Episode 13: What Is a Hashimoto’s/ Hypothyroid Flare and How to Handle One Naturally

There is maybe nothing worse than getting your hypothyroid symptoms under control and feeling good for a while and then WHAM– your symptoms come back and leave you tired, fried, and with your hair falling out.

Maybe it comes after a vacation of throwing all your dietary changes out the window or after an especially stressful season. Maybe it comes after a stretch of sleepless nights and grabbing some sugary snacks to make it through the day. There are lots of reasons for what we call a “flare-up”, but it doesn’t change how frustrating it can be when it happens

In this episode, we’re talking Hashimoto’s flares… hypothyroid flares… which can pop up when you’re going along working on healing, and then BAM your symptoms flare up again and of course, I have a few simple shifts that you can do to start making an impact in this area today.

Glad you're here,

Sarah

 

Resources Mentioned In This Episode:

Take a quiz to assess your symptoms: bit.ly/thyroid-tools

Disclaimer: Information shared on this podcast and any referenced websites are not to be taken as medical advice or to be used as a diagnosis or treatment plan for any medical condition. I’m sharing my educated opinions & experience but nothing shared here can be taken on a one size fits all basis and we always recommend you do your own research, talk to your own doctors and practitioners, and take full responsibility for any health & medical choices you make.

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Want to read this episode instead? Here’s the transcript!

So there is maybe nothing worse than getting your hypothyroid symptoms under control and feeling good for a while, and you're going along and you think you've got this thing kicked, and then wham, your symptoms come back and leave you tired and fried and cold, and your hair's falling out, and you're walking around in a brain fog wondering what the heck is going on. And, you know, maybe this comes after a vacation of throwing all your dietary shifts out the window and eating whatever you want. Or maybe after a super stressful season for whatever reason maybe it comes after a stretch of sleepless nights and then surviving on caffeine and sugary snacks just to get through. There are lots of reasons for what we call a flare up for a Hashimoto's or hypothyroid flare, but it doesn't change how frustrating it can be when it happens.

And so in this episode, we're talking specifically about Hashimoto's flares or hypothyroid flares, which can pop up when you are just going along working on healing. And then bam, your symptoms come back, flare up again, and leave you feeling like you've made no progress at all, which isn't necessarily true. So today we're gonna talk about what it is, and of course, I have a few simple things that you can do to start making an impact in this area and some encouragement if you've been there. So grab that notebook and pen and let's get started with today's episode. Before we jump in, I always like to point people to the quizzes that I've created for you to help you figure out what's going on in your body in sort of a subjective kind of way. Obviously, we have blood work, we have those very objective measures that help us determine what's happening in our body, but sometimes the subjective symptoms can be a little confusing.

And so I wanna encourage you to go to bit.ly/thyroid-tools where I have three different quizzes that you can take. One is focus on hypothyroid symptoms in general to see if the random things that you might be experiencing in the symptom department are connected to your thyroid. The second quiz that I have is called the adrenal dysfunction assessment, and that is to see whether your adrenals need some attention. Maybe your hormone levels are a little bit off outside of your thyroid, but the adrenals and the thyroid are tightly connected. And so a lot of times when you have a problem with one, you have a problem with the other. This can help you determine if this is an area that needs some attention for you. And then the last one is the toxic load and liver function quiz. I have many episodes so far on the importance of liver health as it's connected to thyroid health.

And so this quiz helps you determine if you need to pay a little more attention to the level of toxicity that you're experiencing and perhaps give your liver some support to help with its natural detox function. You can head to bit.ly/thyroid-tools to take any of those quizzes. They're short little online quizzes, but they'll help you just kind of determine where to focus your energy and efforts so that they can help you to start working through making some shifts, assessing some symptoms that might be keeping you from feeling good as you move through your days.

Welcome to the Natural Thyroid Fix. I'm Sarah Geisinger, a holistic lifestyle and nutrition coach and former hypothyroid mom who has reversed her thyroid disease using a natural approach to thyroid health. Trust me, I know what it feels like to move through the life in a brain fog, needing a nap by mid-afternoon and constantly be cleaning the hair you've lost outta the shower drain. Do you know what I'm talking about? If you're here, I bet you do. So if you're ready to reject the notion that this tired hypothyroid life is as good as it gets and start implementing simple natural strategies to live a vibrant symptom-free life, then this is the podcast for you. Let's dive into today's show.

