Let me guess why you're reading this.
You're exhausted. The kind of tired that sleep doesn't fix.
Your hair is thinning. Your weight keeps creeping up no matter what you do. You're cold when everyone else is comfortable. Your brain feels like it's wrapped in fog. You can't remember simple things. Your mood swings from anxious to depressed and back again.
You finally went to your doctor, who ran some labs and said, "Your thyroid is underactive. Here's a prescription for levothyroxine. Take this for the rest of your life."
Maybe that was months ago. Maybe it was years ago.
And here's the problem: You still feel terrible.
When you tell your doctor you're still exhausted, still gaining weight, still losing hair, they run another TSH test, adjust your dose, and send you on your way. Rinse and repeat.
But nothing really changes.
I'm writing this because I'm furious on your behalf. You deserve to know the truth about what's really happening in your body. And more importantly, you deserve to know that there's a better way.
Here's what your doctor probably told you: "Your thyroid isn't producing enough hormone. This medication will replace what's missing. Problem solved."
But here's what they didn't tell you – what they probably don't even know:
Read that again. Let it sink in.
Your thyroid isn't just "sluggish" or "worn out." In more than 9 out of 10 cases, your immune system is actively attacking and destroying your thyroid gland.
The condition is called Hashimoto's thyroiditis, and it's the most common autoimmune disease in America. But here's the crazy part: most doctors never even test for it.
They run a TSH test, see it's elevated, write a prescription, and call it a day.
It's like mopping up water on your floor while ignoring the burst pipe in your wall. Sure, the floor might look drier for a moment, but the problem isn't fixed. It's getting worse.
Here's what nobody's telling you about why you feel so absolutely terrible:
This isn't just a thyroid problem. It's an overactive immune system problem.
Think about the last time you got sick – really sick with the flu or a bad cold. Now think back to those first few hours before you were full-blown sick. How did you feel? Achy. Lethargic. Brain foggy. Just... off. That low-grade feeling that something isn't right in your body.
That's exactly what autoimmune patients experience 24/7. That constant low-grade "blah" feeling. Not like you're actively sick, but like you're stuck in the early stages of getting sick – all day, every day, for months or years.
Your immune system is in a constant state of activation, fighting a battle that never ends. And that chronic immune activation is exhausting every system in your body.
Now I know what you're thinking: "But Dr. Shields, I never get sick. Doesn't that mean my immune system is weak?"
Actually, it's the opposite. Autoimmunity doesn't mean your immune system doesn't work – it means it works too often. It's stuck in overdrive, constantly activated, draining you of your resources and energy.
This is why you're losing your hair. This is why you can't lose weight. This is why you feel exhausted no matter how much you sleep. Your immune system is burning through nutrients, creating inflammation, and exhausting your body's reserves fighting an internal battle.
And more than likely, your gut is the battlefield where this war started.
Lisa came to see me two years ago, frustrated and desperate.
She'd been on thyroid medication for five years. Her doctor kept telling her that her TSH was "perfect" and that she should feel fine. But Lisa didn't feel fine. She felt progressively worse.
Her fatigue was crushing. She'd gained 40 pounds despite eating less and exercising more. Her hair was so thin she wore wigs. She couldn't think clearly enough to do her job. She was 42 years old and felt like she was 80.
When I ran comprehensive testing, the truth became crystal clear:
For five years, she'd been taking thyroid medication while her immune system continued its assault on her thyroid gland. The medication was like putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound.
Within ten months of addressing her immune system – healing her gut, clearing her parasitic infections, removing her food triggers, and supporting her body's natural healing processes – Lisa's transformation was remarkable.
Her energy returned. The brain fog lifted. She lost 35 pounds without trying. Her hair grew back thick and healthy. And here's the kicker: her thyroid antibodies dropped by over 80%.
Her endocrinologist was stunned. He'd never seen antibodies decrease like that.
But Lisa didn't experience a miracle; she simply addressed the root causes that no one had bothered to look for.
Your immune system doesn't just randomly decide to attack your thyroid. Something triggers it. And until you identify and address those triggers, your thyroid will continue to be under assault – no matter how much medication you take.
