-exercising. So the thyroid isn't failing, the conditions it's working under aren't supportive. So there's a lot more to this situation than you initially think. So we've got to look at what's driving the thyroid to put the brakes on. Now the thyroid isn't just about weight, so one of the biggest myths I want to clear up is that the thyroid is only about metabolism or weight gain. The thyroid influences almost every system in the body, energy and fatigue, anxiety and low mood, sleep, hair, skin, and nails, digestion and constipation, menstrual cycles and fertility, blood sugar regulation, cholesterol, temperature regulation. So when someone says it's just a slightly underactive thyroid, that's massively underselling its role. Now, autoimmune thyroid is a part that's often missed because, again, the antibodies are not routinely tested, and so you could have the signs for a thyroid issue, but and it can be going on for years, years and years before the TSH moves out of range. This is why it's not a very good marker. So a huge proportion of thyroid issues are actually autoimmune, like Hashimoto's or graves, and a lot of the time people are told, well, let's just wait, wait until it gets worse. In that waiting period, the immune system is quietly attacking the thyroid, and a lot of people that I see don't know that they've got an autoimmune issue until it's really obvious, and then they're tested for antibodies, and then they see that it's an autoimmune issue. But if you think about what that's impacting, a lot of these clients that I see have had issues for years with digest, but with digestion, with menstrual cycle issues. A lot of these women have had a hysterectomy because they've got issues there, and then they find out years later that they've actually got antibodies to the thyroid, and like I said, that takes years. So, autoimmune thyroid is not just a thyroid problem, it's an immune system issue, it's related to stress, it's related to the gut, it's related to the nutrients and inflammation, all rolled into one. So, when we're looking at helping somebody that's got an autoimmune thyroid condition, we're coming at it from all of those angles. So, like I said, I really like using the hair test to look at what's going on with the thyroid because it's just so telling. One of the best things about the hair test is that it gives you the trends way before you've got the problems, so it will start to show you that the thyroid is really struggling, it will start to show that some of these nutrients are low. Of course, it doesn't diagnose thyroid disease, but it does show us whether the body has the resources it needs to use the thyroid hormone properly. So I'm looking at things like calcium and magnesium balance, I'm looking at sodium and potassium. Now, these two are interesting because potassium is really with calcium is really involved in thyroid, but we see that potassium is very low, and potassium is actually vital for taking the thyroid hormone, the T4T uh thyroxine, into the converted form. So it's really really crucial. If we're stressed, we lose our potassium, and we see sodium and potassium ratio really low. We see that that has an association with the adrenal and stress response. We have to look at things like copper and iron patterns, we can look at the metabolic type, and we can look at toxins that may block hormone signaling. So thyroid symptoms will often improve, sometimes dramatically, when we support the minerals and we help support detoxify, but what we're really doing is helping to help the body to convert the T4, the inactive form, to T3, where then you get the benefits. So, like I said, it's all very well having the T4 in your blood, but it's completely irrelevant if you can't convert it to T3. Now, iodine is an interesting one because we're we are seeing something close to a widespread iodine deficiency now. Iodine is a basic building block for thyroid hormone. You literally cannot make thyroid hormone without it, but we've got iodine levels low, get very low because of depleted soils, because of the reduced use use of iodized salt, less seafood in modern diets in a lot of cases. Dairy is not now a reliable source of iodine. A lot of people avoiding grains, and if we've got this is the biggest one I see is the an increased exposure to chlorine, fluoride, and bromide block iodine uptake. So even people eating what looks like a healthy diet can be deficient, and it's really important because iodine is not something you would supplement blindly, especially if you have autoimmune thyroid issues. So I'm not suggesting that you go and take some iodine now. You've got to you've got to take it in the right way, and you've got to make sure that you've got the cofactors there. So iodine does need to be properly assessed, it needs to be introduced carefully, and it needs to be balanced with the other cofactors, especially with selenium and the other nutrients that I mentioned. So, part of a wider thyroid support plan, it's a piece of the puzzle, but not the whole picture. So, I couldn't talk about the thyroid without talking about iodine, but it's a little bit more complex. To get people to understand what's happening with their thyroid, I often recommend the book Thyroid in a Nutshell. It really explains things in such a lovely way. The thyroid doesn't exist in isolation, it is deeply connected to our stress response, to our immune function, to our gut health, to our nutrient status, liver detoxification. So when you support the whole system, the thyroid does respond. Now, what I see in my practice is people that who've been borderline for years, or that medication is not has not taken the symptoms away, or they're trying to avoid medication, but they want to help themselves really. So, this is where we focus on things like balancing the minerals, liver and gut support, immune regulation, blood