72// 3 Steps To Advocate For Your Health

After years of struggling with my health and thyroid, I have come to realize how important it is to advocate for yourself. I was recently reminded of this while pregnant and during delivery how important it is to follow these three steps to find answers regarding our health. 

 

Steps to advocating for yourself:

1. Ask questions
2. Do research
3. Ask about the physician's standard practice of care

 

Inside today's podcast, we break down these three steps in depth. 

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If you have questions about the Hansen Method and want to discuss your specific situation and make sure this is the right program for you you can schedule a complimentary thyroid breakthrough call with one of our team members. schedule here. Hurry, my schedule fills up quickly and we only work with limited amount of women at any given time.

 

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Xo,

Shannon Hansen

 

P.S. Make sure to schedule our Thyroid Breakthrough call with one of our thyroid advisors. 

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(00:00):

This is episode 73, 3 things, three tips you can do to advocate for yourself, your health and your thyroid.

(00:10):

Welcome back to the thriving thyroid podcast, where we choose to become empowered patients and take our health into our own hands. Hi, I'm Shannon, a Christian entrepreneur, a mom of three. And after dealing with my own health mysteries, I made it my mission to learn everything I could about the thyroid. I soon became certified as a holistic wellness practitioner, a functional nutrition practitioner and a functional diagnostic practitioner. And so much more. After that, I founded the revolutionary thyroid program, the handsome method as a health professional and a mom. I fully understand the importance of having a fun, simple, and sustainable plan for achieving a responsive thyroid. So I share actionable and practical strategies for developing a responsive thyroid so that the ambitious moms and women can gain freedom from fatigue and lose the thyroid weight once. And for all each week, I will be here for you. Along with my guest experts, we will be sharing simple and tangible tips that work for not only your thyroid, your hormones, your family, and so that you can get back to living the life that you envision for yourself. Welcome to the thriving thyroid podcast.

(01:33):

Welcome back to today's episode thriving Throid with me. Shannon Hansen is Saturday morning at the time of recording this and my kids are home. The baby's in the bounce chair next to me and you might hear some background noise today as I record, but as I tell everybody, this is what life is. This is what being a mom is. This is what being a business owner is. It is having people in the background. It is having interruptions. It's about being messy and imperfect and letting people see that because I want you to know that everything that I'm teaching you, everything I'm talking about, everything I believe in is possible. It is doable for the busy moms, for the working moms, for the business owners, for the stay at home moms, for people who take on and do a lot. And the funny thing that just happened is one of my kids came in while I'm recording and needed a hug.

(02:41):

So what you didn't see or what you didn't here is me pausing and giving her a hug and giving her some attention before rerecording or hitting start again. But I want to welcome myself back as now, a mom of four. We have had a period of time where I recorded a whole bunch of episodes prior to having baby. And now I am back rerecording and doing everything now that I have the new one. So through this process of being pregnant, having a baby, having, getting all of the things that happened during my pregnancy reminded me of the importance of advocating for myself, learning and relearning to ask questions, to do research, to gain, understanding, to gain clarity around all of this. So I wanna kind of take you you back on this journey. And I really feel like I'd love to share personal stories, because I feel like when we share personal stories or when there is a, so a story attached to an example, it makes it easier for us to connect.

(03:52):

We can think, oh, I remember this time when I was in this situation, that's why all of the books that I recommend, or some of my it mindset books or money books, they are told in the format of like a fictional story. So kind of a side note, if you like to read and you like to learn the Jack rabbit factor is one of my very favorite. I recommend that to just, not everybody or three feet from gold, because there are so many good nuggets, but they're told in a story format. So for me personally, that's the way that I love to share and teach people is through stories and through kind of real stories. And obviously it's so much easier to tell your own story versus telling someone else's story, because I can tell you how I felt, how I experience that thing and how it was for me.

