Thyroid Questionnaire

I love this questionnaire from Dr. Hotze, another integrative physician. It gets to the heart of whether you should be tested for thyroid dysregulation, even if your conventional doc has dismissed your concerns. I also like to use these questions to build a tracker for how you improve with different therapies, as trial-and-error continues to be the best route for choosing the best thyroid optimization.

If the question addresses a concern that applies to you, record the number. When done, total the numbers.

1. Do you experience fatigue (4)?
2. Is your cholesterol elevated (4)?
3. Do you have difficulty losing weight (2)?
4. Do you have cold hands and feet (2)?
5. Are you sensitive to cold (2)?
6. Do you have difficulty thinking (2)?
7. Do you find it hard to concentrate (2)?
8. Do you have poor short-term memory (2)?
9. Are your moods depressed (2)?
10. Are you experiencing hair loss (2)?
11. Do you have fewer that one BM per day (2)?
12. Do you have dry skin (2)?
13. Do you have itchy skin in winter (1)?
14. Do you have fluid retention (2)?
15. Do you have recurrent headaches (1)?
16. Do you sleep restlessly (1)?
17. Do you experience afternoon fatigue (2)?
18. Are you tired when you awaken (2)?
19. Do you experience tingling in hands or feet (2)?
20. Have you had infertility or miscarriages (2)?
21. Do you have decreased sweating (2)?
22. Do you have muscle aches (2)?
23. Have you had recurrent infections (2)?
24. Do you have joint pain (2)?
25. Do you have thinning of your eyebrows or eyelashes (2)?

Score < 11? You are unlikely to have a thyroid problem.
Score 11-30? Low thyroid function is a possibility.
Score >30? Low thyroid function is probable.
Get tested if your score is > 11, including a free T3 and TSH. 

Get Your Organic Clothes - Today 50% Off

Today when I checked my Groupon San Francisco, I was thrilled to see a 50% off coupon for American Apparel, where you can get organic, domestically-produced and un-dyed cotton undies (men's and women's) plus organic shirts and tanks at decent prices.

As you may know, I'm preparing for my "Year of Living Organically" Challenge - start date Jan 1, 2011. I'm planning to measure my toxic load in December and measure it again one year later after wearing only organic clothing, mostly locally produced, and only organic skin products. We all know to eat organic as a way of reducing our exposure to pesticides and fertilizers in our food supply, but meanwhile we wear pesticides and fertilizers particularly in our cotton clothing such as jeans. And women in the US own on average 8 pairs of jeans.

I bought my darling husband, David Gottfied, some organic briefs. When I presented my find, he gave me a withering look: "You are not dragging me into this, you know."

As a friend stated, I'm going NRDC on you. I'm becoming a reluctant activist. I'm also looking for folks to join me - while I know a year-long commitment is daunting, consider joining me for a month or a weekend. I'm also looking for corporate sponsors in case you have some ideas for how best to support this endeavor. American Apparel, Donna Karan, are you reading this?

Botanical Alchemist | Organic Fashion Designer

Was surfing Etsy last weekend, minding my own business, when I came across a mystic from North Carolina named Andrea Crouse. Check her out. That's Andrea (above), modeling her Tulsi dress in organic stretchy wool.

Here she is (above) in her super foxy fall shirt made of organic hemp/cotton with pin tucks in all the right places around the waist. As many of you know, I've declared Mondays to be "Mystic Mondays" - help me find mystics like Andrea. They inspire me, feed my soul, and hopefully feed your soul too.

Planning a green wedding? Here's THE DRESS.... made of organic stretchy wool. Lusciousness. 

Now I'm always looking for what to wear to the office that doesn't disrupt my hormones.

How 'bout this number?

As Rachel Zoe would say: Bananas.

I asked Andrea quatro preguntas.

SG: What draws you to natural dyes?
Andrea Crouse:  I love the idea of working more directly with nature's color bounty and discovering different plants, insects, and minerals that can yield hues that are impossible to get with synthetic dyes. I was also drawn to them out of a desire to find the most eco-friendly way to impart color on my clothing. However, I have come to realize that each have there limitations and some naturals dyes can be very dangerous too.

SG: Have you noticed any health benefits since changing to nontoxic clothing?

