By Nicole Fennell, MS, RDN, LD · Functional Nutrition for Women
If you’ve ever been handed a meal plan, followed it perfectly, and still felt off, this one’s for you. I’ve been thinking a lot this summer about why some things actually change how we feel and think long term, and why a checklist so rarely does. Here’s the short version: your thyroid gland is only one of six steps your body needs to actually use thyroid hormone, which is exactly why labs can look “normal” while you still feel terrible. We just turned years of teaching on this into a new podcast, The Thyroid Fix, and I want to walk you through why story matters here more than another protocol.
I’ve been reading a lot of classic literature this summer, recently finishing The Brothers Karamazov and currently deep in Les Mis, and it’s had me thinking about why a good novel can teach you more about self-improvement than an actual self-help book.
Life never lines up with a step-by-step plan. Hand someone five steps and they’ll follow maybe two of them for maybe two weeks. But show someone the whole story, the overarching shape of it, and something clicks that a checklist never touches. It’s a bit like staring so hard at the trees that you forget there’s a forest. Sometimes you need to back up and see the whole thing before any of the individual pieces make sense.
Nobody hands Jean Valjean a 5-step plan in Les Mis. You just watch him become a different person over hundreds of pages, and you feel every inch of what it costs him. Novels don’t explain people to you. They put them in front of you, messy and contradictory, and somehow you understand yourself a little better by the end.
It’s not that different from what we see in clients every day. The meal plan with the checklist rarely works long term. What works is someone finally seeing their own story laid out, this symptom connects to that lab value, which connects to that thing they’ve felt for ten years, until the whole shape of it finally makes sense. People don’t change for good from being told what to do. They change from understanding why, and then being shown what to do.
Here’s our core belief at Chews Food Wisely: thyroid problems are almost never actually a problem with the thyroid gland itself.
The gland only handles one step: production. We call the full process the Thyroid Hormone Journey, and it has six steps total. Any one of them can break down independently of the others, which is exactly why labs can look normal while you still feel like garbage, or your labs can look off while you’re doing “everything right” and still can’t figure out why the math isn’t mathing.
Nutrient status matters at nearly every one of these steps. Iron, zinc, and magnesium show up repeatedly as cofactors, from hormone production down to how your mitochondria actually use T3 once it arrives. And here’s the part that should give you hope: adaptation goes both ways. Give your body the right building blocks and the right signal, and it will adapt back toward feeling better.
We turned years of educational trainings into a podcast, organized by season so you can jump straight to what your body is asking about right now. Many episodes are pulled directly from live trainings, with full presentations and sources linked in the show notes if you want to go deeper.
Our lead practitioner, Emily Kozarsky, works with clients every day, and their words say more than we ever could.
One client navigating a new Hashimoto’s diagnosis said working with Emily gave her direction immediately, real science paired with actual day-to-day education, not just a pamphlet and a generic meal plan.
Another client shared that Emily was the first person who made her feel like she wasn’t crazy, that there was an actual reason behind how she’d been feeling for years.
A third client said Emily helped her get her thyroid medication properly adjusted while also addressing her gut health at the same time.
So many of our clients spent years being told their labs were fine, their symptoms were “just stress,” or it was “probably just their age.” Watching someone finally hear “here’s what’s actually happening” and exhale for the first time in years is why we do this work.
The thyroid gland is only one of six steps in what we call the Thyroid Hormone Journey. Standard labs (usually just TSH) only reflect part of the picture. Issues with conversion, transport, cellular absorption, or utilization can all cause hypothyroid symptoms even when standard labs look “normal.”
It’s our framework for understanding thyroid hormone as a six-step process: signaling, production, conversion, transport, cellular absorption, and cellular utilization. Any step can break down independently, which is why a root-cause approach looks beyond the thyroid gland alone.
The BRAIN Method is our proprietary framework for blood sugar balance, covered in depth in Season 5 of The Thyroid Fix podcast. Stable blood sugar directly supports healthy signaling between the brain and thyroid.
The Thyroid Fix is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, with episodes organized by season so you can jump straight to the topic most relevant to you.
No. We work with women dealing with thyroid, PCOS, hormone, gut, fatigue, and weight concerns, whether or not they have a formal diagnosis or “normal” labs.
Talk soon,
Nicole & Emily, Chews Food Wisely
Sources:
Köhrle J. Selenium and the Thyroid. Int J Mol Sci. 2023. DOI: 10.3390/ijms24043393
Costa-e-Sousa RH, et al. Energy Availability and Thyrotropin-Releasing Hormone Neurons. Thyroid. 2023. DOI: 10.1089/thy.2023.0173
This blog is for educational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any condition or to replace medical care. Always seek the advice of a trained health professional with any questions regarding a medical condition.
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