Ever wondered what it takes to truly heal from the inside out? Dr. Momoko Uno, founder of Omni Wellness NYC, weaves together integrative medicine, acupuncture, and spiritual psychology to guide you on a holistic journey to wellness.

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Show Notes

• Guest Introduction: Momoko Uno, Doctor of Integrative Medicine, certified functional medicine practitioner, licensed acupuncturist, founder of Omni Wellness in NYC, and educator.

• Topic Overview: Hashimoto's disease, thyroid disorders, and goiters.

• Subtle Signs of Hashimoto's:

• Fatigue, digestive problems (constipation), feeling cold, weight gain around the middle.

• Symptoms often include mild depression and thyroiditis (tightness around the throat).

• Progression of Hashimoto’s:

• Can lead to a significant drop in heart rate, muscle weakness, dry skin, brittle hair, and eyebrow thinning.

• Goiters:

• Goiters can shrink on their own or with iodine supplementation.

• Often associated with autoimmune diseases and can be due to iodine deficiency or heavy metal accumulation.

• Sea vegetables may help shrink goiters by binding with heavy metals and toxins.

• Managing Diet:

• Anti-inflammatory diets recommended.

• Eliminate gluten, dairy, sugar, and processed foods.

• Be cautious with genetically modified soy and overheating oils.

• Medication and Thyroid Function:

• Some individuals may reduce or even stop medication with proper management.

• Stress levels significantly affect thyroid function.

• Genetic Component and Triggers:

• Genetic factors can play a role in thyroid disorders.

• Possible triggers include viruses (COVID-19) or environmental factors.

Key Takeaways

1. Early Symptoms: Fatigue, digestive issues, feeling cold, and weight gain are early signs of Hashimoto’s.

2. Goiters and Iodine: Goiters can sometimes shrink on their own or with iodine supplements; sea vegetables may be beneficial.

3. Dietary Recommendations: Anti-inflammatory diets are crucial. Avoid gluten, dairy, and processed sugars.

4. Medication Adjustments: Thyroid medication might be adjusted based on stress levels and overall health improvements.

5. Genetic and Environmental Factors: Both genetic predispositions and environmental triggers (like viruses) can impact thyroid health.

Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome back to Better Than A Pill. Today, I'm very excited to have Momoko Uno on as a guest and Momoko is a Doctor of integrative medicine. She's a certified functional medicine practitioner and a licensed acupuncturist.  She is also the founder and owner of Omni wellness in New York city, and she has taught various graduate programs.

So welcome Momoko. 

Hi, thanks so much for having me on your show. 

 Yeah. So glad to have you here today. And I'm super excited about this topic because I have. That's going on with my body. I know a lot of people on here today listening, a lot of women do too. So we're going to be talking a little bit about Hashimoto's and the thyroid as well as goiters. 

So let's get started. And I thought we'd just talk a little bit first about what are some of the subtle signs of Hashimoto's disease and how does that differ from other thyroid disorders?  Sure. So Hashimoto's is an autoimmune disease and it is actually for low thyroid functioning problems.

It accounts for about 90 percent of hyperthyroidism. So it's in the majority of people who have low thyroid function as a result of actually an autoimmune disease. So most of the time, it just starts off with very vague symptoms that are quite difficult to diagnose because you just feel anything.

often just a little bit tired. It usually starts with some fatigue. And then, as some people think, Oh, do I, do I, am I fighting something off? And then it goes on for a very long time. Some people think, Oh, maybe I have some mild depression. It is often when you're feeling down energy wise, you can also, I am concerned that you might be depressed, but usually it's fatigue.

That's the number one thing. And you might start off having some digestive problems too, often it goes towards constipation, you might feel a little bit chilly than usual. And the other thing that's very common is some weight gain. Especially for women around the middle and, but there it's very subtle.

It goes on for quite some time before any kind of blood work is positive. Some people also said that they had got some tightness around the throat too, that can be another symptom as well.  And I would imagine a lot of women don't recognize those symptoms right away and it's going on in their bodies, but they don't know it until it gets really bad.

