The Hashimoto’s Institute

The Hashimoto’s Institute is no longer available. Please visit our product page for current programs, including the Hashimoto’s Self-Management Program.

Introducing the Hashimoto’s Institute!

I often get many emails from my readers who come to me because they are frustrated and overwhelmed with finding the help they need to overcome Hashimoto’s.

This is because the conventional medical model lacks in helpful approaches to Hashimoto’s.

While Synthroid, (the #1 prescribed medication in the US during 2013) helps many people feel better, it does not address the underlying root causes and leaves many more people left with lingering symptoms. This leaves many patients feeling helpless….

In contrast, the practitioners that are knowledgeable about autoimmunity usually have long waiting lists and don’t accept insurance as insurance companies see their services as excessive and experimental.

Therefore, many people become frustrated with the medical model and try to take their health into their hands. They seek out information online, going to Dr. Google instead. Some of the information is helpful, but some can be harmful.

Unfortunately, there are people out in cyberspace who claim to have the cure for just about everything, but they don’t have enough healthcare knowledge to know that something they are recommending may be harmful or contraindicated for certain people.

There’s just so much conflicting information on the Internet, and the information can become really overwhelming!

Even though I’m a health care professional, I felt helpless and frustrated too when I was first diagnosed, until I decided to take charge of my own health. I went through all of my old immunology, pharmacology, physiology and biochemistry textbooks and notes. I spent hours and hours reading medical journals,  health books and attending nutrition and functional medicine conferences.

I used my background as a pharmacist to evaluate all of the information out there and turned myself into a human guinea pig to get myself into remission…

…But it took me almost three years to sort out all of the information and to find something that worked for me (courtesy of infamous Hashimoto’s brain fog).

How change happens

I wanted to change the way Hashimoto’s is treated and to make this life-saving information accessible to everyone. This is why instead of becoming a concierge health care professional, I started my blog and wrote a patient guide to help other people figure out how to get their health back through addressing the underlying causes of Hashimoto’s.

I’m so happy that many of you have been helped by my book and website, and so I was encouraged to do something that would move the conversation about Hashimoto’s forward even more.

I want every patient with Hashimoto’s and every health care professional who treats people with Hashimoto’s to understand the fundamentals of how this condition develops and to understand the treatment options and protocols that can turn an exhausted, anxious and bloated person into someone with energy, vitality, a healthy weight, and proper digestion.

I struggled for too long with fatigue, irritable bowel syndrome, acid reflux, hair loss, carpal tunnel, and anxiety. Hashimoto’s made me become a shell of my former self, and I get so sad thinking about everyone out there who is still suffering. I want you to get your life back too!

You can get your life back

At the risk of sounding cheesy, I want to reach out to everyone personally and say, “There are so many things you can do to get your life back,” and I want to call their doctors and tell them the same.
My goal is to help 10,000 people reverse Hashimoto’s and put it into remission!

I’ve been attending various conferences, doing a lot of networking, reading and researching to find the best resources to make this happen.

The last year, I’ve traveled around the world speaking to patients, physicians, nutritionist, and pharmacists, with great results, but knew I couldn’t keep it up forever, this kind of travel is tough on the adrenals and quite expensive!

I felt like I was one little pharmacist trying to change the world one person at a time, and although I certainly have more energy than I used to, my experience in public health taught me that change needs to happen on a wider scale.

The question I ask myself every day is “How can I help more people, effectively, in the shortest amount of time, costing them the least amount of money?”

Because I think many of you are tired of being tired, and tired of spinning your wheels, and tired of spending a lot of money without feeling much better.

So the answer came to me last December, from one of you, one of my readers (by the way, I read all of your messages, Facebook comments, and blog comments).

This reader reached out to me with a suggestion: “You should create a week-long online Hashimoto’s course!”

I thought this was a brilliant suggestion as I think every person with Hashimoto’s deserves to have this type of education, but I wasn’t sure how I could pull off such a big, expensive and complicated task, that is, until serendipitously, I met two other Hashimoto’s experts: Dr. Alan Christianson and nutritionist Andrea Nakayama, a few weeks later at a health conference in Florida.

“Dr. C” as he is affectionately called by his patients, suggested that the three of us create the world’s first ever Hashimoto’s online event.

So we’ve joined forces to make it happen, and that’s how the Hashimoto’s Institute came to be!

Dr. C + Dr. Iz = Happy Thyroid

The Hashimoto’s Institute Course is now available.

We’ve been working on it in secret since January, and have gathered 30+ of the world’s top experts in Hashimoto’s, food, toxins, functional medicine, and autoimmunity. We also decided to take a new approach to online education. Instead of having various speakers talk about their own content, we developed a curriculum.

We’ve divided the content into 7 modules, to take you from diagnosis to designing your recovery. During the first 6 days, you’ll learn the fundamentals: about the functional medicine approach, coping with diagnosis, nutrition, nutrient deficiencies, hidden infections, healing the gut, the adrenals, and toxins.

On the 7th day, Dr. C, Andrea and I will help you design your roadmap to recovery. We’ve reserved the 8th day for really important special interest topics (like pregnancy and postpartum), and you’ll love the bonuses you’ll get when you register.

You can check out the curriculum and purchase the Hashimoto’s Institute.

I’m so proud and excited to bring you this event, and I can’t wait to hear about how it changes your life for the better!

