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  • 03:03 About Elle Russ
  • 19:00 Low thyroid symptoms
  • 28:10 The Paleo Primal Diet & Lifestyle
  • 46:05 The Paleo Thyroid Solution
  • 51:28 Taking thyroid hormones
  • 56:56 The most pressing health issue in the world today
  • 01:02:10 Learn more from Elle Russ

Wendy Myers: Hello! Welcome to the Live to 110 Podcast. My name is Wendy Myers.

And I’m your host. You can learn more about me at myersdetox.com.

Today, we have a very special guest on the show. Her name is Elle Russ. She has a book called The Paleo Thyroid Solution. And she has a lot of really amazing tips about how to identify the underlying root causes and signs and symptoms of low thyroid function, and some of the different testing, what your test results should look like, why your doctor likely does not know how to identify thyroid issues, much less treat them, and what you can do to take matters into your own hands and take control of your health.my

So, her book is called The Paleo Thyroid Solution. We’re going to detail that today on the show.

But before we get into things, I have to do the disclaimer. Please keep in mind this program is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or health condition and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. The podcast is solely informational in nature.

So please consult your healthcare practitioner before engaging in anything that we suggest today on the show.

Please go check out my book on Amazon. It’s called Limitless Energy. In that book, I detail the toxic metals—arsenic, aluminum, tin, and thallium—that interfere in energy production in your body. These metals essentially poison enzymes that transport nutrients into your mitochondria which are your body’s powerhouses that produce your body’s energy.

So, in the book, I detail a very simple strategy and protocol to detox these metals, so that, over time, you can improve your body’s ability to produce energy. So, go check that out, Limitless Energy on Amazon.

Hey, everyone! You guys know my dog, Jezebel, also known as Paleo Doggy, she’s such a sweetie pie. I love my dog so much. I recently got a present from her from Bark Box. And this is such a neat company. They send you a box every single month of toys. They have a different theme every month, and they send you toys and special treats that you can’t get anywhere else. Jezebel got a little chill pill which she totally needs in the box. And she totally loves it. And she’s really enjoying her monthly goodies. It’s a gift that I’m giving to her that’s sent to my house every week. There’s no shipping in the continental US.

If you guys want to try Bark Box, just go to BarkBox.com/Live. And if you sign up for a 6- or 12-month membership, you get one free month of Bark Box. I highly, highly recommend it. Jezebel is loving it!

03:03 About Elle Russ

 

Wendy Myers: Today, our guest, Elle Russ, she’s a writer, a life coach, and host of the top-ranked Primal Blueprint Podcast. She is the leading voice of thyroid health in the burgeoning Paleo Primal Ancestral Health Movement.

Originally from downtown Chicago, Elle lives and plays in Malibu, California (where I used to live). You can learn more about Elle at ElleRuss.com.

Elle wrote The Paleo Thyroid Solution after consulting with over two dozen endocrinologists, internal medicine specialists, and general practice MD’s, but her thyroid condition was only getting worse. Nothing from doctors resembled a solution or even hope.

Exasperated and desperate, Elle took control of her own health and resolved two severe bouts of hypothyroidism on her own including an acute reverse T3 problem. Their devoted Paleo Primal lifestyle, intensive personal experimentation, and a radically modified approach to thyroid hormone replacement therapy, Elle went from fat, foggy, and fatigue to fit, focused, and full of life. She definitely has a ton of energy. I just really, really enjoyed this interview with her on the show.

And you can check her out again at ElleRuss.com.

Elle, thank you so much for joining the show.

Elle Russ: Hi! Thanks for having me.

Wendy Myers: Why don’t you tell the listeners a little about yourself and how you got into the health field?

Elle Russ: Yeah, you know, it was an accident. I think, like a lot of people in the health field, once you suffer from something and something hits you and changes your life, and you’re running like a chicken with your head cut off trying to figure out what it is, you tend to sort of become your own little expert, especially if you keep hitting the missteps along the way with uninformed doctors. And that’s what happened to me.

So, essentially, I’m in the entertainment industry. I’m a writer. I’m an actor. I’m a comedian. I did that for years. And part of that train—and it’s a little bit different now. But when I got into that train, when you’re an ingénue in the entertainment industry, you’re expected to look a certain way. And most of them look like they’re pretty damn good athletes, right?

And so, that was the achievement. And I thought I was doing it the healthy way by working out and following what I thought was the diets of the day, which was really Zone and the “eat every two or three hours” and keep your insulin steady and all of this kind of nonsense that we know now I was doing the best I can to try to do it without bulimia and anorexia and and starving myself and all of that. You know what I mean? I thought I was doing it the right way.

Well, it turns out I really wasn’t. And I didn’t figure that out until later. But I was really doing was—and when I look back now, I essentially triggered and gave myself hypothyroidism. I can’t say whether it would have come another way otherwise, but I can tell you that my diet and lifestyle, although seemingly healthy at the time, and having the body and the wherewithal, someone that looked that picture of health.

So, that’s another thing I’d love to talk to you about today because we tend to look at people’s bodies and go, “Ooh… God! I’d love to have her legs” or “I’d love to…” And you might not if you see their blood work. And so that was me!

Wendy Myers: Exactly! I know there are some models that have had starved themselves to the point where they have a hole in their heart. Crazy stuff! Looks can be deceiving.

Elle Russ: They really can.

And the thing about it then is I reached this level fitness. But on the inside, I was a sugar addict, I was a food addict. I was essentially starving myself. I didn’t realize that that’s what was happening. That world is horrible. And that, I empathize. You can be 400 lbs. listening to this and be a food addict, or you can be skinny and fit and be a food addict or sugar addict. It might be worse if you’re 400 lbs.

It may be a little bit more difficult to do things in life, but it’s still the same hell. And that’s a really awful place to be.

So, at the time, I thought either everyone’s not talking about it, and they’re all struggling in their head too and suffering and thinking about food all day and are obsessed, or just something’s wrong with me.

Now, at the time, a ton of symptoms hit me. I started getting my period every couple of weeks when I shouldn’t—a 30-year old, healthy female. And then, I just started to slowly fall apart.

And as I kept going to doctors, they kept taking the wrong thyroid test, they kept misdiagnosing me with other things or putting band-aids on symptoms without looking at the root, the cause. And after suffering and being really undiagnosed for two years, and being a complete—

I mean, talk about accelerated aging, it was a disaster. And the depression, crying almost all day long, not even being able to leave the house because every time I bent my leg, it felt like I drank a bottle of MSG. My legs were heavy. My ears were itching. My hair was falling out. I had acne.

Hypothyroidism, over time, when I calculated, took about six years of my life. So it makes it really worth it to me to have suffered to help people get from A to Z faster than I had to, and wasting $15,000 that, as a broke actor at the time, I didn’t even have on useless, harmful doctors that were uninformed using 30- to 40-year old outdated protocols.

And this is the exact, same concept of someone saying, “Oh, my gosh! Don’t eat fat. It causes cause heart disease.” That’s not what causes heart disease. Yes, maybe high fat in the presence of a high carb diet causes heart disease, maybe certain types of overloads. But the paradigm was all wrong then. And it’s shifting now. It’s the same with thyroid, but a lot of doctors haven’t caught up. The ones that have are functional medicine doctors, DO’s, and some other people that, through their practice, they don’t often taken insurance. They spend an hour with you, an hour and a half. They’re doing in-depth testing. And a lot of people just don’t want to give and open their pocketbook for that. And they want to try to do their best with their HMO 15-minute doctor.

