Inspired Living for Women: Conversations With Women Over 40

The Truth About Thyroid Function: Beyond Standard Medical Tests

• Lauri Wakefield • Episode 24

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In this episode, Dr. Dana Gibbs shares how her own experience with years of unexplained fatigue led her to question everything she was taught about thyroid health. A former ENT surgeon, Dr. Gibbs discovered that many of her patients — and herself — showed classic signs of hypothyroidism despite having “normal” TSH levels. She now uses a more integrative approach that looks beyond standard labs to assess free hormone levels, T3/RT3 ratios, and screen for Hashimoto’s. Dr. Gibbs explains why so many women feel dismissed by conventional care, how subtle thyroid issues can masquerade as other conditions, and what labs and treatments can actually make a difference. She also tackles the confusion around hormone replacement therapy and offers clarity on its risks and benefits for women over 40.

✨ Topics Discussed:

  •  Dr. Dana Gibbs’ journey from ENT surgeon to thyroid health advocate
  • Why “normal” TSH doesn’t always mean your thyroid is fine
  • The deeper labs that reveal hidden thyroid dysfunction
  • How treating thyroid issues can resolve symptoms others miss
  • Clarifying the real risks and benefits of hormone replacement therapy

💡 Key Takeaways:

  • Many thyroid issues go undiagnosed when doctors rely only on TSH levels.
  • Free T3, free T4, and the T3/RT3 ratio offer a clearer picture of thyroid function.
  • Hashimoto’s can appear early and often goes unnoticed without proper screening.
  • Hormone therapy, when used appropriately, can support heart, bone, and overall health.
  • Feeling dismissed by “normal labs” is common—but there are answers beyond them.

Noteworthy Quotes:

“I had no idea what it felt like to be normal until I started taking that medicine.”

“Having a TSH above three has now been correlated with things like high cholesterol, liver disease, and cognitive issues—even if you don’t feel it yet."

“Untreated thyroid issues suppress the immune system—and when you fix it, people just stop getting sick.”

“We’re doing all these surgeries on people that surgery is not going to help.”

Dr. Gibb's Bio: Dr. Dana Gibbs is a retired, board-certified ENT and thyroid surgeon with more than two decades of experience in private practice. Today, she leads Consultants in Metabolism, where she focuses on integrative, root-cause care for thyroid and hormone imbalances like Hashimoto’s and subclinical hypothyroidism. Based in North Texas, her boutique practice supports patients dealing with chronic fatigue, stubborn weight gain, and other lingering symptoms often overlooked by conventional lab testing—delivering personalized solutions and compassionate guidance for complex endocrine health.

More About Dr. Gibbs:

Website: danagibbsmd.com

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Website: inspiredlivingforwomen.com

Lauri Wakefield [00:00:42]:
Hi. Welcome to the Inspired Living for Women podcast. Thanks for joining me today. I'm your host, Lauri Wakefield, and my guest today is Dr. Dana Gibbs. Hi, Dr. Gibbs.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:00:51]:
Hi. It's great to be here.

Lauri Wakefield [00:00:53]:
It's great to have you had an interesting conversation leading up to this, so have a lot of good things to talk about. So Dr. Dana, or Dr. Gibbs is a retired board certified ENT and a thyroid surgeon with over 20 years in private practice. Now leading consultants in metabolism, which is a practice that she founded. She specializes in integrative care for thyroid and hormonal imbalances, including Hashimoto's and subclinical hypothyroidism. Her boutique, North Tex, Texas practice helps patients struggling with fatigue, weight gain and other persistent symptoms that are often dismissed despite normal labs offering real answers and compassionate care for complex endocrine conditions. Say that quickly a few times. Yeah. Dr. Gibbs, let's, let's start with, with you deciding to get into the medical field.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:01:46]:
Okay. So if you want to go way back, we get in the way back Mobile. I've known, I wanted to be a doctor since I was, I don't know, 10, 12, maybe a really long time. And I was fascinated as a kid by the pioneers of medicine, the Harvey Cushings and the Michael DeBakeys of the world. And I just thought, oh, I want to be a brain surgeon. That was, I think I did an essay when I was like 11. Oh, I want to be a brain surgeon. So I've known for a really long time that that that was where my interests lie. It was funny because when I got into my senior year in high school, I got really sick and I missed, gosh, I missed many days of school. I had mono basically. And when that kind of all shook out, I had to drop a bunch of classes and I'd gone from really high in my class down quite a bit. And I did not end up pursuing a scholarship to like a high powered Ivy League school, which I thought I was, that I, everybody thought I was going to do that and I just was like, I just can't. I'm tired. And I stayed tired. And it was a weird thing. It's been so long now that I can't remember. Was I tired even before that illness? I don't even know. But when it came time to check the box and say, oh, yeah, I want to take the MCAT and go to medical school, I didn't do it. I was too. I said, I'm too tired. I don't think I can. I have heard what it's like to go to medical school. I've heard how ridiculously hard it is.