sugar stability, nervous system support. So when we do those things, we often see better energy, calmer moods, a change in body temperature, improved cycles, and better resilience. And again, I'm thinking about this in terms of perimenopause and menopause, thinking to myself, a lot of these symptoms mimic that. So before we go down the route of hormone replacement therapy, thinking that it's going to be a magic wand, we've got to look at the adrenals and the stress response. We've got to look at the thyroid. As many of you know, I do the Dutch test, which looks at hormones. I did a Dutch test on a lady recently who's in her late 40s, really, really struggling with mood issues, heavy periods, lot like to the point of saying that she couldn't really function, as like her life is really impacted. And so she was asking before I go down the route of asking for HRT, I just want to see what's happening, and so I recommended the Dutch test. We run the Dutch test, her sex hormones, both estrogen and progesterone, were really good, really well balanced, but her stress pathways were not, and so we ended up looking at that, which then feeds into this whole orchestra. The same with the thyroid. So, some of the things that I want you to understand is that the symptoms matter, and my frustration a lot of the time is that when you have tests done and you're within the range, it's almost dismissed what you're feeling. You're saying, I feel tired, I feel dryness is another one, I'm constipated, I'm gaining weight, and it doesn't matter what I do, it just keeps going up and up. Things like that are symptoms that shouldn't be dismissed. So even if the TSH and the T4 levels are fine, you've got to take it one step further. Now you can do a more complex thyroid test, the GP often won't do it, but you can do a more complex thyroid test through a blood test through somewhere like Medikex, where they will look at T3, they will look at the antibodies, and they will look at some of the cofactors. You could do it through the hair test and have a look as well. But when we're looking at these ranges in the blood test, another thing to think about is that normal doesn't always mean optimal. This is the other thing. You could be someone that operates better at a lower end, you need a higher amount of thyroxine. I've had a lady before who had a high level of thyroxine. When she went for a blood test, the levels suggested to the GP that she needed to come down off of that amount of thyroxine, which she did, but then she suffered massive problems. She started to gain weight, she didn't feel right, she said. Constipation was so bad that she she caused herself to have a bowel prolapse because it was that bad. There was lots of things going on with falling asleep, with not feeling right mentally and emotionally. And she is someone that when we looked at the genetics and we looked a step further, we found that she doesn't convert her T4 very well. So she needs a larger amount of T4 to get the normal amount in the cell that she needs to function properly. So being in the range doesn't always mean optimal, and it doesn't always mean that it's right for you. The thyroid is but part of a bigger picture, so we've got to look at the connections with the liver, the gut, stress response, etc. Supporting conversion is the most important thing that I will look at. So if we've got T4 in the blood, if we help the body convert it and use it, that often makes a huge difference. In order to support conversion, we need some of those cofactors. Nutrients, really, really important, but stress and immunity matter just as much as hormones. So I think most of the time the thyroid isn't broken, it's often under-supported. When we give the body what it actually needs, it can be incredibly responsive and it can have an impact on one of the biggest symptoms that people have, which is the weight side of it. The thing that they want to really address a lot of the time is the weight. It is really hard to lose weight if your thyroid has got the brakes on. So if you want to explore this a bit more properly with testing and understanding what is the next stage past the TSH and the T4, then that's the work that I do. So by all means, you can book a free call with me to talk about it. But like I said at the start, it was one of those subjects that comes up a lot in my clinic, and it is relatively easy to sort out once you know how that thyroid works and how you can best support. Your system in terms of that conversion and supporting those other areas of the body that are heavily involved there. So it feels like um a very medical episode, and I haven't got Catherine to bounce off and for her to ask, what do you mean there? What's that? How does that work? So I hope that's been helpful. Please do come and post in the Facebook group, far too fabulous Facebook group. Any questions you have about this episode or just to say hi. Yes, I listened Julie to the solo episode and I enjoyed it. And I will see you hopefully with Catherine on the next episode.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

Bye for now. Thank you so much for joining us today. We love creating this for you. We'll be back next week with another great episode. Until then, we'd be beyond grateful if you'd subscribe to the podcast and leave us a glowing review. If you've already done this, thank you so much. Please do share the podcast with friends and family. You never know which tiny piece of information could be life-changing for someone you care about. We absolutely love hearing from you. So connect, comment, or message us on our social media channels. You'll find all the links in the show not. And if you haven't already, come and join us in our free Facebook group where we continue the conversation and you get to connect with like minded women. We'd love to welcome you in. Until next time, stay fabulous!