And I’m not saying “don’t go in that direction,” but then you better be armed with all the knowledge. And that’s why I wrote the book—is to give it.

I mean, I just had someone today who showed me blood work of someone—we can get into the details later of this—with a very severe reverse T3 problem. And that doctor’s answer for that was to give that person more T4. That would be absolutely harmful. They’d be hurting that patient.

What do you do? That’s your MD. That’s a doctor you’re seeing. So, what you do with that patient? “Oh, my gosh! Now, my doctor’s a dumb ass”—excuse me. “Now, my doctor is clueless about this. So now, what do I do? I don’t want to offend this person. But at the same time, they just told me something that will hurt me and make it worse, and they don’t even know of what they speak of?”

So, this is a very frustrating situation for patients. And it’s where I was.

And I’ll tell you what. I consider it a level of borderline malpractice. And I talked about it in my book, but I had one doctor I went to who, literally, they took out their smartphone while I was in the room, and they go, “Siri, what is the active thyroid hormone?”

Wendy Myers: Are you serious?

Elle Russ: And I looked at him and I go, “Are you kidding me? Did you just ask—I can tell you right now what’s T3. I’ll bet you $1 million.”

Wendy Myers: That’s so frightening.

Elle Russ: And he goes, “Oh!” And I’m drawing diagrams of the thyroid. I’m explaining everything. And he literally just was like, “Tsk, it didn’t make sense.” He couldn’t even see beyond what he was taught 30 year ago. And this guy treats thyroid patients.

And I talk about this. I’ve walked out a lot out of a doctor’s office crying. That was one doctor’s office I walked out of crying.

I was already better at that point. I did that as an experiment to see how uninformed doctors are. That was a great one because I really hit the money on that. I mean, talk about walking in and getting a gold mine for like an experience. I was like, “Wow! This guy is really a doozy!”

But I actually got into that parking lot—I was in Hawaii—in my car, and I just bawled my eyes out, Wendy, because I was already better and I knew. I was writing the book at the time. But I had that moment again. And I have it all the time like I did today where I tear up and I feel that way now knowing that there are doctors out there that are treating patients…

Wendy Myers: Well, that’s a lot of them.

Elle Russ: It’s the majority of them. And that’s why you got to watch out.

Wendy Myers: Yeah! Even when I go to my HMO to Kaiser Permanente, and I ask for a thyroid checkup, they only will do TSH.

Elle Russ: Kaiser won’t even do free T3 or reverse T3. I don’t think Kaiser even offers it.

Wendy Myers: You have to ask. You have to ask. But then, they won’t do it unless they see there’s a reasonable need to do that, if there’s some sort of symptomology. But they want to do the TSH first, see what that says, and then come back later.

And people just aren’t going to do that. People don’t know the questions to ask to get their thyroid properly tested so they can get treated.

And I don’t think most doctors have any idea how to treat thyroid issues. They just will prescribe thyroid hormones just to see what happens. So, just see what happens here.

Elle Russ: That’s right! And one of the things too is that, even down the road, you could go to the most expert doctor who knows everything about thyroid and can do their best, but truly, it is the patient.

Labs—well, we can look at labs and symptoms (and they usually go hand in hand)—it’s so individual and personalized. Your labs may look good, but you may need a quarter of a grain more of natural desiccated thyroid. And that’s okay. There might be room for that.

There is play. It’s individual. You might need a little bit more in winter, and a little bit less in summer. These are things that only one individual—

And again, you can’t count on a doctor to help you understand this.

And I guess this goes back to something I really just want to bring up. I have to take responsibility here too. I listen to that doctor because he had a degree. I did what he said.

And I kept bleeding, I kept bleeding, he put me on a birth control. I went through four birth control pills. I kept bleeding. I was misdiagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome. I had a polyp and a fibroid in my uterus I had to get removed. I would love to give the invoice for that to the doctor. He should be paying for that, right?

So, all of this happening to me, and nobody said, “Well, why though? She’s 30 old. She’s had healthy gynecological health. Her whole family does. What’s causing this?” Instead, they gave me a band-aid. “Well, let’s stop the bleeding. Let’s not look at what’s causing it.”

This thyroid gland is the master gland of the human body—period, end of story. You cannot live without it. Very few, one in a bagillion people are born without it. And immediately, you’d have to administer thyroid hormones or they die. So, if you’re on a stranded island, and you have no thyroid gland, you’re done.

So, what does that say if you’re going to live your life with sub-optimal or low output or poorly metabolized thyroid hormones? You know the answer to this one.

I’m 44 now. I look better than I did probably 13 years ago because the accelerated aging and the glycation and what happens to one’s body when you are hypothyroid is a total nightmare. And the problem with it is that because it’s the master gland and it’s in control of every metabolic process, from your temperature to your production regulation of sex hormones, to your brain function, everything slowly starts to fall apart.

So now, you get high cholesterol, here’s your statin. Now, I’m depressed, here’s your Prozac. And it will work for three months, and then it won’t work anymore because you never, ever addressed the problem.

And then, you get polycystic ovarian syndrome. I don’t know what you don’t have and shouldn’t, and wouldn’t anyway. So you’re going to get a disease you otherwise would not have gotten if you weren’t in a hypothyroid state.

And this is just the breakdown domino effect. And that’s why people’s hair falls out, and their skin cracks, and they get acne. Everything falls apart!

So, it’s important for everybody, whether you have a problem or not, to understand how the thyroid works and to work on optimizing it and encouraging it to do the best that it can and providing the primordial baseline for it to get to where it needs to go. And there’s so much you can do.

And everybody should be concerned about this, not because you should fear getting a thyroid problem—I mean, no one wants that—but because this is the master. So let’s start to treat it like that.

And so, my book not only goes through “Hey, here’s how to optimize it and just not even get in the first place,” and then “Okay, if you do get it, here’s how to try to reverse that naturally and do a protocol for 8 or 12 weeks, whatever kind of turned it around. Get retested.” And then, you can go from there. “Okay, if you have to go on thyroid hormone, then what?” And I take everyone through those stages. And I detail blood work.

I wrote this book because it was the book I couldn’t find. I’ve read every thyroid book out there, and I really haven’t. I’m not being a braggart by saying I really think it’s in the top three. And the other two are very specific and don’t offer what I have. They’re all different.

And I’ll mention the other two because they’re important. One is very important for people who have reversed T3 problems because it’s really the only definitive book on T3 only treatment. And it’s by a patient by Paul Robinson. And it’s called Recovering with T3. And that one is very specific in a niche for people who have that problem. That’s why I want to let people know about it. Most doctors really don’t know how to assess a reversed T3 problem.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, uh-huh.

Elle Russ: So, Paul Robinson is your guy. There’s videos that you can go to with recovering with T.

The other one is very famous. And she’s amazing. She helped save my life. Her name is Janie Bowthorpe. And she is the author of and the creator of the website StoptheThyroidMadness.com.

Wendy Myers: Yes, that’s a fantastic website.

Elle Russ: It’s the best thyroid website. If you want the most comprehensive look, go there. And they also have a forum and a Yahoo group of moderators and fellow patients.

And this can be invaluable in a sea of “Oh, my God! I’m broke. And I’ve gone on to 50 doctors.” Well, maybe a patient who has gone through this BS before like me—there are people like that online that are willing to help you.