Lauri Wakefield [00:03:21]:
Plus, I don't mean to interrupt you, but I was going to say, even in addition to tired, it probably affected your concentration. And just.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:03:29]:
And it didn't even occur to me that was the case. Did not. I just thought, oh, I'm just really tired. I can't think right now. I'm really tired. But anyway, I went and finished my degree. I got a degree in biochemistry. I went into a science lab and I did two years of science lab work. And the second year of that was in a science lab that was associated with a medical school. And some of the professors were physicians. They were doctors. And I was like, dang, they really do all the cool stuff. Yeah, they really have all the fun. And I just said, okay, fine, I'll take the stupid. And I did. And I got into med school. I was right. It was really mind blowingly difficult with my energy level. I slept through a test one time. I. When I think back about it, I'm like, how the heck did I even make it through? But halfway through medical school, I started passing out. And we go into the hospital and you start doing rounds and you get up really early in the morning and go. And I started feeling like I was going to pass out on rounds. And that was a long time ago. And basically I got chastises. That's a professional. You can't take a knee in the hallway. I'm like, do you really want me to pass out on the floor? I wasn't. I was a shy person. And so I wasn't cocky enough to smart aleck the guy and say, would you rather me pass out and you have to take me down to the error? I wish I would have, but I wasn't like that. But anyway, so I went to the health clinic and they did all my labs and they said, oh, your TSH is fine, everything's fine, you're not anemic, blah, blah. Yeah.

Lauri Wakefield [00:05:12]:
Were you thinking that it was maybe, like, a lingering symptom of the mono that she went through? I swear, you just didn't know.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:05:18]:
I had no idea. I had no idea. And so I was like, okay, maybe you're depressed. Here, take these antidepressants. I'm like, oh, okay, fine. And I did. And of course, they didn't really do anything. And so I just slogged along and I kept going, and I finished, and I developed the habit of procrastinating everything I could possibly procrastinate in favor of sleeping, of course, and just flogging myself. Oh, you lazy sew. And get this done. And I still struggle with those mental habits today.

Lauri Wakefield [00:05:52]:
Yeah.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:05:52]:
And I'm almost 60, and it's just. I'm still struggling with the mental habits that I got back then, but I made it through somehow. And I trained in ear, nose, and throat because it seemed easier than brain surgery or surgery. Wow. Those docs, they actually get to go home by six every day. They know their kids, and. And the surgeons did not. They were my kids, 12, and I missed their graduation, and I missed their dance recitals, and I missed their soccer games. And I'm like, heck, I'm not doing that. No. So I went into ent, and it was very interesting. I loved the. Doing the ENT surgeries and particularly the thyroid surgeries, which were really cool.

Lauri Wakefield [00:06:34]:
Yeah. That's interesting, because I didn't know thyroid was part of that.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:06:37]:
Yeah. Yeah. Any kind of cancer that's between your nose and the top of your collarbones is pretty much to do with ent, unless it's in your spine or in your spinal cord. So we were doing lots and lots of thyroid surgeries and laryngectomies and that kind of surgeries. So I enjoyed that. I got really good at it, and I went out into private practice, and I kept doing that. And part of what is what we do in ent. And if you're in Texas, everybody's got sinus. That's just. Everybody could be an ent. But what I figured out really fast was that all my patients also had allergies. And so part of ent, it's an optional part, but you can go back and you can get a certification in allergy so that you can give people allergy shots or that kind of treatment. And when I did that, I developed this contrarian out of the box kind of thinking, because the ENT allergists are really old school, and they have conflicting methods to the medical allergist. If you go to an allergist, immunologist. They do stuff a little bit different. And so I got into this contrarian way of thinking. And so then when I was at a conference one day and a guy put up a list of hypothyroid symptoms, I was like, holy.

