Hashimoto’s is the most commonly diagnosed autoimmune disease but the problem is that the person looks fine from the outside, even though they are exhausted and don’t feel fine on the inside. Most of our patients come into our office, even if they already have a diagnosis of Hashimoto's, on medications- but they are still experiencing most of the typical symptoms. The problem with traditional thyroid care is 2 fold: One is that the thyroid typically is only superficially evaluated on lab work- out of 10 markers needed to fully understand what is going on with the thyroid, typically only 1 or 2 are run. This is typically why Hashimoto’s autoimmune thyroid is commonly missed. Secondly, regardless of what is found wrong- even if it is Hashimoto's - the only treatment that is typically offered is hormone replacement therapy in the form of Synthroid or levothyroxine. So picture the problem: the immune system has begun attacking and destroying your thyroid gland.. and the only treatment offered is to give you the thyroid hormone that you are missing because of it. None of that does anything to deal with the autoimmune component- which is why you still experience so many of the same symptoms. If it advances to the point where you have an ultrasound and they see something that they “need to watch”- what are they watching it for? They are watching it till it gets bad enough or becomes cancer- then they are going to move to take the thyroid out. This is why so many people end up feeling lost because they have all the symptoms, but are told it isn’t their thyroid. Or that their numbers look good- even though they don’t feel very good. Or do they have to deal with the worry every time of year when they go back in for follow-up ultrasounds- is this the one they find something bad on. So obviously the elephant in the room is the autoimmune component of Hashimoto's. If the immune system component of Hashimoto's isn’t dealt with, the problem itself will degenerate and never go away.