Video Transcript:
Today’s question comes from John C., “How can you tell if hot flashes are hormonal acidosis or Lyme co-infection issues?” John, that is such a great question and it is honestly very hard to tell, many times, where the sources of hot flashes are coming from within your body.
Test…Don’t Guess
Honestly, what I recommend is to test and not guess. And to also set up appointments with those sort of clinicians that might be working with you in hormones, or maybe your primary care provider that’s working with you with Lyme. But, to ensure that we evaluate the body’s metrics in a whole assortment of things.
Get a Full Hormonal Panel
I’m going to recommend a few tests that you might want to have run. The first, if you’re not sure if it’s hormonal, let’s identify your hormones, a full hormone panel. That involves assessing your reproductive hormones, and for men and women, this includes estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone.
Many men think that they might not be producing estrogen and progesterone and in fact, they are. Just not at the levels like women and their cycles are very different. But, you are testing that. Sometimes, men will present with elevations in estrogen. There are three types of estrogens that we want to test. Those are some things to consider that might be behind hot flashes.
Get A Full Thyroid Panel
Another value to have tested is your thyroid, a full thyroid panel. Let’s rule out Hashimoto’s, because your thyroid gland, if it is in a hypo state, that can cause you to feel cold and hot in different parts of your body. So, you might have cold hands or feet, but you might be feeling really hot in the torso. If you’re feeling a torso hot flash, it might be thyroid-related.
Get Your C-Reactive Protein Value: An Inflammatory Biomarker
Another value to address is c-reactive protein. This is just a really good biomarker of any inflammatory state within the body. That helps us understand, are we dealing with maybe an infection or are we dealing with any type of underlying disease or inflammatory state that we need to address?
Sometimes, c-reactive protein is run by cardiologists, because it’s often a biomarker for heart disease. But, it can be also a marker of inflammation in a knee, or arthritis, or a Lyme scenario. Get that value for sure.
Test Your Cortisol Levels
Then, another hormone panel to have run is to test your cortisol saliva. At least, you have four, we call it a diurnal cortisol level. Some clinicians are running this and clinicians like myself, we do a lot of tests where you can order them online, have them shipped to your home. Then, you can run the labs and mail them out to the lab. They actually provide you results very quickly.
Cortisol is one of these things where cortisol imbalances can lead to hot flashes and night sweats. That can be also an underlying factor for thyroid imbalance, for hormone imbalance. So, evaluating your cortisol in the morning, at lunch, at dinner, and right before bed is a really good way to evaluate your circadian rhythm.
That’s the rhythm of your natural waking. You’re kind of at your highest energy cortisol point and then you should be dipping and slowly going to your lowest point at night. A lot of folks, when we test cortisol, it doesn’t work out that way. That’s okay, it’s just the sign that your body’s stress response mechanism is heightened. And often, that is heightened due to underlying physiological, biochemical imbalances. An infection, a flare. Identifying that source is really critical.
Could It Be Acidosis?
Now, when it comes to acidosis, labs, kidney values, liver values, enzyme values, and also running a urinalysis will be helpful. Also, if you’re not sure if it’s acidosis and we might be dealing with some underlying diabetes or insulin resistance, let’s make sure you’re testing your glucose every day. Know that when you test your glucose, so that’s your blood sugar value, when you test in the morning, that’s ideally going to be your highest peak. But, if your cortisol is imbalanced, your insulin and your blood sugar levels are going to near the cortisol spikes.
It’s not uncommon for folks to test their blood sugar levels throughout the day and get all sorts of random numbers. Sometimes really high, sometimes moderate levels, or normal levels. It’s best to test several times throughout the day, ideally in the morning, right around mid-afternoon, right before dinner, and right before bed. That’ll match up with your cortisol values and then you can identify if cortisol is driving your blood sugar imbalances, that might be leading to hot flashes or kind of a heat experience. Or, if there’s something else going on. I like to use our labs to rule out things as well.
Testing for Lyme Disease
Now, with Lyme, this is a whole other ballgame when it comes to evaluations – evaluating Lyme and testing. One of the things that I’ve found in referring patients to specific Lyme specialties is to identify if there’s a spare heat, any type of bacteria present in the blood, identify and evaluate by live blood cell analysis.