Lauri Wakefield [00:08:04]:
Wow. That's what I have.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:08:06]:
Holy cow. I have all those symptoms. My hands are cold all the time. The. My eyebrows on the sides had fallen out. My hair on the top was really thin. I was constipated all the time. I was tired. Even if I slept 12 hours, I was tired still. And irregular periods, all this stuff. And I looked at that list, and I went, holy crap. That's what I had. And the next thing. The next words out of his mouth were, you don't always have to have abnormal TSH to have benefit from taking thyroid medicine. And I was like, what picked my job off the floor? And when I got home, I asked my doctor, I said, hey, I heard this lecture, and can I try this? And she put me on. I think it was armor thyroid at the time.

Lauri Wakefield [00:08:49]:
Oh, okay.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:08:50]:
And it was like, whoa, this is what normal people feel like. I had no idea what it felt like to wake up in the morning and not.

Lauri Wakefield [00:09:00]:
And feel refreshed.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:09:01]:
You need to hit the snooze 16 times. I had no idea.

Lauri Wakefield [00:09:05]:
Yeah.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:09:06]:
What it felt like to be normal until I started taking that medicine. And at the time, I was doing thyroid surgeries. Every few weeks, I would do another thyroid surgery, and these patients would come back and they would feel worse. And they were like, hey, Dr. Gibbs, I've gained 40 pounds since I saw you last. And I'd be like, isn't your endocrinologist giving you thyroid medicine? Oh, no. They said, my labs are fine. And I'm like, what? And the more I learned about it, the more I was like, this is wrong. The way we're doing this is wrong. 1 95% of the patients that I'm doing surgery on don't actually have a cancer, Right. And they feel worse after I do this surgery. Is there something better I can do? And so I started looking for techniques, and I found them of, okay, I'm going to give this person thyroid medicine for six months and see if I can shrink that nodule that before we try to take it out. And you can't always do that, because some of them, you put a. You take a biopsy specimen, and it's really obviously cancer, and you have to take it out right then. But a lot of them, it was like, we're not really sure. And it's. Look, it's not worth having your thyroid out to go down that path unless you absolutely have to. And so I started with the treatment, and I was successful some of the time, and not as successful some of the time, but it was better than it was. And then when I found out I had thyroid, it was like, oh, my gosh, you just blew head explosion. And I started looking for mentors who could tell me what was going on, and I found them, and I started treating the way they taught me, and more people were getting better, and then I would start going, oh, you know what? This sinus patient has the thin hair and the eyebrows. And I'm like, hey, are you sick all the time? Are you cool? They're like, yes, I am. You don't. Your teacher. And it's February, and so you don't have time to do your sinus surgery until June. Why don't I start you on some thyroid medicine now? And they would come back in August or September, and I'd be like, when are we going to do your ent. Your sinus surgery? And they're like, I don't need that. I just need a refill on the throat. Like, holy cow, I'm onto something.

Lauri Wakefield [00:11:20]:
So you think the sinus issues can be caused by.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:11:24]:
Absolutely. It's like you're. It suppresses. It damages your immune system to have untreated thyroid issues going on, and you fix it, and all of a sudden you're not sick anymore. That turned out to be the case for me, too.

Lauri Wakefield [00:11:38]:
I've been.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:11:39]:
I haven't had a sinus infection in years, and I used to get three or four a year.

Lauri Wakefield [00:11:44]:
So how long ago was it that you realized what it was?

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:11:48]:
I would say it was pretty close to 20 years ago. Okay, it was pretty close to 20 years.

Lauri Wakefield [00:11:54]:
And so are you still taking thyroid medication?

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:11:57]:
Yes. Yeah. Oh, I absolutely am.

Lauri Wakefield [00:11:59]:
Synthroid or something.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:12:01]:
I take a combination of synthetic T4, which is levothroxine.

Lauri Wakefield [00:12:07]:
Right.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:12:08]:
And then I also take something called lyothyrenine, and I play with the ratio, the combination of the two, sometimes up, sometimes down. And it depends on labs where I go with that. And I treat myself the same way I treat my patients.

Lauri Wakefield [00:12:24]:
So what do you look at, like, for a range for tsh? Like, even if it's within normal range and you start treating them, how low do you try to get the tsh?

