Today we’ll start the topic of Hashimoto’s thyroiditis or Hashi, which causes over 90% of all the cases of hypothyroidism in the US and other developed countries. To put it another way, most people with low thyroid have Hashimoto’s.
The first thing you should know is that Hashimoto’s is not the fault of your thyroid gland, but of the immune system. Another thyroid condition called Graves disease that causes overactive thyroid, is also caused by the immune system. The thyroid is an innocent victim. It’s your own immune system that attacks the thyroid cells, attacks thyroglobulin, the thyroid peroxidase (TPO), TSH receptors and other structures. Antibodies against TPO indicate the severity of the disease. The higher the antibodies, the more severe the disease.
I mentioned that one of the reasons why hypothyroidism develops is when the thyroid gland is partially or completely removed, either with a scalpel or by radiation. Hashimoto’s kind of works like this. It slowly destroys your thyroid without the scalpel or radiation, but through the action of the immune system.
If you compare normal thyroid with Hashimoto’s thyroid under a microscope, you’ll see that many thyroid cells are gone. They are replaced by bluish looking cells. Those are lymphocytes, part of your immune system.
And this is a good time to say a few words about the immune system.
The immune system is unimaginably complex. It is like the military. It consists of billions of specialized while cells, each performing a different function, with the overall goal of attacking and destroying anything that is not part of you.
There are white cells that swallow the invading microbes, the way a snake swallows a mouse. There are white cells that release chemicals that make holes in the invading microbes and that kills them, kind of like poking a hole in a balloon. There are white cells that make antibodies against the invading microbes. The antibodies stick to their targets and mark them for destruction by other immune cells.
Your immune system knows which cell is yours and which is foreign. The cells of your body have a certain special protein on the surface, a marker, an identifier, a sign that this is you. Only your cells have this sign. Other cells have their own signs, but they are different from yours.
When the immune cells see your marker, they leave the cell alone. But if they don’t see the marker on a cell or a particle, your immune cells will attack and try to destroy it.
This is how your immune system fights infections, because the bugs causing the infection don’t have the right marker. They are foreign cells that must be destroyed. That’s how we fight viruses, bacteria, parasites and even cancer.
Each day we are attacked by billions of all kinds of microbes. They try to enter through the skin, through the mouth or intestine, and your immune system fights them. It’s a 24/7 process, a never-ending war that goes on behind the scene. You are not aware of it. In the end, the immune system is usually successful, that’s why we are not sick all the time. But in the process, billions of white cells die, casualty of war. That’s why each day an average person makes about 100 billion new white cells.
Because the infection can enter anywhere, these white cells are distributed everywhere, in the skin, in the blood, in all the organs, always ready to get into a fight. Many white cells accumulate inside the lymph nodes, which is like an army base, full of soldiers ready to go into action. Lymph nodes are full of different white cells, and they are also distributed all over the body. But about 80% of lymph nodes are located around the intestine, because that’s where the most toxins and bad bacteria come from.
Intestinal bacteria live inside the intestine. Normally, most of the bacteria are good, but many are not. They are trying to get inside the body and cause harm. That’s why there are so many lymph nodes around the intestine, ready to fight the bad guys.
When everything goes as usual, the immune system encounters billions of potential invaders. The usual workday for the immune system is identifying foreign organisms that managed to get inside of you and fight them hand to hand, swallow them, make chemicals against them, make holes in their skin wall and produce antibodies against them. And while this war is going on, your white cells don’t attack your own cells.
But what if the immune system becomes overstimulated and overactive? What if the number of “bad guys” doesn’t stay normal, but doubles, quadruples, or becomes 10 or 20 times higher? This puts the immune system into overdrive, so it becomes overstimulated and crazy, it starts attacking not only the bad guys, but the good ones also. It starts making antibodies again everything in sight, including your own tissues.
As we’ll see in the next lecture, this sometimes happens by mistake, when the overstimulated immune system makes antibodies against a real foreign substance that happens to resemble to your own tissue. For example, gluten in wheat and rye has a structural resemblance to some proteins in the thyroid gland. If a person has gluten sensitivity and makes antibodies against gluten, these antibodies will also react with thyroid tissue. But whatever the reason, there are antibodies directed against your own organs, which damages those organs.
The result of this is an autoimmune disease. This disease can attack one organ or tissue, like thyroid gland, or several organs. In fact, a person with one autoimmune disease has a higher risk having a second or even a third one. All in all, there are over 80 auto-immune diseases caused by the immune system that has gone crazy from overstimulation. Remember, the organ itself has done nothing wrong, the whole thing is not the fault of the organ, but of the immune system.
Next time, we’ll talk about the most important cause of overstimulated immune system – Leaky Gut Syndrome. We’ll talk about how it develops, what causes it and what role it plays in Hashimoto's.
If you know someone who might be interested in low thyroid, please refer them to LowThyroidDoctor.com so they can download this ebook. Also, if you have questions or comments, please email to DrTeplisky@gmail.com.
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