Absolutely, and we'll talk about that a little bit more later in terms of the stages but it is very true. It can go on for years before you're actually accurately diagnosed. Yeah. And often it's treated incorrectly too, if you, because most people develop constipation and they're on like fiber supplements and laxatives and all that kind of stuff, which is, obviously helpful, but it's not really the correct treatment.

Yeah, that makes sense. I know in my case, I was found by accident by a functional medicine practitioner. I've talked about it before on the podcast and I caught it early though. And so you're lucky because you went to see a functional medicine doctor, but most people don't. Yeah. Yeah.  Because I knew enough of that.

And that's the reason I had this podcast. Even though they were telling me, my doctor, there's nothing wrong. There's, I know I'm gonna check just in case.  . Yes. So you were very smart, right? You didn't listen to your doctor. That's right. To ignore your symptoms because most doctors will just tell you, oh no, there's something else going on.

You are fine. Exactly. But, definitely one of the takeaways from that is we want to be proactive, right? We want to be proactive, right? So not all solutions are going to be found in mainstream medicine. And I'm not here to say that mainstream medicine is bad by any means, but we need more and that's it. 

Absolutely. And you should listen to your body. And if you're, if you feel like, Oh, there's something going wrong, even though my doctor said I'm fine, keep looking for solutions. Exactly. I know we just touched basically about how it can get worse. So what are these kinds of progressions with Hashimoto's and, how can somebody monitor this and their condition effectively? 

So you can also start getting quite cold as well. And then your heart rate can go down. Normal is.  You don't want it to really go below 60 beats per minute, but if it starts going below that, that can definitely be an indication that something's going on. You could start feeling quite weak.

Your muscles start getting fatigued very easily. Your skin usually starts getting very dry too. And the hair starts getting very coarse and brittle and tends to fall out too. It's different from, it's more like a thinning of hair that happens, and also, not just on the top of your head, but also what's really common is in the eyebrows too.

So if you start noticing that the edges of your eyebrows, your hair starts losing hair, that's usually a sign that the thyroid is weak.  Okay. Yeah. So be everybody listening today. If that's happening to you, take action, right? Take action or even the earlier symptoms. So I'm going to move on into this area of goiters now.

So  that's what really got my initial attention. I was at an annual exam. Personally, there was a lump on my throat and it disappeared out of nowhere. And then the next thing I know, I'm getting a biopsy to make sure it's not cancerous and they're really large. So now I have to monitor that annually to make sure that it doesn't grow.

So that's been a thing on my mind, it's I'm doing a lot of things nutritionally stressing all the lifestyle things that we want to do, to help this. I'm just curious, can goiter shrink on their own? Maybe you can even explain what a goiter is for people that don't know what it is and can they shrink on their own?

So yes, they can shrink by themselves. Okay. You might need medication especially if your thyroid function is already starting to look like it's compromised, like if your T3, T4 levels are low, or and, goiters can also develop too when your thyroid becomes overactive as well, but in this case, when it's underactive, You will probably need to be on medication but what's going on with the goiter is when the thyroid starts to groan.

It starts to swell. It's usually just on one side. Sometimes it can be on both because the thyroid is this little butterfly gland that's just on, just underneath your right, just underneath your voice box, actually. And usually, with autoimmune diseases, what ends up happening is that usually one of the lobes starts to have irregular development.

And sometimes, if it gets worse, you can have it on both sides as well. And, in the early stages, you might just feel like it's a little bit tight and, as I was saying, a little bit tight in the throat. And then it starts becoming more visible. And when it is, more like the stage two is when you can, when it's quite large and you can actually see it protruding out of your neck.

And it usually becomes large like that because it's a way that the thyroid tries to expand so that it can absorb more iodine than the body because that the thyroid function is completely dependent on having enough iodine.  And so what it's trying to do is it's trying to cast a bigger net to collect as much iodine so that it can make.

Yeah. And that's interesting. I know just from my personal experience that I didn't, don't have any altered thyroid function. I have a very large goiter, but my thyroid is functioning okay. So it's okay. And the, but then I was also told iodine is not the solution. Taking iodine is not the solution.

No, so sometimes it can help and sometimes it can't. It doesn't, because it depends on what's really going on with your thyroid, right? So sometimes you can, if it's triggered by some kind of inflammatory reaction, because it can be because you had a virus or something and you're and things get really revved up and your body's immune system is, is having a hard time dealing with, an infection or something like that, then no, not necessarily iodine is not going to necessarily help, but in most of the cases.

