Your Body’s Cry for Help: What Conventional Thyroid Testing Isn’t Telling You with Divya Gupta

What You’ll Discover Inside:

• The “Normal” Lab Lie
  A common lab result that’s often misread—and why it could be delaying your client’s healing.

   

• Thyroid Clues in Disguise
  What symptoms and organ systems often point to thyroid dysfunction before the labs ever do.

   

• The Gallbladder-Thyroid Connection
  Why losing this one organ may set off a hormonal cascade—and what most providers miss in post-op recovery.

   

• How Corporate Stress Masks as Chronic Fatigue
  What happened when one high-achieving woman finally decoded her burnout—and why it’s more common than you think.

• Functional Testing That Speaks the Truth
  Which labs and lifestyle markers Divya trusts most to uncover hidden patterns in thyroid and metabolic dysfunction.

Resources and Links:

• See the Full Transcript here
• Download our FREE guides: 
  • Get the Optimize Thyroid Function Guide here.  
  • Get the Cardiovascular Risk Assessment here.
• Join the Next-Level Health Practitioner Facebook group here for free resources and community support
• Visit INEMethod.com for advanced health practitioner training and tools to elevate your clinical skills and grow your practice by getting life-changing results. 
• Check out other podcast episodes here

Divya Gupta’s Resources and Links

• Find Divya on her Website: divyagupta.net
• Instagram: _divgupta
• Facebook: Divya Gupta
• Download her Free Guide: Hypothyroidism Symptoms & Labs Guide

Guest Bio

About Divya Gupta

Board Certified Holistic Nutritionist & Restorative Wellness Practitioner, Divya helps ambitious professionals create healthier futures than their parents experienced through personalized functional nutrition. Having overcome her own health challenges—gallbladder removal and Hashimoto's—while balancing corporate demands, she understands the limitations of conventional healthcare.

 

Her personal transformation fuels her passion for guiding clients to reclaim their well-being. When not working with clients, Divya enjoys hiking, cooking, yoga, and traveling. She lives in San Jose with her husband and two children, including a newborn welcomed in March 2025—embodying the vibrant health she helps others achieve.

 

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Transcript

Dr Ritamarie

Thyroid imbalances are rampant. And there are many reasons for it in our modern world. Thyroid is just another system that is intimately linked with insulin resistance and metabolic health. Yet so many doctors overlook it, so many practitioners, health coaches, whatever we are, are overlooking that intimate connection and wondering why is the thyroid not improving? 

 

And today, my guest and I are going to do a deep dive into the interconnection between thyroid disorders and blood sugar and provide support to practitioners and health seekers alike who are ready to optimize thyroid function and live with energy, strength, vibrance and joy. 

 

So I'm here today with Divya Gupta. Hopefully I said your name right. A board certified holistic nutritionist and wellness practitioner. And she helps ambitious professionals, which she came from that background and knows a lot of those, create healthier futures through personalized functional nutrition. 

 

Having overcome her own health challenges, like many of us, when she had her gallbladder removed and Hashimoto's while she balanced corporate demand. So she understands the limitations of conventional healthcare. 

 

When not working with clients, Divya enjoys hiking, cooking, yoga and traveling. She lives in San Jose with her husband and two children, including a newborn baby that she welcomed in March, 2025. 

 

So welcome Divya. I'm so excited that we're here, and we can talk about this extremely important topic. 

 

Divya Gupta (02:09)

Thank you, Dr. Ritamarie, for having me, and it's such an honor to do this again with you.

 

Dr Ritamarie (02:13)

I am so excited. I was on your podcast, your summit. I think it was just what? Six months ago? I can't even remember time flies so by

 

Divya Gupta (02:18)

Yes, it was released last April. That's a year ago.

 

Dr Ritamarie (02:22)

Okay, so it was over a year ago. Okay, well, we're here again. And we're to talk about the same topic, because I think it's very important. And practitioners are ignoring it. 

 

So most practitioners don't connect the dots between thyroid function and blood sugar and metabolic function. So how would you explain the blood sugar regulation connection with thyroid health?

 

Divya Gupta (02:46)

Yeah, so this is so fascinating about a body, right? Nothing works on its own, and everything is interconnected, And nothing and no system in a body just performs just one function either. It's like a show off. It's very multifaceted. Everything does multiple functions. I like to use the analogy of dance partners, your thyroid and your blood sugar. 