And of course, I offer people a free 15-minute consult. And anyone can just contact me. I email everybody a big sheet of “here’s how to get started. You don’t have to buy my book.

Here are the resources. Here’s how to find a doctor. Here’s the blood tests to get.”

I know what it’s like to spend so much money, and it’s all wasted and being burned up.

And so I want to offer as many people a free headstart as possible. You can always go to ElleRuss.com. Just contact me and go, “Hey, my thyroid screwed up. I heard you on Wendy. Send me the information,” and I’ll send it.

So, this is really important. But back to I didn’t take control then. I let a doctor dictate something for me. I didn’t do the research. Now, to my credit, the research wasn’t there in terms of Paleo Primal health. So, that was not even around. And so I don’t know that I would have been able to find that link and that answer then.

But I feel like, looking back, I just blindly trusted someone. And had maybe I dug deeper from the very beginning—

And this just goes to if you’ve got something serious that’s affecting your life, you’d go to the ends of the earth to fix it. Perseverance pays, it really does. And so you don’t stop. The people that stop are the people that just listen to the doctor.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, yeah. And that’s the predicament a lot of people find themselves in.

They don’t have the knowledge base. And they just listen to their physician, thinking that he has all the knowledge and the degrees, et cetera, when you really have to take responsibility for your own health.

No one’s going to care about your health as much as you do. And if you really want to take control of your health, you have to listen to podcasts like this, like the one that you host, and arm yourself with information so that you can conquer your health issues.

And for anyone out there listening that’s having health issues, you definitely want to examine your thyroid and look at your thyroid. Just like you said, it’s one of the big root causes of other health issues. There’s a lot of vague symptoms that could be attributable to other health issues that are actually being caused by the thyroid.

There’s a reason that the thyroid medication or the thyroid hormones are one of the top prescribed medications in the United States.

Elle Russ: Number one.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, number one.

19:00 Low thyroid symptoms

 

Wendy Myers: And so, let’s talk about what those low thyroid symptoms look like. Let’s cover some of the basics for anyone that may not know and want to recognize their symptoms as possibly being hypothyroid symptoms.

Elle Russ: Well, I had over 30 at one point. And I’ll run down some random ones and some classic ones. Obviously, the longer it goes undiagnosed and untreated, the more symptoms you get. But initially, there’s a few things.

I want to talk about men for a second because this is disproportionately a women’s disease, but men do get it. And so, for men, they will experience not getting morning erections when they should at a certain age. They’ll be exhausted. They’ll also might have weight issues and be cold—cold hands and feet all the time. That’s a big one. Temperature is huge. So, this is something you can diagnose at home. I talk about that in my book too.

So, you can get your temperature.

And when I was seriously hypothyroid and a mess, I was about 96 degrees all day long. So you’re freezing even in summer. It doesn’t matter how hot it is.

So, the coldness, it also goes to dry, cracked skin, anything brain, anything depression. You start to lose interest. You start to give up on your dreams. You’re not motivated. You don’t have the energy. It takes you three hours to just wake up and have five cups of coffee before you can deal.

One day, you’re just like, “Wow! I just stared into space for three weeks. What is happening to me?” And that can be scary and people are afraid to admit that because, see, they don’t understand that that might be hypo symptom, and then they start to think, “Ooh, am I getting older? Am I getting dumber?” That’s what it feels like. It feels like you’re getting dumber. And it’s a scary thing. And then, you might have someone in the family who was that way, and you go, “Uh-oh, I had somebody with Hashimoto’s, a really good friend of mine, who started to go down the direction of… oh, well, Aunt Sally was always…” And I’m always like, “No, no, no. Aunt Sally might have had untreated Hashimoto’s…”

Wendy Myers: Or you think you’re getting older and dementia is setting in or something.

Elle Russ: You really do!

Wendy Myers: A lot of women have this after they have a baby like me. They have brain fog. They think it’s mommy brain. But that doesn’t last two and three years. A lot of women, their thyroid tanks after they have a child.

Elle Russ: That’s right, that’s right.

And weight is a big thing obviously—the inability to lose weight, gaining weight all the time, uncontrolled bleeding, feeling bloated, inflammation, hair falling out even, loss of curly hair (if you have curly hair, and it goes straight), inner itching of the ears, heavy legs, and anything having to do with like you’ll notice a difference in vaginal fluid and you’ll notice the consistency and things will be off or orgasm contractions might not be as strong.

That can also be due to low ferritin, low iron storage.

Those things will start to creep up. But essentially, you start to get exhausted. And it can creep up on you slowly.

I knew someone who—one of the success stories in my book looked out, and she kind of caught it right away. She was just freezing for like a couple of weeks. She went in, find the right doctor who tested her appropriately, boom! He put her on natural desiccated.

So, she got lucky. Most people aren’t that lucky. They spend years and years. The doctors are taking the wrong tests, and they say, “You’re fine. It’s not your thyroid. Maybe you need to work out more and eat less.” That’s what I was told.

So, a couple of other symptoms too. This is a weird one, but it’s one that I’ve noticed consistently with other people, so it must be a thing. On your index finger, on the corner of your index finger, just like on the sides (if you’re going to go down the side of your index finger), that will become very dry and cracked and scaly. And that’s kind of like a weird indicator. It’s an alert. It’s like an uh-oh.

So, if that’s happening to anybody…

Wendy Myers: Yeah. Now, you made me look at my index finger. I suspected it for a second. No, I’m okay. I’m fine.

Elle Russ: Yeah, you would totally know. You would go, “What’s going on there?” It would be a problem.

And also, the dry, cracked heels or the dry, cracked skin.

I had horrible acne pop up. And I had perfect skin my whole life. And then, later on, after I got fixed, I went back to a facialist, and she said, “Oh, my gosh! Your skin is not bumpy underneath anymore,” and I said, “What are you talking about?” She was like, “During when you were coming in here, you had all these problem. I could feel…” She could feel the difference in my skin.

It’s everything because, think about it, no logs are on the fire. Everything is slow and sluggish. It all slows down. It’s sludgy. Things aren’t getting metabolized properly. Things are getting stopped up. You know what I mean? You’re constipated. It’s a huge one. And I mean, constipated to the point where even laxatives won’t do it. That’s a really brutal symptom.

Any kind of depression—and I mean really any kind of depression including bipolar because that could be related to people with Hashimoto’s swings if they have severe attacks going on.

And so, a teenager’s erratic behavior could be tossed off as classic teenager BS, or your daughter might have Hashimoto’s.

Wendy Myers: Yeah! For men, that depression will manifest itself as anger.

Elle Russ: And low testosterone, by the way. That will go hand in hand with this too usually with men.

So, those are some of the symptoms. There’s over 30 in there. And they’re debilitating.

Anything gynecological—polycystic ovarian syndrome or cysts, abnormal bleeding ,heavy periods, fibrocystic breasts, anything that’s estrogen dominance-related as well.

So, you have to understand, again, this slow, sludgy thing. And now, you’re a woman, so now hormones are screwed up. Estrogen dominance is likely. Testosterone is probably kind of low. Your adrenals are suffering.

Now, you have adrenal fatigue because it’s taking over because you don’t want any thyroid hormone.

And again, like you said earlier, you can give also a patient all the thyroid hormone you want, you can go to a doctor and have them go, “Oh, my gosh, you’re hypothyroid,” take the right tests and give your thyroid hormone.