The Sleeping Giant

So I wish I could tell you that once you're done handling your hypothyroid symptoms, that you're just like done, that you're done dealing with it, that you can just forget about the lifestyle shifts you've made when you were healing and just go back to living however you want. But if I told you that I would be lying. Once I got all my symptoms under control and was able to get off thyroid meds I had gotten some blood testing done as part of just a baseline appointment with a new functional doctor. We just wanted to see where I was at when I was feeling good. And this is something that I was excited to do because I had definitely seen where my numbers were at when I was feeling bad. And so I was eager to see this. And it was exciting. It was exciting to see all my levels within the normal ranges.

It was exciting that I had been feeling symptom free. I'd been feeling good for really a pretty long stretch, like, like a couple years at that point. During that time though, I was being very diligent about living as low talks as I could about eating a pretty whole food based processed food free diet and being really diligent about avoiding certain foods that I knew caused some problems for me specifically. And so I was excited to see that all of that was working, but my doctor said something to me during that meeting that I will not ever forget and I, it continues to inform the decisions that I make about lifestyle choices and the things that I do even today. And that is this. He looked at my blood work, he was also excited and encouraged that my numbers looked so good after having having had a diagnosis of Hashimotos thyroiditis.

And he said, you know, Sarah, what you're doing is working. Keep on doing it. Keep on, keep on keeping the toxins out of your home, staying away from toxins and personal care products, all of that stuff. Keep doing that. Keep eating foods that nourish and help your body to heal and keep inflammation levels down. Keep managing your stress and prioritizing sleep in all of that. Keep doing what you're doing because he said there's a sleeping giant that is living inside of you. And if you just go back to eating loads of processed foods and not being discerning about the chemicals and the toxic load in your household and not prioritizing sleep and just living a high stress life, then you will absolutely reawaken this beast that's within you, and you will be right back where you were a few years ago. Yeah, no, thank you very much.

I am not interested in going back to where I was when I was at my worst a few years ago. And I would imagine that neither are you, however, it is important to know about that sleeping beast within me. And I I do, I keep that in the back of my mind at all times when I remember how that sleeping beast made me feel when it was at its full strength.

Hypothyroidism is an autoimmune disease

If you have hypothyroidism, you also likely have a sleeping beast within you too. And it, well, actually, maybe it's not sleeping. Maybe you're in the throes of experiencing like full on symptoms right now and feeling exhausted and feeling kind of hopeless and all the other things that come with hypothyroid symptoms. But here's the thing, if you have hypothyroidism, there is a super high chance that the reason that you don't have enough thyroid hormone, the reason that you are hypothyroid, which is just like a descriptor, not a real diagnosis, it's a descriptor that you don't have enough thyroid hormone.

There's a super high chance that the reason is because you actually have an autoimmune disease. And that's kind of, there's, you know, good news there and there's kind of bad news there. The bad news is autoimmune diseases at some level are sort of gonna be with you for the rest of your life. That's the bad news. But the good news is, is that lifestyle changes, diet, getting those sort of lifestyle factors under control and supporting you that really can put your auto, that autoimmune disease in its place and allow you to live symptom free. And so that is, that is good news. So the reality is, is that most people, at least in the US and other developed countries, they we don't really tend to develop what's called glandular hypothyroidism where you're just like, it just happens that the thyroid gland itself is, is problematic.

Instead, most people with hypothyroidism actually have the autoimmune form of thyroid disease called Hashimoto's thyroiditis, and that means that their hypothyroidism is rooted in autoimmune disease, that it's your immune system that's actually causing the problem and attacking your thyroid and causing it not to function correctly. And that is the most common reason for people having hypothyroid symptoms. And this is important because people tend to start feeling symptoms of hypothyroidism, or even hyper hyperthyroidism can happen as a result of an autoimmune disease called graves disease. It just kind of goes the other direction. But a lot of times when you first go to your doctor and you're struggling with these symptoms, the sometimes your blood work doesn't tell the whole story because oftentimes you'll typically have doctors will run a T s H test. And when they run that test, sometimes even when you have Hashimotos at the beginning, it can show up as having too much thyroid hormone because you have these swings, these ex you experience these different swings in your thyroid hormone.

And so this is something that can happen for a quite some time before you ultimately settle into having hypothyroid symptoms and, and being in a hypothyroid state pretty consistently. And that can really get confusing because your test results say one thing and you're feeling another. And that can also be challenging with your medication. And so feeling both of those types of symptoms happens because the disease is autoimmune in nature, which means you have kind of like a progressive disease just raging on in your body. And if you're not addressing the immune system and the autoimmune nature of the disease, then no amount of medication is going to to to change that. I'll talk more about that later. And also just looking at tsh just looking at the thyroid stimulating hormone and being diagnosed as hypothyroid, that only looks at one piece of the whole puzzle.

