Understanding Your Thyroid Hormones Function: The Thyroid Hormone Solution With Amanda Hinman. Learn about how your thyroid hormones function, how to really heal your thyroid, how you thyroid and your hormones are interconnected and more. Discover why you need more than just medication to heal your thyroid and why each person needs their own individual solution for your thyroid hormones function.
Functional Medicine Health Coach and Best-Selling Author, Amanda Hinman specializes in helping successful women between the ages of 40-60 who are struggling with hormone, mood, and gut imbalance to heal naturally and gain 3 hours of energy daily so they feel fantastic!
Amanda is the founder of The Thyroid & Hormone Solution Program which has helped hundreds of women beat Hashimoto’s, hypothyroidism, insulin resistance, anxiety, hypertension, brain fog, weight gain, and more.
Receive her Free Hormone Assessment here to discover what your symptoms are telling you about the 6 critical hormones for vibrant health.
Check out Amanda’s book- The Thyroid and Hormone Solution
Transcript
AnnaLaura Brown: Hello, this is Anna Laura Brown, host of the Autoimmune Rehab podcast, where we talk about how to actually thrive and heal your autoimmune condition rather than just covering it up with pills or changing your diet and hoping you’ll feel better one day. We feature solo episodes on helpful topics and interviews with guests who have actually walked in your shoes with autoimmune disorders who have years of experience in helping people to thrive and not just survive with autoimmune challenges. I’m a health coach who started this podcast because I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s in 2018 and wanted to inspire hope and transform health for people with autoimmune challenges. So, keep listening and let’s get you the health and hope you really need. This is the autoimmune rehab podcast.
AnnaLaura Brown: And today I am really excited to have here with me Amanda Henman. And Amanda has written a really awesome book. And so we’re going to be talking with her about her book and a little bit about her thyroid and autoimmune story and all that other good stuff. So welcome to Autoimmune Rehab, Amanda. And tell us a little bit about…
AnnaLaura Brown: who are you and what brings you here.
Amanda Hinman: Yes, thank you,…
Amanda Hinman: Laura Brown. I’m so excited to be here and you are speaking to my heart because I too am a Hashimoto’s survivor remission. So definitely can relate to you and this whole mission to empower others with autoimmune dynamics to really feel fantastic in their bodies. I am the founder and bestselling author of The Thyroid and Hormone Solution, a five-step process to help women over 40 to balance their hormones naturally. And again, like I said, I feel like a life redirection, a divine direction for the chance to impact hundreds of women so that they feel absolutely empowered,…
Amanda Hinman: clear, and capable of living their vibrantly healthy life.
AnnaLaura Brown: That’s awesome.
AnnaLaura Brown: That’s amazing. And definitely very much needed because, anybody that’s been on this journey for any length amount of time starts to realize that, hey, thyroid is not just your thyroid. It’s, all kinds of other things, whether that’s the hormones, the adrenal glands, all kinds of things. It’s all interconnected. And the sooner you realize that, the more you can work on actually improving your oral health and wellbeing. So yeah.
Amanda Hinman: talking about. it’s looking at the interconnection with our digestive system and our immune system and our cardiovascular system and our endocrine system, the hormones, everything is linked together and putting those pieces of the puzzle for each individual in a way that I think most important is to have a plan that’s simple, it’s sustainable, and it’s impactful. So it really makes a difference because we can talk theoretical about all these things in theory, but if a woman can’t actually sustain that and make choices that are going to be congruent and consistent in her life, it doesn’t really impact her health individually. Yes.
AnnaLaura Brown: Absolutely. I mean, theory is really pointless until you can actually apply it. For Absolutely. So, you mentioned that you got a Hashimoto’s diagnosis as well. Take us back a little bit to…
Amanda Hinman: Yes.
AnnaLaura Brown: what was How did that come about? What was your life like before then?
Amanda Hinman: So, this goes back over 12 years ago. I was pregnant with my fourth daughter at the time. I have four daughters who are now, 13, 15, 17, and 19. But, back then I was pregnant and, went for a routine prenatal checkup and they drew blood and did all the lab work and they were like, wow. you have a thyroid imbalance here. Let’s look at that further. And then went on for further testing to find out it was Hashimoto’s, an autoimmune dynamic. And I remember Laura Brown, I remember, candidly, I’m just going to be honest, I was angry when I received that diagnosis because at that season in my life, I self-identified as someone who was very healthy. I was a group fitness instructor.