That’s a little different than the standard testing that we see. Even then, some testing resources are not as comprehensive as they need to be. If it is Lyme and we’ve identified that, then there’s a possibility that the Lyme could be impacting the cortisol. It could be impacting the reproductive hormones.
Test…and Then Retest
Make sure you do a full analysis and don’t rely on Dr. Google. Really get the evaluation of where your body stands and then, retest in six months. Do whatever you need to do. Take the measures to work whatever protocols provided for you. Definitely, if you need any resources, I’d love to help.
Don’t hesitate, John, to contact me if you need any additional resources or you want to review your labs. I do that with a lot of patients, where they’ll book a 30-minute appointment and we’ll review the lab results. That can be very helpful.
An Offer for the Organixx Community
One of the really exciting things that we have here at Organixx, in my partnership with Organixx, is I’m offering all Organixx consumers and customers a special discount to schedule an appointment with me. There will be information on how to access this special discount.
John, for you or anybody else that wants me to review your labs, I’d love to do that. We can put together a very personalized, very tailored, specific protocol to meet your needs. Really address the hot flashes and identify where are they coming from. Because identification, utilization of labs, and putting together a very specific, comprehensive plan is really the true path to healing.
Thanks, John, for asking that question. I hope that’s been helpful and I look forward to hopefully working with you soon.
When your organs are working hard to detoxify, you want the purest form of iodine possible to help them work more efficiently. It only makes sense to use an organic form that’s totally natural and free of chemicals. Organixx Iodine is one of the only formulas that is USDA Certified Organic. It’s a pure, nascent form of iodine which your thyroid can use immediately.
Video Transcript:
Our next question comes from Rosemary. Rosemary asks, “I need to ask you about thyroid issues. I have had radioactive iodine done, and that affected my thyroid. And now I have to take thyroid medication for life. Is taking iodine, like from Organixx, recommended?
Thanks, Rosemary.”
Okay. Rosemary, this is a really great question because it depends, and I hate to be noncommittal, but this is really where, individually, we need to address your body, your thyroid health, and the overall balance of minerals and key nutrients necessary for your body, and your iodine receptors to be open to absorbing, assimilating, and using iodine in the most effective way. And this is really, really critical.
It’s not so much about whether the iodine from Organixx will work or not in terms of its potency. It’s a highly powerful, potent product. But what we need to do is we need to make sure that your thyroid gland will not be overwhelmed or charged up in a way that we have a situation that we call the thyroid storm.
And basically, that means we over-activate the thyroid function. And if you are dealing with hypothyroidism, it could further exacerbate it. Particularly, when you go off of the iodine or within three to four weeks of taking it, you kind of have an increase, you’re feeling great and then we have a crash. We want to avoid that. So, there are a few things that I recommend with my patients.
First: Test Your Iodine Levels
The first, most critical thing is to actually do a test. So, I recommend for my patients that we test their iodine levels. This is a blood-spot-based test that you can easily do at home or call your clinician and have your iodine levels assessed. Similarly, we want to get essential elements like selenium and chromium. We want to identify the kind of friends, best friends, if you will, in the body of iodine that help iodine be absorbed the best. And what we find is chromium and selenium both equally need to be in an optimal state for iodine receptivity to be optimized, but also to be articulated in the most healthy way.
Consult with Your Healthcare Professional
So I will tell you this, I do have patients who have had thyroid removal, they’ve had their thyroids radiated, they’ve even had nodules or partial removal of the thyroid gland, and are able to take iodine, but it is a case-by-case basis. It’s not something you want to do alone.
Regularly Monitor Your Iodine Levels
And you definitely want to monitor very closely, when you increase your iodine levels, that you have labs drawn at minimum every three months. And that is a recommendation for anybody who is going to be taking iodine that maybe has a challenged or an imbalanced thyroid, that state of that imbalance you can invigorate your thyroid in a healthy way with iodine, but we need to monitor that. We need to closely monitor it so that we don’t get in a situation where your iodine might trigger a thyroid storm or even exacerbate your situation.
I hope that helps. Let us know how that goes.
When your organs are working hard to detoxify, you want the purest form of iodine possible to help them work more efficiently. It only makes sense to use an organic form that’s totally natural and free of chemicals. Organixx Iodine is one of the only formulas that is USDA Certified Organic. It’s a pure, nascent form of iodine which your thyroid can use immediately.
