Book Review: The Thyroid Connection by Amy Myers, MD

THIS BOOK REVIEW HAS BEEN SPONSORED BY THE BOOK’S AUTHOR. ALTHOUGH AS ALWAYS, ALL THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS ARE MY OWN.

Dr. Myer’s book is based around her twenty-eight day programme to get you back on track to good health, following a Hypothyroidism or Hyperthyroidism diagnosis. She looks at diet, gut health, stress, supplements and more.

I’ll also reference back to this book and what I’ve learnt from it throughout my blog posts.

Amy Myer’s writes with a familiar tone and from a common perspective in her second book, The Thyroid Connection, as a thyroid patient who feels let down by conventional medicine. She’s now a trained functional doctor and works with thyroid patients to help them regain good health and look at what’s going wrong not only inside their body but also in their lifestyle and diet.

She starts with an introduction to thyroid disease – both hypo and hyperthyroidism –  and the epidemic of these conditions being on the rise, but also going undiagnosed and ineffectively treated and managed. Here she includes common signs and symptoms of both and why so many doctors are missing them or leaving patients ineffectively treated for the condition.

Dr. Myer’s writes with an obvious passion for helping other people in the same situation she was in – those having their lives affected quite substantially by their thyroid condition – because she knows from her personal experience that this is avoidable and that all thyroid patients deserve to live with better health and quality of life. Throughout the book, she reassures the reader on this.

For me, I found a lot of the chapters regarding what hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism are, the signs, symptoms, issues with treatment and inaccurate testing etc. to not be new knowledge to me, or at all surprising, but I read over them anyway to almost refresh some things in my mind. This makes the book accessible to all levels of thyroid patients, though, as if you’ve only just been diagnosed or are just starting to learn more about your thyroid condition, then this book could be a good place to start, with a lot of the basics covered.

About a third of the way in to the book and you finally reach Dr. Myer’s programme. The information on diet, supplements, gut health, toxins and more, that she bases her programme around. It may be worth knowing that a lot of reviews on Amazon have complained about how much she mentions her programme and supplements throughout the book. This type of selling isn’t for everyone.

She also has a whole chapter on stress, how it is so delicately interlinked with our thyroid health and how we can better manage it. As part of her plan, I was impressed to find that she included a literal twenty-eight day plan for the reader, with food, supplements and other tasks detailed for each day. She’s clearly spent a lot of time ‘perfecting’ this and if it works for many of her patients, then why not share it in a book for others wishing to try self-help ideas and techniques?

However, as someone who has already gone gluten-free, I found a lot of the dietary suggestions made in the book to be quite overwhelming and presumptuous – no dairy, no processed food whatsoever (not even a little bit), no grains, no legumes, no nightshades, no eggs, only one alcoholic drink on special occasions etc. etc.

I don’t agree with lots of dietary restrictions personally and nor with a one-size-fits-all diet.

Since being gluten-free, I have also gone dairy-free for several months (to no effect) and, whilst I figure I would eventually adapt to it as I have with being GF, it would limit me so much more than gluten has already.

I struggled to enjoy a DF diet, even after several months. My mental health and stress levels were affected very negatively by it. But Dr. Myers suggests that all thyroid patients remove all of these things, whereas I take more of a ‘everyone is individual’ stance.

Reading a book like this and considering implementing a programme such as The Myer’s Way programme, you will have to be openminded about making big adaptations to your diet amongst other things, so if you’re 100% refusing to budge on that aspect of your life, this book probably isn’t for you.

I am not saying that we’re all sensitive to the same foods, as I feel it’s entirely up to the individual what they feel is most important to them. For me, I can live without bread, pasta, pizza (although you can make GF versions) pretty easily, but avoiding dairy makes me so miserable and stressed, that when I see no difference being dairy-free, it’s probably not worth cutting out.

But if you can make these changes to at least trial if they help you, then it’s worth a go. And Dr. Myers does let you incorporate some back in after the initial twenty-eight days.

Dr. Myers has a straightforward approach and I think many will appreciate this, but others may be put off by her ‘My way or the highway’ (or shall I say ‘Myers way or the highway’) approach.

The book definitely got me rethinking the importance of my food choices and it was comprehensive in terms of testing and treatment options, but I’m not sure it’s for everyone. If there’s any part of you that’s interested though, by all means I recommend you take a look.

You can get a copy of this book from Amazon here.

Have you read this book? 

You can click on the hyperlinks in the above post to learn more and see references to information given.