But here’s the thing. Is that thyroid hormone going to get to where it needs to go and work right or backfire on you? You don’t want it to backfire on you (because I’ve had that happened. And that’s called the reverse T3 problem.”

So, you need to make sure this is all ready to receive that.

And so, it’s more than just taking a pill. It’s optimizing your iron storage. It’s optimizing your adrenals. You can’t do all this at the same time, but it has to be done.

Wendy Myers: There’s a lot of people listening to that, “take thyroid hormones,” and they don’t get a relief of the symptoms or just mild relief because, like you said, they’re not absorbing it properly.

Elle Russ: Yes, it’s not being metabolized properly. It’s not getting into the cells. There’s a reverse T3 problem there on the wrong meds or wrong level of it.

So, there’s a lot of people that take thyroid hormones that don’t even know what they do or how the thyroid works. And let’s just think about it. If you’re one of those people, don’t be that dummy. Don’t be that dummy. There are millions of people out there that are that dummy, and that’s why they’re still suffering, taking thyroid hormones, going back to the doctor, then trying to figure out other stuff and getting misdiagnosed to go, “Oh, I guess it was just this. I guess it was…”

No, you don’t have maybe depression, and you don’t have to take Prozac. The thyroid is just not being optimized correctly.

So, we do have to take responsibility. If you’ve been diagnosed with a disease, learn about it. Become your own expert.

And here’s proof that you have to. Let me share with your audience if they don’t know. Talk about taking ultimate responsibility, I actually dosed myself back to health twice in 10 years because doctors wouldn’t help me. I had no choice but to do it myself.

That’s not a situation anyone should be in. But plenty of patients are put there because they don’t have any—

I was out of money. I had seen all the doctors in the world. The last doctor I went to at that time, I spent $600 for some famous Beverly Hills hormone doctor just for the appointment, not even the bloodwork, just for them to test my free T3 and go, “Oh, my God! You’re below the range. You’re severely hypothyroid.” It was at that time. And I was like, “Really? It took two years to get there.” Thank God I know this now.

And then, I said, “They’ve all hurt me. I’m out of money. I’m doing this myself.” These people don’t know what they’re talking about.

And it’s a lonely place to be. And thank God for other patients online who are moderating these groups who are able to be there and help you navigate and assess. But as well, that really wasn’t enough because then when you’re done being hypothyroid—and let’s say you’re optimized on medication, or you’ve corrected it naturally, “now what do I do with all these weight that I’ve gained? Now what do I do?” because most people become insulin-resistant.

And that is where Paleo Primal comes into play. But The Paleo Thyroid Solution, the reason I wrote that as a title is not because it’s a gimmicky thing like, “Oh, here’s the thing.

Here’s the thyroid stuff. And then, eat Paleo, and you can lose the weight.”

What it is is because, if you really delve into what Paleo Primal lifestyle is, it’s the ultimate in adrenal balance and the ultimate in blood glucose management. And those two things are so related to thyroid. It’s why people with type II diabetes often get thyroid problems and vice versa.

So, there’s the component. It’s the lifestyle of being a fat burner versus a sugar burner, which everyone can learn about when they get into this Paleo Primal. That really is the ultimate connection here that was made.

I could have written the thyroid book many, many years ago, but it wasn’t until I discovered this angle. It’s really in line with our genetics and our thyroid rhythm and the messages we’re sending to it. If you want to send it the most proper messages, you’ve got to have really good glucose management and adrenal management. And the best diet and lifestyle for that is Paleo Primal.

So, that’s how that works.

28:10 The Paleo Primal Diet & Lifestyle

 

Wendy Myers: So, let’s talk about that a little bit. I’m a big fan of the Paleo diet as well.

And I talk a lot about it on my website also. So what does Paleo mean exactly? And why is it the optimal lifestyle and diet for thyroid health?

Elle Russ: Well, it’s optimal for actually every human. It is the best for everyone on the planet.

So, a lot of people have a misconception of Paleo Primal. And I’ll talk about a few of those in a minute. Paleo, Primal, Ancestral, Evolutionary, they are all the same. They are kind of synonymous. There might be a couple of like some people consider primal (which is really kind of the term coined by my publisher, Mark Sisson, who wrote the Primal Blueprint) where he’s a little bit more like, “Well, occasional chocolate and dairy. And if you can only do 80/20 in terms of percentages, then you’re better off than most people.” And he might be a little bit more lenient some would say than someone might consider Paleo as being strict.

But here’s where it really goes wrong in terms of the interpretation. People just think it’s a list of foods. And they really also think that it’s high protein, which it’s not. And I’ll get into that in a second.

Here is the determining factor. There’s only two ways to really have your metabolic system be working at any given time. You’re either burning glucose, and you’re running on that, or it’s on fat.

We are designed and our DNA expects us to really primarily use fat as a main source of fuel. Most people in our society are sugar burners, meaning they’re really burning off of glucose.

How do you know if you’re a sugar burner? So easy! Can you go two, three, four, eight, twelve, twenty-four hours without eating and not have a hangry meltdown, without having any kind of physical or mental lapse? Most people would say no. I can go probably three or four days right now. It would not even be a problem because I’m completely fat-adapted.

What does that mean? It took about a month—it takes about a month—you change over to really what your genetics expect of you. You’re switching on these fat-burning genes. And you’re starting to detox the brain from expecting that crack that is glucose. And here is hypoglycemia for everybody, up and down every two or three hours. That’s a sugar burner.

If you have a meltdown after four hours, and you’re like, “Oh, my God! I can’t even…”—and I used to be that person—that’s not how life is supposed to go.

We are the only humans in the world that have to eat every two—that’s a living thing. You know what I mean?

Our hunter/gatherer ancestors did not operate this way. They went long periods without food. And they ate a very low carb diet. So, Paleo Primal is a high fat, moderate protein, low carb paradigm that its goal is you spend about two to three or four weeks of willpower to get the food down so you can get through switching your brain and switching everything over to really kind of depending on fat as the main source. And then, life changes. You’ve got steady glucose and adrenals.

Here’s why the adrenals come in. Every time someone’s got a high and a low blood sugar, or like a hypoglycemic or a sugar burner, every time it dips too far or goes to high, the adrenals respond, “Uh-oh… uh-oh” and starts pumping out cortisol, which you do not want it to do.

There’s where your fat is around your middle. That’s an antagonistic hormone to testosterone, to thyroid, to everything. So you’re sending it like a fight-or-flight message unnecessarily.

So, those are threats—the drop and the high. You only have those drops and those high when you’re a sugar, when you are a glucose-dependent sugar burner. That’s the only time you have those drops. You don’t when you are fat-adapted.

So, here’s where people get it wrong. They’re like, “Oh, yeah! I went Paleo, and it didn’t work” or whatever. Then they were just eating from a food list. And that’s all they were doing. Or when in doubt, they ate meat. And if you overeat meat, that can be inflammatory and/or can turn into sugar through a process called gluconeogenesis.

So, it really is a high fat, moderate protein, low carb paradigm. And it really is about under 150 carbs or less unless you’re an athlete. And if you’re a woman like me that’s 5”2, 150 carbs is sometimes too much.

Our ancestors never ate more than 80, and sometimes none. And this is why we all have this process called ketosis which is a whole different level, a deeper level, of being super low carb. And I don’t suggest anybody who’s hypothyroid to jump in there because you can’t even really get their metabolically. But our genetics really—

And doesn’t it seem right, isn’t it weird that we would have to suffer every two or three hours? What do you think our ancestors did?

