In this interview I discuss Hashimoto's Thyroiditis and Graves' Disease with Linda Lizotte.

Linda: This Linda Lizotte, I'm the co-founder of Designs for Health, nutritionist and I'm happy to interview Dr. Nikolas Hedberg tonight. Let me tell you a little bit more about his background. Dr. Nikolas Hedberg, he's a D.C., D.A.B.C.I. He's a board certified chiropractic internist by the American Board of Chiropractic Internist. His practice is in Asheville, North Carolina where he focuses on autoimmune thyroiditis.

 

Dr. Hedberg is the author of the book 'The Complete Thyroid Health and Diet Guide' which is a comprehensive guide to diagnosing and treating thyroid disorders that's sitting right here next to me, it's fantastic. Dr. Hedberg lectures at integrative medicine conferences. Has been published in medical journals and teaches advanced functional medicine courses through Functional Medicine Town and as an adjunct faculty member at Hawthorn University. Health care practitioners of all disciplines consult with Dr. Hedberg on the most difficult cases, his practice philosophy can be summed by this quote by Sir William Osler, "It is much more important to know what sort of a patient has a disease than what sort of a disease that patient have." Wow, very good. Okay. Let's work to getting started. So thank you Dr. Hedberg.

Dr. Hedberg: Thanks for having me again Linda. I really appreciate it.

Linda: Again the book 'The Thyroid Alternative: Renew your Thyroid naturally' he's got some nice write ups in here by some doctors that we know. We have Dr. David Brady foreword. He's got a really nice write up by Dr. Daniel Taylor, chiropractor, he's been in clinical rounds. Dr. Ernest Colin and... who's a clinical director of Holistic Medical Clinic of Carolina. And Dr. Geoffrey Moss from Massachusetts that a lot of you know so well. So fantastic book.

It's definitely... we're going to go through a lot of it, what's in there tonight. Obviously, we'll... the book is more patient friendly and I know that was difficult for Dr. Hedberg to do as it is for any of your practitioners to try to bring this to patients. That's where this book might be really useful to you because you're trying to explain the same stuff. So get the book and if it's something that you're trying to explain to your patients on a regular basis you can just hand it to them. You don't have to explain it all saying it a 100 times.

Dr. Hedberg: Thank you.

Linda: So, all right. So I know that that's why probably why you wrote the book Dr. Hedberg no?

Dr. Hedberg: Yeah. There's some good thyroid books out there but I wanted to give a broad overall picture of functional medicine and all the on causes of thyroid disease because a lot of people seem... the feedback have gotten already is, they [inaudible 00:03:03], 'Wow, I never even knew that the adrenal is going to affect the thyroid and the Lyme disease can cause thyroid problems. So it's... I think to me a good job educating people about thyroid disorders.

Linda: Yes. We're going to learn some new things and learn some things like you just mentioned that I wasn't really up on before so... I would love for you to start with some of the statics that you state in the book and just some great information about autoimmune thyroid disease. That probably would make a good start to all of this.

Dr. Hedberg: Right. Now is the best time to be a functional medicine practitioner because autoimmune disease is on the rise. We're really the only ones who can identify why it's there and really get these patients under control and improve their qua...