Healing Hashimoto’s Disease with Andrea Nakayama

In this episode of The Dr. Hedberg Show, I interviewed Andrea Nakayama in a discussion about strategies for healing Hashimoto's disease.  We talked about her "3 Tiers to Epigenetic Mastery" and how they relate to Hashimoto's disease and thyroid health.  Within the 3 tiers we discussed stress, gut health, infections, micronutrient deficiencies, adverse childhood experiences, SIBO, reproductive hormones, goitrogens, iodine, and all the various diets that people are following these days.

Andrea is a clinician but also a Hashimoto's patient so it was a real pleasure to get her insight and expertise on healing Hashimoto's disease.

Dr. Hedberg: Well, welcome everyone to "The Dr. Hedberg Show." This is Dr. Hedberg and I'm really looking forward to my conversation today with Andrea Nakayama. And she actually had me on her show, "The 15-minute Matrix," talking about infections and Hashimoto's disease. And she's extremely knowledgeable. She knows a lot about thyroid issues and Hashimoto's, which we're gonna get into today. So Andrea, welcome to the show.

Andrea: Thank you so much, Dr. Hedberg. I'm so pleased to be here.

Dr. Hedberg: So for the people who don't know that much about you, why don't you just give everyone a little bit about your background and what you're working on these days in functional medicine?

Andrea: Yeah, thanks for asking. I'm a functional-medicine nutritionist, and I've created a curriculum for practitioners where I train into the theories of a functional-nutrition approach, both the science and the art of working in what I consider to be the gap in functional-medicine or holistic-medicine approaches. So I have a school called Functional Nutrition Lab. We have about 4,000 graduates in over 65 countries at this point. And we also have a virtual clinic where we work with patients directly and serve, again, the underserved population. I think of the people we serve as the big bigs. They have big health issues and they've already made a big effort, sometimes working with the top doctors around the country. So that's the work that I do that I feel really passionate about. And I myself, I'm a patient. I have Hashimoto's. I have had quite a life journey that led me to uncovering my own autoimmune disease. And I manage it so that I can live the best life possible.

Dr. Hedberg: Let's jump into the what you call the three tiers of epigenetic mastery. And so, this is a kind of a system or approach to healing and functional medicine. So can you walk everyone through this approach that you've created?

Andrea: Yeah, absolutely. I definitely see, like I said, that there is a gap in functional medicine. And I am completely in service to the functional medicine model. I really believe that we have to see the person as a whole. We have to look at the roots. We have to work in therapeutic partnership. And we have to see through systems, a systems-based approach, both biological systems and understanding the web of interconnections, but also a systematic approach that allows us to work with those who are sick and not getting better. So if we honor the truth of bio individuality and see every single individual as unique in their own way, not just a diagnosis like Hashimoto's or like I experienced with my husband having a brain tumor, you know, he was treated like a brain tumor, if we're to see each individual and each patient as unique, we still need a systematic approach. Otherwise, we're constantly in the dark looking for solutions.

And that's why I created the three tiers to epigenetic mastery. I saw it as a way to teach into honoring the individuality of each patient. So the three tiers are, tier one, what I call the non-negotiables. Tier two, deficiency to sufficiency. And tier three, dismantling the dysfunction. And what I see in functional medicine is that we often go to the tier three approach. We often want to skip to the sexy infection or the thing that's happening in the body that may...