Hypothyroid And 5 Other Reasons For Constipation

Speaker 0 00:00 Welcome to aim for health root cause conversations with dr. James Biddle, all content from the conversations in this podcast are created and published for informational purposes. Only. This is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice and should not be relied on for personal medical decisions. Always seek the guidance of your doctor with any questions you have regarding a medical condition now onto the show. Enjoy. Speaker 1 00:29 Hey, I'm dr. Bidel and today is the 3rd of June, 2020. And then I have our new patient coordinator, joy Lambert to help us out today. Hi joy. Speaker 2 00:38 Hello? It's good to be back. Yeah, so we have people sending in questions. What do we have today to deal with? So a question that came across my desk today is people are wanting to know, is there a connection between sluggish bowel habits and thyroid? Speaker 1 00:53 Absolutely. Are we done? Should we go home? Speaker 2 00:57 Well, no, what's the connection. What's the connection. Yeah. Speaker 1 01:00 Between, yeah. Well, if you've got sluggish thyroid, you've got sluggish bowels and why it's that word metabolism? Well, what is metabolism metabolism? It's basically how well you turn food into usable energy in your body at the cellular level and what drives the metabolism, the thyroid. So your thyroid gland, your thyroid hormone, your thyroid gland of course makes thyroid hormone. And that travels through your bloodstream and tells all your cells to be active. You know, and it's almost easier to say what happens when you lack thyroid hormone, because that shows you then what thyroid hormone does. So if you have somebody whose thyroid just shuts down completely, and they're not diagnosed after a few months, they'll help all kinds of interesting things. They'll of course have mental dullness, they'll have a weight gain, they'll have fluid retention and this very weird stuff called nonpitting edema, meaning that when you press on it, it does not make it a little bump. Speaker 1 02:09 It just doesn't really give at all. Um, it's called myxedema and it is cause it's not so much fluid. It's, it's, uh, it's more like a fatty fluid under there. Very interesting from, from the lack of the metabolism, uh, going on, uh, and they get the dry hair and hair loss and dry skin and dry nails and coarse facial features. And, uh, of course, constipated and everything just kind of stops moving because every cell in your body now doesn't have the cellular energy production, energy production of ATP, which is kind of our little dollar bill currency of energy that we turned food into, uh, to actually do things in ourselves. And so every cell in your body is not doing what it's supposed to do. A couple of fascinating things for that. I had one patient go to another practitioner who's not really licensed. And you know, they did know muscle testing and said, Oh, this thyroid hormone is not good for you to stop it. Speaker 1 03:11 And so six months later, she was in the intensive, cardiac, intensive care unit with a pericardial tamponade Oh, so there's a SAC around your heart called the pericardium. And there's a little thin layer of fluid to lubricate it so that your heart can beat and have a smooth surface to meet on inside there. But that can fill up with fluid and then push on your heart so tight that your heart can't then, you know, relaxed to fill up with fluid anymore. And she almost died from not taking her thyroid hormone. Well, that's not good from a pericardial effusion. Yeah. So that's, that's kind of the extreme case when I was in residency and did my actually medical school did my inpatient psychiatric rotation. I met a young man in his twenties with myxedema madness. What's that pains. He was psyched. He had temporary psychosis from a complete lack of thyroid hormone. Speaker 1 04:07 He had hypothyroidism and had not been diagnosed. And that made him crazy. I mean, literally by the definition of crazy, he didn't, he could not understand consensus reality and what was going on. He was seeing and hearing things. Wow. So that's all the wild stuff that profound hypothyroidism can cause, but usually what's happening is people are going to their doctor and they have hypothyroidism and they're given a certain medication, but doesn't work quite right. Or they're given a lack there. They're not diagnosed with hypothyroidism and they're given a lab test and told, Oh, your lab tests are normal, go home and stop whining at me. And, but in fact, they do have a functional hypothyroidism going on. So is the hypothyroidism defined by T four T three? Or you mentioned ATP? Well, no, the energy action it's