Amanda Hinman: I taught cardio kickbox classes and I ate salads and smoothies and I thought I was doing all the right things that I had learned attributed to health in terms of, eating low-fat foods and working out all the time and things like that. So when I was told by the doctor that I had an autoimmune disease, my body was attacking itself and I would just need to take medication for the rest of my life and likely once you have one autoimmune, you’re more at risk for multiple autoimmune dynamics and diseases. I was just in denial. I was like, “What the heck? How is this possible?” Not to mind you that I was really disconnected from listening to my body’s cues and clues.
Amanda Hinman: I was kind of tuning out the fact that I was massively struggling with insomnia. That hair was falling out even though I was pregnant. That’s usually a time when your hair thickens, right? I wasing out the fact that I had, really short fuse and was snapping at my daughter’s my, toddlers at the time because I was attributing it all to being pregnant and, other circumstances, other things in life. So went to start working with a naturopathic doctor. Wanted to take a holistic approach instead of just assuming that medication was the only answer. And did a whole bunch of testing was given a list of supplements and about 25 foods or more that I had to eliminate and could no longer eat and dove right in and said okay I’m going to do this. I’m going to heal. I’m going to take this on. And I remember things got worse instead of better.
00:05:00
Amanda Hinman: And then I felt really frustrated because I was supposedly doing all of the right things in terms of the foods that I was eliminating and the supplements that I was taking and yet it still wasn’t effective for my body. I’m going to add a little bit to the story because about 18 months after my initial diagnosis where I’m still kind of working with this and trying to figure out the autoimmune dynamic, my oldest daughter at that time, she was eight, she was always a really highly sensitive child, prone to anxious thoughts and anxiety. And that escalated to where she was having anywhere from 10 to 15 seizures in a day.
Amanda Hinman: And Laura, nothing brings you to your knees as a parent more than seeing your child suffer. It was scary, right? Because I never knew when was going to be a situation where her life was at risk with the next seizure and she was taking four different benzoazipene medications through 12 pills a day, just to make it through a day without having an episode. And I remember being down in Lori Children’s Hospital, amazing doctors and the pediatric neurologists who are highly skilled and very talented just told us that, there’s no specific reason. Sometimes these things are genetic and…
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah.
Amanda Hinman: she will need to be on medication for life to manage this. She would likely never be able to drive a car. All these things. And every fiber in my being was like this, there’s got to be another path.
Amanda Hinman: this can’t be the end of her story. And that’s when I went back to school to study functional medicine science and really get to understanding the interconnectedness of these systems and knowing how to build health. How can we uncover the blockage or the impairment or the depletion in the body that’s happening for this individual and create an environment so that the body can start to build health again and heal. And it was really empowering like it felt and that’s why I’m like so I lead with knowledge and inspiration because when we know better and we have a simple practical way to do better, we experience better. And that’s exactly what we did. My daughter was completely healed. we went off of all of our medication in under a year as did I.
Amanda Hinman: So we went from being on six different medications to zero and I’ve been medication free healthy ever since and I’ve gone on to help hundreds of women who really want to understand and have a partner to collaborate with them. It’s not about just handing a protocol and saying cut these foods, take these supplements. It’s like let’s look at where your life is and…
Amanda Hinman: what you can know about your body now that you understand the dynamics and put together a game plan to set you up for success early.
AnnaLaura Brown: That’s absolutely great.
AnnaLaura Brown: That’s And you actually in a lot of ways, I mean, if you look back at it, you were lucky that you got your autoimmune diagnosis so quick because most people don’t get it that quickly.
Amanda Hinman: Yeah. Yeah.
AnnaLaura Brown: And the other trend that I’ve also noticed too is that a lot of us, at least I know for me,…
AnnaLaura Brown: I’d already been free for three years when I got my diagnosis and thought that I was pretty healthy, too. So, we think we’re pretty healthy until we get that autoimmune diagnosis and we’re like, “Hey, wait a minute. Maybe we’re not so healthy as we thought we were after all.
