The Adrenal Thyroid Revolution: A Proven 4-Week Program to Rescue Your Metabolism, Hormones, Mind & Mood

411 Pages·2017·9.19 MB·English

by  Aviva Romm M.D.

Dedication
To all women who have felt unseen and unheard,
you are not invisible and you are not alone.
To all who have been told “It’s all in your head,” it is not.
And to all who have felt like you’ve been
sleeping for too long, rise and shine.
Let’s move mountains together.
Epigraph
When sleeping women wake, mountains move.
—CHINESE PROVERB
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Introduction: Feel Like Yourself Again
Part 1: The Roots of SOS
1. Your Body and Brain Are Sending Out an SOS
2. The Five Root Causes of Adrenal and Thyroid Dysfunction
3. What’s Your Type? Decoding Your Root Causes
Part 2: The SOS Solution
4. Reboot: Remove Food Triggers, Restore Self-Healing
5. Reframe: Calm Your Mind and Mood
6. Repair: Heal Your Gut, Boost Immunity, Support Detoxification, and
Balance Your Hormones
7. Recharge: Nourish Your Adrenals and Thyroid
8. Replenish: Eat for Life
Closing Thoughts: Staying Replenished Cell to Soul
Recipes: The Replenish Kitchen
Appendix 1: The SOS Solution Lab Tests
Appendix 2: Working with Your Health Practitioner—or Finding Another
Resources
Acknowledgments
References
Index
About the Author
Praise
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
INTRODUCTION
Feel Like Yourself Again
My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive,
and to do so with some passion, some compassion,
some humor, and some style.
—MAYA ANGELOU
I
DIDN’T GO INTO MEDICINE thinking I’d specialize in women’s adrenal or thyroid
function. I knew a great deal about the importance of these glands in women’s
health, but did not anticipate that they would play a central role in my medical
practice. However, the unexplained symptoms my patients were experiencing,
and the difficulties they’d experienced trying to get answers about their
symptoms and conditions, brought the adrenals and thyroid to the center of my
attention.
While I was seeing women with all of the concerns an integrative family
doctor expects, from weight problems to headaches, high cholesterol to
hormonal imbalances, I found that almost all of my patients had clusters of
symptoms in common that weren’t technically related—at least according to the
way conventional medicine works. They were worrisome symptoms, too, not
only to them, but also to me, because I knew that many of them were signs of
chronic inflammation that heralded potentially more serious chronic disease in
their future. Some had already progressed to those chronic diseases.
More than 80 percent were fatigued. Sometimes it was minor, causing them
to rely on caffeine and sugar to get them through the day, but many were
struggling with severe exhaustion, which affected their daily functioning and
their ability to care for their families, perform at work, and enjoy their lives. The
vast majority weren’t sleeping well—some were unable to fall asleep, others
were waking up in the night, and many woke in the morning wanting to pull the
covers back over their heads because they were still exhausted. Most needed a
coffee or two to get their day going. About a third were taking, or had recently
been prescribed, a medication for depression, anxiety, or sleep—or all three.
Memory and concentration problems were common, even in women as
young as their twenties, leading quite a few to express concerns about early
dementia. Not only were weight and body image a problem, but so were signs of
metabolic syndrome, a serious condition of prediabetes, high cholesterol, belly
fat, and high blood pressure, even in women in their thirties and forties.
Digestive troubles including constipation, reflux, bloating, and irritable bowel
syndrome (IBS) were typical.
Most shocking was the number of women I was seeing with autoimmune
conditions. Previously considered rare, at least one in eight of my patients came
to me with at least one autoimmune condition, whether rheumatoid arthritis,
Sjögren’s syndrome, Crohn’s disease, psoriasis, celiac disease, or, most
commonly, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.
Almost all of my patients were perpetually overwhelmed, with a relentless
sense of stress and dread over their never-ending to-do list of personal,
professional, and family responsibilities, unable to carve out time for self-care,
or even to prepare and eat regular meals. My patients were seeking my care for
what is now increasingly called “the Western cluster”—a twenty-first-century
set of chronic symptoms and frighteningly common medical conditions that in
the past decade has become “the new normal.” Overall, my patients felt sick,
tired, frazzled, and foggy, and they didn’t know why. Over and over I heard
patients say, “Dr. Romm, I just want to feel like myself again.”
Woman after woman came to me after having been seen by sometimes as
many as five or more physicians and specialists who had no answers for them
other than what could be written on a prescription pad—often a recommendation
for an antidepressant—leaving them feeling alone, confused, unheard, and
