A reader asked me this great question.... Do you know anything about Hashimotos Encephalopathy, and if so what are the natural protocols vs the normal treatment of steroids? For those of you who dont know what this is, this includes a whole host of neurological symptoms that can occur in hashimotos patients, ranging from brain fog to balance to movement and mood issues, to name a few. This is a great question, and for the best answer I would recommend Dr Kharrazians Why Isnt My Brain Working? book. But here is my quick explanation of this. I think one problem is that many doctors of all specialties really are not up to date on the latest research and are still practicing based on what they learned in school, and stubbornly resist any change. To them, this condition is rare, as you can read in this link thyroid.about/cs/hashimotos/a/encephalopathy.htm However, what we find in functional medicine is that patients often have antibodies against more tissues than just the thyroid. Many patients come in with multiple auto immune conditions. This is why proper testing is so important. Most patients who have thyroid antibodies have gluten as a trigger for the auto immune attack. What far too many doctors dont know is that the most common symptoms of a gluten reaction are actually neurological and NOT gut related. Gluten ataxia, for example, occurs when a gluten reaction causes disturbances in a persons walking ability. Other research shows that it can trigger psychological disturbances from autism and ADD to schizophrenia. See this study for sources ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24693281 Many patients will also have reactions to cows milk proteins, which can cause auto immune attacks on myelin sheaths in the brain. This reaction, as well as the gluten reaction, can trigger attacks on the brains GABA pathway, which is the inhibitory pathway in the brain. When this pathway is being damaged, patients can have anxiety, motion sickness, increased pulse and blood pressure, insomnia, and more. The important thing to understand is that if there is an antibody reaction occurring that is targeting nerve tissue, those tissues are being destroyed by the reaction. Therefore it is critical to remove the foods that are triggering this reaction if you want to preserve as much tissue as possible. Corticosteroids dont really address this. They are more of a symptom relief approach. Many thyroid patients also have iron anemias, hypoglycemia, circulatory and adrenal issues, all of which affect brain function. Additionally, many have leaky gut problems, and there is a gut-brain connection whereby impaired gut function can cause impaired brain function. Deficiencies in Vitamin D are also common as well as the presence of inflammation. All of these can further impair brain function and cause neurological symptoms. Functionally, all of these must be addressed to get to the root cause. This is in addition to balancing the thyroid. So you should be able see the kind of thought process that your doctor should go through when assessing this condition. Just prescribing corticosteroids for flare ups is a band-aid approach. All of these issues need to be tested for and addressed if you really want to have a long term change in this condition. I would love to hear from anyone out there who has had neuro symptoms like brain fog, tremors, anxiety, insomnia, balance or coordination issues. Please share what your doctor did to evaluate and treat this, and if they listened to your concerns or not. If you have more questions, please feel free to contact me, and be sure to follow @drkirkgair or facebook/thyroidinfo
Posted on: Fri, 04 Jul 2014 02:40:31 +0000
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