It is an iodine deficiency. In that case, it can be helpful to take something like in Chinese medicine. What they usually do is they give you sea vegetables, which is actually really high in iodine, and that usually helps to shrink it. And even if you don't have an iodine deficient C. coida, it can also still be helpful too, because there are other things, I think, in sea vegetables, which is not completely understood why, but how, why it helps to shrink.

Voiders I, my personal thing is that it could potentially be heavy metals as well. Doing, as I'm sure. And so doing some kind of chelation therapy through using sea vegetable chelation, just meaning like binding with heavy metals can help to extract the toxins out of your body.

And the great thing about the sea vegetables is not just only binding with heavy metals, but it also binds with other toxins too, because the thyroid is like the spongy gland and it tends to absorb just all sorts of junk that's going on. We have a lot of the lymphatic system, it's very heavy throughout the neck.

And it just tends to get accumulated around that area. And so it's taking it a step back before anybody listening today starts to just take iodine or anything else. It's finding out what is going on, what is the root cause, because it could be like, you're saying heavy metals.

It could be radiation. It could be fluoride. It could be that your gut is all messed up, which is really what happened to me. I didn't have it, so I pulled off the iodine because I had done research. I'm going to take iodine, and that wasn't the solution. So I think that one of the take home messages, finding somebody that you can work with, that's going to be able to help you get to that root cause.

I, I, I've heard a lot about even people with mold issues. I've had several people I know and so we don't really know. And I think that initially, and I don't know if you can relate to this, you become paranoid. Oh my gosh, we've got to protect everything. For me, it was like chlorine.

Is not good for you, right? So we can't get in the pool, we can't get in the pool, but we don't necessarily know. We don't know. It's very difficult to diagnose specifically what is actually making us worse. Trial and error can be helpful, but in, in the thyroid, there's usually and not just the thyroid, but many other chronic illnesses, there's a delay in terms of when the symptoms get worse.

So it's not like you jump into a pool and then your thyroid gets bigger. It doesn't work like that, as and so it's really difficult to, even if you are very good at journaling and keeping note of what's happening in your body. To understand that sometimes, like for example, if you eat something and you have a bad reaction and it's in your mouth, that's pretty obvious, right?

But other times it has to get absorbed and then metabolized by your body, and it can be like days later, sometimes much later, if it's heavy metals, it's an accumulative issue, and that can be years later, it tips over and then you have symptoms. So it's very complicated. It is. That's what this has been.

I've delved into this personally and experienced different tests and so on. And it's ever evolving too, because you can not have radiation in your body and then it comes back. You can not have heavy metals in your body and then you do. So it's okay, this is ongoing.

I think that anything that we can do from a holistic standpoint, of course, is going to be good. Our stress, number one, stress number one stress, stress is a huge factor, especially with autoimmune diseases. So like I'm thinking, lifestyle, exercising, all those things I think are important.

I know for me personally having an autoimmune disorder and working with other people that do, there's also a threshold and we have to be mindful of our individual thresholds. Would you not say? Because. It's my experience. We'll give generic recommendations and this is my area, so I love it, but we can give generic recommendations like yes, we need a strength trainer, but let me tell you, you can do those things and cause more harm than good if you don't know what you should be avoiding.

So I think it's finding the balance targeting back a little bit. I wanted to ask you about nutrition in a general sense  when it comes to the goiter. What can people do? What would you recommend in general that people stay away from or eat?  So in general, I think  For autoimmune diseases and just chronic illnesses in general, like being on an anti-inflammatory diet is probably key.

Like you just don't want to add to any more inflammation. If you already know that you have any allergies to anything, I recommend that you cut those out because if you are having anti antibody production in your body from eating things that you know that you shouldn't be eating, it's just going to make the whole inflammatory issue worse.

And then there's a whole bunch of stuff that tends to cause inflammation in most people. So it's probably best if you cut those out, those are usually all the yummy things, unfortunately. But it is usually a good idea to cut out the things for example, gluten, so yummy, but not great for the thyroid usually.