without solutions to the very real symptoms that were impacting the quality of
their lives.
This book began in response to the needs of these women for a deeper
understanding of what was going on with their health, and a much-needed way
of preventing and reversing this Western cluster. The Adrenal Thyroid
Revolution brings you the same plan that I developed for the women in my
practice and that I use daily. I bring it to you because you also deserve to have
the answers you need to feel at home in your body. This program is designed to
reverse the symptoms that are keeping you from feeling your best, reversing the
symptom overload that is keeping you from feeling your best and helping you
get from depleted to replenished.
The Adrenal Thyroid Revolution focuses on two systems—the adrenal and
thyroid glands—that are often the most overdriven and overwhelmed in a
woman’s body. The overwhelm of these important organs is the result of
multiple influences on your health that you’ll soon understand and learn to
change.
Why a revolution? Because it’s about time for a change in women’s health
care, and the medical profession needs to sit up and listen to what we’re saying.
Not only are women suffering needlessly, but too many are being dismissed,
ignored, and disrespected. Women’s lives are at stake, and it does not have to be
this way. It should not be this way. This book offers a revolutionary new way to
think about your health: it’s that you can live energized and symptom-free,
instead of feeling frustrated with, or even betrayed by, your body. And it puts the
tools you need to take back your health right into your hands. That’s
revolutionary.
The solution you’re about to discover will strengthen and balance multiple
systems in your body by healing the root imbalances that are impacting you the
most. It will show you how to make simple, powerful, and sustainable food and
lifestyle changes that ease toxic multisystem overload and bring you into a
symptom-free life with renewed energy. I’ve helped thousands of women
transform their health and lives, and I’d love to help you, too.
WOMEN NOT SEEN, NOT HEARD
In medical school, I was taught to diagnose and treat an incredibly long list of
diseases. I studied under some of the world’s most brilliant and influential
doctors at one of the most prestigious medical institutions. Yet somehow, the top
concerns leading women to seek medical care—fatigue, chronic overwhelm,
problems with memory and focus, hormonal imbalances, insomnia, depression,
anxiety, and stubborn weight—were not being addressed in our medical
education, beyond teaching us what drugs might relieve the symptoms. No
connection was made between these various symptoms and their causes, other
than to say it was genetic, or “all in the patient’s head,” and there was no
discussion about why increasing numbers of women were suffering from these
seemingly disparate symptoms. Like you perhaps are, my patients were among
the tens of millions of women struggling with a complex array of confusing
symptoms. Many had been dismissed with “medically unexplained symptoms”
or treated as “difficult patients.”
Let me introduce you to just a few of the women I’ve worked with whose
symptoms had been dismissed or overlooked by their doctors, and for whom my
program has made a world of difference.
Bethany: Running on Empty and Paying the Price
Bethany, at forty-seven, was so tired that she was pumping herself up with
coffee and sugary snacks all day to keep going. By 4:00 P.M. she was already
longing for the moment when she could get her kids into bed and crash for the
night. Diagnosed with high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and prediabetes—
which together are called metabolic syndrome—she was at high risk for heart
disease, and her primary care doctor recommended that she start a cholesterol-
lowering (statin) drug. She didn’t want to, but she was worried because even
after doing a restrictive detox program, and diligently going to a spin class five
mornings a week, she hadn’t been able to lose more than a few of the thirty-five
extra pounds she’d put on after her fourth child was born five years before. Her
TSH—an important thyroid lab—had doubled in the past year, indicating that
she had hypothyroidism, but her doctor had assured her that her thyroid was
normal. He’d chalked up her symptoms to fatigue from being a busy mom.
Using the program you’ll find in part 2 of this book, Bethany was able to
receive proper thyroid testing, which led to a proper diagnosis and treatment, and
a complete turnaround in her energy. She was able to get off of the sugar and
caffeine roller coaster, and over a few months, her cholesterol normalized and
she returned to close to her prebaby weight.
Liz: Foggy, Groggy, and Hormonally Imbalanced
Liz, at thirty-nine, wanted to start a family, so was coming in for hormonal
advice. Her hormone struggle began in her twenties and included severe PMS
and endometriosis. Liz was now struggling to get pregnant. On top of that, she
felt so exhausted that she needed to rest between seeing patients in her graduate
nursing studies, and she couldn’t seem to concentrate on her studies, describing a