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:12:32]:
I actually try to keep the TSH well inside the normal range.

Lauri Wakefield [00:12:36]:
Okay.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:12:37]:
So I don't like it to be above 2. But I don't like it to be down at 0.2 either. I want it to be well within that normal range because I'm doing something that's outside the box. And so I want to be extra special careful that I'm not causing harm to a person by giving them too much thyroid medicine, which will cause your TSH to go down, really. And there are a lot of providers who treat thyroid who think it's okay to get your TSH down in the 0.0, whatever. And I think that's risking. I think that's risking heart issues like heart failure. And I think it's risking. It's definitely risking bone loss. I think it accelerates bone loss, and bone loss is something that women over 40 already really need to be aware of and are at risk for. And so I absolutely don't want to, by trying to help somebody, put them at higher risk for them. And so I'm very careful to make sure that TSH is not going down too low.

Lauri Wakefield [00:13:46]:
So do you find that women, as they get along people, probably, but women as they get older, that their TSH goes up usually at a certain age?

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:13:56]:
It's not that simple. There are some people that their TSH stays fine their whole life. And I don't just check tsh. I check a panel of labs that include something called the T3RT3 ratio. And I can find some fairly subtle thyroid abnormalities using that. That combination and just looking at, okay, how good are your free hormone levels? And I also spend a minute looking to make sure a patient doesn't have an autoimmune disease, because the most common thing that causes low thyroid is thyroid autoimmune disease or Hashimoto's disease.

Lauri Wakefield [00:14:36]:
Yeah, that's more for hyperthyroidism, right?

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:14:39]:
Or no, it can be either it can be hyper, which is too much, or it can be hypo, which is not enough. And Hashimoto's disease damages your thyroid gland gradually over a period of time. The youngest person I've ever diagnosed with Hashimoto's disease was 16. But I have read literature studies of kids as low as 6. And I was like, oh, my goodness, that's.

Lauri Wakefield [00:15:05]:
Now, how is that diagnosed?

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:15:08]:
It's a blood test for antibodies, and then you look at a sonogram, and if you have a characteristic appearance of your sonogram of your thyroid to see if you have a nodule or what's called heterogeneous appearance to the thyroid gland. So that's. So those. The combination of those two and Like I was saying before I came at it from a surgeon's viewpoint, when I first started doing thyroid surgeries out in private practice, and the pathology would come back chronic lymphocytic thyroiditis, I was like, what's that? And I looked it up, and I was like, oh, my gosh, that's Hashimoto's disease. This is an autoimmune disease. Why are we doing surgery for an autoimmune disease? That's ridiculous. That's another one of the out of the box things that I started noticing was like, okay, we're doing all these surgeries on people. That surgery is not going to help.

Lauri Wakefield [00:16:00]:
But people in the medical community probably don't.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:16:04]:
They're in their own lane. The endocrinologists are, I'm going to treat you until your TSH is normal. Boom. Get out of my office. The ENT is, oh, you have a lump. I'm going to take it out. Get out of my office. There's nobody taking care of those middle ground people. It's like, my TSH isn't very bad. I have a little bit of lumpiness to my thyroid, but it's not horrible. I don't need a surgery, but I feel bad. I feel bad, and nobody wants to do anything for me. And the danger of that is that people then go to the Internet and they find somebody who does unproven things and maybe even dangerous things, like getting your TSH way too low. And it's frustrating to me that happens because I really do feel like there's a happy medium. And I wish there was more docs in my, I don't know, in my niche that I've chosen to pursue. And, and. And there gradually are getting to be more, but there's not very many.

Lauri Wakefield [00:17:06]:
So, like, at what level? Okay, say somebody has like a TSH that's like a little bit over 4.0. Do you automatically treat them on thyroid medication?

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:17:16]:
I probably would, because if I see them, then they came to me because they have symptoms. Does that make sense? I mean, they didn't show up in my office until they had a problem.