Wendy Myers: Yeah, they ate once…

Elle Russ: They ran to the top of the hill, and then what, they’d be a prey because they’d be like, “I haven’t eaten for…” That would be a mess!

Wendy Myers: Yeah, they ate once or twice a day—maybe.

Elle Russ: Maybe. And that’s really what ends up happening when you get fat-adapted. You end up eating about once or twice maybe a day.

And it’s a really interesting thing that’s funny because the freedom—and here’s going back to the food addiction. Forget weight loss, forget thyroid optimization, forget health, curing disease or whatever. Those are all amazing. It cures and fixes all food obsessions.

Wendy, this is the success story we get consistently, even from the person who lost a hundred pounds to the person that cleared up their psoriasis. Whatever their story is, the end result is always, “I can’t believe I don’t think about food all the time.”

I thought about food all the time—all the time. I would be making deals, engaging stuff.

And after I’d even eat lunch, I’d be planning on when I could—I’d be “How much can I get away with…” It was horrible!

And people listening who have this or have had this, you know what I’m talking about. And it’s a really scary, awful place because your life feels like—

And now—and this sounds weird to someone who’s addicted to food. But for those out there who might be still addicted, you don’t even think about it. Your whole paradigm shifts. You’re so satiated, you forget almost. And it doesn’t take your life up. It becomes—I don’t know, it becomes such an intuitive, wonderful, enjoyable, healthy relationship with food.

And that is only the result of being fat-adapted and even keeled.

So, here’s another thing that’s great about Paleo Primal. Because it’s the ultimate in adrenal balance and blood glucose management, it’s also the ultimate for anxiety and issues like that. Those rise and falls and that output of cortisol, that’s what gets people jacked up and frazzled and exhausted. And then, they crash, and then they’ve got a thyroid problem or something else. Do you know what I mean?

I know you know this already, but this is what people don’t understand. You have to delve deeper into this subject to understand the concepts that I just shared. But at the end of the day, it’s really like this triangle of, yes, there’s a carb level, there’s a paradigm of the high fat, moderate protein, low carb, but there’s also the lifestyle.

So, the lifestyle portion of it is chronic cardio which is kind of an adrenal blaster. It’s really a no-no. It’s about maybe, once a week, you sprint, but you’re doing low level. You’re burning fat.

And so, this, for example, for me, the change I had to make way back when was I go hiking all the time here where we live. I would haul my ass up the mountain, and I’d be like, “The harder I work, the more I sweat, the better I’m going to lose the weight.” And I’d be hungry and sore and tired after working out because I was burning glucose.

So, beyond 75% of your max—or you can just do an easy calculation and do 180 minus your age—if you do that calculation, you really shouldn’t go over that number too much.

When you go for consistent time periods over that number, you are in glucose-burning.

And we can only store so much in our body at one given time—in our organs and our tissues. So you don’t want to be exhausting it unless you have to.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, the fittest I’ve been is when I was not doing tons and tons of cardio.

I was doing yoga. I was doing weightlifting. That’s my primary exercise. And I was doing a little bit of walking. But not a lot of high intensity cardio, definitely not.

Elle Russ: And so, the people on the treadmill over there, they’re in a hamster wheel. They’re in a sugar-burning hamster wheel where they’re burning the glucose, and they have to replace it.

So, you can eat them from a Paleo food this, not understand things, and then you go, “Am I doing it wrong?” Yeah, you probably are. And I’ve done it all wrong. I’ve overeaten the protein. I’ve overeaten the fat.

But eventually, what’s great about it is it becomes intuitive. You know what your body needs. And that is what is so strange. And the things that once required willpower to resist, you don’t even care about anymore—like a piece of cake. You’re just like, “I’d have it if I’ve had it,” where every other time in the past, it would be like, “Oh, my God! Don’t eat it. Don’t eat it.” I’d still want it, but I don’t want it now.

So, it’s weird. It’s not to say that I wouldn’t want it at some point during the year. But I’m saying, before, as a sugar-burner, I wanted it every time I saw it. I was holding back not to take a bite of the cake.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, you’re white-knuckling it.

Elle Russ: Right! And that’s a really brutal place to be. And that’s what sugar dependency does.

And why do you think we have such a type II diabetes problem in this country? Every single commercial on TV is for type II diabetes. And this is why. That’s exactly why.

People are sugar-burners. It gets out of hand. They don’t understand it, unbeknownst to them—and just so your audience knows (which they probably already do), but the standard American diet, the government food pyramid, suggests six to eleven servings of grains every day along with two to four servings of fruit. That is a diabetic-making diet.

Wendy Myers: Yeah! I mean, that is bought and paid for by the food industry, bought and paid for. It has nothing to do with science, or caring about you, your health, or anything. It’s just about money.

Elle Russ: And a great book on that is called Death by Food Pyramid by Denise Minger.

That’s another one that just details that specific one.

Wendy Myers: I actually interviewed her about that because that specific topic.

Elle Russ: Oh, did you? Great!

So, that’s really a snapshot of Paleo Primal. But people really misunderstand it all the time.

And so, here are some objections. Actually, let me give you an example because this is really important in the way that we can send a message to our thyroid that will screw it up.

Your body is trying to save you at any given time. It’s always trying to save you. That’s what you have to remember—and even type II diabetes, that’s your body trying to save you. If you’re getting fat, your body is doing its job. It’s trying to save you. It’s storing the sugar. It’s like, “Oh, my God! Help her. Get this out of here.” Granted, you might be getting fat, but your body is trying to save you. So that’s what you have to remember. It’s not trying to fail you, it’s trying to survive.

And so, one of the things that it will do, for example, let’s say you’re a normal person that has no thyroid issues, but you’re training for a marathon and maybe you’re skinny anyway.

You have no issues, but maybe you’re over working out. And you may be under eating. In that case, you can get a reverse T3 thyroid issue or just low thyroid, euthyroid sick syndrome which is hypothyroidism because the body will go, “Hold on a minute! She doesn’t have that much fat on her body. She’s running from danger,”— chronic cardio, right? There’s the danger, chronic running. So, “she’s running from danger. And it doesn’t look like she’s getting a lot of food. We’re down-regulating this whole thing. We’re not going to put out any more of this T3, so she doesn’t burn fat. We’re going to lock this up until she has proven to us that she’s good to go.”

So, those are the messages she’s sending—do you know what I mean—that marathon runner.

The other thing too is that’s why infertility and miscarriages is huge with this. So anyone who is seeking to get pregnant, you go get your thyroid figured out first. You do not want to go through a miscarriage because of something dumb because you have low thyroid function and your body is like, “Nope!” Do you know what I mean?

That’s the other thing too. It’s trying to save you. So, in those moments as well, if you don’t have enough body fat, per se, and you’re over working out, and starving yourself, or eating into that wrong paradigm and not getting satiated like I was—I was doing chronic cardio, and I was a total hypoglycemic sugar burner. And I may have had the body to reflect hard work, but I was, like I told you, suffering. And in that situation, the body does think it’s starving. And so it says, “No, we’re not going to give her any more of this fat-burning thyroid hormone until she figures it out. And furthermore, she’s not having a baby. She’s not going to have a baby. She’s not getting pregnant. We’re just going to have a miscarriage because she is in no position to support anyone right now.”

Your body is always looking out for you. And so it’s like what messages are you sending?