Here's something that will blow your mind: the health of your gut directly determines the health of your thyroid.
Seventy percent of your immune system lives in your gut. When your gut lining becomes damaged and permeable – leaky gut – your immune system goes into overdrive. Undigested food particles, bacteria, and toxins leak into your bloodstream, and your immune system attacks them.
But here's where things get really problematic: through a process called molecular mimicry, your immune system can confuse thyroid tissue with these foreign invaders. The antibodies it creates to fight off the bad guys also attack your thyroid gland.
This isn't theoretical. This is proven science. But does your endocrinologist test for leaky gut? Do they assess your gut microbiome? Do they even ask about your digestive health?
Most don't. And that's medical malpractice as far as I'm concerned.
Certain foods are like gasoline on the fire of thyroid autoimmunity. And you're probably eating them every single day, thinking they're healthy.
Gluten is public enemy number one for thyroid patients. The molecular structure of gluten is remarkably similar to thyroid tissue. When you have leaky gut and gluten enters your bloodstream, your immune system creates antibodies against it. Those same antibodies then attack your thyroid gland. Study after study has shown that gluten triggers thyroid autoimmunity.
But it doesn't stop there.
Dairy products are problematic for many thyroid patients. The proteins in dairy – especially casein – can trigger immune reactions in susceptible individuals. I've seen thyroid antibodies drop dramatically just from eliminating dairy.
Sugar and refined carbohydrates create blood sugar swings that trigger inflammation and stress your immune system. They also feed pathogenic bacteria in your gut, worsening intestinal permeability.
Industrial seed oils (canola, soybean, corn oil) are loaded with inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids that fuel autoimmune processes.
Your doctor probably never mentioned any of this. They might have even told you that "diet doesn't matter" for thyroid disease. But I've watched hundreds of patients see their thyroid antibodies plummet just from changing what they eat.
Here's where things get really disturbing: many of my thyroid patients with autoimmune issues have hidden gut infections that are directly triggering their autoimmune condition. And almost no conventional doctors are looking for them.
Your gut is supposed to house trillions of beneficial bacteria that support immune function, produce vitamins, and protect your gut lining. But in most thyroid patients with autoimmunity, this delicate ecosystem is completely out of balance.
Here's what many people don't realize: you don't have to have digestive symptoms to have gut dysbiosis. You can feel perfectly fine from a digestive standpoint and still have massive bacterial imbalances that are silently destroying your thyroid.
Guide Continued Below
Chronic infections like Candida overgrowth and other opportunistic organisms are common culprits we discover in thyroid patients. These infections don't just cause digestive upset – they actively trigger and perpetuate immune system dysfunction.
When beneficial bacteria are depleted and pathogenic bacteria overgrow, several things happen:
Let me explain what leaky gut really means for your autoimmune condition.
Your intestinal lining is supposed to be a selective barrier – like a security gate that lets nutrients through while keeping toxins, undigested food particles, and bacteria out of your bloodstream. This barrier is held together by tight junction proteins that act like gates between cells.
When chronic infections, inflammation, and dysbiosis damage this lining, those tight junctions break apart. Your gut literally becomes "leaky."
Now here's where it gets dangerous: undigested food proteins, bacterial fragments, toxins, and other foreign materials leak directly into your bloodstream. Your immune system – which never expected to see these substances in your blood – goes into high alert and creates antibodies to attack these "invaders."
This is how you become toxic from the inside out. Your own gut becomes the source of constant immune activation and inflammation. Day after day, your immune system is being irritated and overstimulated by this internal toxic load.
And here's the critical connection to thyroid autoimmunity: this chronic immune activation doesn't stay localized to your gut. The inflammation becomes systemic. Your overworked, confused immune system starts making mistakes – attacking your own tissues through molecular mimicry, including your thyroid gland.
You're not just dealing with low thyroid hormone. You're dealing with a body that's being poisoned from within by its own compromised gut barrier.
Before you dismiss leaky gut as some "woo-woo" alternative diagnosis, understand this: intestinal hyperpermeability (the medical term for leaky gut) has over 29,000 research papers written about it on PubMed. This is established, documented science – not fringe theory.