So people who have Hashimotos often experience both symptoms of not having enough thyroid hormone and having too much, especially at the beginning because your, your thyroid is responding to the attacks of the immune system. So the reason that's really important to keep that in mind is because of the way you address it and the way that it can show up in your body, it can show up, you can have symptoms under control, you can be living symptom free, and then bam, all of a sudden you have all sorts of symptoms that pop up. And that is because you're in a flare up, which occurs with people who have autoimmune diseases. They're sy, they're kind of moving along relatively symptom free, and then all of a sudden they have symptoms again.

Symptoms of a hypothyroid flare up

So I have a list of common symptoms of someone that's suffering from a Hashimoto’s thyroiditis flareup.

And so there are others that are on this list, but these are the ones that are kind of the most common. And these are, these symptoms are common if you are just at the beginning stages of sort of unraveling what's happening with your thyroid and your health. And if you are have been working with a doctor and are, and are taking some medication, these can be still be common symptoms that you occur because that occur, because the taking a medication does not resolve the disease, it just resolves one piece of it. So some of the physical symptoms of a Hashimoto's flare up would be having cold hands and cold feet being intolerant to cold in general. A lot of times people who have Hashimotos thyroiditis just are generally colder and you find yourself wearing a jacket or sweater, even if it's warm outside.

And the opposite can also occur where like just heat extremes and temperature can just wipe you out. And so just feeling, you know, in, in hot temperatures, just feeling like totally wiped out, that's also can be a sign of a flare up. Excessive hair loss. This can be from your head. It's most often noticeable from your head, especially for women having dry hands and feet are just dry skin in general, having extreme fatigue, this is what I would say is maybe the worst of the symptoms from ha of having a Hashimoto's flare up and that exhaustion. It just, it doesn't get better with sleep. Even. You can be sleeping 12 hours a night and taking a nap and still feel tired. It's like a tiredness in your bones. Also, having heavy or irregular menstrual cycles, that can be a, a symptom of having a flare up and that is something that is, it can just just be challenging to deal with, but is definitely an indicator having body aches or joint pain.

And this can be just kind of a, the dull ache that you might be familiar with or increasing specifically and, and then feeling like it's migrating. Maybe it's in one day, it's in your, your knees or one day it's in your hands the next day. It feels like your fingernails <laugh> are achy. Having heart palpitations can be another one having a hard time either gaining or losing weight either direction. Both it can go either way. And that is an indication having blood sugar crashes, which you can know if your, your blood sugar is unstable when you feel maybe hangry or even just feeling shaky or kind of irritable. And when you're eating an otherwise healthy diet that it's just kind of your body's not responding well to that. And then some mental symptoms could be the brain fog kicks in, it becomes really hard to think to complete kind of basic tasks.

Takes a lot of mental effort and concentration feels just like you're kind of moving through mud. Mentally not being able to remember things both short-term and long-term memory challenges. You know, that idea of walking into a room and thinking, wait, why did I come here? That could be a symptom of, of a flare. Even having a hard time kind of recalling names. Feeling like something's kind of stuck on the tip of your tongue, having restless sleep and struggling to either get to sleep or stay asleep, having insomnia. And then that just kind of perpetuates all the other things, especially, and sleep is just so important and just did an episode last week on that. Episode 12 is all about sleep. But that is an another symptom of a flare, another sign of a flare struggling with anxi anxiety or panic attacks.

Having that mental, just like angst inside of can be really debilitating and is also an indicator that you could be in a flare. And the same time having just mood swings in general or feeling really apathetic or depressed. It can be ha being in the midst of a Hashimoto's flare can absolutely affect your mood and your ability to just navigate things and challenging situations. And so those can be things that you can use as indicators in general. There's a couple signs of just general autoimmune disease symptoms, and these are the same, this following couple things are they, they seem to be symptoms that anyone who has any sort of autoimmune disease, not just Hashimotos deals with. And that is feeling like you just have like a depressed immune system. You have the inability to just fight off the colds and viruses that you might encounter, and you kind of pick up anything that you come near.