actually TSH is usually the definition of hypothyroidism. Speaker 1 05:03 If you're going to define hypothyroidism is that your pituitary hormone or TSH goes high, trying to drive your thyroid gland. So normally it's like 0.4 to 5.0. And if it goes higher than that, then you get an official diagnosis of hypothyroidism and then sometimes your T3 and T for low. And sometimes they're not so low. Um, but, and we've talked about this before, is that conversion of T four, your thyroid gland makes T4, and it has to be converted into T three at the cellular level in order to, uh, really turn on your metabolism. And if people have anything wrong with them medically, they won't do that perfect perfectly and anything wrong could mean you're post-menopausal and you're not on female hormones. It could mean, uh, you're stressed. You know, there's a lot that can go wrong with people. And of course in my medical practice, people are coming here because they've seen other doctors and not gotten the answers they want. Speaker 1 06:02 So the majority of my patient population has something going on that could mess up their metabolism of thyroid. So just giving them the usual medication of Synthroid or T four and making their lab tests normal does not necessarily fix it. And then we check that up by checking their temperatures. And then sometimes you can check there, T3 the reverse T3, but the problem is it doesn't really happen in, in the bloodstream. It happens at the cellular level. So we like to temperatures, really tell the answer. And then what we do differently is rather than giving the Synthroid or T four, which is levothyroxin, we'll give natural thyroid like Armour or nature Throid. And that is 25% of the T three is still 75% T four, but at least it's 25% better. If that's still not good enough, then we'll just give T3. And that's through contacting pharmacies as a sustained release T3, or it's from big pharma as a protocol Cytomel or lie with irony. Speaker 1 07:02 That either way, now you're half T3 and you can't go down that weird pathway to reverse T3 and plug everything up. Gotcha. Um, but I also want to point out the hypothyroidism is not the only thing that conscious sluggish bowels, what else causes sluggish bowels? Well, there's a whole page of possibilities. So one of the things that simple, straightforward things is you're not eating enough fiber. The average American gets about 15 grams of fiber a day and they should be getting 50. So what constitutes what you would consider to be the right kind of fiber? Well, any, any dietary fiber is the right kind of fiber and you want a variety, but it's fruits and vegetables and beans and nuts and seeds. And as a supplement, I like ground flax seeds for extra fiber because they have great nutritional value and they change how you get rid of toxins and they change how you metabolize your gender hormones. Speaker 1 08:03 So they decrease the risk of breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, all those things for pennies a day for grinding up some flax seeds and throwing it into your smoothie or oatmeal or something like that. It's easy to get those in and just basically, you know, your prebiotic for your probiotic. It's what, it's what your probiotic eats and ferments in order to make great things that give you a good gut health, um, which brings us to the next common cause of constipation. And that's not good bowel flora, your microbiome is off and what's been shown to actually control your microbiome. Is your diet, are you eating the fiber and exercise? Are you exercising? So how does exercise, uh, regulate your gut for, right. So a lack of activity, another being cause of constipation. So not only does it help your microbiome through some mechanism or another, but it just, just moving. I mean, you just get up and move and that's going to help your gut regulate and move. You're moving your body around. Okay. Speaker 2 09:11 And when it comes to your gut, flora, I've heard you say this before, but just so that everyone gets this benefit, um, when it comes to your actual stool, it's not all just the food we've eaten, right? There is a relationship with the gut flora. My understanding is about half Speaker 1 09:28 Of what comes out as your poop is the dead bodies of the good bacteria in your gut. It's, it's your gut bacteria multiplying and then dying. And that's, that makes up a large percentage of our bowel movements. Uh, so you have to have those good bacteria. And, you know, we've seen, uh, trying out a new type of probiotic called a spore biotic, and I've tried many types of probiotics. And I personally never saw a difference, but I tried this. I actually saw a change in my bowel