And those messages do come in the form of exercise, diet, and then mental.

And so, that’s really locked up with Paleo Primal. Paleo Primal is also all about rest and relaxation too, and proper sleep and getting back to those kind of roots and unplugging.

A couple of these objections are great for people. I’d love to share. So one is, “Oh, well, if cavemen were so healthy, then why is the median age, average age 34?” And that’s funny because even though that may technically be true, when you really look at the archaeological record, that’s just the average. People die in childbirth. You’ve got to scrape.

There was no emergency room or urgent care. You were screwed.

But in looking at the record, if someone made it past puberty, they often lived well into their 80’s and 90’s with no issues. And we don’t see thyroid on the historical scene until about 12,000 years ago in China—I think it’s 12,000. Yeah, that’s 12,000 years ago.

And it’s interesting because that’s when grains came on the scene. And it’s funny because the first recorded history of thyroid issues in China were under the Emperor whose name was the Emperor of 5 Grains. And for those that don’t know, Paleo Primal—

And I was like, “I think this kind of make sense.” I mean, I’m jumping to the conclusion, but I make it because the funny thing about it is what we know now is that—for people that are listening and they don’t know this. We know for sure that grains, especially gluten, trigger Hashimoto’s antibodies which is a form of autoimmune hypothyroidism. So, that’s just very interesting.

And if you look at Paleo Primal, grains are just not really meant for human consumption. I mean, you can make some exceptions for some really well-soaked, old, tiny-made bread products, or some soaking of beans and legumes and things like that for some people who can handle it. But for the most part, beans, legumes, and dairy, and grains are not really meant for humans.

And so, we see the problems. In fact, actually, a great movie The Perfect Human Diet by CJ Hunt, they talk about it and some paleontologist said that they never, ever saw arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, on the archaeological record until 10,000 years ago when grains came on the scene. That means from every sample, from every human from 50,000 to 200,000 years ago, they never saw it show up until grains, until farming, until domestication.

So, I think this is really important for people to look into. Forget about like, “Oh, you going Paleo?” You don’t have to tell your friends. Don’t announce it. There’s no label. No one has to do cross fit. I don’t do cross fit. People try to equate that with it. And by the way…

Wendy Myers: I don’t do that either.

Elle Russ: Right! And here’s the thing nothing wrong with cross fit. Here’s what’s wrong with it. People do it five days a week. That’s too high intensity. So now, you’re on that sugar burning train, getting back to that. It’s antithetical to the Paleo lifestyle, to do it a lot—you know what I mean—unless you’re maybe training for something and you’re planning on doing it athletically. A lot of people to compete in those games.

So, you don’t have to do all of that to be Paleo Primal. But look into it because this is really about what’s genetically aligned, what our DNA expects of us. And this is a really important realm to discover. It can open up a whole new world of looking at your own genetics and how—

For example, I took a genetic test, just the standard one. And some friend ran it through a program. And she said, “Oh, do you have problem with eggs?” And I said, “Well, that’s funny you said that because I’ve been eating eggs my whole life, and I didn’t think I had a problem with it. But there’s been a few times—too many—where I’ve eaten eggs on its own and felt kind of gross. I’m not sick. It’s not a tummy ache. But just kind of like, ‘Ooh, I kind of want this to digest and just get over with because it just feels heavy or weird.” And she said, “Interestingly enough, you have the same gene mutation that I do that says you might have an issue processing foods that’s high in sulfur.”

Now, the funny thing is is that I have a major issue with garlic—major.

Wendy Myers: I do too.

Elle Russ: And garlic is high in sulfur. And I also have that issue with broccoli a little bit. Broccoli is another one.

So, here’s the funny thing. Just as an experiment based on this, I was like, “You know what? I’m just going to quit eggs for a few months just because why not. I mean, it’s not like I’m allergic. I’ve gone and even had it tested. I’m not allergic.” I eliminated it for a couple of months.

And then, one day, I was like, “Oh, yeah! I haven’t forgot.” I had eggs, and it was like I had an Ethiopian refugee distended stomach with the worst gas. It was like a violent…

Wendy Myers: Yeah, yeah.

Elle Russ: It’s amazing when you eliminate and you truly get something out of your system.

Wendy Myers: You had a really strong immune system reaction, and you have much more exaggerated symptoms. And that’s what’s great about doing the elimination diet.

When you finally do re-introduce that diet, no question that your body is not liking that.

And it’s scary thought that your body compensated and dealt with it all the years that I was pummeling it with things with eggs in it. It’s not to say I’m not going to have a good quiche or something with an egg in it. Of course I am! But now, I just know.

And the thing is that it’s a bummer. Eggs are cheap and great. And they’re great Paleo Primal food. I’d love to have eggs every day. But you know what? After that experiment, that’s not going to happen.

And that was just based on someone seeing something in my genetics.

So, this is really important. It’s not just, yes, this is a genetically DNA-aligned lifestyle and diet for everybody and every human. But just the idea of this whole subject matter is something that’s really fascinating. And to get to know more about yourself and do the biohacking and experiment as you do, it’s really a gift. I know you think it’s fun too, but the levels that you get to—I feel better now than I did at 23.

Wendy Myers: I did too!

Elle Russ: No question about it.

Wendy Myers: Absolutely! I feel fantastic, absolutely.

46:05 The Paleo Thyroid Solution

 

Wendy Myers: So, tell us about your book, The Paleo Thyroid Solution and what the listeners can expect when they read your book?

Elle Russ: Well, you can expect a real hands-on, in-depth sort of like a bible, like a thyroid bible. You’re going to see before and after bloodwork. You’re going to see what your blood work look like. What does it look like when it’s messed up? What does it look like when someone is second? And then, what does it look like they’re on medication and are better? Or what is a normal person’s thyroid? I want to teach people how to evaluate their own blood work and how to do this.

You’re going to find out how to dose if you have to go on thyroid hormone. You’re going to find out all about Paleo Primal lifestyle and nutrient optimization and how to fix a thyroid problem. If you want to stay off thyroid hormone, you’ve gone the wrong direction, and you’re like, “My thyroid is screwed up. And I really want to just try to get this thing worked around naturally.” So, that’s the first protocol.

And then, I go through all of them up until even having reversed T3 problem—which not a lot of books talk about this which is dosing with T3 only. It’s a very rare discussion. Only two or three books I know really have any discussion in there. And so, that’s detailed.

And then, really valuable is the Q&A in the back of the book with a Primal Paleo, functional, integrative medical doctor named Dr. Foresman. And you’re going to hear from a doctor why endocrinologists are so stenched in ego, why they don’t this, why they’re not willing to listen, what did they learn wrong when they learned it.

And what’s great about that is you can take that to your own doctor too and at least hear another doctor talk about your training. So, I intentionally have it in there too. I mean, a) anyone could believe what I have to say. But obviously, in this day and age, as we even joked about earlier (even though you and I don’t believe it), it offers credibility. So you’re going to hear it from a doctor too. And you’re going to hear more details from him. So the Q&A in the back of the book is so essential.

And you’re going to see some before and after stories. I wanted to see people succeed. I wanted to hear their stories. I wanted to see photos. I was so miserable and fat and just bloated that I just wanted to see someone else make it.

Also, I’m sure you’ve seen it, it’s a beautiful book, like aesthetically. All the photos are from Hawaii. It’s really gorgeous. I wanted it to be sort of an aesthetic journey. Hypothyroidism is so crappy to go through.