And that is most likely due to the fact that your immune system is just already fighting. It's already working really hard and it's not fighting the right fights though <laugh>. And so it's already, it's, it's just kind of preoccupied and so it can't fight off the colds and, and viruses that you come in contract with. Additionally, struggling with seasonal allergies is another indicator that you might be in an autoimmune flare because again, that con that's connected to your immune system. Digestive issues are very common when you're dealing with someone who's in an autoimmune flare situation, including gas or bloating or constipation or diarrhea. All of those things, they're connected to the problems that are going on in the gut that's connected to leaky gut. And and food intolerances, feeling dizzy or having a sense of vertigo is kind of feeling like the world's spinning irritability.

 And then adrenal fatigue is another one. And so there's a huge connection between people who have auto autoimmune disease and adrenal fatigue. If you have an autoimmune disease, you likely have some level of adrenal dysfunction. And so some indicators of that might be that you are feeling just tired, totally shot by 3:00 PM and having consistent sugar cravings or salty food cravings, really having food cravings at all. So there's there's a lot of, a lot of symptoms of adrenal fatigue. And I would actually encourage you to go and take my quiz that I have that is the adrenal dysfunction assessment that can kind of help you take those very subjective symptoms for what measures adrenal dysfunction and see if kind of where you fall on the spectrum, if that is a problem that you wanna work on. But you can find that quiz at bit.ly/thyroid-tools.

Another symptoms is having adult acne and pimples. And, and really you, you can know that you're in a flare because that kind of comes on when that's not your normal thing which, you know, that's frustrating. Who wants to deal with that anyway? A lot of times you can, it's hard to tell if you are in the midst of having a flare up or you're just getting sick like your kid came home with a, with a cold and now you have it too. And so that can be confusing to know of whether you're in a flare or whether you're just getting sick. But the easiest way to determine it is to give it time. Usually if you have a cold or a virus, it gets worse, it kind of ramps up quickly and then leaves, right? Whereas with Hashimoto's flare, usually it's kind of more slow moving.

You kind of feel it creeping in and it does not leave you quickly. Usually it hangs around much longer. You, you feel like you're just sick for a really long time. You've got a cold for a really long time. You can also get some testing to determine if you are in, if you've got a lot more autoimmune activity going on in your body. And you can really, you can see a lot with a full thyroid panel of testing. And so you can ask your doctor for that, but at the same time, it can be nice to have a piece of paper that says, yes, you are in a Hashimoto's flare, and then you know for sure what you're dealing with. However, it's not always that easy. It's not always easy to get, you know, in to see your doctor at the time of a, you know, when the flare symptoms start kicking in and you start feeling crappy.

How to handle a hypothyroid flare up naturally

If you're feeling these symptoms that I just mentioned after about a week or so of kind of having determined that it's not a cold or not a virus and all of that, then I mean, obviously you can go get things tested to find out, but I would encourage you to make sure that even if you decide to go get some blood work to see where you're at at that time, it's more important to start taking some steps to get yourself out of that flare. And so I'm gonna talk about that here in just a minute because if you, you can always, you know, know the testing helps you to know, but it doesn't necessarily fix anything. And so it's important to start doing things to address what's happening in your body and the autoimmune activity kind of ramping up in your body. I personally think it's more important to address that than, than to worry about getting a diagnosis.

So chances are, by focusing on calming down inflammation in your body, focusing on rest and nourishing and reducing stress that the autoimmune activity that that flare will calm down. And that is something that I think you, you can do with your, the choices that you make and the, the actions that you take at home. I think that sometimes we can get into this belief that our, you know, maybe we just need to go change, add more thyroid hormone. We need to get more, get more medication. And sometimes that is true. Our bodies need thyroid hormone to work efficiently. And without sufficient quantities, you're never gonna feel better if you don't have enough thyroid hormone. That is, that is a fact. And so it's super important for us to work with our doctors to find a replacement hormone medication and, and to make sure that, or, or to make sure that our thyroid is actually producing the levels of hormones that we actually need.

Using thyroid medication to support natural healing

So working with a doctor and to both, one, find a medication that works for you and two, that you're getting it at the appropriate level or if you're not on medication, making sure that the level that your thyroid is actually producing is appropriate. And so if that is something that you need to, to do and address, it's critical that you work with your doctor to do that because thyroid hormone is so important to literally all, all the functions of your body. So it'll, the medications will help you feel better and a lot of the symptoms will start to go away. But the thing is, is when just just using an adjustment in medication, it is helpful in resolving some symptoms, but it does not stop the progression of the autoimmune disease that's still like raging in the background. So if the only thing that you do is trying to address your, if to try to address a Hashimoto's flare with medication, then you are still allowing the disease to work in the background and just sort of putting a bandaid on it.

