3 Mistakes People Make When Trying to Manage Thyroid Problems Naturally

Beyond the Thyroid – Episode 36: 3 Mistakes People Make When Trying to Manage Thyroid Problems Naturally

In this episode of Beyond the Thyroid, Dr. Dana Gibbs unpacks three of the most common mistakes people make when attempting to treat thyroid disease “naturally.”

You’ll learn why focusing on antibody levels instead of hormone balance can lead you astray, how chasing an elusive “root cause” can leave correctable issues untreated, and the misconceptions around natural versus synthetic thyroid hormone.

Dr. Gibbs also explains recent FDA actions against natural desiccated thyroid (NDT) products, what that means for patients, and why proactive advocacy is needed. This episode is about cutting through the noise and giving you clear, practical strategies to feel better and protect your thyroid health.

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Episode Highlights:

00:00 Introduction to Natural Thyroid Management
01:51 Common Mistakes in Natural Thyroid Management
02:47 Mistake #1: Focusing on Antibody Levels
05:07 Mistake #2: Ignoring Correctable Causes
08:00 Mistake #3: Believing the Hype About Natural Thyroid
14:24 FDA Regulations and Natural Thyroid
18:38 Summary and Final Thoughts
20:09 Conclusion and Call to Action

✨ Avoid the common pitfalls and take the smarter path to thyroid health. Tune in now!

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✉️ Email Dr. Gibbs at drgibbs@DanaGibbsMD.com or visit https://www.danagibbsmd.com/ for more information.


Thank you so much for listening! Tune in on the next episode.


The medical information provided in this episode is intended for informational purposes only and should not be construed as medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider regarding any medical questions or concerns.

Transcript

dana-gibbs-md--she-_1_08-26-2025_172749: 0:04

Welcome to episode 36. I'm Dr. Dana Gibbs, and today we're tackling a topic I see come up every single week in my clinic, and that is the idea that you can manage your thyroid naturally. I think you can, don't get me wrong, supporting your thyroid with lifestyle, nutrition, stress reduction, better sleep smart supplementation is incredibly important. But too often I see people fall into traps that keep them stuck, frustrated, and sometimes even sicker than they were before. So today our topic is three mistakes that I see people make when they want a more natural approach to their thyroid health. Let's dive in.

0:59

You're listening to the Beyond the Thyroid podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Dana Gibbs. I'm an ENT surgeon and hormone specialist. For years, I struggled with my own unrecognized thyroid problems before and even after I was regularly performing thyroid surgeries. Then, one day, I learned something that turned my health around and opened my eyes to the limits of mainstream medicine in treating more subtle thyroid abnormalities. I spent the next 20 years fine tuning my hormone expertise in disorders like Hashimoto's disease, perimenopause, and stress related illness. Come join me as I share this new approach to hormones that empowers you to take control of your own thyroid and hormone imbalances. Let's dive in.

