Thyroid & Menopause Madness

DEDICATION

I want to thank and dedicate this book to the many caring women who have so graciously shared their pain, stories, and healing victories with me. These committed women have not been afraid to change, implement, and go the distance, despite tremendous pain and fatigue, while getting to the root cause of their health issues. You are true heroes; I admire, love and respect you. Each of you has inspired me to finally get my message into book form, in order to share the trials and adventures of how to regain hope, vitality, and passion.

I also offer my gratitude and appreciation to Dr. Datis Kharrazian, for his revolutionary healing protocols for Hashimoto’s disease and hypothyroidism. My deepest thanks for his tireless work that has enabled me to better serve and enhance the lives of my clients.

Most importantly, I dedicate this book to my husband Jim, who has provided tremendous support, advice, and assistance. Without his patience, love, and inspiration while I was writing this book, this would not have been possible.

FOREWORD

Here’s the bad news about living in our modern world: staying well as we age can be complicated. Even with the best of intentions, life—with all its inherent stresses—takes over and me-time essentially disappears as children, job and significant others get top billing. Before you know it, entropy sets in and we begin feeling our age. In the blink of an eye, we are at the midway point and beyond. Unless you lead a charmed life, your mind, body and spirit have taken a bit of a beating. As Dr. Joni says so well, midlife begins mooching your mojo!

Here’s the good news: there’s hope! The human mind, body and spirit are remarkably resilient and there is a way back to health for you. Science has come a long way in understanding the many ways in which our physical health and emotional well-being begin to suffer as we age. When you truly understand these underlying causes, you can begin to correct them one at a time and the healing process begins. More importantly, so does your joy of living.

These foundational principles for healing come from the game-changing new medical field called functional medicine, where we treat causes and not symptoms. Because every one of us is biochemically and genetically unique, these differences must be taken into account or you will become just another victim of the broken medical system that tries to pound a square peg into a round hole by prescribing medications that cover up symptoms instead of treating the underlying causes.

Fortunately for you, Dr. Joni Labbe does a remarkable job of translating these powerful principles into a clear and individualized path that you can start today to begin reclaiming your physical health and emotional well-being. And she does so in a delightful and entertaining way that makes it truly fun to learn and grow and get well again.

Even more importantly, Dr. Labbe’s concise, caring and compassionate approach comes not only from an academic interest in the subject, but also from her own personal struggle with autoimmune disease. She has been where you are, felt what you feel and knows the joy you will experience when you too become well again. Dr. Labbe is a remarkable healer and in the true sense of the word, she wants you to become whole again. As you explore these powerful healing principles and apply them to your life, you will feel her concern, her passion and her heartfelt desire to truly help you feel well again. I cannot think of a better guide to take you on this journey of healing than Dr. Labbe. Enjoy your way back to health and vitality.

Neil F. Neimark, M.D.

Body/Soul Connection Newsletters

PREFACE

I am sure you have been seeing a number of books on women’s health addressing topics from hormone replacement to diet and life style, but are you seeing books that address all these topics as they relate to one another? Most are only dealing with part of the problem. If you are currently experiencing poor health you should be asking yourself: Am I having an autoimmune problem? Have I been over stressing my adrenal glands? Am I eating too much sugar? Why am I feeling so tired? If you are seeking the full perspective in healing, this book provides answers in a concise, easy to read format and includes references to get additional help, if needed.

All too often in our practice we are seeing the depression of midlife, the weight gain, and the hormonal imbalances. With 20 years in family practice I can attest to this and that the present orthodox approach that prescribes anti-depressants, cholesterol medication, and synthetic hormones to make one feel better clearly are not working. In our society we are seeing a growing dissatisfaction with doctors addressing symptoms and not the underlying causes; and there is a shift in the medical care model to better address the root cause of the health problems women are suffering from. The Internet has made this information much more accessible and the timing for Dr. Labbe’s book could not be better.

The health problems of today are multi-factorial and Dr. Joni Labbe is giving you a concise approach to unravel the complex problems that are not solved with medication. Each aspect of common health problems for women are addressed individually and then tied back together into a life style approach you can live with. Her approach makes sense, the evidence supports it, and the results are certain to get your health and life back on track.

There is so much information packed into the following pages, so hold onto your hat and don’t hesitate to get started. It may feel like you are sacrificing much in the beginning, but once you begin seeing the benefits for yourself and your family, the changes are self-perpetuating. Get ready to make a new life for yourself and begin feeling the zest for life those before you are already enjoying.

Juergen Winkler, MD

Quantum Functional Medicine, Carlsbad, CA

INTRODUCTION

WHY IS MID-LIFE MOOCHING YOUR MOJO?