Lauri Wakefield [00:17:26]:
But could you have it do that.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:17:28]:
At that level and not have issues? Be completely and utterly. No symptoms at all? But here's the thing. Having a TSH above 3 has now been correlated with things like high cholesterol, liver disease. Trying to think of some of the other ones, like gaining more, but eating less. There's just a variety of outcome measures that you can look at and go, okay, you're at higher risk for Those things. And if you're treated just with levothroxine, you're still at higher risk for those things whether you're treated or not. But if your TSH was like 20 or even 10, then absolutely. Even if you have no symptoms at all, you should probably be treated because you. Here's what happens. It's okay. This patient comes in and their TSH is 42. But they say, oh my goodness, I don't feel bad, and put em on thyroid medicine. And they come back a couple of months later like, doc, doc, I am so embarrassed because I had no idea how brain fogged I was because I was in it. When you're in the fishbowl, you don't see the things unless you compare yourself with other people around you. So I have seen people where their only symptom was that they were cognitively impaired and didn't realize it because they were living it and they didn't realize that it wasn't normal.

Lauri Wakefield [00:18:55]:
So do you deal with other hormone imbalances just other than the thyroid issues?

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:19:00]:
I do. And that kind of evolved organically as well, because it's like, okay, so I have all these women that I'm treating for thyroid problems, and this was in my ENT practice still. And they would come to me and they say, doc, I need menopause hormones. Can't you write those for me? And I'm like, no, I'm an ent. I'm in an ENT practice. And so I could not. I didn't feel like I should treat them. But I did go and start learning about it. Of course, I was going through menopause myself. And at the point. At that point, I didn't know what I didn't know. I had a doc put me on pellets. And then he was like, oh, my goodness, your uterine lining is too thick. We have to do a biopsy. Oh, you have a polyp. We should get a hysterectomy. Blah, blah. When you get a hysterectomy and I come, I wake back up and he was like, took your ovaries out too. And I'm like, you did? Really? Okay, so now I really went on hormones.

Lauri Wakefield [00:19:57]:
Do you regret that? Having this tractor?

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:19:59]:
The diet is well meaning. He was well meaning. But what he did to me caused me to need that surgery. Yeah, when I think about that, I do get a little pissed. But I. He meant well. He did not. He was not dismissive of me. And I've heard all kind of stories now of women going in and Saying, doc, I have this, I have that. And just, oh, you're just getting older, go away. It's just menopause, go away. And that just drives me, that makes me so furious. At the same time, it's a little bit understandable. This. Are you familiar with the Women's Health Initiative?

Lauri Wakefield [00:20:34]:
I've heard of it. I don't know a whole lot about it, but go ahead.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:20:37]:
Okay. So the Women's Health Initiatives was a really big scientific study that was done on women. Original goal was doctors had figured out in treating their patients, doctors had figured out and it seemed like it lowered heart risk to take hormones. And so their stated goal was, we're going to find out for sure, does hormones actually improve heart risk? And so they took a bunch of women who were in their mid to late 60s, 59 to 73, minimum of 10 years past menopause, most of them.

Lauri Wakefield [00:21:12]:
Right.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:21:13]:
And they put them on hormones and they did that for. I don't know if they were in the study for five years or I don't know. But in 2002, they went and did a big press conference. Stop the presses. We found out that this part of the study increased the risk of breast cancer by 25%. And everybody freaked out.

Lauri Wakefield [00:21:35]:
But it was flawed, right?

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:21:37]:
Flawed. They were not correct. They had incorrectly chosen the people in the control group that they were comparing them to. And it wasn't the estrogen that was causing the problem in the first place. It was the. There's a second drug that was part of it called Standby. It's called Medroxyprogesterone, Prempro, Provera, which was in the 90s, that was the number one hormone that women were given was Prempro. And so that's the study that they did. But the part of this study. So they also had a part of the study that was women who had already had a hysterectomy. And those women got the Premarin, the estrogen, but they didn't get the Provera and they didn't have any risk increase of heart of breast cancer. And so they didn't bother to say that part. They just stopped the presses. This hormone causes breast cancer. And practically overnight, every doctor stopped prescribing hormones and every medical school and training program stopped teaching doctors how to prescribe hormones. And so we now have a 20 year desert of doctors who don't know how to prescribe for women. And it's so tragic because it turned out the per that their conclusions were wrong.

Lauri Wakefield [00:22:56]:
So you don't think, you don't think taking, I guess they would call it systemic hormones. You don't think that contributes to the like an increased risk of breast cancer?

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:23:06]:
I absolutely don't.