movements really, but they even got even better. Uh, and uh, other people that aren't trying to a report at the same thing, and the difference is the regular probiotics are alive. And so they can be killed by your stomach acid by sitting on the shelf by many things, the spore Biotics are not alive. They're the seed kind of the, the heat resistant drought resistant spore of the probiotic. And they go in past your stomach acid and seed into your small intestine and your large intestine. And they have been shown to establish their better and to reverse leaky gut syndrome and food allergies. Really. So we really like the spore Biotics, you know, it may not pan out, but it seems good from where I sit right now. So that's one of the things just dehydration people not drinking enough can cause constipation. Speaker 2 10:57 And since we're getting into hot weather now, when it comes to drinking enough, what's enough water. Speaker 1 11:03 Oh, you know, I, I suspect that the science around this is not as good people say this with such confidence, like you should drink six classes of six ounces of water a day. Well, you know what, if you're a hundred pounds or 250 pounds, right, Speaker 2 11:18 Right. I've heard a general rule of half your body weight. And then that in ounces would be a reasonable target. Speaker 1 11:25 Yeah. I like to use looking at your urine, your urine should be diluted and not concentrated. You know, when you're getting into that, your urine is getting really dark. Now, when you take the multivitamins and stuff, you have B two, which makes it fluorescent yellow. Right. Um, but, but otherwise, you know, your urine should be fairly pale. And if it's getting to where it's getting really dark yellow or Brown, you are dehydrated, then that's when you need to start drinking anymore. You know, if you're noticed you haven't peed for three hours and you just squeeze out a couple tablespoons, you got a problem. Right. You know, you've got to keep those kidneys flushing well and physiologically. If you're dehydrated, then doesn't your body absorb more moisture out of your stool as you're digesting, which would make your stools harder and more compact and therefore make you more likely to be constipated. Speaker 1 12:15 That's right. And that kind of brings us back to the root thing of like, why do we poop in the first place? And you know, what are they supposed to be like? So we proved to get rid of this stuff, you know, the dead bodies of the bacteria we put to get rid of toxins and may poof get rid of the stuff that we're not turning into ourselves. The part of food that we are saying, okay, thank you very much. But you know, you become part of me and you don't become part of me. Right? And then we poop out the part. That's not become part of us. Uh, but our, it is liquid when it moves from your small intestine to your large intestine. At that point, your stool is still liquid really. And the largest role of your large of your bowel of your colon is to ribs or bladder. Speaker 1 12:59 And as it reabsorbs water, it also happens to reabsorb toxins. And that's another reason why fiber is so important is so that the fiber binds onto toxins and helps you poop out toxins rather than continuously reabsorbing them up through the liver. This is called intro hepatic circulation, where your liver works all day long to conjugate and excrete, uh, like the bad estrogen that causes breast cancer, right? Uh, but then in your bowel, if you don't have enough fiber to hang on, to improve, now you have bacteria that unconjugated them and you reabsorb them right back up to your liver again. And you gotta do all that work all over again. No, your honor, toxifying yourself just by not pooping enough, but not pooping enough. And so how often should you poop? Well, how often do you eat? You know, most people eat two, three, four times a day, and I think they should poop two, three, four times a day. Speaker 1 13:53 You want to, you know, keep it moving. Uh, and it should be formed or loosely formed it, it should no float or not, but it shouldn't be difficult. And you shouldn't have time to read in the bathroom. You should be able to sit down, take care of your business, you know, clean up and move along. Uh, and so, you know, if you're not doing that yet, then there's things you can do to get there. Right. And I'm amazed at how many people think that pooping three times a week is fine. And it may be average for Americans, but it's not fine. No, that just sounds terribly uncomfortable. It, they are, you know, they're full of it and they're getting toxic. Right. And so, so we're gonna keep going on that. So other things that can cause constipation is I found