They did a huge study on this a few years ago, and I was actually interested to find that it was actually inconclusive, the results. But I do think that a lot of people are walking around with antibody  production to gluten and not knowing it because they, in conventional medicine, just test for celiac and not for all the other proteins.

There's so many different wheat proteins and then also dairy. A lot of people are lactose intolerant, but there's also lots of different types of things, aspects of, Of milk and dairy that you could be potentially having an allergic reaction to. These tests are unfortunately quite expensive and you have to go see a specialist to see them.

If you're not sure, then, you might want to try cutting them out. And unfortunately, if you just cut them out for a day or two, it doesn't work. Has to be long term that you do this for. And then the other thing that's also a big factor is sugar. Unfortunately, it just causes a tremendous amount of inflammation.

And so it's best if you can cut that out. In particular, soda. Soda, high fructose corn syrup, is unfortunately not great for the body. And then there's there's all sorts of other things too that are much more questionable that, um, in terms of oils, there are good oils and there's bad oils and try and figure out which ones work for you and which ones don't work for you is important because some of them are actually really good for the thyroid and some of them not so much, but in general, if you overheat your oils and they become rancid,  That's also going to be toxic on your body.

So just be mindful of what types of oils that you're using and not overheating them because those cause free radicals and damage to your body. Anyway, that's there. There are of course so many other things too, but there, that's some basic things. Oh, and there's also the, all the other things that tend to be allergens, right?

The commonly known ones like soy in particular, if it's genetically modified, tends to be very problematic. on the immune system. Organic soil on the other hand, everything that I read seems to be less of an issue, but unless you of course have a sensitivity to soil, but genetically modified soil, everybody should be staying away from that in my opinion.

That's awesome. No, this is such, that was so well said. And I'm nodding my head the whole time thinking, yeah, and when you said about the gluten, that's what it was for me. And I resisted that because I was like, I don't want to have to go back to this thing. gluten free lifestyle, this strict diet I had before children, it's been 12 years and then boom, I was taken off gluten.

And then my symptoms started to improve in all kinds of ways. Wrist pain in all kinds of ways. So I'm a major believer in that. So thank you for bringing that to light. Bringing that up because there's power in eliminating one of those things. Like you just mentioned, it could be a dairy for somebody, right?

But getting tested, like you said, I think is key. And sugar and processed foods, like all of those things that we want. And I I think that it's also important  And I will say this because we, I get on here and I talk about, yes, we need to eliminate all these things. But I also want to throw out there today for people listening. Guess what, we are all human and our soul is important too.

So if you want to have  whatever it might be a treat occasionally has X it's okay.  It's okay, because sometimes we need to do those things. And I think that we have to be careful about being so strict and so anal about everything that we don't honor that. Okay.

Let's have a little bit of grace ourselves. Let's give ourselves a treat once in a while, whatever that might be. And it may not be the best thing for us, but we're not going to die. And I'm here to tell you that we probably will live. We're not going to die.  And, I think it's important to hear too, especially for people that struggle with past eating disorders, and disordered eating, because that can be, if we deprive ourselves, then we're just going to want it more and then boom, we're going to explode.

And then we have a whole other host of problems. So just throwing that out there. Absolutely. In general, I try to tell people the 80 percent rule. If your diet is good, 80 percent of the dime, then you should be able to eat your chocolate cake. Or whatever it is that you like because you've got to live life and you've got to enjoy food and if you are 100 percent strict all the time, I think you're just going to be, nobody can do it for a long period of time.

I have not met one patient who could do it all the time. It's very difficult. Thank you for saying that I like to steal the 80-20 percent rule. That's great. I love that. One other thing that I want to bring up today because this is very prevalent. A lot of people that are taking medication  have been told, For their thyroid specifically, whether it's Hashimoto's, goiters, whatever I, you're going to need to be on medication forever.

And I really personally hate when a doctor says that I've been told that before for other things. And I think to myself, first of all, you should never say that because in my opinion, there's only one God and you're not it, so that really drives, this force behind me, but I'm just going to throw this at you is that what's been your experience with this when it comes to these things?

You can get off medication, or you can definitely reduce it.  Now, there are some exceptions to the rule. If you've had medication that has wiped out your thyroid function, if you've had it removed, for example, if you had cancer and you had most of your thyroid removed, or if you had hyperthyroidism and you had radiation done and you have no function, that's difficult.

