161. McCall McPherson: Why Your Thyroid Is Being Undertested And Undertreated
5/5/202647 min
Fatigue, brain fog, weight gain, hair loss, low libido, high cholesterol, and a doctor who keeps telling you your labs look normal. For the millions of people walking around with an undetected or poorly managed thyroid condition, this is not just a frustrating experience but a dangerous one. Because what their doctor never told them is that the most important thyroid marker, the one that actually powers every cell in the body, is only being checked 4% of the time, which means the test they are relying on to rule out a thyroid problem is missing it almost every single time.
In this episode of Extend, I sat down with McCall McPherson for a conversation that is going to completely change the way you think about your thyroid, your labs, and why the treatment that 89% of thyroid patients are on may be the very reason they are still suffering. If you have ever been dismissed by your doctor despite feeling terrible, this episode is going to give you the language, the labs, and the clarity to finally get the answers you deserve.
McCall McPherson is a licensed Physician Associate, founder of Modern Thyroid Clinic, a practice with over 15,000 patients and hundreds of thousands of data points behind its approach, a TEDx speaker, and a 2024 Inc. 5000 honoree. She became one of the most sought after thyroid specialists in the country not just because of her clinical expertise but because she spent years as a thyroid patient herself, spending 16 hours a day in bed at 27 while being told her labs looked completely fine. There is nobody more qualified and nobody more personally invested in getting this right than she is.
WHAT'S DISCUSSED:
- (2:12) The symptoms that signal a thyroid problem and why doctors keep dismissing them.
- (4:38) Why every person with low testosterone needs to get their thyroid checked immediately.
- (5:14) The three windows in a woman's life when thyroid disease risk spikes dramatically.
- (6:12) What Hashimoto's actually is and why medicine is treating it completely backwards.
- (11:46) Why TSH alone is missing the problem 96% of the time and what to ask for instead.
- (16:38) What reverse T3 is and why elevated levels are silently blocking your thyroid hormone.
- (35:15) Why subclinical hypothyroidism carries a 68% increased risk of heart attack and why medicine still is not treating it.
- (38:53) McCall's personal story of spending 16 hours a day in bed at 27 while being told her labs looked completely normal.
Listen to this episode of Extend and finally understand why your labs have been coming back normal while your body has been telling you something is very wrong, what to ask your doctor to test, and what it actually takes to get your thyroid, your energy, and your life back.
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Learn more about Dr. Shah:
Website: drshah.com
Clinic: next-health.com
Instagram: darshanshahmd
Learn more about McCall McPherson:
Instagram: @mccallmcphersonpa
Modern Thyroid Clinic: www.modernthyroidclinic.com/
Modern Weight Loss: www.modernweightloss.com/
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsDarshan Shah· Host0:00
[gentle music] Welcome to Extend, with me, Dr. Darshan Shah, a podcast dedicated to cutting-edge science, research, tools, and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21, and trained and board-certified at the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board-certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results when it comes to your health span. We are living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system, no longer focused on disease management, but achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as I interview world-renowned experts, offering you a step-by-step guide to proactively avoid disease, and most importantly, extend your health span. You've been tracking your macros, you've dialed in your sleep, you've optimized every supplement in your stack, but you're still feeling exhausted. You're still gaining weight. You're still getting brain fog by 2:00 PM. And every time you bring it up to your doctor, they just run a little lab test protocol, and they tell you that you're fine. But here's what they're not telling you. Normal isn't the same as optimal, and for millions of people, the majority of them women, undetected or under-treated thyroid dysfunction is the silent reason every other protocol stops working. In this episode, I'm gonna dive deep into this topic with McCall McPherson. She's the founder of Modern Thyroid Clinic, Modern Weight Loss, and Thyroid Nation.