How To INCREASE Free T3 Naturally

Dr. Stengler: Would you like to know the secret that integrative doctors use with hypothyroid patients to help them feel better — better than you get with standard thyroid medications? Watch this video, and as I walk you through it, I'm going to talk to you about the prescription thyroid medication that integrative doctors like myself use with many patients to help them feel better and get better results than standard thyroid therapy. I'm Dr. Mark Stengler, and I've been practicing integrative medicine for 30 years.

Desiccated thyroid extract is a medicine that integrative doctors like myself use all the time to help patients with hypothyroidism not only feel better but have much better results on their lab tests as well. Desiccated thyroid extract is not a standard thyroid therapy — you won't find many doctors using it outside of us integrative doctors. However, it is a prescription drug that's available from standard pharmacies as well as compounding pharmacies.

Desiccated thyroid extract is also referred to as natural desiccated thyroid, and it's produced from the powder of porcine thyroid and then made into tablets. The word desiccated means to be dried out — in this case, dried animal powder. It is available in United States pharmacies and in European pharmacies as well. It contains a ratio of T4 to T3 of 4.2 to 1.

In the human body, the main thyroid hormones are T4 and T3. Some people don't like that it has T3 because they're worried about overstimulating effects, but T3 really is the key. It is the dominant thyroid hormone that gets into your cells and drives energy and metabolism. So with desiccated thyroid extract, you're guaranteed to get that active T3. We know some people genetically don't convert T4 into the more active T3 very effectively.

Desiccated thyroid extract, from the early 1890s to the mid-1970s, was the preferred form of therapy for hypothyroidism. Then synthetic drugs came on the market and became the normative prescription. However, desiccated thyroid extract never went away. It's still available in pharmacies today and still very popular among patients and integrative doctors because of the results we see compared to standard synthetic thyroid medications. According to the FDA, 1.5 million patients received prescriptions of desiccated thyroid extract from 2024 to 2025 from outpatient retail pharmacies. In recent times, the FDA has voiced concern about the safety and effectiveness and wants manufacturers to improve the way they're producing these hormones, so it looks like that will be worked out in the next few months, which is a good thing.

Desiccated thyroid extract is unique in that it also contains the thyroid hormones known as T2 and T1. We know the human body produces these, but they're not available in any medications other than desiccated thyroid extract. T2, for example, has been shown in studies to increase metabolic rate, activate fat breakdown, and lower lipids. Studies have also shown it reduces body weight, fatty liver, and triglycerides. In one small human study, people were given 300 micrograms of T2 daily for two weeks, and they increased metabolic rate and decreased body weight significantly without other changes or side effects. There's less known about T1, but the body does produce it, it's found in desiccated thyroid extract, and it has a balancing effect on the stimulating effects of T3. T3 improves heart output, heart rate, systolic blood pressure, and coronary flow, and T1 has a balancing effect, preventing overstimulation from T3. We can see why the human body has all four thyroid hormones — and only desiccated thyroid extract has these four hormones in terms of prescriptions.

Several studies have compared treating hypothyroidism with desiccated thyroid extract to other forms of thyroid replacement. For example, a 2024 study that reviewed a number of studies found that desiccated thyroid extract improved quality-of-life scores better than other traditional thyroid replacement therapies. Another 2024 online survey assessed quality-of-life scores in people on different thyroid preparations and found that those taking desiccated thyroid reported a quality of life superior to standard levothyroxine therapy alone — and, as you'd expect, their T3 levels were higher. Another study published in 2013 found that desiccated thyroid extract caused modest weight loss, and nearly half of participants preferred it over standard levothyroxine. Having that active T3, and probably the T2, you can get that metabolic effect.

If you're on traditional thyroid replacement therapy and you're still experiencing hypothyroid symptoms even though your lab tests look pretty decent — symptoms like fatigue, difficulty losing weight, feeling cold all the time, poor cognitive function, brain fog, dry skin, constipation, or others — consider working with an integrative doctor who can prescribe desiccated thyroid extract. It is one of the secrets integrative doctors use to help patients with hypothyroidism feel much better. If you liked this video, click the like button and look for my other videos on hypothyroidism, natural treatments for hypothyroidism, and a variety of other integrative medicine topics.

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