(04:41):

So during this, well, let me back up. So fourth baby, my previous three pregnancies, I thought I was very educated on natural birth on the body, on hormones, on all of those different things. My, so my oldest is 11. Then I have an eight year old and then I have a six year old. I had no clue what I was doing. I mean, I did, but I didn't . And my previous three deliveries were very difficult. They were very long, they were very gone out. My shortest one was 15 hours. And I was like, whoa, like magic, you know? And I was telling my mom, or I was, my mom had come to visit me and I was talking on the phone and they were like, Hey, how was your delivery? How did it go? You know? And I was like, oh, it was amazing.

(05:36):

I only, it was only 15 hours long. And, you know, I hemorrhaged pretty bad, but you, it was great. and my mom sat there thinking, oh my gosh, you know, that's crazy for her. That was not even as long as her longest. And she had given birth to four kids. So for her to hear me describe how amazing this was for 15 hours, she was like, what is even happening here? now this delivery, I learned a few things. That number one helped prepare my body. I did weekly acupuncture. I did massage. I did pressure points at home. I took herbs and supplements to help soften and ripen the cervix. I heard like I did a lot to tone my uterus used homeopathy and used all of the natural resources that I have available to me. And I knew that that was going to be very important because of my previous three experiences.

(06:36):

So the, this time throughout the pregnancy, one of the things that I did is I would talk to my practitioner about different things, different questions that would come up for me. So for example, one of the things that I didn't know happened in my body with my previous three was that I cervix would dilate. They would call me complete, but I would have a little lip from the cervix. And what would end up happening is they would have me start pushing and that cervix, because the baby was still high up, that cervix would swell, cuz I was trying to push the baby down and my cervix would swell. And then, and I would quote unquote, swell shut. And they were like, oh, you're actually not complete after long times of pushing and because, and I couldn't get the baby out. And so by that time, I'm tired.

(07:30):

I'm exhausted. I'm like, give me the epidural. I'm done. I'm tapping out. like mama has nothing left to give. And I had learned that after baby number three. And I was like, like I'm done having kids, at least I thought at the time and I was talking to a nurse or excuse me, a midwife who had delivered, you know, hundreds of babies. She was retired from that. And she, her daughter had a very similar experience and she told me, Hey, this is very, very rare and it's not very common, but it does. And it can happen. And you know, she's retired. She actually lived in a different state. So it wasn't possible for me to, to work with her. And so I was like, okay, what am I gonna do? And I brought it up to my practitioner, my doctor, my OB, well, actually she's a midwife.

(08:26):

I, I work with a clinic that has midwives and doctors OBS, this one was a midwife. And so I talked to her, I said, Hey, listen, this is what has happened to me. The last few pregnancies, you know, what can we do? How can we support this? How can we prevent this from happening? How can I prepare my body? And she was like, I have never heard of this thing before. And she said, well, you know, in that kinda case, we can give you Benadryl. And I was like, huh, okay. That's a little interesting. I don't know how I feel about that. And so I kind of just said, okay, I asked a question and I moved forward, right. I had an answer. I went home and I told my husband, I said, Hey, they told me that if this happens again, I can take Benadryl and it will help calm down this.

(09:14):

Well, my body, I didn't love that answer, but at least it was something, it was an intermediate. Right. It kind of solved that initial problem. So let me kind of give you these tips. So there's three of them. Number one, ask questions, right? Number two, do research and number three, ask about their standard practice of care. So that was one situation for my pregnancy delivery. And then during my delivery, I had a different OB come in and I absolutely loved her. She's amazing. She's part of the team. I'm so thankful that she was the one on call when I, I delivered this baby, but I had never had anybody break my water before my water had always broken naturally. And we did things a little bit different this time. And so I asked her, I said, she gave me the option. Hey, you're dilated so far.

(10:11):

Your baby's, you know, moving down if we break your water, you know, we can and kind of speed things up. And I was like, oh, I don't know, because in my mind I was so fearful of, oh my gosh was my first, my water had been broken for over 20 hours. They were like, we need to, I was planning a home birth. We need to take you to the hospital. And then I was fearful of them having to do a, C-section not that C-section is so bad, but I just, you know, that's not something that I wanted. And so when I'm, in delivery, I'm contracting, I'm in labor. I'm asking the doctor, you know, if you break my water, what is the standard practice of care? How long will you let me labor with, without taking me in for a Csection, because I don't want to risk that if I can prevent it, right.