Vaginal atrophy, she snorted with indignation. What god-awful thing is that?

I was sitting across the desk from a 53-year-old postmenopausal woman. She was in my office seeking help for fatigue, low libido, hair loss, weight gain, and insomnia. Lauren had been to many doctors looking for ways to cope with these issues.

I’m not done living! Lauren despaired. Why do so many doctors keep making me feel like a loser?

Like a lot of us who live into our 40s and 50s and beyond, Lauren was not lazy, crazy, or finished. But doctors had made her feel that way. Just because every woman goes through menopause does not lessen the devastating impact it can have on our health and lives. Few women talk about it, and if they do, it’s often the butt of a joke or casually dismissed.

Transitioning into menopause can be a nasty slap in the face for many of us. Here we are buzzing along through life. The kids are finally at an age where we can complete a thought. We’re hitting our stride in our career, perhaps at last earning a respectable income and professional respect.

And then what happens? Bam! Suddenly the periods come every two weeks in torrential gushes, or whenever they please. Hot flashes threaten to ignite our thinning hair, and now we need to shave our faces? Just when we’re commanding respect at work, a mysterious fog shrouds our brains, slowing function to a crawl. Memory is contained on Post-it Notes and iPhone calendar alerts. Strange ‘demons’ periodically possess us, and we yell, cry, or both for no particular reason. Sex hurts, but who wants to do that anymore anyway? It’s like the Sahara Desert down there. And sleep. Oh, we long for precious sleep, but here we are wide-awake in the wee hours of the morning, night after night. Sneeze, laugh, or chug some water and we’re wetting our underwear. New layers of fat turn up in the oddest places (back fat, really?), taking the fun out of wearing clothes. Weird things start popping up at checkups, like high blood pressure. To add insult to injury, the hair salon recommends a product for aging hair, and the eye doctor says it’s time for bifocals.

And here’s the thing – we cope, we manage, we smile, we pretend we are OK. We pick up the pieces of our health and carry on. We look perfectly normal while shopping at the grocery store, and yet it seems like our body is slowly disintegrating, slowly developing strange new symptoms. How concerned do we need to be? Will anything help? Doctors tend to dismiss our complaints with prescriptions for antidepressants, anti-anxiety meds, and sleeping pills. These solutions rarely help. But we know; deep down we know this is not who we are, this is not how it’s supposed to be. This is NOT OK!

If men went through menopause, a national emergency would have been declared long ago! Hundreds of millions of dollars poured into research, and the topic would be headline news. Every hospital would have a menopause wing; millions would bravely participate in menopause fun runs and proudly wear little menopause ribbons, blood-red maybe. Retired football players would do menopause ads on TV. We’d talk about it with a serious tone at Starbucks. But no, as women we are too often dismissed, ignored, or even ridiculed. Sometimes our husbands divorce us, or doctors send us on our way with an ever expanding list of prescriptions.

I’m painting a pretty dire picture, even though I left out a lot of symptoms. I know that a woman can suffer from extreme menopausal symptoms and still patch together a pretty decent life. Plenty do, because women are incredibly strong by the time we hit midlife. It’s kind of like labor and birth. Only this time the pain and discomfort are drawn out over many years. Older women in our lives pat us on the back with a compassionate smile and assure us we will get through this. Things will get better, we’re told, but they never really do for a lot of women.

Here’s the thing, although menopause is perfectly normal, suffering grievously through this transition and losing your health is not. Not for Lauren, not for me, and not for you. This is largely a modern malady. When the ovaries wind down and eventually stop making estrogen, the adrenal glands are designed to pick up the slack and produce the hormones we need to function normally. The problem is that by the time Lauren and many other American women hit their 40s, their adrenal glands (two glands that sit atop the kidneys and look like walnuts), are now like two little burnt pieces of toast. Why? The adrenal glands manage stress, and the poor things have been worked to the bone. By midlife they are tuckered out, barely managing their most basic functions, much less able to take on something as significant as estrogen production. So estrogen gets moved to the bottom of the to-do list, the ovaries have a going-out-of-business sale, and the many estrogen dependent tissues in your body, particularly your brain, are left gasping at a dry well.

It doesn’t have to be this way. My friend Lisa says menopause is when the ‘chickens come home to roost.’ All the transgressions of youth come back to haunt you during the transition into menopause. You can no longer get away with never sleeping, eating like a teenager, and thinking exercise is only for the spunky spandex girls at the gym. It’s time now to do the work that’s needed to take care of your body.