There’s also letters to loved ones in there and to bosses. Relationships suffer because of this. You’re undiagnosed for two years, you’re acting like a freak. Now your husband is like, “I didn’t marry her. I don’t know who she is.” And people get divorced. People lose their jobs.

There’s a success story in my book where she quit her job to preemptively avoid getting fired because she could not figure out the number. She was getting dumped. She’s mixing up numbers, couldn’t remember numbers. And she was like in accounting. And she got so scared at what was happening to her brain, she quit because she was afraid she would get fired.

So, I have letters to your employer, letters to loved ones to explain to them directly. And I’ve had people call me and cry on the phone to me because of that, that being a very important thing that their husband read because they’re like, “I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy.”

Someone goes too, “I had a family member yell at me. I went to over 50 doctors. But I went to 25 on the first bout. And I had a family member yell at me and said, ‘You’re going to have to listen to one of these doctors,’ and I was like ‘No, I don’t,’ and I’m glad I didn’t. I’m glad I took my health into my own hands.”

But I shouldn’t have had to, and I don’t want anyone to have to be there. So, I want to arm everyone with the knowledge that I learned through suffering through a almost every thyroid scenario there is. And I could tell you from doing it on my own as well with this personal experimentation I had to go through. I’ve been hyper. I’ve been hypo. I’ve had a reverse T3 problem. I don’t have Hashimoto’s, but…

I’m just so grateful to be able to use the experience that I have to help others because it’s such a lonely place.

And think about it, you can’t have relationships. Who’s going to want to date you? “Oh, I don’t what’s happening. I’m falling apart. I’m a mess. Want to love me?” Yeah, that’s a great a great place to be singled from, you know?

So, there’s a lot. And it’s tough. It really does tax relationships as well between people.

There’s an author that talks about how he’s still repairing his relationship with his kids.

And it’s funny because I have a friend whose father was a late diagnosed type 1 diabetic.

And he had a bunch of mood swings when he was younger. And they just thought their dad was a fly-off-the-handle. And it kind of turns out that something—

And that’s not to excuse the behavior, but there is an explanation sometimes for that behavior. And if can get to the root of it, you can fix it.

Wendy Myers: I was going to say that even if people go to their medical doctor and the doctor knows what they’re doing, you only have a few minutes with them. Even if you’re in very, very good hands, you still have to know how to eat, how to take care of yourself, your lifestyle. You still have to do all of those things and know when something is off so that you know when to make an appointment with your doctor.

Still, even if you have a fantastic doctor or you have a team of amazing health professionals, you still have to educate yourself to know how to take care of yourself and all facets of your life.

Elle Russ: That’s right. They can’t be there with you 24/7. Sometimes, you’re going to have to make some decisions on your own. Absolutely, yeah.

51:28 Taking thyroid hormones

 

Wendy Myers: And so, you talked a little bit about desiccated thyroid hormone throughout our talk. So let’s talk about some of the differences and benefits of taking desiccated thyroid hormone (which you can get over-the-counter) versus medications which can be synthetic. There are also natural thyroid hormone that you can get as well. Let’s talk about those differences and differentiations.

Elle Russ: There’s really only a couple of options. The worst one and the most prescribed one and the one that’s not the most optimal for a variety of reasons is Synthroid or T4 only or levothyroxine (it’s just T4 only which is one of the thyroid hormones).

The most optimal, in general, is to have a T4, T3 combination. And that desiccated thyroid, it’s from chopped up, essentially dried up pig gland. And it comes in a ratio of a specific amount of T4 and a specific amount of T3 that very much mimics our output.

So, our own thyroids, when they’re working right, they output about 80% T4 and 20% T3.

And then, throughout the day, maybe 50% of that T4 is going to be converted into T3 as you need it.

And so, with the natural desiccated thyroid, let’s say we talk about it in grains, but let’s say one grain is 60 or 65 milligrams, that’s usually about 38 micrograms of T4 and about 8 to 9 micrograms of T3 in just one pill.

So, it’s like in kind of the right ratio. It’s more endocrine mimicry. ur bodies don’t solely rely on conversion alone. If you take T4 only, that’s not really endocrine mimicry. And no wonder there’s a lot of problems with it.

Just as a side note (and the doctor says it in my book). For everyone listening, if you are taking Synthroid, maybe it’s working for you, or you’re taking T4 level—if you’re taking generic, think about switching. Everyone, even a couple of endocrinologists actually have said that Synthroid brand name T4 only is the only choice. If you go for generic, it can screw up liver enzymes, thyroid results. There’s been some wonky stuff.

So, if you happen to be on generic, you might want to switch to the brand name.

So, there’s T4 only. There’s natural desiccated thyroid in a T4/T3 combination. There’s a lot in there. You can’t separate them. And then, there’s you can couture it yourself to the patient, meaning you can compound T4 and T3 together in the amounts that you would like for that patient. That could be very important for people who are very sensitive to fillers in some of these things. They’re very allergic to everything. They’re really autoimmune. They might need to go and compound it which is super clean. It’s still synthetic, but it’s super clean.

So, there are more benefits to taking something that’s a T3/Tf combination because it’s more endocrine mimicry.

Natural desiccated thyroid has been around one a hundred years. It’s extremely cheap.

And it really works for most people.

Now, you can still be taking natural desiccated thyroid. And maybe you need to add a little T3 to it, maybe you need to add a little T4 to it. There’s always things you can do to tinker with whatever it is that you’re one. But usually, as a thoroughfare, people do well and do well on just taking doses of natural desiccated thyroid.

Now, it does have some other things in it. It has like calcitonin and T1 and T2. People can look those up. I don’t like to get into those too detailed because they’re not actually essential for life that we know of because you can live on the synthetic versions of that and live a great life. So, it does still have some other components there.

But essentially, the best way to go is to just have the T4/T3 combo. And because natural desiccated is so cheap, it’s been around forever, and it is in those ratios, it often kind of does the job best.

And the one that’s really the go-to nowadays is Nature-Throid as the natural desiccated.

And Armour Thyroid used to be the standard. And the reason it’s kind of not anymore is because Armour Thyroid, the pharmaceutical company, at one point, changed their fillers in it, and they didn’t alert people. People got screwed up. It didn’t work as well. There were problems. And so doctors kind of got a bad taste in their mouth from that one. And I’m not knocking Armour Thyroid. It’s still a wonderful thing. But more people are going towards Nature-Throid or WP.

WP has less, less fillers. But again, if I were to suggest anything, I’d be like “start with Nature-Throid and go from there.” That’s what I would do.

Wendy Myers: That’s what I took. That’s what I took when I was in thyroid medication. I think the Armour house corn in it I believe. One of them has some fillers, some weird fillers that people can have sensitivity too.

Elle Russ: Another thing though is religious. So, if you don’t eat pork, then that’s a decision that we then go, “Okay, fine!” So then you do the synthetic combo.

And then, there’s T3 only, by the way. Then there’s T3 only which I’m on. So, T3 only is very rate. Most people don’t have to take it on its own. It’s a last resort. As far as the four options like T4, desiccated, or synthetic T4/T3 (that’s the third one), the fourth one would be T3 only, that one’s like fourth on the list for a reason. It’s the last order of business. You really do want to a T4/T3 combo.

I get into the details of this in my book. We don’t have to now about the reverse T3. But those are essentially the four options, the most optimal being natural desiccated or T4/Tr synthetic combination.

