A Woman's Blueprint To Thyroid Health: Why You're Still Tired, Gaining Weight & Why So Many Women Are Being Misdiagnosed Ft. McCall McPherson

**Lauryn Bosstick** (0:00)
I am going to give you the playbook to a woman's thyroid. We have McCall McPherson. She is a pioneer, physician, associate, and entrepreneur specializing in thyroid, hormone, and metabolic health. And in this episode, she is going to walk you through all the things that you need to know about your thyroid. McCall, welcome to the show.
Okay, I found you on Instagram. Late one night, I was scrolling, you popped up into my feed, and your frequency and what you were saying was something I was so attracted to. And I personally have so many questions about my own thyroid. So I invited you on the show.

**McCall McPherson** (0:36)
To tell you how excited I was to see you slide into my DMs, I can't even. So happy to be here.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (0:41)
I love sharing information that I'm curious about with a bunch of different people. It's one of my passions. And for this episode, I did kick Michael off because we're talking about women's thyroid. I felt that was fitting.

**McCall McPherson** (0:54)
I think that's totally fair.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (0:55)
Okay. Okay. Let's get in to what a thyroid is. Because I think you'd be surprised how many people don't really even understand what it is or what it does.

**McCall McPherson** (1:07)
Right.
So it's a little, everyone always says butterfly shaped gland on the lower part of your neck. It kind of sits below the Adam's apple and it is our master hormone. It affects everything in our whole body from our metabolism, to our energy, to our mood, to our hormones, to our skin, our hair, our digestion, our libido, everything.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (1:31)
What do you think people are getting wrong about the thyroid when you see content being made on social media?

**McCall McPherson** (1:38)
Lauryn, we could unpack so much. But I think a couple of things. There's a lot of talk about reversing hypothyroidism and reversing Hashimoto's. And I think people get those conversations confused because there are two different things.
One is quite reversible. One is actually pretty hard to reverse or sometimes impossible, often impossible. And people are confusing those terminologies and it can cost people their health.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (2:08)
Which one can you reverse out of both of them? Because I'm curious for my own self.

**McCall McPherson** (2:14)
So Hashimoto's can be reversed. I've been in remission for over 12 years.
It is an autoimmune disease. Medicine traditionally, my traditional training, didn't look at Hashimoto's as being able to be reversed. But it actually can be. And it's measurable. It's objective on labs. And you can put it into remission. Minimally, you can reduce your antibodies, which is incredibly valuable in and of itself.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (2:40)
And why can't you reverse hypothyroidism?

**McCall McPherson** (2:42)
Okay, so let's talk about it. 80 to 90 percent of hypothyroidism, so low-functioning thyroid, is due to Hashimoto's. So think about it. Hashimoto's, an autoimmune disease, your body gets confused. It thinks your thyroid gland is a foreign invader. It starts attacking your thyroid gland and eroding away the tissue that secretes hormones and replaces it with scurry inflammatory tissue that doesn't work as well. It doesn't secrete hormones as well.
And that is what leads to hypothyroidism. So let's say you have Hashimoto's. Let's say I wave a magic wand right now and I reverse your Hashimoto's, you're in remission, but you had it for 10 years.
You had 10 years of your body attacking your thyroid gland, again, eroding away that tissue and it's not going to grow back just because you're not further attacking it, you won't magically regrow that tissue. So you're left with persistent hypothyroidism.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (3:40)
So how do I know if I have hypothyroidism or Hashimoto's? Would that have been in the blood test that I took?

**McCall McPherson** (3:47)
For sure. So you can test both of those. So Hashimoto's is looked at in blood work as TPO or thyroid peroxidase antibodies and thyroglobulin antibodies.
Hypothyroidism is looked at ideally with a full thyroid panel that happens less than 4% of the time, but people need TSH, free T4, free T3, reverse T3. To look at hypothyroidism, adequately really be able to diagnose you and give you an understanding of what's going on.

**Lauryn Bosstick** (4:16)
So if someone is listening and they're on Synthroid, how do they get off if they want to get off or can they even get off?

**McCall McPherson** (4:24)
Good question. I would say that is a case by case basis. Okay, so I'd have to know what their labs looked like before they started Synthroid and if they did in fact have Hashimoto's.
There are subsets of people that didn't have Hashimoto's that kind of have what I call a pure conversion disorder. Basically, they have difficulty activating their hormones, but they produce enough hormones. Often those people can successfully come off of medication. People with very, very mild hypothyroidism can come off of medication, but I want to reframe the conversation a little bit.