Thyroid Health

My Story: When “Incurable” Wasn't the Whole Story

In 1998, I sat across from an endocrinologist who told me I had an autoimmune thyroid condition — a toxic multinodular goiter, where my own immune system was attacking my thyroid — and that it was incurable. I had been experiencing hand tremors for months, and my legs felt so restless at night that I couldn't sleep. My heart would skip and pound for no reason. I was so tired all the time that I had no energy to play with my little kids, and my hair was literally falling out in handfuls. That was the scariest thing.

My two choices, I was told, were surgery to remove most of my thyroid, or radioactive iodine to destroy it. Either way, I'd be on thyroid medication for the rest of my life.

I remember thinking: there has to be something better. I wanted an option “C.” I was only 28 — there had to be more than just managing this forever. Not because I doubted the doctor's honesty, but because nobody had asked why my immune system had decided to attack my own thyroid in the first place.

A chiropractor introduced me to applied kinesiology — muscle testing that helped pinpoint exactly what my body needed. This testing pointed straight at my diet. I was eating gluten and dairy every day, and soy was hiding in almost everything else I ate. So I cut all gluten, dairy, soy, and sugar. Alongside that, I had regular chiropractic adjustments guided by muscle testing, targeted supplements and homeopathic remedies, daily walks, and time playing the piano, which was an important emotional outlet.

The change didn't happen overnight, but it happened faster than I expected. First my hand tremors and restless legs settled down. Then I started sleeping through the night. Then the hair shedding slowed, and eventually stopped. My heart stopped skipping and pounding. My energy crept back, slowly, and then my hair started growing back in — which, after months of watching it fall out, was a huge relief. Over the following months my symptoms eased and my labs returned to normal ranges, and I felt more clear, calm, and balanced than I had in a long time. Individual results vary — this is my own experience, not a promise of the same outcome for anyone else.

That experience is the reason I became a doctor. It's also the reason this page exists. I'm not writing this to tell you your endocrinologist is wrong — conventional medicine is essential, especially for monitoring, and sometimes medication is necessary. I'm writing this because there is almost always a missing question: what triggered this in the first place?

What Autoimmune Thyroid Disease Actually Is

There's a big difference between a thyroid that's simply tired and a thyroid that's under attack.

Simple hypothyroidism can happen from things like iodine or selenium shortages, or general wear and tear. It's relatively straightforward.

Autoimmune thyroid disease — Hashimoto's thyroiditis (underactive) and Graves' disease (overactive) — is different. In these conditions, your own immune system makes antibodies that attack your thyroid gland. Up to 90% of hypothyroidism cases in the U.S. are actually Hashimoto's, even though most people are only told they have “low thyroid” and handed a prescription.

Here's the part that gets left out of that conversation: your thyroid isn't malfunctioning on its own. Your immune system is doing this. That means the thyroid is more like the “scene of the crime” than the actual “criminal.”

The Missing Piece: Find Out Why Your Immune System Is Confused

If your immune system is attacking your thyroid, the most useful question isn't “how do I fix my thyroid?” It's “what is my immune system actually reacting to, and why did it start?”

This isn't a fringe idea — it's an active area of research. Autoimmune disease generally requires a genetic tendency plus a trigger. Take away the trigger, and the immune system has a real chance to calm down.

One of the most well-studied triggers is your gut. When the lining of your intestines becomes more permeable than it should be — often called “leaky gut” — undigested food particles and bacterial fragments can slip into places your immune system was never meant to see them. Some of those particles and proteins look enough like your own thyroid tissue that your immune system can get confused between the two, a process researchers call “molecular mimicry.”

Increased intestinal permeability has been documented in both children and adults with Hashimoto's thyroiditis, and researchers now describe a genuine “gut-thyroid axis” connecting the two — intestinal dysbiosis, bacterial overgrowth, and increased gut permeability appear to favor the development of Hashimoto's thyroiditis [1].

A 2020 pilot study on children with Hashimoto's found measurably higher levels of zonulin, a marker of gut permeability, and increased intestinal permeability has been shown to precede the onset of several autoimmune disorders [2].

And a broader review of the research describes the mechanism directly: when the tight junctions between intestinal cells loosen, antigens from the gut microbiota can pass through and trigger the immune system through molecular mimicry [3].

The gut is one trigger. It's rarely the only one.

So What Else Might Be Triggering Your Immune System?

In my experience, most people with autoimmune thyroid disease have one or more of these driving the fire:

• Toxins your body hasn't been able to clear — heavy metals, mold-related toxins, and everyday chemical exposures your immune system can't ignore
• Food sensitivities you may not even connect to your thyroid, gluten being one of the most common
• Chronic stress, which changes your hormone and neurotransmitter patterns in ways that directly affect immune regulation
• Hidden infections, including “stealth” infections that don't cause obvious symptoms but still keep your immune system on high alert and tax your whole body

I cover each of these in more depth on the Inflammation and Detox pages, because they're really the same underlying story showing up in different places in the body.

Where Nutrition Fits In

Even while you're working on triggers, your thyroid needs specific raw materials to function and to keep antibody levels in check. Selenium is one of the best-studied examples: a 2025 meta-analysis pooling 21 randomized controlled trials and over 1,600 patients with Hashimoto's found that selenium supplementation significantly lowered thyroid peroxidase antibody levels after 3 months and again after 6 months, along with a decline in TSH after 6 months [4].

That's just one nutrient, in one part of a much bigger picture — which is exactly why food quality and targeted nutritional support are part of how I approach thyroid cases, not an afterthought.

What Working With Me Looks Like

I don't treat a lab number. I look at your whole picture — history, symptoms, functional lab ranges (which are often narrower and more revealing than the “normal” range your last doctor used), and applied kinesiology muscle testing to help figure out what your body is specifically asking for. Then we work, step by step, to identify and reduce your immune triggers while giving your body genuine support to regulate itself.

What this can help with

• Comprehensive testing that looks beyond a single TSH number
• A focus on identifying and reducing your immune triggers
• Applied kinesiology to help guide targeted nutritional support
• Care from a doctor who has personally navigated a thyroid condition