Lauri Wakefield [00:23:07]:
Okay.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:23:09]:
So there is some evidence that if you already have breast cancer and you take those hormones that it will stimulate it to grow. And so somebody who is under treatment for breast cancer should not be taking systemic hormones. That is definitely the case, especially if it is the receptor positive type of cancer.

Lauri Wakefield [00:23:35]:
Yeah. I have a couple questions.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:23:37]:
Yeah. But they did find some good things with the Women's Health Initiative. They found that hormones reduce the risk of colon cancer by 30 something percent, which is a lot. They found if you started taking it before it had been 10 years after menopause, that it did actually reduce your heart risk. They found that it protects you against bone loss, which is very near and dear to my heart because I'm watching all the women in my family fall, break a hip and become debilitated.

Lauri Wakefield [00:24:08]:
Yeah, can I. Yeah, can I interrupt you? I know you're a lot of information there. Okay. So for myself, I told you before we got on the call, I was diagnosed with estrogen positive breast cancer back in 2020, late 2022.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:24:19]:
So that was that long ago at all.

Lauri Wakefield [00:24:21]:
Yeah, fortunately it was early stage. But anyway, so I went through, I had the surgery and I had the head radiation therapy, no chemo. And then they put me on the estrogen flocker Arimidex. So I took that for a year and then I just felt awful. It felt terrible. And plus just knowing the things like the bone loss and the, the brain fog, just things that it can lowering your estrogen. It's once you've already. Because I'm postmenopausal. So once you already get to that point, like how much lower is your estrogen going to go? It's not. How is it going to help?

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:24:52]:
Yeah, they're going to take it from five to two.

Lauri Wakefield [00:24:54]:
Yeah. So I did, I stopped taking it. But that's super interesting.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:24:57]:
Yeah. Like I said, if you don't have cancer, then taking estrogen will not cause you to have breast cancer. Taking estrogen without progesterone will increase your risk for endometrial cancer for sure. That's absolute fact known for sure. There are controversies right now over should somebody who is post estrogen receptor positive breast cancer go back on hormones. The good news is that there are some great hormone alternatives. There is something called DUA V which has a cirm in it, which is definitely known to be bone protective and it has the estrogen in There. But it also has the receptor modulator. So it. There's a brand new study out that says it protects you against recurrence.

Lauri Wakefield [00:25:50]:
Is it kind of like tamoxifen or.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:25:53]:
I do not understand it as well as I should.

Lauri Wakefield [00:25:56]:
Okay.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:25:56]:
Oh, that's okay.

Lauri Wakefield [00:25:57]:
Yeah.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:25:58]:
But I do know that there is a brand new study that just got released that is talking about reduction in cancer risk. And I was like, wow, that's fantastic.

Lauri Wakefield [00:26:09]:
Interesting, because all the poor folks who've.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:26:11]:
Had breast cancer and I mean, it's 10% of women again, that's crazy. It's super high. And so that's a huge subset of people to just say, oh, no, sorry, you can't take hormones.

Lauri Wakefield [00:26:23]:
That's huge. Do you think there's a difference between, like transdermal? Because some of them will. Where you apply it to the skin versus the systemic. You think one is better than the other?

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:26:34]:
There are significant differences. Okay, so there's. The first level of hormone replacement is the vaginal hormones. So local vaginal estrogen. It is wonderful for the urinary. Everybody gets the, okay, I cough and I pee now. It fixes that. You laugh, but it's annoying. And so many people have it. People get urinary tract infections. And that was one thing that I was just plagued with when I started going into menopause. Was like, God, I've got another urinary tract infection. What the heck? This is like the third one this year. So the vaginal hormones do not increase your systemic levels of estrogen. They do not elevate your cancer risk. They don't do anything bad, but they stop urinary tract infections and they stop vaginal dryness and they stop the atrophy of the tissues that leaves you susceptible to incontinence and all that. And so I'm like, look, I put my 80 year old mother on the stuff.

Lauri Wakefield [00:27:34]:
Are you able to prescribe those to your clients?

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:27:37]:
Yes, we were talking about that and I was saying, oh, no, I can't write these prescriptions. I. When I left the ENT practice, I said, you know what, I'm going to go get certified and I'm going to learn how to do.

Lauri Wakefield [00:27:47]:
Okay?

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:27:48]:
So I do that now. And that's part of what I offer. Because all my patients eventually hit. Even if I get them when they're 25, they eventually are going to hit menopause. So eventually I need it.

