We are dedicated to helping our patients to come to the right diagnosis and treatment for their underactive thyroid. Our efforts have been awarded many times.
A sample of our many Awards:
The judges for the Innovation & Excellence Awards were very happy to consider CountryHealth as a previous winner in the
Countryhealth was taking part in the LUX Global Excellence Awards 2023. Following on from their extensive research period, CountryHealth has been successful this
Our 4th award in 2023 🙂Thank you to all our team and the support of our patients. We could not
Hi Dr Oliver,We hope you and the team at CountryHealth are keeping well. Firstly, we would like to thank you on
Most Trusted Thyroid Health Clinic - UKThis is fantastic news for our practice and a well-deserved achievement for our hard
The Story After winning already in 2019, we entered this award for a second time - and are very excited
Autoimmune Thyroiditis: Hashimoto’s and Graves’ disease
About 10% of the worldwide population suffer from a form of over 80 different autoimmune diseases (AID), the common ones being thyroid disease, coeliac disease, rheumatoid diseases, Multiple Sclerosis, and Type 1 diabetes. If you have one AID you are at greater risk to develop another.
Autoimmunity is a loss of immune tolerance.
If you have autoantibodies against your thyroid gland, it can work both ways:
- Either your thyroid becomes underactive or hypothyroid. This is caused by thyroid peroxidase and thyroglobulin autoantibodies and is called Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.
- Or you have thyroid-stimulating autoantibodies to the TSH receptor (TSHR) which causes Hyperthyroidism in Graves’ disease
To make it even more complicated, in some Graves’ patients, thyroiditis becomes sufficiently extensive to cure the hyperthyroidism with resultant hypothyroidism. T regulatory cells (Treg) seem to be involved in the natural progression of hyperthyroid Graves’ disease to Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and hypothyroidism in humans. Vitamin D seems to help to improve the function of the Treg cells.
In order for an autoimmune disease to develop, in addition to genes, a trigger, and a leaky gut barrier must be present. Healing the leaky gut can put the autoimmune condition into remission.
An autoimmune paleo diet can bring “phenomenal” results and testing for food intolerances is - as per Dr Wentz - one of the best interventions to reduce autoantibodies.
Choose the Right Thyroid Hormone Replacement
Ultimately, to properly balance a thyroid that is severely out of balance, you will need to go on some type of thyroid hormone replacement therapy.
Altering your diet and your lifestyle will certainly help tremendously, but if your thyroid isn’t functioning properly, you may need to take some additional thyroid hormones to supplement its output.
Traditionally trained doctors prescribe synthetic T4 thyroid hormone called Levothyroxine. But that doesn’t make it the best treatment for everyone. Some people benefit from it, but in some cases the symptoms don’t seem to go away using only T4, even if their tests return to normal. A Functional Medicine practitioner knows is that no one treatment works for everyone. A combination of experience, testing, and trial and error becomes necessary to get any treatment just right.
We have discovered that the majority of our patients benefit from a combination hormone treatment including both T4 and T3. Levothyroxine is just T4, the inactive hormone. Most doctors assume that the body will convert it to T3 and all will be well.
Unfortunately, pesticides, stress, mercury, infections, allergies, and selenium deficiencies can block that process. Since 100 percent of us have pesticides stored in our bodies, we will all likely have some problem with Levothyroxine.
The most common treatment we use is Natural Desiccated Thyroid (NDT), a prescription drug made from desiccated (dried) porcine thyroid. It contains the full spectrum of thyroid hormones, including T4, T3, and T2 . That last one – T2 – is a little-known product of thyroid metabolism that actually may be very important.
Whilst the majority of our patients does well on NDT, everybody is different and therefore we adjust out treatment plan to each client. Some benefit from a combination with Levothyroxine, some need extra T3 and some only T3. Ultimately, we use the combination that works best for each individual client.
Sometimes the only way to find out if you have a thyroid problem is a short trial of NDT or Levothyroxine for three months. If you feel better, your symptoms disappear, and you lose weight, it’s the right choice.
Once all the factors that disturbed your thyroid function have been corrected, you may be able to reduce or discontinue the medication.
Careful monitoring is essential. Taking too much thyroid hormone or taking it if you don’t need it can lead to undesirable side effects, including anxiety, insomnia, palpitations, and, over the long term, bone loss.
How to get started:
1. Book a FREE pre-registration call with Dr Frey
We want to make sure that our services match your requirements. During this call we discuss your current health problems and how our practice works.
2. Register with our practice
If you want to be looked after in our thyroid health clinic, you first need to register as a patient. Following your pre-registration call where we establish whether our services meet your requirements, we send you a link to register or direct you into the direction of other heatlhcare providers.
Tip: You can spread the cost with regular payments with one of our payment plans!
3. Provide Up-to-date blood results
If you have a complete panel of thyroid blood results not older then 2 months we can use them.
The results should at least include TSH, FT4 and FT3. If you had no antibody test in the past, TPO and TG antibodies should also be tested.
Please note that we do not accept results from Inuvi / Pura / Genova diagnostics.
Ideally, you should also test your Vitamin D and Ferritin level together with Vitamin B12, Folate and hs-CRP.
Please check our testing instructions!
4. Order our ThyroidPreneur Handbook and your first Thyroid Report
Please email us your results when they become available and we prepare your ThyroidPreneur Handbook together with your first Thyroid Report. The ThyroidPreneur Handbook provides a lot of useful information about thyroid function, explains the different tests, recommends lifestyle and diet changes and supplements to help you get better.
Our treatment recommendations are not only based on numbers, but on how you feel.
We put your TSH, FT4 and FT3 on a scale of [-10] to [+10] in colour coded format to help you understand your results better. Based on our findings we make bespoke recommendations for treatment changes - if this is indicated.
The fee for a private prescription is not included in the report fee. We send the prescription to one of our partner chemists which will send you the tablets once you paid them directly. Our prescription is timed to last until the next test is due, unless a dose adjustment is necessary before.
We recommend to retest every 2-3 months if any adjustments to your treatment plan were necessary and to keep your NHS GP informed.
Tip: You can spread the cost with regular payments with one of our payment plans!