HIGHLIGHTS FROM COURSE

1. “I’m going to represent. If I’m tired and I’m stressed I’m not going to expect anybody else to give me that rest. I’m going to give me rest. I’m going feed myself from the table. I’m going to not put that food on my plate. Even if offends the hostess I’m going to say: ‘Thank you so much. It looks delicious, but that doesn’t work for me.’ I’m not going to expect anybody else to represent me. I’m going to do that.’ -Stacey Robbins, (Day 1) on becoming empowered
2. I’m committed to doing this by deepening our collective understanding of where our food meets our unique physiology and why it matters because our daily choices do matter. They make a significant impact on our physiological expression. -Andrea Nakayama on the functional medicine approach to Hashimoto’s (Day 1)
3. So what the data showed in the animals is that when they’re fed GM foods, they doubled their gamma delta T cells. What we know in humans is that when they have more gamma delta T cells, they have more allergy and autoimmunity. Gamma delta T cells also secrete interleukin-17, which is an inflammatory cytokine, and that contributes to the production of something else called interleukin-21, I believe. Interleukin-21 is like fertilizer again for those pro-inflammatory Th17 cells. –Dr. Alex Vasquez on the autoimmune paradigm (Day1)
4. “Brain-based fatigue is different from metabolic fatigue. Brain-based fatigue can be identified when people get tired when they use their intellect” Dr. Kharazzian on Hashimoto’s and Preserving Brain Function (Day 4)
5. “Selenium deficiency has been found to be a trigger for Hashimoto’s, and while gluten-free diets can help Hashimoto’s, they can also lead to Selenium deficiency”- Suzy Cohen, (Day 2) on Nutrients and Hashimoto’s
6. Well, I have lectured across the country and also internationally about the dangers of using too much iodine. I know there’s people out there and on the internet that think that iodine is the cure-all of all. But as an endocrinologist, I would see a lot of people who would get very sick with taking too much iodine. And it’s kind of interesting. You know, if you get prescribed iodine, and you get really, really sick, and you get hyperthyroid – very overactive thyroid – and your heart rate’s really going fast, you’re losing a lot of weight, you have tremors – and you could die from this condition – they usually don’t go back to their doctor or their healthcare provider that gave their iodine. They usually want to see someone else.-.- Dr. Edwin Lee on the endocrinologist’s perspective on Hashimoto’s (Day 2)
7. “So the thing about Lyme disease it really is called the great imitator just like syphilis was years ago, and the diseases I see it imitate frequency are Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Myalgic encephalomyelitis, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. ” Dr. Horowitz on Lyme as a potential trigger for Hashimoto’s (Day 6)
8. “The one body system which is 100% of the time involved in autoimmune disease is going to be the GI tract.” So you’re going to have some kind of tissue damage and inflammation in the lining of the intestinal track, something we sometimes call Leaky Gut Syndrome. But basically, it means that the gut lining has lost its normal integrity. People start to get reactive to foods. There’s a lot of inflammation in the gut. The food allergies make the inflammation worse. You know, often this is accompanied by gluten and dairy-related problems” Dr. Dan Kalish on toxins (Day 5)
9. Since we’re talking about Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, in autoimmune disease of the thyroid we know if we look or map out the microbiota or the bugs that live in the gut there is a strong presence of an overgrowth of a bacteria known as your Yersinia. In fact, it’s Yersinia enterocolitica.” David Brady on molecular mimicry with Hashimoto’s (Day 6)
10. Over-the-counter probiotics usually have billions of colony-forming units, and this seems like a lot. But when you think of that in the context of what’s actually living inside of our gut, which is 100 trillion bacteria, really taking a probiotic like that is like dropping a grain of sand into an ocean.  Dr. Izabella Wentz on gut protocols with Hashimoto’s (Day 6)
11. “Once the issues causing hair loss are resolved, what I see in my practice is within the first month people stop losing hair. Within two to three months their hair is growing back, and they are starting to see fuller hair.” Dr. Shel on hair-loss with Hashimoto’s and resolving possible causes (Day 8)
12. “Shame says: ‘I am bad.’ And so the fact of ‘I am bad,’ ‘I am damaged goods,’ ‘I’m not worthy,’ ‘I’m unlovable,’ ‘I hate myself,’ ‘I wish I were dead.’ Those are some thoughts that people have a lot. Those types of emotional [tape roots], if you will are directly related to the autoimmune process. Because think of it, the autoimmune is self-attacking-self. So from a metaphysical standpoint mind/body, we’re looking at hatred and shame turned inward – hatred towards oneself – self-loathing, right? Michelle Corey- on forgiveness and Hashimoto’s (Day 8)
13. “Food reactions can be driven by six different immune pathways. Most doctors only test for one or two.” Dr. Peter Osborne on Food Sensitivities and Hashimoto’s (Day 8)
14. One of the things we see with Hashimoto’s is that there’s really this web of dysfunction. There are all these different areas that are impacted because the thyroid hormone receptors are everywhere in the body. So we see it in the brain. We see it in the liver. We see it in the digestive tract. We see it in the adrenals. We see it in the kidney. We see it everywhere. And when I realized that and put it together I thought: ‘Wow, the five element theory and the five element system really is the way of explaining those kinds of interactions.’ Marc Ryan, Lac on his Five Elements Approach to Hashimoto’s (Day 8)

Check out the Hashimoto’s Institute curriculum and register!

PS. You can also download a free Thyroid Diet Guide, 10 Thyroid friendly recipes, and the Nutrient Depletions and Digestion chapter for free by going to www.thyroidpharmacist.com/gift. You will also receive occasional updates about new research, resources, giveaways and helpful information.