Lauri Wakefield [00:27:59]:
So you ended up starting. You left your private practice and started. It's another practice. It's consultants and, and metabolism. Yeah, yeah, 2023. So you want to talk about that a little bit?

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:28:10]:
Sure. So when Covid hit and things just went crazy in insurance based medical practices and they shut our surgery center down and we couldn't make money, and I'm hitting pretty heavy into menopause and my vision is changing and my back is sore and my neck is sore. And I decided, you know what, I think maybe I don't need to do surgery anymore. I think I may be done doing that. And it was a hard choice, but I, I was ready to be out of that group practice, high overhead environment.

Lauri Wakefield [00:28:43]:
And probably just be able to practice in the way that you wanted to practice without being like.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:28:50]:
Without feeling weird about prescribing somebody hormones. Because in an ENT practice it did feel weird. And the other thing was the kind of patients that I was attracting for these more complex combination kind of problems take up more and more time. And insurance doesn't want to pay you as a doctor for advising somebody on how to eat better or advising you on the right way to use this medicine or that medicine. They'll pay you to do a test on them, they'll pay you to give them an allergy shot, they'll pay you to take out their sinus polyps, but they don't want to pay you to make the patient better by helping them change their lifestyle. And that's true of medicine altogether at this point. And so I said, you know what, I want to keep doing this, but I don't think I want to take insurance anymore. And I could not stay in the practice once I decided that. So yeah, so I pulled out and I said, you know what, I'm going to go and I'm going to have as lean a practice as I can. And I have an office that I can use a couple of days a week to see people in, in person if they want to. But the rest of it's all telehealth. And so that has worked out extremely well.

Lauri Wakefield [00:30:05]:
Yeah, so I, when I was looking at your website and we talked about this before we got on the call, you have videos on your website. You also have a YouTube channel, but you have videos on your website that are not on your YouTube channel. So if somebody wants your website, they can. And those were from Facebook lives, right? Some of them.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:30:22]:
Correct. Yeah. When I first started the practice back in 23, I started putting content out and I would visit with other people or I would go on myself and just pick a subtopic within thyroid or menopause or hormones and just talk about it. And then. And Facebook made me take them all down a couple weeks, but they're still all on my website, which is great. Anybody that wants them, they're there.

Lauri Wakefield [00:30:47]:
And then you also have a podcast. Is that. What's the name of the podcast?

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:30:51]:
Name of the podcast is beyond the Thyroid. And I. Yeah, I started that last year when I decided that Facebook was not the platform for me anymore. And I think I just did episode 32.

Lauri Wakefield [00:31:04]:
Okay.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:31:05]:
So it's gradually building the level of content there. I started just with thyroid topics, and I have very few so far that are branching beyond that into the menopause or into the resistance or things like that. I don't put.

Lauri Wakefield [00:31:22]:
Is it geared more toward medical professionals or just people in general?

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:31:27]:
I tried to make my content applicable to somebody who is looking for answers for their own medical condition. I think probably my early stuff is a little too high toned as far as that goes. And I've really worked hard on making it more plain speech and more. More understandable for folks who are not science trained. Okay. But yeah, I think there's enough interesting stuff there that you wouldn't be bored listening to it.

Lauri Wakefield [00:31:57]:
As a physician, you also have a course that you teach for medical professionals.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:32:03]:
Right. So what that is, is, is my mentor, my main mentor that taught me a lot of what I know about thyroid and hormones. Already had a course that he was teaching in person before COVID hit. And he is an older gentleman. He is not technically inclined. And he was just going to give it up. And I'm like, no, Alan, let me.

Lauri Wakefield [00:32:31]:
I'll become technically inclined.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:32:33]:
Let me become technically inclined so I can keep. Because the Astol is too valuable to keep. And he realizes that. He's just, you know what? It is my purpose in life to. To teach this to as many people as I can.

Lauri Wakefield [00:32:47]:
So what's his background?

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:32:49]:
He is also an ent.