food allergies can cause constipation, food allergies and food allergies in our experience cause gut paralysis and in women that tends to show up more as constipation in men, it tends to show up more as acid reflux. Speaker 1 15:02 It certainly crosses both ways, but what happens is if your things aren't moving down, then they kind of back up and you get the acid reflux or you get the constipation. And, um, one of the biggest food allergens, I think, especially for women, is being allergic to their own candida or yeast growing in their gut weight. So you're saying I could be allergic to myself, you know, and you can be allergic to what's growing in your gut, which also relates to how good is your microbiome. Because if you have a stronger probiotics in your gut, you're going to have less yeast. And how good is your diet? Because you have, you have less sugar and more fiber. You have less yeast. And how well balanced are your hormones. We all hear about women who go through their menstrual cycles and in part of the month, usually the PMs phase, they get constipated when their hormones change. Speaker 1 15:57 And part of what happens when the hormones change is it makes the terrain more hospitable for yeast growing. So candida is yeast just to make sure everyone, it is a type of yeast that grows in our gut and everybody has it. You can't eradicate it, but it supposed to be imbalanced, kinda like staph on your skin. We all have staff on our skin. You can't get rid of it. It's always there, but you should not be having a staph infections on your skin. No, so the same is true for yeast. You know, in our mouth, the overgrows is thrush, obviously vaginally, you can get vaginal yeast infections, but in our gut. And it's one of those things that conventional doctors, you know, have not been very, uh, open-minded to, but it's been known in the alternative world for over 40 years that this, you know, yeast overgrowth and you've got is a very common problem. Speaker 1 16:47 And part of what's making that worse and food allergies worse is the amount of toxins we're exposed to like, like phosphate or Roundup in our diet, right? And even heavy metals like mercury, uh, really, you know, disrupt the gut lining cause leaky gut syndrome. And then we get more food allergies from the immune system, seeing undigested particles of food going across the gut wall. Uh, and then that snowballs and you get yeast overgrowth, you become allergic to that and all of a sudden your custody. Hmm. There's so many things that go into this there's there can be a lot. So it's not just that you have, if you're constipated, you have a sluggish, thyroid is, that's just one thing that can make you constipated. So when we're looking down the constipation protocol, you know, we want to look at all those different things. And then once we make sure we've cleaned those things up, or even before, we can certainly give people things to help the constipation. Speaker 1 17:43 And my favorite is magnesium. Tell me about that. How does that work? Well, magnesium relaxes your muscles. And if you take more magnesium than you can absorb in your small intestine that hits your colon and moves on through, and if you overdose the magnesium, you can get a roaring diarrhea. And that's what magnesium oxide does. There's basically three different categories of magnesium that which absorbs very poorly. So it's used to cleanse the bowel like magnesium oxide, that which absorbs really well. So it's used to raise the blood levels like magnesium Pilates, or they're hooked on to an amino acid to help them absorb better. So they get better blood levels and less effect on your bowels. And then middle of the road is magnesium citrate. It both raises blood levels well and can help move your bowels if you're constipated. Um, so that's kind of middle of the road. Speaker 1 18:41 Uh, we mentioned the ground flax seeds and more water and probiotics and eating more fruits and vegetables. And then there is an iron Vedic preparation called AAA T R I E P H a L a. Uh, it's kind of the concept of prunes, but it's three fruits and it's not addictive. You can use it the rest of your life. It helps actually helps tone the bow. Um, and it's put into capsules, these three dried fruits, you know, kind of using the concept of prunes to help regulate your pals. And we find it one of the, one of the gentle ways to keep people regular who have had longterm chronic constipation problems. Speaker 3 19:23 Yeah. Speaker 1 19:23 And then of course, fixing, fixing the thyroid. Now, when you're talking about magnesium, that if you take enough of it more than your body can absorb, it can have a laxative effect. Doesn't vitamin C do