dana-gibbs-md--she-_2_08-26-2025_172945: 1:51

So I hear this so very often,"I don't wanna take thyroid medicine." Well, I get it. Neither do I. But what I do want is not to be so cold that nothing short of a blistering hot bath is gonna get me warm. Two, not to gain weight, though I eat next to nothing. Number three, not to be so tired that I can't drive my car without a dangerous potential for an accident. I also don't wanna take the wrong type or dose of thyroid medicine and end up with normal labs, but still feel like crap. So that's what I wanna really talk about today because while I love lifestyle medicine, nutrition, stress management, and supplements, I see these mistakes that people make over and over again when they try to manage their thyroid disease naturally. And these mistakes can keep you stuck and exhausted for far longer than you need to be. So, mistake number one, focusing on your antibody levels instead of your thyroid hormone balance. So I've mentioned in earlier episodes that there are two parts to Hashimoto's Disease and Hashimoto's Disease is the most common disease of thyroid. It's also the most common autoimmune disease of all autoimmune diseases. And part one of Hashimoto's disease is the autoimmune attack itself. And there is no pharmaceutical drug that eliminates that autoimmune attack. It's just like type one diabetes or MS. Or rheumatoid arthritis. Once the damage is done to your organs or your tissues, the affected organ doesn't simply return to normal. That said, there are lifestyle and natural approaches that can help calm inflammation and reduce the attack. Strict diets, anti-inflammatory herbs, leaky gut protocols, stress reduction, and sometimes you can get your antibody levels all the way down to zero. I have talked about that on other episodes of beyond the thyroid. But here's where the mistake comes in, part two of Hashimoto's disease is the damage that's already has been done and is ongoing to your thyroid gland. For some people that damage has been going on for 20 years or more, and some of them have no thyroid function left at all. And even if your thyroid antibody levels become undetectable today, your thyroid tissue that's secreting thyroid hormone that's necessary for life may be permanently damaged and not able to supply sufficient or the proper balance of thyroid hormone to your body. Seeing people really get trapped in this obsessing over their antibodies, but ignoring that bigger question, are your thyroid hormones balanced your free T3, free T4, total and reverse T3 ratios? Tell me if your cells are actually getting what they need- thyroid hormone wise to function. And that to me is part number one, and it's much better than chasing your antibody levels like a stock ticker. Mistake number two, ignoring correctable causes while you're chasing the root cause. So this is another major mistake I see is this fixation on finding the root cause of your thyroid disease. Now I know that you know that I don't love that phrase because too often it sends people down a rabbit hole chasing chronic Lyme or mold or Epstein–Barr virus. Do those conditions even exist? Yes, I think absolutely. Can they play a role? Sure. But if you focus exclusively on them, it commonly meaned that you're overlooking the common and correctable issues that are right in front of you. Here's the thing, if your thyroid hormones are unbalanced and inadequate, it causes suppression of your immune function to the point that autoimmune diseases can take hold, infections can take hold, that allergies can take hold, and I see that over and over with people who have inadequate thyroid hormone, inadequate balance of their thyroid. So is it the chicken or the egg? Did the Epstein–Barr virus reactivate and cause your Hashimoto's disease or have you had Hashimoto's for years, and you've got reactivated Epstein–Barr virus because your Hashimoto's has gotten out of control and your thyroid balance is bad. And there are also correctable issues that are right in front of you. Things like insulin resistance, poor sleep, chronic stress, nutrient deficiencies, and these are the drivers I see most often in my clinic, and they're very fixable. Maybe not simple. But definitely very fixable. It is tempting I know to wanna take a detox or a bunch of fancy protocols or expensive labs, but it really misses the point and can sometimes even damage your health if it keeps you from replacing thyroid hormone when your gland can't make it anymore because the ongoing damage to your immune system will continue. This is also where I remind patients of something important. Thyroid hormone is not a drug in the way that Tylenol or blood pressure medication is a drug. A drug is something that you take to control a symptom, a chemical that is not native to your body, and a drug is rarely measurable in your blood. A hormone, on the other hand, is a naturally occurring signaling molecule in your body that your body used to have normal amounts of and is designed to run on. So thyroid hormone replacement, whether it's natural or whether it's synthetic, is chemically identical to what your own thyroid gland would make if it still could. So, mistake number three that I see is believing the hype about natural thyroid and suppressing TSH. This is a big one. The idea is that the only good thyroid medicine is the natural thyroid medicine or the natural desiccated thyroid, or the second part of this is that you need to drive your TSH well below normal in order to get symptom relief. So here's the truth. All these thyroid medicines contain bioidentical thyroid hormone. Every single one. The T4 in Synthroid is molecularly identical