Amanda Hinman: And I love that you mentioned that…
Amanda Hinman: because a lot of times there are catchphrases and things that we hear all the time about go gluten-free and, eliminate dairy and all these things and those can be components for individuals that are helpful. However, if we’re just simply swapping the gluten-free or the regular cookie for the free cookie, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s getting those real nutrients to your body in the way that it needs in order to thrive, right?
Amanda Hinman: So, I’m much more about let’s add in and let’s really uncover where there’s a depletion in nourishment that your body is not getting…
Amanda Hinman: what it needs and let’s add that in because once you give it what it needs, it’s naturally going to crowd out other stuff and you’ll feel better.
AnnaLaura Brown: Absolutely.
AnnaLaura Brown: And that was exactly me, too, is I just kind of tried to replace the gluten stuff with the gluten-free stuff. A lot of it was junk. It wasn’t healthy.
00:10:00
Amanda Hinman: Yes. Yeah,…
AnnaLaura Brown: had other things that I later uncovered by with the course that I went through that was, attacking the thyroid and other things and I was just like, “Oh, shoot.”
Amanda Hinman: players and I really think there’s a couple of key numbers that I always like to share because I think it’s powerful.
Amanda Hinman: First of all, over 20 million women in America are affected by some type of thyroid imbalance. And that is very common. And usually there are these 2.9, five, and 30,000. Those numbers affect not only just thyroid, but those numbers affect women’s health in 2025 more so than they ever have before. even in 4, 2022, going back and what they stand for 2.9 seconds is now the average adults attention span. So that’s super short and…
AnnaLaura Brown: Mhm.
Amanda Hinman: to our health, It requires focus to have sustainable health.
Amanda Hinman: So, if we’re constantly having our attention pulled in so many different directions every 2.9 seconds to pay attention to this, look what’s happening on the news. wait. My child needs something over here. wait. this is happening and I’m thinking about my, event planning list that I have for that thing that I’m doing next week. If you’re going in your mind is going in a whole bunch of different directions that works against you maintaining truly sustainable strong health, So that 2.9 second distraction, especially our devices, our technology is really what’s grabbing a lot of our attention. It’s detracting from health. And the next number is five.
Amanda Hinman: Five pounds is the average number of pounds that women over 40 gain nually. And talk about a hormone firestorm happening in our body when we just put on atapose tissue because we tend to lose lean muscle mass after age 40. And so that means we put on extra pounds usually in the form of atapose fatty tissue which now has its own different endocrine disrupting imbalance which can block thyroid which can impair our immune system which can slow down our metabolism. all the things that we don’t love.
Amanda Hinman: And if we’re just doing what everyone around us is doing, doing the norm, the norm is to expect a five pound weight gain every year, Exactly. it’s like I don’t mean to be depressing, but it’s just like we also have to be cognizant of the world that we live in.
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah.
Amanda Hinman: So that if we’re not intentional, this is the result of just going along to go along, that’s just what our model is creating. Then that 30,000 number I showed I shared is 30,000. That’s the average number of what I call highly processed chemicalized food like substances that we find in our supermarkets. When we go to the grocery store and we’re surrounded by a ton of choices, even if they’re in pretty packages and labels and the boxes look nice and they say, all natural or something, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is.
Amanda Hinman: And having a barrage of partial food- substances is very very overwhelming for our body’s immune systems and…
Amanda Hinman: nervous systems to understand what we’re giving them. So when we choose real whole foods regularly, that is a completely different signal and a completely different message we’re giving to ourselves.
AnnaLaura Brown: Absolutely.
AnnaLaura Brown: For So, if somebody’s listening to this and they’re thinking, “Okay, that sounds nice, but I don’t want to get too overwhelmed. I don’t not sure if I’m really ready to jump all in necessarily or go hire a functional medicine doctor or coach or whatever. what would be one of the first little things that you would tell somebody to do?
Amanda Hinman: Your body is always going to talk to you through symptoms. It can’t talk in a voice, but it will express symptoms and that is your hormones essentially like the little messenger molecules in the body speaking to you. and in fact I’m happy to gift it to your audience as just my way of helping them understand their body. I think it’s really helpful to notice what symptoms you are experiencing. If it’s like mild headache from time to time, if it’s itchy, dry skin, if I have some aches and pains in my joints, whatever it is, note that and then start to look at cross reference what that can be tying to. So, in my free hormone health assessment, we look at the most common symptoms that are attributable to imbalance in your top six metabolic hormones.