(11:03):

There are situations that, you know, we can't prevent or whatever. And she said, you know, we're gonna let you labor as long as you need to with baby. And as long as you and baby are both safe and healthy and fine, we're not going to do C-section. We don't need to do that. You know, we'll let you go as long as you need. And I was like, okay. So that calmed my fear. And I said, you know what? I actually feel really good about you breaking my water and they broke my water. Oh my goodness. You guys from start to finish. This delivery was five hours. So drastically different than the other three. But all along the way, I was talking to my doctor, I was asking questions. I was asking about the risk. I was asking about the benefit I was asking about how will it help me?

(11:51):

Will it support the baby? What is the process? What do you specifically do in these situations? And I was able to walk through the process and make educated decisions, knowing full well that prior to delivery, I had taken care of my body in such a way that would allow my body to be supported during delivery. And I even had a postpartum plan for myself. I knew from, again, previous experience that seeing a chiropractor after delivery was really good for me, really good for my hips, really good for my back. All of those different things that I knew ahead of time and comes from step number two, where we're doing the research. So let's kinda break this piece down a little bit. We can ask questions all day long, but if you don't even know what questions to ask, oh, you're gonna be stuck. Right? So doing the research benefits of X procedure, right side effects, risks, and alternative treatment.

(12:57):

So when it comes to thyroid, let's give the example of nodules on your thyroid. You're maybe having a hard time breathing or food feels like it's getting stuck. Things like that. Maybe they're suspecting cancer. Maybe they're not. What I would do is I would be in the office and I would say something like, you know, thank you. I hear what you're saying. I wanna go home. And I wanna research this a little bit more or ask them for the questions. You know, what's gonna happen. If you remove all of my thyroid, you know, what kind of medication, what is your standard practice? How will will I need to change my diet will I need to make lifestyle change? And you know, some of those basic questions you can come up with right on the spot. Tell me more about that. Give me more background, give me more experience all of those different things and ask them what their standard practice is for that.

(13:53):

And then you can say something like, I wanna go home and I want to research this a little bit more and look at what opportunities, what benefits, what risks. Now, if it , if your nodules or goer is so big that it's cutting off airway, that's a really big issue, right? And that's not something that can be ignored. And then you can come back into the office a little bit more prepared and say, you know what, I've done my research. I know the benefits. I know the risks. I know the side effects. And I've looked at alternative treatments. I feel like a full thyroidectomy would be the best option for me. And I want, you know, your doctor or your physician, whoever you're working with to support you in that. And then step number three, going back to what is your standard practice of care?

(14:45):

Once you remove my thyroid, what is that going to look like for me? What is your standard practice? Because every doctor, every physician is going to be a little bit different. So I wanna go back and talk really quickly about step number two, about doing the research. This is kind of pregnancy delivery related, but in the context of let's say birth control. We know birth control is terrible for you. I've done two episodes on it. Episode 29 and 53, but sometimes birth control is the best option for the body, right? If your body for personal or medical reasons, right? If your doctor is like, listen, your, your uterus is X, Y, Z. It is not safe for you to have a baby. You're married. You are obviously having intercourse and your husband can't or won't or whatever, have a vasectomy birth control may be the best option for you at that time.

(15:47):

And so then looking at the risks, the benefits of what kind is going to be the best for my body, that's broken down in episode 29. You guys can kind of look at that a little bit more if you are experiencing that and then being able to weigh out your options. Okay? So doing the research and really examining what is going to be the best for me is going to be, you're gonna feel empowered, right? You're gonna say this is what's right for me. And this is what part of this is the big part of advocating for yourself. So then let's move on to step number three, asking about the standard practice of care. Especially if something goes wrong, tell me worst case scenario, what's gonna happen. What are you gonna do? What do you want this to look like? If so, let's give an example here.