to the T4 in armour thyroid, or NP thyroid. The T3 in liothyronine is identical to the T3 in natural thyroid. The source is different, the structure is the same. It's indistinguishable from what your healthy thyroid gland would have made. Except in the proportion. Now, several episodes back, I went into a lot of detail on what's in a natural desiccated thyroid in the brands like armour or NP thyroid. Now, these are derived from dried animal thyroid glands, and they contain both T4 and T3, and the T3 is, in my opinion, why it works better than Synthroid alone for a good proportion of people. Now there are some practitioners who swear by them and won't give their patients anything else. I think this is silly. Other doctors who refuse to give them because they've bought into the hype that was put out by the synthetic manufacturers a long time ago. For me, natural thyroid is simply one more tool in my toolbox and when I discuss what's in it specifically, I was talking about other possibly biologically active ingredients that used to not be required to be disclosed, and then some inactive ones that are added. They're called excipients. They're the inactive ingredients that are added for various manufacturing reasons, and this is equally true for the natural thyroids as it is for the synthetic thyroid hormones. So to review, armoured thyroid contains an extract of desiccated, that means dried out pig thyroid glands contains all the structural proteins and the extra hormone metabolites that are naturally found in all thyroid glands, and this includes something called calcitonin, which we rarely talk about, but I'll be talking about that in a couple of weeks. It contains proportionally more active thyroid hormone T3 than is found in human thyroid glands. And it contains some other inactive ingredients, as I mentioned, but there are far more. While there are practitioners who are passionate believers in natural desiccated thyroid only, there are far more mainstream physicians who insist that these natural thyroid products are terrible, and the guidelines actually tell them not to even consider using it. And most of these doctors have bought into the miss that have come up over the years about those. So let's talk about'em. The first one is, it contains too much t3 well, okay. 90% of what's released from a normal human thyroid gland is T4 and only 10% is T3. But that doesn't mean that we don't need more of that in our bodies. 80% of the T3 our bodies use is converted after the fact. And so if you have a hypothyroid condition that affects your ability to convert T4 to T3, it is highly likely that you have less T3 than you need. And taking a preparation with 17% T3 is not only generally not too much, but it's common in my patients that it isn't enough. So armour Thyroid, as all NDT does, contains the exact ratio of 9 micrograms of T3 to 38 micrograms of T4 in every 60 milligram tablet. So that's where that 17% number comes from. And while it may be perfect for some, it is frequently not enough for many, and the problem with it is if you need more T3 and you give more armour thyroid, then what's happening is that you're also raising the dose of T4 and a raising dose of T4 triggers elevations in reverse T3. Reverse T3 damps down the effect of the T3 that you're getting and lowers the TSH at the same time, which brings up the next problem or myth that comes with armour thyroid, and that is that armour thyroid causes bone loss and heart problems. Well, this problem is utterly dose related and it exists with any thyroid hormone preparation. And what I do frequently find is that practitioners who exclusively use armour tend to overdose it for two reasons. First of all, they forget about the very short half-life of T3, less than 24 hours, and they don't realize that it's way more effective if you give it 2 or 3 times daily as it was given before the advent of Synthroid and its claims of ideal once daily dosing, which aren't true by the way. And two, when they push the dose higher to try to get complete relief of symptoms, that patient is now getting too much T4, or any thyroid hormone drops the TSH below the normal range. And even if there's still not enough T3 to make you feel well, your TSH will still be suppressed. And there are big problems with taking too much, which include first side effects like irritability and sleep problems. Major longstanding problems like bone loss and heart problems among others. And this can of course happen with. Natural thyroid formulations, but it's also very common with levothyroxine monotherapy or even combination with T3 synthetic if it is being dosed improperly. So if your TSH is down below 0.3, then you're taking too much, but it's probably too much T4, that's the problem not too much T3 the last myth is that NDT is not FDA approved, and this one is actually true. But completely irrelevant. Well, I should say, and this is important, it used to be completely irrelevant because the new Trump-era FDA is now on the war path against natural animal thyroid saying that it is a biologic because it contains proteins. Nevermind. Those exact proteins are already found in normal human thyroid tissue as well as in animal thyroids. So in a letter dated August 6th of this year, 2025, the FDA officially classified animal derived thyroid medications, including brands like armour and NP as unapproved biologic drugs. Giving providers and patients a 12 month window to transition to FDA approved thyroid hormone replacements. So manufacturers have 12 months to submit data to prove that these biologics have efficacy or quit manufacturing and selling it. Let me tell you, my friend, 12 months