If you've got nothing to work with, then that's very, you can't get off medication at that point. But if, in most people's cases, you can improve thyroid function tremendously. And I've had patients who have gotten off medication, who've reduced it, it fluctuates quite a lot, actually, day to day.

I'm actually not an endocrinologist, but I'm just a general practitioner but, people who are on I've worked with holistic endocrinologists and I've seen them how they work with medication, because I'm not the one that's prescribing the medication, and it can go up and down tremendously.

And a lot of it really, as you were saying, depends on stress levels, because you're going to go through thyroid hormone a lot more if you're having a rough day. It's just, your body's just going to need it. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, that's again, going back to the importance of monitoring our stress, calming our systems down and doing things like in my role that would be doing things like breath work, stretching restorative work, fascia work, all those things.

Those are important and powerful. And we forget, we get all wound up. I know I do because by nature I am not calm. I am  type A, driven. So I have to work against that nature. And I think that there's power in that. Thank you for bringing that up. I have to pick your brain. One more thing that is on my mind when it comes to let's just say developing a goiter.

You have you seen, cause this is what I really feel happened to me. And I want to pick your brain on this. So there's definitely a genetic component to goiters. My friends and my family. Okay. However,  I feel that it's no coincidence. that my goiter came out of the blue full blast, which I didn't notice. And all of a sudden I've got this big lump because of the COVID vaccine I took.

And I took one, one vaccine. And I think from what I've heard, and even heard from other people is that because I had that genetic component, this vaccine sped everything up. And that's how I believe it to be true. And I'm just going to pick your brain on that. What are your thoughts? It could be the vaccine, it could actually be the virus itself too, like I'm not, you could actually have your spike proteins and you can also have a look at antibodies and see what your numbers look like, because in general vaccines only create a little bit of a raise in a reaction in the body, but your natural immune system, the antibodies that are created are much, much higher.

So it might not even actually be the vaccine itself. It can be a reaction to the virus. So just to keep that in mind too. But yes, when your immune system gets hit by any virus, it doesn't even matter if it's COVID, it could be other things too. It just has a, tripling down effect that goes through the endocrine system too because keep in mind that has so much to do with your metabolism and if you're needing more resources to deal with any kind of infection in your body it's going to need it's it's going to get affected so and then also it gets burnt out really quickly because it's like It's like burning the candle at both ends and the thyroid starts to really struggle after you've been sick for a long time.

So it can be, it could be,  it can definitely be any kind of vaccine, any kind of virus.  So in your case, yeah, it could have been the vaccine. It's hard to say specifically because we don't have the technology to be able to pinpoint and say that's the vaccine. What was it? The fluoride? Was it the genetics?

Was it? What was it? We're not, we don't have that information, but it's possible. Yeah. No, that makes sense. And that's a fair answer. So I think that it's fair to say that it could have been the vaccine, it could have been a virus. It could have been Epstein Barr. I'm not saying for me personally, but it could be a virus, many like what you're saying, let's not eliminate the fact that it's maybe not always COVID, there's other things that can trigger. Yeah. That makes sense. Many. Yeah,  very cool. I just want to thank you so much for coming on today. This has been great. And I want to tell everybody listening today that we're going to include the links for Momoko's websites here. So if you want to learn more about her work, you can check the links in the description.

So I just want to thank you so much again for coming on. This has been wonderful. Thank you so much for having me. Excellent. So listen, I just want to sum it up for some of you listening today. If you  may be scared to hurt yourself, let's say while exercising or you're struggling with things like back pain, stenosis, spondylolisthesis, joint or muscle pain and stiffness, let me know if you are ready to live pain free and enjoy your favorite activities with confidence.

If you are, let's connect.  I have about 26 years of experience in helping people improve their health and alleviate back pain, stiffness, and other discomforts. So I'm ready to help you. You can schedule your consultation today just by clicking the link in this episode or reaching out to support@movement craft.com

and because you are a listener of the better than a pill podcast, this consultation is a special rate for you exclusively. So remember we release new episodes every other week on Wednesday. And I truly look forward to having you join me then.