And yes, you can actually test for it. Advanced stool testing can measure specific markers of intestinal permeability, including zonulin (a protein that regulates tight junctions) and other inflammatory markers that indicate a compromised gut barrier. This isn't guesswork or subjective diagnosis – it's measurable, quantifiable data about the integrity of your intestinal lining.
This dysbiosis and leaky gut creates a perfect storm for autoimmune thyroid disease. Your immune system is chronically activated, fighting infections that shouldn't be there, dealing with a constant influx of toxins and foreign particles through your leaky gut barrier, and eventually, this chronic activation gets misdirected toward your own tissues – including your thyroid gland.
Yet most endocrinologists never test for gut dysbiosis, never assess for leaky gut, and never identify these specific pathogenic organisms. They assume if you don't have digestive complaints, your gut is fine. But that couldn't be further from the truth.
Here's something else important: don't obsess over your thyroid numbers. Yes, we need to test them. Yes, they give us valuable information. But thyroid hormone levels fluctuate throughout the day, and they don't tell the whole story.
From my experience working with hundreds of autoimmune thyroid patients, here's what I've found:
90% of the time, when you address the root cause of the thyroid problem – calming down the overactive immune system – people feel dramatically better.
Why? Because it was never just about the thyroid numbers. It was about the chronic immune activation exhausting their entire body.
When we heal the gut, clear the infections, remove the food triggers, correct the nutrient deficiencies, and reduce the toxic burden, the immune system finally calms down. The constant state of alarm and inflammation decreases. The body stops being drained by internal warfare.
And that's when people get their lives back – not because we perfectly optimized their TSH, but because we stopped their body from attacking itself.
In our clinic, we take a different approach – one that's personalized to your specific situation.
First and foremost, we'll do testing to confirm whether the actual cause of your thyroid problem is or isn't Hashimoto's. This is critical because if autoimmunity is driving your condition, we need to know so we can address it properly.
From there, we tailor our approach based on what we find and what makes sense for your individual case and we systematically address these root causes using our proven process:
Step 1: Remove the Triggers
Once we identify what's driving your immune system into overdrive, we systematically remove those triggers:
Step 2: Replace What's Missing
We replace the nutrients your body desperately needs to function properly:
Step 3: Repair and Rebalance
Finally, we focus on repairing the damage and rebalancing your system:
When we support the body's natural healing processes this way, remarkable things happen:
Patricia had been on levothyroxine for eight years but still struggled with exhaustion and weight gain. After we did a food elimination diet, eradicated her candida overgrowth, healed her gut, and improved her T4-T3 conversion, her energy soared and she lost 30 pounds. Her TPO antibodies dropped from over 600 to under 100.
Robert had Hashimoto's with debilitating fatigue and brain fog. After eliminating his trigger foods, treating his gut dysbiosis, and optimizing his nutrients, his mental clarity returned, his chronic digestive issues resolved and his inflammation markers dropped by 50%.
Michelle suffered with hair loss, anxiety, and cold intolerance despite "perfect" TSH levels. When we tested her T3 levels (which her doctor had never checked), they were abysmally low. After addressing her gut health, improving her liver function, correcting her nutrient deficiencies, and improving her T4-T3 conversion, her hair grew back thick and full, her anxiety resolved, and she felt warm for the first time in years.
We're not performing miracles. We're simply supporting what the body wants to do naturally – heal itself when the root causes are addressed. Below are video testimonials from some of the patients whose lives were transformed through our approach.
You might wonder: if this works so well, why isn't every endocrinologist doing it?
The answer is both simple and infuriating.
First, medical schools don't teach this. Doctors spend years learning about diseases and drugs, but virtually no time studying nutrition, gut health, parasites, or the connection between gut infections and autoimmune thyroid disease. They're practicing exactly what they were taught – which is to replace thyroid hormone and ignore the immune system attack.
Second, current medical care is simply addressing thyroid levels with medications. Doing this type of root cause work takes significant time and requires real commitment from both the patients and the doctors. Changes like these don't happen unless the patient and doctor are committed to this process.