After my visit with Lauren, I thought back to my own midlife journey. I had been enjoying a long, rewarding career as a chiropractor specializing in nutrition. I had earned my degree as a Board Certified Clinical Nutritionist. I even hosted a two-hour talk radio show, Healthier Way with Dr. Labbe on a San Diego radio station, and enjoyed my community of family and friends. But there were small insidious changes that I chalked up to age, or menopause, or life. I had a hard time taking 10 lbs off even though I worked out (before going into the office) and ate right. I had a little brain fog: why did I walk into the room, where did I park the car? Sleep was restless, and I kept waking up at 3:00 am. It was time to get real with myself. I had put on extra stubborn weight and felt foggy-brained ever since going through menopause. My memory wasn’t as sharp as it used to be, and I got tired more easily. I thought it was just age, or that I was doing too much.

As I do with all my clients, I run blood work on myself every year. In 2007, in my early 50s, the blood report showed the presence of antibodies. In that moment, I felt my stomach drop to my knees. I knew exactly what this meant; it was a result I had seen often on the blood work reports of my patients. You could have bowled me over with a feather! I was in the health and wellness world. I walked the talk! I took supplements, exercised, managed my stress, and practiced my faith.

How could I have been doing everything right and have a test result like this? I had developed an autoimmune hypothyroidism condition called Hashimoto’s disease. This is an autoimmune disease in which the thyroid gland is attacked by a variety of cell and antibody-mediated immune processes. Hashimoto’s often results in hypothyroidism with bouts of hyperthyroidism. But that was only part of the puzzle! I also learned, through additional testing, that I have Celiac disease, an autoimmune intolerance to gluten.

After I picked myself off the floor and licked my wounds, I went on a quest to find out how I could live big with two autoimmune diseases. I read books by Mary Shoman, a magnificent patient advocate and prolific writer on thyroid and autoimmune issues. It was an honor to study with the brilliant Dr. Datis Kharrizan, and I leaned in to learn all I could: for my own quality of life and to empower others with what worked (and what didn’t).

This is how my journey started, desperate for answers for my own survival and curious about all the pieces of the puzzle. How could I get to the root cause of the problem, and how could I implement meaningful changes in practical ways? Over time the process that you will learn from this book emerged. It’s the process of identifying all the pieces of your health puzzle and then putting them together in a way that enables a healthy, vibrant you. This process has brought energy back to my life, and to the lives of the clients I’ve had the privilege to serve.

Scared into Action

That blood test scared me into action. As a clinician I know about autoimmune disease and have seen what it does to people. One autoimmune disease often leads to another, and then another. If Hashimoto’s disease is left untreated, you can eventually find yourself dealing with pernicious anemia, type 1 diabetes, or multiple sclerosis; all very real possibilities that I’ve learned about first-hand in my practice. I immediately went on a strict gluten-free diet because of what I had learned studying with Dr. Datis Kharrazian, DHSc, DC, MS; author of Why Do I Still Have Thyroid Symptoms? and Why Isn’t My Brain Working? I also applied what I learned from Dr. Bob Marshall, founder of Premiere Labs and Quantum Reflex Analysis, and Sam Queen, research director of The Institute for Health Realities. I consolidated all this knowledge to put together a supplement and diet regimen for myself based on my lab tests and symptoms. I was on a mission to get back the mojo that my menopause had mooched. This has been my passion and what I have specialized in since my diagnosis in 2007.

It can be difficult to achieve vibrant health, and it takes time. Discovering I had Hashimoto’s was just the first piece of the puzzle. I also discovered that Celiac disease, hormonal imbalances, gut health, and numerous other factors contributed to my symptoms. It took some time to find all the pieces, but once I did I had an overall picture of what my body needed for optimum health. Then, all that was left was to commit to doing whatever it took to achieve it.

The first 30 days required some real discipline, but I lost 10 pounds in the first six weeks and my brain fog lifted. I developed a greater sense of well-being, and was sleeping better, and waking refreshed. This was quite motivating and made it easier to stick to the diet and the protocol. However, midlife offers no free passes—we spent all those in our youth. Every day I have to pay attention to my diet, engage in physical activity, manage stress, and take a few key supplements (not a whole kitchen counter full). I will need to keep this up for the rest of my life, because I’ve learned this is what my body requires to maintain vibrant health. There is no cure for Hashimoto’s/low thyroid, no magic bullet, but in this book you’ll learn how to successfully piece together your own health, easily manage your condition, get your life back, and live big until God calls you home.

I exercise four to five times a week, pray every morning for wisdom and every night for forgiveness. Gluten and junk foods no longer tempt