Andrea Crouse: I started wearing almost all organic clothing when I was in my early 20s so I didn't really have any health problems that went away. However, one of the reasons I decided to work exclusively with organic fibers was my father being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis when I was a teenager. At that time they where linking the disease to prepubescent exposure to an environmental toxin. As a boy my father spent summers swimming in a Lake that was later found to have batteries dumped there during that time. I wasn't sure what I was going to do as an adult but I did know that it had to be as environmentally sustainable as possible.

Above: Andrea's Babydoll dress in hemp/organic cotton with the yummy pin tucks all the way 'round the waist.

SG: What are the challenges to working with organic fabrics and natural dyes?

Andrea Crouse: Because organic fabrics change from season to season much more then GMO or super controlled crops, it is impossible for me to be super consistent with my colors. I have noticed the same fabric will take the same dye in different ways from one roll to the next.

The type of clothing I can make is limited to what is possible with plant fibers.....however, this is a wonderful challenge that I enjoy! I may also be adding leather and sheepskin from local organic farms...hopefully by next Fall!

SG: Leather and sheepskin? Bring it! What are the benefits of working with organic fibers and natural dyes?

Andrea Crouse: I know that the materials I am working with are safe for my family and clients and of course the beautiful planet we call home.  I'm providing green jobs for my community.  There are always new and amazing advances in the organic world that I get to incorporate into my designs while at the same time working with these materials is deeply connected to human history and a time when natural materials where all we had.

SG: OK, friends. You heard it here first. Now, I need to get me some organic undies. Ideas? Andrea, can you hook me up?

Healing Mantra "Let Go" by HH

 
Getting ready to sign out for Shabbat but one juicy learning before I go. I learned today about the benefit of the Tryambakam mantra for learning to let go of something that's in the way of your realizing divine capacity, and wanted to share it with you. Here it is chanted so movingly by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso.

महामृत्युंजय मंत्र

This mantra is also known as the Maha Mrityunjaya Mantra. Learn it in Sanskrit and chant it to yourself, or do what this busy mom does: listen intently while going about your day.

The intention is that it helps you restore life and let go of what needs to be released to move to the next step.

Here is the simple translation, from Wikipedia:

We Meditate on the Three-eyed reality which nourishes and increases the sweet fullness of life. Like a cucumber from its stem may we be separated ("liberated"), not from immortality but from death.

Word to Word Meaning of Maha Mrityunjaya Mantra

• Tryambakam = the three-eyed one (accusative case)
• Yajamahe = We worship, adore, honor, revere
• Sugandhim = sweet smelling, fragrant (accusative case)
• Pushti = A well-nourished condition, thriving, prosperous, fullness of life
• Vardhanam = One who nourishes, strengthens, causes to increase (in health, wealth, well-being); who gladdens, exhilarates, and restores health; a good gardener
• Urvarukam = cucumber(accusative case)
• Iva = like, just as
• Bandhanan = stem (of the gourd);(ablative case "from the stem"- the ending is actually long a then -d which changes to n/anusvara through sandhi)
• Mrityor = From death
• Mukshiya = Free us, liberate us
• Ma = not
• Amritat = Immortality, emancipation

Here's the transliteration, for the chanters among us:

tryambakaṃ yajāmahe sugandhiṃ puṣṭi-vardhanam

urvārukam iva bandhanān mṛtyor mukṣīya māmṛtāt

Happy emancipation!

Natural Dye Workshop -

Just in case you're interested - this is part of my documentation process!

Join us January 30, 2010 for the next Natural Dye Buffet! Add yourself to our email list for the details.

Special thanks to Rebecca Burgess and the talented, soulful women who joined us yesterday in my yard!



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Alchemist Next Door: Create Clothes That Heal

Hokahay! Today is a fine day to dye - natural dye, that is, in the back yard of our LEED-Platinum green home with a group of intrepid women gathered to learn about natural dye and integrative medicine. Our group - moms, artists, gardeners, professors, activists - learned first about the toxic and completely unsustainable conventional clothing industry, and then dived deep into another model. That model, introduced to me by Eco-Artist Rebecca Burgess, is about creating clothes that heal, clothes that are radically local, and rather than harming you through your skin and also the workers who make them, they leave no impact, no residue, no or very little carbon footprint.

Above you see the range of color that Rebecca has gathered locally from plants such as black walnut, horsetail, indigo, cosmos, sage, and eucalyptus.

We made a vat of dried cosmos and added boiling water. Let sit for a few minutes and it's ready - rather like tea....