Lauri Wakefield [00:32:51]:
Okay.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:32:52]:
And he started. He started. Oh, he's like I said, He's 70 something now, so he's probably 15 years ahead of me training wise. So he. I think he probably graduated med school in maybe 1980, something like that, maybe. And he started out in general surgery. Burned out. And I luckily figured out I didn't want to do general surgery before I burned out from it. He went and did er, and then he finally settled on ent, which was an infant field at the time. There wasn't a whole lot of ENT specialists. But he did his ENT training and then he did otology training, which means ear surgery was what he did. And in Ear surgery, especially back in the 90s. So much of the chronic ear disease that he was seeing turned out to be caused by allergy that he became an expert in allergy. And so that's where I first met him, was at an allergy conference, which I think is funny, but he's. I don't really do a lot of allergy anymore. I learned all this thyroid stuff and all my allergy patients got better that didn't need more.

Lauri Wakefield [00:33:59]:
And I'm like, but that's a good thing.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:34:02]:
So it is a good thing. And so I offered to coordinate with him to sponsor this course. And I think we're going through it now. We're about halfway through it now. It takes 12 sessions to go through it all. And I think this is the fourth or fifth time we've done it and I'm really happy about it. We're starting to get a little bit of a following and hopefully that will continue to grow. And as he retires, I'm probably taking over.

Lauri Wakefield [00:34:28]:
How are you reaching out? Are you on LinkedIn or other places.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:34:31]:
Where I have a LinkedIn page? I'm. I have a person that manages my social media for me. So I don't personally put a whole lot out there, but I do have an email list. I have, I have a newsletter that I put out.

Lauri Wakefield [00:34:44]:
So their course is about thyroid and hormone imbalance.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:34:47]:
It's. It's about hormone imbalances from thyroid to men's and women's sexual health to insulin resistance to adrenal fatigue, fibromyalgia, vitamins and minerals deficiencies and every little thing in between the cracks. And yeah, we spend a lot of time on nutrition. We spend a lot of time on the right way to balance people's hormones.

Lauri Wakefield [00:35:11]:
That it would be somebody who actually is a. Is. Has a doctor. Is a doctor.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:35:16]:
Generally it's doctors. Yeah. But we have some naturopath. We have one naturopath, we have one lady who's a nurse practitioner that came a couple years ago and she has not been recently. But yeah, it's for clinicians.

Lauri Wakefield [00:35:31]:
Okay.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:35:32]:
It's for clinicians. And then other teaching wise stuff. I actually have done a course on how to use a cgm, which is a continuous glucose monitor for people who work worried that might. They might be headed towards diabetes. I've done a combined hormone course which I think was too, too lofty. The goal was too lofty and I think I needed to tone it down a bit and stick with one topic at a time. So right now I'm working on A thyroid only course for laypeople. So if somebody's, you know what? I. I have those symptoms you talked about, and I want to find out if I have thyroid and my doctor is not going to help me. Come to the course and I'll teach you the right way to order your labs and we'll go over them and we'll figure it out for you. Yeah, there is a little bit of a renaissance going on in the hormone, the women's hormone care field at this point. There are more studies that are coming out. There are new combination medications that are much safer for people who are at higher risk for breast cancer. There are starting to be more shared decision making on, okay, I didn't start hormones right when I went through menopause. And I'm a little bit after, is it safe for me to do this? And so there's starting to be more nuance in that field. And I just want to encourage people who are like, oh, it's too late for me. No, it's not too late for you. Go talk to a doctor who is educated about it. And the way to find that person is probably to go to the Menopause Society website and look for somebody in your local area. And not everybody on the Menopause Society website is going to know everything about everything, but it's a great place to start.

Lauri Wakefield [00:37:21]:
Okay, so I can link to that if. Is that what it's called?

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:37:24]:
Yeah, I can send. It's called the Menopause Society and I can. I can forward you the link.

Lauri Wakefield [00:37:29]:
Okay. All right.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:37:30]:
Yeah.

Lauri Wakefield [00:37:31]:
Okay. So I think that'll wrap things up then for this episode. Thanks so much for joining me today. If you'd like more information about Dr. Gibbs and the products and services she offers, you can visit her website at danagibbs G I B B S M D.com I'll link to her website in the show notes. If you'd like to see the show notes for today's podcast, you can find them on my website at Inspired Living for women. Com. The show notes will be listed under Podcast show notes episode 24. And if you'd like to join me as I continue my conversations with other guests exploring topics with women over 40, please be sure to subscribe to the podcast, the Inspired Living for Women podcast. Thanks again and have a great day.

Dr. Dana Gibbs [00:38:09]:
Bye, everybody. Thank you for having me. This has been great.