Consultants in Metabolism

Consultants in Metabolism I am a board certified physician with a practice focused on optimizing thyroid, hormone management and wellness.

09/05/2026

If you have Hashimoto's and you're on thyroid medication, this conversation is worth your time.

Lindsey Patrice Perez was diagnosed with Hashimoto's at age 9 and spent years navigating a healthcare system that kept telling her everything was fine. When she started GLP-1 therapy for insulin resistance, her Synthroid levels needed close monitoring, and she learned firsthand that more medication is not always better. Heart palpitations, shakiness, and hormonal imbalance were the signals her body was sending that she was being overmedicated.

Her response was to build SOLAIA, an AI-powered health advocacy platform designed to help patients track their symptoms, prepare for appointments, and advocate for themselves effectively. Because as she puts it, accessibility, advocacy, and education should be standard in healthcare, and especially for women, who are consistently underdiagnosed and underresearched.

Dr. Dana Gibbs sits down with Lindsey in Episode 54 of Beyond the Thyroid for a conversation that goes well beyond labs and medication. Watch the full episode on YouTube and share this with someone who has felt dismissed by the healthcare system.

09/03/2026

Episode 54 of Beyond the Thyroid is a guest episode, and this one is different.

Dr. Dana sits down with Lindsey Patrice Perez, who was diagnosed with Hashimoto's at age nine and spent years being told her labs were normal while still dealing with fatigue, brain fog, dry skin, and weight struggles that nobody could explain.

Lindsey eventually learned to advocate for herself -- tracking her own symptoms, requesting expanded labs, and showing up to appointments with a concise one-page clinical summary that changed how her doctors engaged with her. Expanded testing eventually revealed a PMOS component and an insulin resistance picture that standard labs had missed entirely.

She also shares how GLP-1 therapy helped her metabolic situation, and what that required in terms of monitoring her thyroid medication.

Out of all of that frustration, she built SOLAIA -- an AI-powered health advocacy platform that generates a personalized one-page clinical brief for $9, so anyone with Hashimoto's can walk into a 20-minute appointment prepared and harder to dismiss.

Dr. Dana also shares her own story of waking up to the limits of TSH-only testing, and they cover which labs to ask for, how to frame symptoms to avoid being dismissed, and when it's time to find a different doctor.

Link in the comments to listen or watch.

09/01/2026

If you've tried cutting out dairy and weren't sure what was actually causing the reaction, this breakdown is worth saving.

Dairy is not one thing. It contains lactose, casein, whey proteins, and fat, and each component interacts with the body differently. A reaction to whole milk doesn't automatically mean you need to eliminate every form of dairy.

Dr. Dana Gibbs uses what she calls an investigation ladder to identify exactly which component is the driver. Clarified butter is pure fat with protein and sugar removed through the clarification process. If it's tolerated, fat is ruled out as the problem. Yogurt is fermented, meaning bacteria have consumed most of the lactose and partially broken down the casein and whey. If yogurt is tolerated but plain milk isn't, that points toward lactose intolerance or sensitivity to intact casein and whey in their unfermented form. Hard aged cheeses fall somewhere in between with proteins further broken down by the aging process but some casein still present.

She also flags something easy to miss: reacting to plain fat specifically can point to gallbladder dysfunction related to inadequate thyroid treatment, not a dairy sensitivity at all.

Full episode on YouTube. Share this with someone who has been avoiding all dairy without knowing which part is actually the problem.

Track your reactions at danagibbsmd.com/tracker. Link in comments below 👇

08/30/2026

If you've tried eliminating a food before and decided it wasn't a problem when you brought it back, this is worth reading.

The timing of a food challenge is one of the most overlooked parts of the elimination process. Dr. Dana Gibbs explains the specific five day window and why it matters.

Remove the food completely for five days. Challenge on day 6. On that day, antibody levels from prior exposure are still elevated, but the food antigen has cleared your system. When you eat it again, you get what's called a hyperacute immune complex reaction, and that exaggerated response is the clearest signal that the food is a genuine problem.

Challenge too early and the antigen hasn't cleared yet. Challenge after day 7 and antibody levels have started to drop, weakening the signal. The result is a false negative, and the person concludes the food is safe when it may not be.

This is one of the most common reasons food sensitivities go unidentified for years.

Full elimination and challenge protocol in Episode 53 of Beyond the Thyroid on YouTube. Start tracking at danagibbsmd.com/tracker. Link in comments below 👇

08/14/2026

The series finale of Beyond the Thyroid is live -- Episode 53, and this is the practical one.

After four episodes covering the science behind food reactions, opioid peptides, molecular mimicry, and cyclic immune responses, this episode gets into exactly how you actually find out which foods are your problem. Not a theory. A protocol.

Dr. Dana Gibbs covers the Big Six foods and all the hidden places they show up (corn alone is in sauces, medications, supplements, and most packaged food under a dozen different names). She walks through the elimination phase step by step -- including why feeling worse on day 3 means it's working, not that you should stop. Then the challenge phase, reintroduction, how to handle a reaction if it happens, and the rotation diet for people managing multiple sensitivities.