(16:42):

If we start with, let's say Centro or Lev rockin, because that's your doctor's favorite and they can give you a specific dosage and whatever, you could see something like if we start with this medication, what would you do? If I was still experiencing the fatigue, the weight gain, the puffiness, the hair loss, the mood swings, the low libido, all of those thyroid symptoms. Would you be open to trying a natural thyroid like nature th or nature thyroid, or would you be open to adding in C SEIL for T3 to help me regulate some of these experiences? If I can't do well on Sy or Lev rockin, right? Asking about their standard practice can help you better. Hey, I'll try it your way. But are you open to maybe trying something a little bit outside the box if they said no, no, no, I don't. I don't like nature thyroid.

(17:43):

It doesn't work. It's terrible. It's hard to regulate whatever that can give you the clue early on to maybe start looking for another doctor or physician who would be open to an alternative thing. If their standard practice wasn't working for you because everybody's body is different. Everybody's root cause of thyroid imbalance is different and we should not be, be treated the same. And we need to have a doctor or physician in our corner that is helping to advocate for those things. I hope you guys are hearing my kids in the background. , they're claiming out underneath the stairs and playing Kaos and harmonics and all of the things right outside my office right now. So often we go into the, the doctor's office blind and we accept whatever they are pushing at us because they know because they went to medical school. However, if we're working with a primary care physician or an endocrinologist, they only have been trained in their area of expertise and even a natural pathic doctor while I'm a huge fan of naturalpathic doctors, they are well naturalpathic doctors are more general care, right?

(18:58):

Yes, they are natural mind. They're gonna give you herbs and supplements, which is great. But if they haven't niched down into thyroid or hormones or skin or something like that, they may be just doing what the quote unquote textbook has said about, said area, right? so, again, it's still important for us to ask questions and hopefully they'll do a little bit of research for us to help us in our area. So I have a question for you, and this is just something to think about. Have you ever heard your doctor say, I don't know, let me look into that. Probably not, because if they did that, they would be maybe quote, unquote, discredited, right? They would feel like, oh my gosh, I don't know what it, you know, they're questioning me now. When for me, in actuality, it would prove that they're willing to put forth the time, the energy, the effort, and finding the answers for me.

(20:04):

So something to think about. I use my team all the time. I use them for everything. What do you think about this? What do you think about this? And I'll give you an example. Just the other day we were discussing a client and she has really bad digestive issues. A lot of our clients come in with more adrenal fatigue and this particular client comes in with a more focused on needing support with her gut. And so we were talking about this client what does she need? How can we support her? How are we gonna move forward? And we talk about all of our clients all the time behind the scenes. We have coaches, success, coaches meeting without any clients where we just sit and talk about everybody what's going on, who needs, what, what do we think about this? So anyways, well, so let me kind of finish up this and then I'll move on to the next thought.

(21:03):

So this particular client, like I said, is having GI issues and we're trying to figure out what is aggravating her. And we review our one-on-one clients in the Hansen method, their weekly journals, and we give them feedback. And the reason this is so valuable and why this helps accelerate our clients' results is because we can see things that a them before they do. So this particular client , she has really bad, a heartburn and indigestion. Well, we were seeing a lot of those symptoms when she was eating chocolate before bed, and then she's going to bed and she's waking up and she's super uncomfortable and having a hard time falling asleep and it's impacting her and all of these issues because the chocolate she was eating. So we just advised her. We said, you know, Hey, let's take this out for a little while, or if you're gonna eat it, maybe eat it earlier in the day.

(22:02):

Take it with some digestive enzymes, you know, instead of having milk chocolate, you know, dark chocolate. And we gave her some criteria to look for for that, because it's not about deprivation. It should never be about deprivation. It should be about the nutritional seasons that our body needs and what our body needs in order to go to self heal to self-regulate and food should be a form of like therapy for our body. If our shoulders out, because of a sports injury, we're gonna go to a a physical therapist to help with mobility, to help with stretching. We might even see a chiropractor for it, but when it comes to food and nutrition, oftentimes we don't do those things because it's too hard because it's too inconvenient because we don't know what's going on when in actuality, that can have a huge impact on the way that the body works and how it moves forward.