Don't get me wrong, that bandaid is necessary. You need the thyroid hormone to start making some changes, however, it's not actually getting the autoimmune disease under control. And so it'll be a short-lived fix. And so this is this is because of the autoimmune nature of Hashimoto thyroiditis. And so if, if you're wondering what I mean by that, that means that instead of just addressing something with, by saying, oh, we don't have enough thyroid hormone, let's replace it with that, a more holistic approach to addressing this problem is trying to support the immune system to address the autoimmune symptoms to kind of reduce the autoimmune disease activity from going crazy in your body. And the way that you can do that is through a lot of different lifestyle shifts. That is what works the, the, the most effectively for managing autoimmune disease. For, for many, many people, including myself, managing Hashimoto's thyroiditis, it's a mixture of diet, of lifestyle, of medication when needed, and focusing on these things consistently over the long term.

Natural solutions for hypothyroid symptoms

You need to be eating a healthy diet, a diet of foods that work for you that nourish and support healing in your body. You also need to build in relaxation movement. You need to build in focus on sleep. And, and then also for some, you need to make sure that your dose of thyroid medication is correct. It's kind of like, you know, pieces to a puzzle. You lose one of those pieces, <laugh>, the complete picture of health and wellness is not gonna be there. It's gonna be this little hole, right? And so, you know, this is how a flare can come. You can can, you can be going along and then all of a sudden you lose a piece, you drop a piece down the the vent end of your, of your house, and you lose a piece of the puzzle and you just don't focus on that.

And then you can land yourself into a flare up. And if you don't take action to start trying to put the pieces back together, then you can have issues for a long time, possibly facing even a more difficult road to recovering for further with adding more complications and layers. Because again, your body needs the sup, the kind of holistic support when we're dealing with an autoimmune disease. Okay? So I wanna give you a few things that you can do today to start moving the needle on how you feel, especially if you're in a flared up state. And if you're not in a flared up state right now, then save this for some time when you might find yourself in one. And again, these aren't gonna be all you need to do and they're not gonna maybe have massive impacts, but the deal is with approaching thyroid and really any health issues from a holistic perspective, these are health and wellness comes as a culmination of small steps that are combined together over time to create a massive impact.

Eating to heal hypothyroidism

So the first thing that I would encourage you to do is to ask yourself some questions. And it's important to kind of be honest with where you're at so you can figure out what's going on and start to work backwards from there. So there's a couple questions that I would encourage you to ask yourself and give an honest answer. So the first one is, have I been eating foods that are best for my body or have I just kind of been ignoring what I know helps my body to feel good? If you have known food intolerances or sensitivities, maybe because you discovered them from an elimination diet, have you been eating those foods? Have you just maybe not been paying attention? Maybe you are on vacation, maybe you kind of forgot that the reason you were feeling good is because you had taken some foods outta your body out of your diet that were, that were working for you. And then has that been going on?

Movement for hypothyroidism

The next thing is, is have you been getting enough movement in if you don't get any and there, this is a fine balance especially for someone who is dealing with hypothyroid symptoms. We don't wanna not move at all, but also moving too much, exercising too much can also cause symptoms. So it's a challenge to kind of hit the right amount. So have you been getting enough movement in when you don't get any exercise, your immune system can become compromised just because you're not exercising enough. And so things like walking, hiking, biking maybe yoga, if you, all of those things are great for people with an autoimmune immune disease. Adding in weight training is very helpful and supportive for people with autoimmune disease. However, if you're getting too much movement, maybe doing super intense workouts five to seven days week, or maybe training for a marathon or an Iron man or something like that, and not allowing your body to recover, that can be an example of having too much movement, which is read as your body to your, to your body as a, as a major stressor. And send can send your body into flight or flight mode, which is not helpful, kind of sends you into this bad cortisol loop.

Stress can worsen hypothyroid symptoms

And as we've talked about in other episodes with cortisol, it can create problems by having these major stressors, which speaking of stress, are you experiencing more stress than usual? Has something happened? Do you have major life things going on? That can be a, a huge trigger that can really, and I've found that for me, this is stress is the thing that can make a flare happen the most death illness, someone close to you, maybe having a car accident, dealing with maybe having a, a, a new baby or moving, buying, selling houses. All of these things you can, these can be common major stress triggers that can be really problematic. So how have those things been? And once you've sort of answered those questions, you can start making some changes in your life to correct and address and hopefully reverse the flare quickly as a result of addressing these things, these questions.