the same thing it does. It does. Uh, and the dosages for magnesium, it's about a, like 200 for most people around 200 to 250 milligrams per dose, uh, that will do that. If you get up to 300 or 400 per dose, you know, then you can spread it out and you can have a dose in the morning and dose in the evening. And so you can get more into your body without the laxative effect. And then for vitamin C, it's around 2000 milligrams per dose for most people, but there's a wide degree of individual sensitivity. Uh, so again, if you spread it out, you can get a thousand milligrams, three to four times a day, and most people will be fine. Speaker 1 20:13 But most people, when they get above about six to 8,000 milligrams a day, they'll start to get Kevin, uh, gassy bloating, diarrhea, uh, whereas the magnesium BA uh, slick, surprising, uh, diarrhea. That's a tough decision where it catches you off guard. And if you do both together, then, then it can, you can really get shocked by what's going on, but you won't be constipated anymore. But the whole thing is to titrate is to find your bowel tolerance and to get just a little bit too much action. And then you back off and find your, your sustainable dose, where you're helping your body out, uh, by getting blood levels of magnesium and vitamin C you know, you're pooping regularly. Uh, but you're not having accidents. Anything else we should cover about? Well, yeah. So, so Speaker 2 21:07 Constipated, now that we know that there's all these different reasons why it could be happening, what's a good place to start in terms of what do I do next? Speaker 1 21:15 Well, you, you drink more, you move more, you eat more of the right foods. You add ground flax seeds. You make sure you get your thyroid tested. And if your lab tests are normal, but you're still suspicious, you take your temperatures and you take your temperatures, not first thing in the morning, cause everybody's cold. Then you want to take your temperatures in the middle of the day, like between 11:00 AM and 3:00 PM. And we actually prefer the old blast thermometers under the tongue for seven to 10 minutes for accuracy, for accuracy. Yeah. Uh, the other ones are okay, but they have too much variability. If you do them three times in a row, you notice you get three different numbers. Right. Um, and it should be about 98.0 or better on the average. And if you're constantly less than 90, 98.0, then you've probably got a thyroid conversion issue. Even if you don't have a thyroid production problem, you know, the lab test tells you tells you, are you making enough thyroid hormone? And then your temperature should tell you, are you using it the right way? Yeah. And you know, I gotta say, if it's a newer problem, uh, you should make sure you don't have a serious medical condition. Oh, of course. Right. Cause a large colon polyp, uh, colon cancer, you know, these very serious things. Uh, we like, we, we, we are fans of, you know, screening to make sure you're not missing a bad thing. Speaker 2 22:49 And, uh, a thought along those lines, hemorrhoids would hemorrhoids cause constipation or just constipation lead to hemorrhoids or is it something different altogether Speaker 1 23:01 Constipation living to hemorrhoids for sure. And as people, uh, you know, who live long, just, you know, haven't really learned how to poop properly by relaxing. You know, of course, you know, we often teach people about the Squatty potty, Oh, love the Squatty potty. If you put your body in a position of squatting by, you know, raising your feet and knees, uh, then that relaxes the anal sphincter muscle. Speaker 3 23:27 Uh, Speaker 1 23:29 So it lets everything out better and people really should not have to push regularly to poop. And if, you know, every day you're pushing to poop as causes hemorrhoids. Uh, the other thing is, you know, contribute to hemorrhoids like weightlifting or working in pregnancy and such. Speaker 3 23:49 Um, but Speaker 1 23:52 Yeah, it's mostly the constipation causing the hemorrhoids out the other way around. Speaker 3 23:57 Right. Well, Speaker 1 24:00 Joy, thanks for guiding us a through a discussion on getting to the straight poop. Thank you. Thank you, dr. Bell, this has been fascinating and I hope this is helpful for you all. And we'll keep giving you, uh, information, uh, from asked dr. Jim, Bob. Uh, so sending your questions and we'll hit your questions up. Take care. Speaker 0 24:29 Thanks for listening to aim for health root cause conversations with dr. James boodle and our host joy Lambert. Be sure to visit <inaudible> dot com to access the show notes and discover other valuable free content in support of reclaiming your health bye for now.