(22:58):

So let me give you an example, another example. So when we're talking about gluten and bread, we know that gluten and bread is a huge issue. I have a whole episode on the gluten free craze and how that plays into thyroid. So you guys can go check that out as well, but, well, let me, let me just say this little snippet about gluten. So gluten mimics thyroid hormones and can trick the body into thinking it has too much or not enough. So that's kind of the danger with gluten and, and, you know, traditional gluten has been sprayed with glyphosate and I, me personally, I believe that glyphosate is more of the issue in the culprit versus the actual gluten, but here in America, we spray everything with that glyphosate. And it's wonderful. you guys can go research that on your own. Maybe I'll do a podcast episode on that a little bit later.

(23:54):

So when we are working with a client, if they come in and they're eating, let's say white bread, they're eating that fluffy wonder bread. That's what they grew up on. That is part of their, a comfort food. We might build out a plan for that client to say, Hey, we're gonna start by moving you to like an organic bread. That's a S sprouted wheat. So we're moving from a good, and I wouldn't maybe say that that's good, but it's a good option. to a slightly better in with the organic sprouted wheat, we're getting better nutrients, and then maybe transitioning them into an organic sour dough, maybe a homemade, if they're open for that, and then maybe moving to a completely gluten free BR bread, or just kind of removing that all together. I'm personally not a huge fan of gluten free bread unless it's toasted or warm or just out of the oven, like you have to eat it when it's hot.

(24:53):

It's kind of a texture thing for me, but it's, we're building out a plan. So while it is ideal that we are a hundred percent gluten free, that's a huge lifestyle change for many people. And some people can go all in and read all the labels and not be overwhelmed while other people need more of those smaller baby steps. And this is why advocating for yourself is so important and where it can come into play. Because communicating with your practitioner and saying, I hear what you're saying, that I need to be gluten free. How ever while I'm learning how to restructure my diet, how to change the meal plan, how to let's say you have a whole bunch of pasta in your, in your pantry, and it's all, you know, regular pasta. What if you reduce the amount that you're eating, right? Instead of eating a whole plate spaghetti, you're eating a quarter of a plate.

(25:50):

And then focusing on this salad, that might be a better transition for you. If you're not willing to go into your pantry and throw everything out and start from scratch. Because again, you're having to throw out food, you're wasting money, you know, all of those little, or I'll give you an another example. One of our clients, she loved pretzels. And so she transitioned from regular pretzels to gluten free pretzels. And she was like, this is amazing. But she bought something different when she ran out, right. She didn't just go throw that bag half bag or full bag or whatever it was. If pretzels away, she ate them slowly and then bought an alternative. Okay. So this can be important for you because your practitioner, you know, if you guys work with us, we can help give you solutions. We've already been through this process.

(26:47):

We know what it looks like. We know how it feels. I remember going in to the grocery store, right after being told I had to go gluten free. And I was, I think I was like 23, maybe 22, 23. And I remember the anxiety that I had felt my palms were sweaty. My heart was racing. I was picking up things that I had normally bought. And I was like, I think this has gluten. I can't eat that. And I was just standing there, like, what is the alternative? What am I gonna eat now? What am I gonna feed myself? What am I gonna feed my husband? What am I gonna feed this tiny baby that I just had? It was very over well. And I wish I would've had someone who would've said, Hey, these are good brands to try. But more importantly, just focus on the fruits and veggies and meat.

(27:33):

Now, I know that's easier said than done a lot of times, but I needed that time to make the transition. And I wished it wasn't all or nothing be because that anxiety just built up in me. And it kind of created a bad relationship with food for me specifically, because I didn't know what I was doing. I wasn't educated and I didn't feel comfortable in those decisions. So this is also why our clients inside the handsome method when they work with us. One on one, why we build out two to three phases for them over six months. Now we build out usually two to three and we kind of have a plan based off the functional testing that we do at the beginning of the program or towards the beginning of the program, because we know that health is progressional, and you're gonna need to take this baby step and this baby step and this baby step, and then you can move here.