Use your diet to heal hypothyroid symptoms

The second thing I would encourage you to do is to use your diet to get inflammation under control. Diet and lifestyle changes are some of the most effective things that you can do on your own. And sometimes, sometimes you do need to work with a, with a, with a practitioner to uncover some root causes. But if you can start removing inflammatory foods, you give your immune system a chance to calm down and stop attacking. And also to heal leaky gut and just heightened inflammation levels cause all sorts of chronic health problems. And so if you can reduce those things, then you are well on your way to setting your body up to be able to heal. You also really need to spend some time figuring out if there are food things, food intolerances that you specifically had. It's important to make sure that you are paying attention to foods that are known to be the most inflammatory.

Things like the connection between Hashimotos and gluten. If you are in a flared up state, it's probably a real good time to really make sure and dial it in and make sure that you're going gluten free because of the strong connection between Hashimotos and gluten. And it can take up to three months for gluten to leave your body. And that is something that is so that takes time. And that means when you're, when you are, when you are trying to focus on being gluten free, that means not having a cheat day, not having, you know, a a bite of your friend's cake. Not having a beer on the weekend or having, you know, one day a week that you eat as much gluten. It doesn't, it doesn't work that way. You need the gluten to fully get out of your body and it takes three months of being totally gluten free for that to happen.

Start to work on that, start to work on that if that is something that you, if you find yourself, especially in a flared up state, there's a lot of research out there about that. And an entire episode that I have about being gluten free. You can scroll back to find that episode and I will link it down in the show notes.

Managing stress & good sleep can heal the thyroid

Okay, the third thing, and the last thing that I would encourage you to do is manage stress and prioritize sleep. And this specifically comes from my experiences when I start really feeling crappy and find myself in a bad spot in a flare up. It is almost always because of a stressful season and not prioritizing sleep. So stress alone can cause autoimmune flares and trigger it to start in the first place. So it's super important to get that under control. We oftentimes just expect life to be stressful.

We accept that modern life is just stressful. We live at a fast pace, there's not a lot of margin, but we have to build in downtime every day, and we have to build in stress reducing activities every day. Not just like, oh, I'll go take a vacation and that's how I'll relieve stress. Nope, it has to be a part of our consistent routines. Our body also needs a lot of rest and recovery. And so getting adequate sleep is a must. And you're looking, especially if you're in a flared up state, you wanna be getting eight to nine hours of sleep and not overdoing it when you're awake. If you're feeling wiped out after some specific activity, then take the time to rest, listen to your body and pay attention to what is going on with your body. I would also encourage you to incorporate movement as part of the stress response.

Your mental state though is very, very important. And it's something that just kind of gets brushed aside, especially in our modern western American society. But our mental health has a direct correlation to our physical health, and so pay attention to that and start helping to support that by building in routines that help to support stress and the body will soon follow. Okay, so that's it. There we have it. So I would encourage you to, if you have not taken the va, one of the various quizzes or all of the various quizzes that I have created for you, I'd encourage you to go do that at bit lee slash thyroid dash tools. And you can take the toxic load quiz, the adrenal assessment, the hypothyroid assessment. But I hope that by taking those quizzes you can help to kind of see where you're at.

I think can, can help really determine what some of the triggers for getting yourself in a, a hypothyroid flare up may have been so that you can get yourself out of a hypothyroid flare up. You can find those at bit dot lee slash thyroid tools and they're just real quick little quizzes. But I hope from all of this, you're able to kind of have some strategies and some tools and things to focus on if you are in a flared up state right now or if you're not, that you can file this away for some time down the road that you might be. And maybe let this serve as a reminder that if you continue to focus on these holistic lifestyle changes, then you can keep those things at bay. So I hope you're able to apply some of these things and continue to make small shifts towards feeling healthy and good, because I believe when you do it that way, when you focus on those doable, sustainable lifestyle shifts, then living a symptom-free life is totally possible.

And I want that for you. Real quick before you go, if this show has helped you in some way, then I know that it'll help others too. So please head over to iTunes, subscribe, and then leave a review so that more women can find health and healing too. And do you know that you can have an incredible impact on the women who deal with thyroid issues in your circle? Yep, that's right. All you have to do is take a screenshot of this podcast, tag me at natural dot thyroid dot fix, and post it in your stories. Let's light a path for all the other hypothyroid mamas looking for hope and healing, and to just feel like themselves again. I'll look forward to connecting with you over on Instagram until next time on the Natural Thyroid Fix.

Sarah Geissinger