00:15:00
Amanda Hinman: Looking at cortisol and insulin, and then of course estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. So women can, take a couple answer some questions, take a couple little review of the symptoms that they experience and then get a sense of does that likely to mean that I probably have low cortisol levels or is this likely to indicate that I have elevated insulin? something I should start to understand about my body. So, I think the first step is just listening to your body’s symptoms and then gaining some knowledge of where areas for you to support and…
AnnaLaura Brown: For sure.
Amanda Hinman: areas for you to learn more about perhaps in your body. so like I said, I’m happy to share that with you and I’ll share
AnnaLaura Brown: Absolutely. Yeah, we’ll definitely have you share the link with us and…
AnnaLaura Brown: then we’ll definitely link that in the show notes so people can go there and get it. Yeah, that sounds amazingly useful for people.
Amanda Hinman: And just to put it into a real practical terms,…
Amanda Hinman: I’m thinking of a client of mine, Melissa. She came to me when she was really uncomfortable, bloating in her stomach and just was then had tender breasts and she’s like, I don’t know, my body feels off. I’m just noticing all these sensations and feelings that I haven’t had before and don’t recall having before. And when we went through, she did her symptom, checklist and kind of looked at this hormone assessment and noted that she had many signs of elevated estrogen. She was prone to allergic type, sneezing attacks and headaches and things like that. Histamine was really high in her body. She also had I said, breast tenderness and things like that.
Amanda Hinman: So what we were able to uncover is and then one of the things that scared her is her doctor had said when she went for a mammogram, hey we see some lumps in your breast. We want to have these tests that she was scheduled for a lumpctomy. And by looking at really what’s at play here is some estrogen imbalance and some difficulty with cortisol, we were able to help get the right nutrients she needs, help her body to detoxify these excess hormones. that lump disappeared and she avoided a $5,000 lumpctomy surgery. Not let alone the fear and the anxiety that was provoked from thinking this could develop into something more substantial like breast cancer or something like that. So just looking at some of those cues and clues earlier on can guide you in a direction of okay where should I start to pay attention to what should I notice to listen to my body?
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah, that’s amazing. That’s awesome.
AnnaLaura Brown: So, let’s talk a little bit about your book then. And I’m sure that your book probably has a lot of that in it,…
Amanda Hinman: Yes. Why is this?
AnnaLaura Brown: too. Probably you have the quiz in your book, I’m assuming, thyroid hormone solution. talk with us a little bit about what did you like was missing in the health and wellness market? there’s all these thousands of books out there and you decided to write one yourself. tell us a little bit about it and what you felt like was missing that you needed to write this book and put this book out there in the world.
Amanda Hinman: Yes, thank you for the question. So, the reason I wanted to bring this book out to the world is because this is the same five steps that I’ve been doing for years to help support, like I said, hundreds of women in all different cities across the country to create real tangible results. And I was like, I’m doing this work and there’s just I can’t work with as many women as actually could use this.
Amanda Hinman: And the thing that’s I think a unique approach to my book is there is science in there. There’s some science in there, but it’s not really there’s a lot of books in there where it can get really heavy and overwhelming. most of them,…
AnnaLaura Brown: one Yeah.
Amanda Hinman: Let’s be honest. And I wanted to write this book as almost like a toolkit for women to actually create change in their life rather than just theoretically learn about it. It’ is going to teach you about some of the dynamics and how our hormones are interconnected with different things. But it really gives you a game plan. I have what I call my mindset shifts for each of the five steps. for example, step one is identify the root cause and looking at some of these things like taking a hormone assessment at least a couple times a year to check in with your symptoms to see what your body is signaling to you. And then we have things like the next step is replenishing key nutrients that your body needs.
Amanda Hinman: And so ways that we know and I know I’ve learned from working with so many women, what is the number one thing that starts to derail them? What are the things that get in the Usually it’s Usually it’s I don’t love to prepare and to cook and thinking about food and meal planning and all that, right? So, it’s the most streamlined, relatable ways that women have been able to shift their belief and shift their perspective to really navigate through how to consistently live a new way so that your body is truly healthy and maintains that health.