(28:31):

And sometimes we have to, for the client that I mentioned a little bit earlier, we have to address the gut issues, the GI issues, before we can even get to the adrenal issues before we can even get to the mal absorption issues. And so this is why we're teaching you, educating you and building line online. So let's go back to the three ways that we can advocate for ourselves. Number one, ask the question, ask the question in the doctor's office, validate them. I hear what you're saying. I hear you think that I need X, Y, Z. And then we transition into number two. I'm going to take this information and I'm gonna do my own research. Okay. Dr. Google is great to a point. Okay. Remember that? Because sometimes, and I run into this all the time. I ran into this just this week, I was trying to figure out this tech thing, and I didn't even know what I'm trying to Google for.

(29:32):

right. And it took me forever to find the answers literally like three days, I'm Google searching all the things about this tech, but I couldn't find the right words to find the documents that I needed to find the answer. Okay. So just keep that in mind, but read through things, look at good experiences. Look at bad experiences. Talk to your friends. If you know, people who have maybe gone to through some of the same things. Okay. So that's number two is do your own research. Look at the benefits. Look at, you know, the side effects, maybe jump into the, our free Facebook group and ask one of our community specialists. Hey, this is what's going on with me. I'm thinking about this, about that. You know, we can provide you with some basic answers or give you some resources and places to look OK.

(30:29):

And number three, ask about your doctor or your physician's primary or their standard practice of care. I can tell you what our standard practice of care looks like inside the Han. We have a four phase process that we work our clients through. Number one, clean energy blueprint. Okay. So we're looking at food. We're looking at nutrition because I know if you have more energy, you're gonna be more compliant because you can make the food. You can go for the walk, you can drink the water, all of those things. Then I take you through the symptom. Mapping, looking at your symptoms can help give us a greater understanding of where these issues are coming from. Are they coming from the gut? Are they coming from the brain? Are they coming from the, the HPA access, whatever it is. And then I move you into thyroid block where we're looking at environmental toxins.

(31:25):

Do you have heavy metals? Do you have parasites? Do you have fungus? Do you have mold? Do you have a virus? You know, what are we working on there? And then last but not least opening up those detox pathways. So I can tell you what that standard practice of care looks like for me. But even through those, that four phase process of working with me, I can also tell you that your plan is gonna be customized to you through the testing, right? We test. And we assess, we look at your symptoms. We look at all of these different pieces before building out a protocol for you. We don't do standardized protocols or standardized plans, as we know, and we recognize that you are all different. So typically again, I say typically we start all of our clients off on an anti-inflammatory diet, which is gluten free and dairy free.

(32:18):

If we notice that you're having more food, sensitivities, more food triggers, then we might transition you into a gut healing protocol or, and, or an elimination type diet so that we can locate what is really triggering these GI symptoms, the inflammation, the, whatever it may be. I can tell you that because that is my standard of practice. And that's the same thing for just about every doctor or physician out there is they're gonna have their own methodology of what works for them. And it's important for you to know what that standard practice is so that you, once again, can advocate for yourself and you can become that empowered patient and make the decision that is best for you, because I will tell you, I know I'm not for everybody. I would love to be. And I think I'm actually, I know I'm really good at what I do.

(33:15):

Our success rate from our clients shows me our method works really, really well. Cause by that end of that four months, we're seeing a 60 to 80% reduction in all thyroid symptoms across the board, which is incredible, right? In four months, people's lives are changing. I have some people where they've pretty much reversed everything and have other people who are not as fortunate, right? But those are also the people who maybe aren't doing everything all the way in and they need maybe smaller, smaller pieces, and they need to match up their expectation with the effort that they're putting in. So those are all conversations that I think are, are really important to have with your physician, your practitioner, whoever you're working with with your thyroid, so that you can become that empowered patient. And you can advocate for yourself and your health, and you can find someone who matches your needs and is going to in your journey. All right, you guys, I will see you in the next

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One.

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