56:56 The most pressing health issue in the world today

 

Wendy Myers: So, I have a question I like to ask all of my guests. What do you think is the most pressing health issue in the world today?

Elle Russ: Diabetes, type II diabetes. And the thing is that everyone is getting it to themselves. I was also insulin-resistant. I was pre-diabetic even after sort of fixing my thyroid because I was still just—

When the pancreas gets taxed like that, and you become insulin-resistant, you are the only one that can fix it. You as a human being are the only one that can make the decisions of what to put in your mouth to fix that.

And type II diabetes is fixable too. You can get off of insulin. I mean, don’t try to do it at home. You can’t, you absolutely can’t. And the only way to get off of it is to follow a Paleo Primal protocol, a low carb/high fat/moderate protein protocol.

It’s such an epidemic. It’s so sad. And honestly, that’s going to cause more thyroid problems too. Hypothyroidism is already an epidemic. It’s been an epidemic for a while.

It’s still not totally solved. And I’m trying to be a part of that obviously. But this next wrong of just horrific-ness is really the type II diabetes and just metabolic dysfunction.

You can just be insulin-resistant. You don’t even have to get all the way to type II diabetes.

And that really is from over-consuming carbohydrates. It’s from carbohydrate dependency, and like you said, that shoddy food pyramid and all of the suggestions.

So, people really have to arm themselves with this knowledge. But unfortunately, it’s like unbeknownst to you, you give it yourself, and you think you’re doing the right thing. Your personal trainer says, “eat every two or three hours, eat carbs after you work out.”

You know what’s funny? It’s so funny. I work out at a college nearby that you know about.

And I was talking to some of the volleyball players, the girls. And I was talking about nutrition and stuff like that. I was telling her about Paleo Primal, and she’s like, “Yeah, I’m kind of learning about it?” I said, “Well, what does your coach…?” She goes, “After we work out, we do a big three or four hour deal. Our coach says go and go get like the Big Ben animals with granola and go carb up.”

And then, here’s the funny thing. I said, “Well, that’s interesting.” I go, “That’s like a diabetes-making meal.” And she said, “Oh, that’s funny! He has type II diabetes.” So their type II diabetes coach is coaching them to get type II diabetes… seriously. And the coach is like 40. He’s got type II diabetes not because he’s a sloth. It’s because he’s been in the wrong paradigm for a while.

And I want to go mention a guy named Timothy Noakes. He’s a South Africa professor. He wrote a book called The Lore of Running, is all about the carbing up for the athletes.

Everyone knows, “Oh, you’re going to run a marathon. Eat a bowl of past. Eat bread!” He’s got type II diabetes, and now they all do. He had to fall on his own sword. And I like bringing him up because his colleagues were ripping on him, and he was like, “Everything we knew was wrong. We thought this was the paradigm, we were wrong.” We were, and we’re seeing it now.

So, a lot of people are headed in that direction.

And by the way, you can be a skinny diabetic. Just because you’re an adventure racer, and you work out every day, you run every morning, it doesn’t matter. Here’s the discussion.

You can get away with it visually , but you cannot get away with it internally.

And this happens all the time. We’re seeing so many athletes get insulin-resistant. And actually, a local yoga guy, Ted McDonald, he’s the P90X yoga instructor, he’s been on our podcast, he got tested, and he was like, “What?! Well, I run every day.” But he didn’t realize that before he went running, he was eating about 130 carbs of whatever in his shake. And he thought this was part of the deal.

So, even though he was burning it, consuming it—he’s burning it, he’s consuming it, he’s burning it—he’s still tapping the pancreas for insulin to be released every time he does that. You will not get away with that eventually. Do you see what I’m saying? And then, you’ll be skinny-fat which is more dangerous because you want to get fat if that’s a problem because it’s going somewhere. But when the sugar is not going somewhere, it’s just in your bloodstream, now it’s dangerous.

So, again, it goes back to you can see someone really skinny and go, “I wish I had her body,” no, you may not unless you have it. So, you may get away with it visually, but you will not get away with that ultimately internally. Something will go wrong or otherwise. So you may be skinny, but then you have like a disease.

Wendy Myers: Yeah! I mean, all of our organs, they only have so long of a biological life. And if you keep abusing the pancreas, it’s releasing insulin, abusing the pancreas, releasing insulin, it’s going to wear out really, really quickly—much quicker than you probably anticipate.

Elle Russ: That’s right, yeah. So, I guess that would be—that’s a long, in-depth answer on that one. But everybody has got to look into that. So, even if you are fit and healthy, you still need to look at this paradigm. Check some of these levels. You might have a high HbA1c. You might be insulin-resistant and kind of not even know it. And that would be dangerous as well because that’s inflammatory.

So, again, I think that’s the biggest epidemic. But the sub-epidemic of that is the people that are fit, that are getting it, that don’t even know because they’re not the ones that are like, “I’m not eating candy bars all day. I don’t get it!” It doesn’t matter. Your body doesn’t know the difference between a Coca-Cola or a three sugar slices of mango. It doesn’t know the difference—38 carbs is 38 carbs. One might be a little better than the other, but…

01:02:10 Learn more from Elle Russ

 

Wendy Myers: So, why don’t you tell the listeners where they can find you, learn more about you? And what about your podcast as well?

Elle Russ: Yes, so I host the Primal Blueprint Podcast every Wednesday. And the Primal Blueprint is the bestselling book by the author, Mark Sisson, who is my boss and publisher. He started the podcast. And then, we have Primal Kitchen Restaurants and a whole food company. He got so busy, so I took over the podcast a couple of years ago (although he comes on occasionally).

And I know you were talking with him this week, right?

Wendy Myers: I am, yes.

Elle Russ: Yes, you were talking with him.

So, you go to PrimalBlueprint.com to look at the podcast—or on iTunes. And that’s every Wednesday. We do mind-body discussions probably like you as well.

And then, you can go to ElleRuss.com. You can contact me through there. I’m happy to send you any thyroid information. You don’t have to buy my book to get that. And from there as well, you can read more about me. I mean, I also have another career as a comedy writer. I’m in the industry. And I do some coaching. So, you can find out a lot about me there. I’m happy to send anyone this initial email of just get on the right path.

This is really important. I don’t want people to feel like they have to spend money to do this, to get an initial jumpstart. Most people have gone to four or five doctors, and they’re already broke.

Wendy Myers: Yeah, absolutely! And a lot of people, they can’t afford additional testing and all the functional medicine doctor. A lot of people are really in between a rock and a hard place with their health.

Elle Russ: That is fixable.

Wendy Myers: Yes!

Elle Russ: So, even in that situation, you can still fix it. You can figure this out. And I hope you don’t have to do it yourself. I’m not suggesting you do. But everything is possible.

And I do want to just say one last thing. Don’t let any doctor tell you you’re always going to suffer from x because you have hypothyroidism. All this stuff is fixable. All of it is fixable.

And so, just don’t get discouraged. You got to keep persevering. There’s an end to this. And I just want everyone to know that.

Wendy Myers: Well, Elle, thank you so much for coming on the show. I truly appreciate it. I had such good information—and great energy too!

Elle Russ: Thanks so much for having me.

And everyone, if you want to learn more about me, you can go to myersdetox.com. You can check out my detox program, get that mercury out of your thyroid, at mineralpower.com

Thank you so much for listening to the Live to 110 Podcast.