I love the black walnuts, gathered by urban foraging (below).

Here are some of the menu items in our dye buffet: horsetail, madrone, coffeeberry, logwood, black walnut, cosmos and coreopsis.

We dyed some local wool in Logwood (below).

Here is some silk long underwear and a scarf from the Logwood dye vat that I did.

We're planning our next workshop on January 30. Join our mailing list for more details. This will be a workshop for those who want more advanced training or want to learn the basics.

Note to Self: Stop Attacking Thyroid

Do you make antibodies against your thyroid? 38% of patients do.

Many of us eye our thyroid with great malice as we bounce around with our TSHs and thyroid symptoms owing to autoimmune thyroiditis (also known as Hashimoto's, named after the Japanese man who described it years ago). Turns out we may be eye-ing the wrong system. It's actually the overzealous immune system that is to blame, and your thyroid is the innocent victim of the infiltrating immune infantry.

Really? How often are we talkin’?

Just read a study of women who came to an integrative medicine practice in Texas – 38% of them, many with no symptoms yet, had positive antibodies to their thyroid.

Yikers. We’re talkin’ common. If you’ve been diagnosed with hyperthyroidism that later normalized or have a TSH that is all over the map despite steady treatment, consider this possibility.  Having an elevation in your thyroid antibodies goes by many names – autoimmune thyroiditis, Hashimoto’s (after the Japanese dude who first described it), chronic lymphocytic thyroiditis (which sounds a little too close to lymphoma for my taste).

Break It Down for Me, Doc: What Does It Really Feel Like?

What I see most often among women with autoimmune thyroiditis is palpitations (due to their thyroid getting stimulated by the antibodies). Some women have a lovely yin/yang flip between depression/fat/exhausted/no libido/can’t crap to anxiety/can’t sleep/palpitations. Others have swelling of their thyroid – diffuse, mild enlargement as the gland fills with white blood cells called lymphocytes.

Gender Inequity

Like most autoimmune conditions, when your immune system gets into overdrive and starts attacking your own tissues as if they were the enemy, women are disproportionately affected.  This applies to celiac, lupus, Grave’s, and rheumatoid arthritis, to name a few. In fact, we outnumber men with autoimmune disease by 3:1. Why is this so? First thing that comes to my mind is our estrogen/progesterone balance and estrogen dominance – turns out estrogen dominance, too much estradiol compared to progesterone, is a key cause of autoimmunity. Pregnancy also appears to put us at greater risk – perhaps because of our exposure of our immune system to our fetus’ cells.

Who You Calling Titer?

Do you know your antibody count (or titer, your level of thyroid peroxidase antibodies, known affectionately as TPO, and thyroglobulin antibodies)? Do you have a program either to keep the titer low or lower the elevated titer you have?

Say you have a TPO of 500… let’s explore ways to get the titer down, which will make your thyroid ride far more manageable and predictable. 

Drop That TPO

How do you get your immune system to back off, which we can measure as decreased antibody count? Rather than stop it in its tracks, as we do in conventional medicine with big guns like steroids, I prefer to look at root causes and focus on reducing inflammation. Inflammation = bad.

One strategy that’s incredibly effective is simple: give thyroid hormone. In a study of folks with autoimmune thyroiditis and normal TSH, half got thyroid medication and the other half got nothing’. Those who got thyroid treatment had lower antibody counts after one year.

There are many additional strategies, many aimed at trying to get your immune system to chill the F out. Here’s how they roll.

• Nutrition: Go gluten-free & avoid other food allergens. Test for food allergens if you’re uncertain either in blood or with the poor woman’s test: the elimination diet. Gluten is a common allergen and causes autoimmune responses in many people. Here’s the data: 30% of folks with autoimmune thyroiditis have gluten sensitivity. To read more on this – google “Leaky Gut Syndrome.”
• Hormones: Guess what? Endocrine probs lead to overactive immune function. Correct estrogen dominance as the main strategy here.
• Adrenals: I know you're shocked to read that high cortisol makes your immune system go into overdrive. Buffer your cortisol - get in the normal range and stay there as a general life strategy - and your muffin top improves along with your thyroid numbers.
• Supplements: Selenium at doses of 200mcg per day has been shown both to reduce antibodies and to return them to normal in some people. 

For more details on how to diagnose autoimmune thyroiditis, check out Mary Shomon’s superb books and website. Here’s one link.

TTFN - time to take my selenium.