is a joke. It takes years to take a drug through the approval process. They even say in the notification that the 12 months is to give patients time to transition back to the correct FDA approved products. And by this they mean levothyroxine. They're not even giving it a chance. The people that are making this claim are trying to suggest that natural desiccated thyroid is somehow harmful because it's not FDA approved. But the truth is that this product has been around since 1890 when it was discovered as a treatment for thyroid conditions, and it dominated the market up through the 1970s, that's when Baxter started heavily promoting Synthroid and suggested that synthetic was cleaner and better and that you could give it once a day. The FDA didn't even exist and wasn't regulating the effectiveness of medications until 1972 because natural desiccated thyroid was in use 50 years before this. So it was grandfathered in, until now. Grandfathered or not, the FDA has been regulating the use of these products and have in the past, pulled products off the market when the manufacturers were not following the rules for potency and for shelf life in the past, natural thyroid manufacturers were not required to prove efficacy like newer drugs are because Desiccated thyroid already had a proven track record, and because it's a natural product, naturally present in human thyroid glands. So, the FDA has suddenly shifted its stance and has created some confusion and fear, but the lack of an approval stamp does not mean that this medication is unsafe or ineffective if the provider knows the right way to use it. Believe me, guys, this is big news'cause 1.6 million Americans take these products and are being left in the dust. A large proportion of levothyroxine users, 15% in studies, do not improve on levothyroxine alone and need alternatives. So if you wanna keep your natural thyroid, better get busy signing petitions, writing emails to your congressmen and senators, and to the new FDA Chief who's Marty Macari, and to anybody in the Trump administration who may be listening. In order to find this letter, do a Google search for FDA's actions to address unapproved thyroid medications or FDA letter to manufacturers of animal derived thyroid products. Use those in Google or on fda.gov, and you should be able to find that official letter. Attach it to your letter, attach it to your email, highlight the parts that are objectionable and let's get this stopped because really, this is, it's ridiculous. Anyway, the final and bigger mistake when you're trying to use a natural treatment to fix your thyroid condition is believing that one particular form of thyroid medicine is the best for everyone. Or that feeling better requires pushing that TSH down into those suppressed levels. So chronically low TSH can hurt your bones and your heart. Healing is about balance, not about extremes. So in summary, the big mistakes I see when people are trying to manage their thyroid is focusing on antibody levels instead of hormone balance. Ignoring correctable causes of thyroid imbalance while chasing that elusive root cause and spending tons of money and wasting time. And then three, believing the hype about natural thyroid or suppressed TSH as being the only ways you can get better with this. And of course the biggest mistake of all if you're symptomatic with your thyroid is believing the story that your labs are normal. So those symptoms must all be in your head. If I've heard that once, I've heard it 5,000 times. So if you're spinning your wheels in one of these areas, I wanna encourage you to shift your focus. Look at what's measurable, correct what is fixable, and use thyroid hormone for what it is. A life restoring bioidentical replacement for what your body is not making enough of. That's what I do to help my patients every day. Cut through the noise, stop chasing the wrong targets, and finally get their energy, their clarity, and their health back. If you'd like to take the next step, check out my thyroid checkup program. It is designed to help you order the right labs, interpret them with me, and finally get answers. You can join the wait list for that at thyroidclarity.com/checkup. So imagine waking up rested. Ready and strong, no longer caught between the extremes of natural only versus synthetic thyroid hormone, but finally, finding what works for you. That's the balance I want for you. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time on Beyond The Thyroid.

20:51

Thank you for listening to this episode of Beyond the Thyroid. If you found this information valuable, it would mean so much to me to take a few seconds and give the podcast a five star review. It helps other people who need this information find the show and it's really easy. Just search and click on the name of the show, Beyond the Thyroid, and scroll to the bottom to ratings and reviews. I truly do read and appreciate. Remember, when it comes to hormones, there will always be more to discover, so follow the show so you get the next episode as soon as it's released. And if you or someone you care about needs a caring doctor to help figure out how to heal hormone problems that other doctors have dismissed, check out my website at www. danagibbsmd. com. And if you're not a physician, please keep in mind, while I'm a doctor, I'm not your doctor. The content of this podcast is my opinion and it's for educational and entertainment purposes only. This is not meant to be individual medical advice and you should consult your own physician for any medical issues or diagnoses that you may have. I look forward to continuing this journey with you beyond the thyroid.