Third, insurance doesn't cover this type of comprehensive care. It's designed for the drug-and-symptom-management model, not for identifying and addressing why your immune system is attacking your thyroid in the first place.
The system isn't about natural health care—it's designed to promote drugs, surgeries, and various other treatments that are costly and ongoing.
If you're struggling with thyroid issues, I want you to know something important: Your body isn't broken beyond repair.
You don't have to accept a lifetime of increasing medication doses while feeling progressively worse. You don't have to believe your doctor when they say "your labs look fine" while you feel terrible. Your immune system is responding to specific triggers that can be identified and addressed.
This journey requires commitment. It requires you to be an active participant rather than a passive patient. It requires changes to your diet, lifestyle, and environment.
But the payoff – getting your life back, waking up with energy, thinking clearly, feeling warm, regrowing your hair, being free from the fear of progressive thyroid destruction – is worth every bit of effort.
I've created a comprehensive assessment process to help determine what might be disrupting your thyroid function and keeping your immune system in attack mode against your thyroid gland.
If you're ready to stop simply replacing hormones and start addressing why your immune system is attacking your thyroid in the first place, I'd like to invite you to take advantage of our New Patient Special.
Thyroid Hormone Evaluation and Consultation
What You'll Receive:
$500 Value For $59!
During this comprehensive evaluation, we'll:
✓ Review your health history and current symptoms in detail
✓ Identify potential root causes that may be overlooked
✓ Discuss what comprehensive testing might reveal about your specific triggers
✓ Create a personalized roadmap for supporting your body's natural healing
To claim your Thyroid Consultation Special and begin your healing journey, click the button below or call our office at 734-779-1650.
Dr. Josh Shields, D.C., C.F.M.P. Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner Supporting natural healing since 2003
P.S. – Your body has an incredible capacity to heal when given the right support. The question isn't whether healing is possible – it's whether you're ready to take the steps necessary to support that healing. If you are, I'm here to help guide you through that process.
Important: This guide is for educational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Always consult your healthcare provider before making changes to your health regimen. The success stories shared are authentic, but patient names have been changed to protect privacy. As with any health program, individual results may vary based on personal commitment and unique health factors.
See Video Testimonials Below
Initial 30 Minute Thyroid Consultation With Doctor (In Person or Via Zoom)
Testing May Be Ordered (Additional Fee)
2nd Visit to Review Test Findings
Personalized Action Plan
Healing the body begins with proper gut and immune function. Through diagnostic testing, we can uncover how your digestive system (where 80% of your immune system resides) may be malfunctioning, not only hindering proper digestion but also causing unwanted immune and hormonal symptoms. From there, we heal the gut, improve immune function and promote wellness by providing the supplements and nutrients your body is craving.
In order for the body to properly heal itself, it must be able to properly flush out waste and harmful elements that are causing damage to the cells of the body. We assess detoxification, liver function, inflammation, environmental pollutants, and heavy metals in the body. From there, we begin a treatment that promotes proper detoxification and cellular repair.
Our advanced testing methods assess hormonal imbalance like insulin resistance, thyroid dysfunction, sex hormone imbalance and adrenal insufficiencies that other traditional tests fail to uncover. From there, we lay out a plan that includes diet, exercise, stress management, natural hormone therapies, nutrient support, and herbal therapies to help patients achieve neurochemical (serotonin, dopamine, etc.) and hormonal balance.
We encourage regular exercise to encourage your body to heal itself and create a positive, healthy mindset. Other positive benefits of being active are: improving detoxification, losing weight, toning muscles, improving circulation, improved energy levels, stress management, and much more. We offer in-clinic yoga classes to help begin your journey to wellness.
Insurance coverage for functional medicine varies, but most comprehensive functional medicine practices don't accept insurance – and here's why that might actually benefit you. Insurance dictates treatment protocols and limits the time practitioners can spend with patients. By staying outside the insurance model, we can provide the thorough, personalized care you deserve. The good news? HSA (Health Savings Account) and FSA (Flexible Spending Account) funds can often be used for functional medicine services, though you'll need to contact your provider to confirm your specific coverage. This makes our care much more accessible than many people realize.We offer very affordable payment plans that make our care accessible. Consider this: some people pay $1,000 a month for peptide prescriptions alone. Our comprehensive approach to addressing root causes often costs less than the medications you're currently taking to manage symptoms.