She also closes out with the full dairy breakdown: lactose intolerance vs casein sensitivity vs casomorphin vs A1 vs A2 milk, and a structured approach to reintroduction that doesn't require giving it up forever.

And the final takeaway of the whole series: the Mediterranean foundation that makes all of this easier, and why building that first changes how much of the rest you even need.

Link in the comments to listen or watch.

08/02/2026

I have a question for you.

What's something about your thyroid health that you've never been able to get a straight answer to? The question you've asked multiple doctors, done hours of research on, and still feel like you're going in circles?

I'm Dr. Dana Gibbs, board-certified ENT surgeon and thyroid specialist. I'm bringing back live Q&A sessions, and I want to build them around what you actually want to know, not a generic list of thyroid topics.

Drop your question in the comments below. Follow the page for dates. Every question gets read.

08/01/2026

Have you ever been told your food reactions aren't real because your allergy test came back negative?

There's a reason that happens, and it has more to do with how allergy is defined than with what's actually going on in your body.

IgE-mediated reactions are the most recognizable form of food allergy. Hives, swelling, anaphylaxis. They show up on skin prick tests and blood panels. In the US, most mainstream allergists reserve the word allergy exclusively for this category. If it doesn't show on a test, many physicians will tell you it's not an allergy.

But in the UK and much of Europe, non-IgE immune reactions to food are formally recognized as a category of food allergy, with clinical guidelines and structured management protocols. These reactions are slower, subtler, and far more common than the dramatic IgE type, and many people experiencing them have no idea food is involved at all.

Dr. Dana Gibbs sides with the European framework on this one, and explains exactly why in Episode 52 of Beyond the Thyroid. Watch on YouTube and share this with someone who has been dismissed after a negative allergy test.

Start tracking your own reactions at danagibbsmd.com/tracker. Link in comments below 👇

07/30/2026

Have you ever noticed that the food you feel most compelled to eat is also the one that seems to make you feel worse over time?

There's a biological reason for that. Any food eaten as frequently as every 72 hours can sustain a low-grade immune reaction indefinitely. You eat the food, feel a brief improvement, then decline again. You want more, the cycle continues, and the underlying sensitivity never gets identified because the food is never absent long enough to reveal itself.

The foods most likely to drive this pattern are the ones so deeply embedded in the American diet that most people don't even register them as choices anymore. Dr. Dana Gibbs calls them the Big 6: wheat, cow milk dairy, egg, corn, yeast, and soy. She also flags cane and beet sugar, which appears under more than 50 different names on ingredient labels, and malt, which is actually barley and a hidden gluten source in cereals, malted milk, and vinegar.

Full breakdown in Episode 52 of Beyond the Thyroid on YouTube. Share this with someone who has been reacting to something and can't figure out what.

Start tracking your own patterns at danagibbsmd.com/tracker. Link in comments below 👇

07/28/2026

Episode 52 of Beyond the Thyroid is live, and this one might explain something that's been confusing you for a long time.

Most people associate food allergies with hives or anaphylaxis. But the most common food reactions look nothing like that. They show up 24-48 hours later as fatigue, brain fog, joint pain, bloating, mood changes, or skin issues -- and because they're delayed, people almost never connect them to the food.

What makes this even harder is that the foods causing these reactions are usually the ones you eat every day and feel most compelled to keep eating. That's not coincidence. Casomorphin from dairy and gliadorphin from wheat are opioid peptides that bind to receptors in the brain. Gut bacteria add another layer, influencing cravings toward their preferred food sources.

In this episode Dr. Dana Gibbs walks through the full spectrum of food reactivity, the biology behind food addiction, the Big Six foods most likely to drive cyclic reactions, and why Hashimoto's specifically lowers your threshold for all of it.

If you've tried cutting something out and felt worse before you felt better -- or couldn't stick with it at all -- this episode explains why that happens and what to do about it.

Link in the comments.

07/23/2026

If you have Hashimoto's and you've been focused entirely on diet without seeing meaningful antibody improvement, this is worth knowing.

Gut infections are one of the most underappreciated drivers of Hashimoto's disease, and H. pylori is the best studied example. The most virulent strains express a protein called CagA, and because CagA looks similar to thyroid tissue proteins, the immune system attacks both at the same time. This is called molecular mimicry, and it's a well-documented mechanism, not a wellness theory.

Studies have found up to a 62% reduction in thyroid peroxidase antibodies within 30 days of successful H. pylori eradication. That is a more dramatic result than most dietary interventions ever produce.

H. pylori also drives iron and B12 deficiency through a completely separate mechanism, by impairing gastric acid production and competing for iron directly as a bacterial nutrient. So one undetected infection can be contributing to multiple symptoms at once.

Dr. Dana Gibbs covers this in full in Episode 51 of Beyond the Thyroid. Watch on YouTube and share this with someone who has been chasing dietary answers without results.

Want to start tracking your own symptoms and patterns? The free food tracker is at danagibbsmd.com/tracker. Link in comments below 👇

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