00:20:00
Amanda Hinman: So, I think the thing that’s new here is the neuroscience piece that’s weaved in through the book and that’s what I do with my clients. In addition to teaching you about nutrients, it’s one thing to know it’s another thing to live And that’s where we use neuroscience technologies to help you truly change how you show up, how you make decisions, and what you do repeatedly in your life. And that’s what this book offers. So, it’s a super simple framework. It makes it so it’s applicable for you to live and have a game plan. And that’s what ultimately changes health. Yeah. Yeah.
AnnaLaura Brown: or for whatever reason hire you. They can read the book instead and implement
Amanda Hinman: That’s what I was say. I’m read the book. Trust me, you’re going to get all of my framework, all of the best things that have worked for women, like I said, across the country. And not only that, I honestly give a lot of tools.
Amanda Hinman: So, if you go to the link that I’ll share with you, you in there can access the free hormone health assessment and some of the trainings that I offer. I share some of them as complimentary trainings. So, you go into this whole experience of okay, I’m going to have somebody hold my hand and walk me through the steps of how I can help to heal my body. Yes, definitely.
AnnaLaura Brown: So, anything else you want to share before we jump into the last question and final call to action for people?
Amanda Hinman: I would say, one of the most important simple things is, just recognizing where you are in the journey.
Amanda Hinman: So, one thing I think is at least I can acknowledge that I’ve had it and I don’t know if any of your listeners will relate to this idea. I’ve started to call it like health PTSD that I experienced because when I was first diagnosed, I tried to jump into action and try and do all of these things to help it improve and it got worse. And I know that there’s many women out there who feel like I’ve tried things and I’ve seen it work for my family members or seen it work for other women, but for some reason my body feels different or I’ve invested in doctors and nutritionists and yet I still don’t have the results in my health that I’m seeking.
Amanda Hinman: So, I just want to say to anyone out there who’s maybe listening and can relate to that, first of all, I have been there and I hear you and I know that that is really hard and that’s a real thing is what I’m naming is health PTSD. really does exist because if we’ve tried things and that hasn’t worked that’s going to forever influence our willingness and our trust in ourselves to be able to re really reach the kind of health that we seek.
Amanda Hinman: So that is again another piece where I go back to oftentimes in conjunction with kind of the nutritional health piece is the mental aspect.
Amanda Hinman: How do we reset our thoughts and the way that we think about things so that we can actually create a new experience, a new outcome and reach your health goals? Mhm.
AnnaLaura Brown: That’s great.
AnnaLaura Brown: I love that. I’ve never heard the health PTSD term before, but yeah, I mean, I know I can relate to that in the past having tried that just and I’m sure there definitely are people listening that can relate to that. So, the final question I always like to ask everybody is if you could go back in time to let’s say the day before you got your diagnosis with your autoimmune and…
AnnaLaura Brown: your Hashimoto’s and tell yourself something that you didn’t know then. What would you tell yourself
Amanda Hinman: I think…
Amanda Hinman: what I would tell myself is my body is actually always trying to help me. Even though it didn’t feel when I had my diagnosis, but I was just ignoring the cues and the clues. I was busying myself with just life and didn’t slow down to listen and honor and appreciate what my body was trying to signal to me. So what I learned through the journey is that if I can start to work in collaboration with my body and understand it and lean in a little bit closer and say okay, what’s going on? what are you trying to show me here? we work well together.
00:25:00
Amanda Hinman: it worked so much easier. But I didn’t do that before and I was just kind of like, I didn’t give it space and I kind of ignored the stuff that was, cropping up earlier. Yes, they can go to hinmanholistic.com and…
AnnaLaura Brown: Hey,…
Amanda Hinman: that’s h i n as in nancy hinmanholistic.com
AnnaLaura Brown: henmanholistic.com. So, we will have that link below and of course we’ll link the book too that she’s written so you can check out the book too. And thanks everybody for listening. If you have enjoyed and found this episode helpful, we would always love your feedback. Appreciate a review. Share it with other people. And if you have an autoimmune story that you’d like to share with me, I would love to have you reach out and let’s do an interview with you. Thanks again. This has been another episode of the Autoimmune Rehab podcast.
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