Functional medicine and holistic medicine share some similarities – both view the body as an interconnected system and both consider lifestyle factors in health. However, functional medicine is distinguished by its rigorous use of advanced testing and evidence-based protocols. While some holistic approaches rely on intuition or traditional practices, functional medicine uses "testing, not guessing." We use sophisticated lab work to identify specific imbalances and monitor your progress objectively. This scientific foundation, combined with a holistic perspective, gives us the best of both worlds.
The most important factor isn't proximity – it's alignment. Make sure the practitioner's values and beliefs about health align with yours. Look for someone who takes time to understand your story, uses comprehensive testing, and sees health as more than just the absence of symptoms. Ask about their approach to treatment. Do they focus on one cause for all problems, or do they understand the complexity of chronic illness? Do they educate and empower patients, or create dependence? Do they have realistic timelines for healing, or do they promise quick fixes? Most importantly, trust your instincts. The right practitioner will make you feel heard, understood, and hopeful about your healing journey.
Absolutely! We offer both in-person and virtual consultations via Zoom. Many of our most successful patient relationships have been conducted virtually, allowing us to work with people throughout Michigan and beyond.Virtual consultations are particularly effective for functional medicine because so much of our work involves education, protocol adjustments, and ongoing support. Lab work can be completed locally, and we can coordinate with local providers when hands-on care is needed. The key to successful virtual functional medicine is finding practitioners who are skilled at creating connection and providing comprehensive care through digital platforms. Technology allows us to extend our reach and help more people access the life-changing care they deserve.
Yes, we offer payment plans through CareCredit. CareCredit offers up to 18 months at 0% interest. Payment plans can be as low as $125 a month. You can apply online for CareCredit or call (800) 365-8295.
Initial Consultation (30 minutes) and Review of Test Findings (30 minutes): $59 ($500 Value) Our initial care plans may consist of one or multiple visits over a 4-7 month period, with total costs varying based on the severity of your condition. To make this process as stress-free as possible, we offer flexible payment options both in-office and through CareCredit. Our care plans are designed to give you everything you need for success, without any surprises. We believe in being upfront with you from the start, providing a good faith estimate of the total investment required for your health. This way, you’ll have a clear understanding of what it will take to complete your journey to wellness. We’re not in the business of stringing you along or creating uncertainty. Instead, we’re committed to offering all the tools, support, and resources necessary to help you get well and stay well. Our care plans may include: -- Nutraceuticals -- Visits with your doctor - Support from our Wellness/Success Coach -- Lab reviews -- Case review -- Wellness Workshops -- Additional materials, such as a food journal, workbook, and cookbook -- Direct email and phone access to your care team between visits. Our goal is to empower you with a complete roadmap to better health from day one.
In most cases, your care here will be covered through a FSA or a HSA. However, we recommend you contact your account coordinator to ensure that your plan will cover your expenses.
The majority of patients are recommended to take a comprehensive blood test evaluating over 80 different bio-markers and all of the primary organ systems of the body. The doctor will also recommend additional testing depending on your unique case and goals. The testing we offer can include but are not limited to a stool test, a hormone test, a food sensitivity test or in depth nutritional test.
If your case is accepted and you are admitted to care, the next step is to complete the testing your doctor ordered, schedule your next visit to go over the test results. At your next scheduled visit you will then start your first nutraceutical protocol and get recommended dietary changes.
Your consultation will be scheduled for 30 minutes but the total time you are in the clinic can take 40-90 minutes total. During your consultation we will let you know if we can accept your case and admit you to care. In order to accept your case we will need to first, determine if we can help you and secondly, make sure you are willing and able to do what it takes in order for us to help you. If those two requirements are met and your case is admitted we will go over the required testing, care plan outline and financial obligations of your specific care plan.