 

Think of them as dance partners. And if they work well, if they know the steps, they know who to lead, when to lead, and it's smooth, and it looks very graceful. But when thyroid is dysregulated, or your blood sugar is dysregulated, like dance partners have forgotten their steps. They stumble and then somebody falls over. 

 

And that's exactly what's happening inside millions of people around in the US or across the globe. And they have no idea why, why am I feeling so terrible?

 

Picture a random person named Sarah, or whoever, who crashes at 2pm, and creates sugar like crazy. And the doctor is like, your thyroid is fine. It's all good. But the person, Sarah, doesn't realize that your sluggish thyroid is like a dimmer switch on your metabolism. So when we’re saying everything, even your cells are not responding as well to insulin. I know you're all about that, you know how important insulin is to blood sugar regulation. 

 

Your blood sugar might be fine, but your thyroid is sluggish. Even if it's sluggish, it doesn't have to be.  If you have hypothyroidism, it’s sluggish. Now your cells start to not respond as well to insulin and then you start getting blood sugar dysregulation, those crashes after meals. 

 

So that's what it is when your insulin is high, the glucose stays longer in your blood, and then the cortisol also goes up. It's very stressful for the body. And then that could also prevent your thyroid from working well. So it’s just like a vicious cycle that keeps going, and nobody's looking at it, just looking at blood sugar, or just looking at a thyroid, but it could be both.

 

Dr Ritamarie (04:48)

The connection is so vitally important. And we don't know which came first, the chicken or the egg. And a lot of people go in for thyroid problems, and you're right, they just incorrectly measure. And we can talk about that in a moment, but they incorrectly measure just TSH and say, your thyroid's fine. Even though the person is just obviously struggling with thyroid. 

 

But given that 93% of the population, according to the most recent surveys, is blood sugar imbalanced, insulin resistant, then if we don't look at that as a contributing factor to thyroid, then we're in trouble. And like you said, if somebody is low thyroid, just slapping on some T4 is not going to help them, because we're not addressing the blood sugar. So we have to address both of these, right?

 

Divya Gupta (05:35)

Absolutely. And, you know, I grew up in India where I grew up in a vegetarian household primarily, eating a lot of bread, rice. It was just part of the culture with lentils. It was a lot in my culture, very healthy, but just very carb heavy. And, you know, when my thyroid got sluggish, you wonder why I was having those young 20 something energy crashes, you know, where your carbs are not converting into energy. They're actually just getting stored as fat. And it's just happening around, across the globe. 

 

You know, that recent statistic that you mentioned, 93%, which was 88% a few years ago, and you hoped it would go the other way, but it went the other way.

 

Dr Ritamarie (06:15)

Yeah, it went the wrong way. Yeah. And you know, their criteria for measuring wasn't even that stringent. And if you use my criteria for measuring, it'd probably be more like 98% of the population is metabolically unwell. And we need to address it, right? And there's a lot of attention on it now. 

 

I've been talking about this for decades. And you know, even online, I started doing courses on it for people to help them overcome this back in 2011 when nobody else was talking about it. And now it's become a popular topic which is good, but the connection between thyroid and insulin is still not talked about very much, right? 

 

So there may be symptoms that people have that might indicate both. You mentioned a couple, that exhaustion, the sugar cravings, are there other symptoms that you look at when you're analyzing somebody when they come in to see you for

these problems? I'm exhausted in the middle of the afternoon, and I can't get my head off the desk, et cetera.

 

Divya Gupta (07:13)

Absolutely. You know, we're all, again, different. How symptoms manifest also is very different for everyone. So definitely the middle of the day, tiredness and that crash. I've been there. I've been there in the corporate world. I needed that coffee, stat, that 2pm hit. I need that coffee. But the other is, no matter how much you sleep, you slept for eight hours or eight to 10, and I slept still waking up tired. Your brain feels foggy, and especially after meals, your brain is feeling foggy. You're not clear headed. You're gaining weight and despite the, “I'm eating less than ever.” Everyone is saying that. 

 

I come across a lot of my clients doing intermittent fasting, and sometimes I'm like, it's a great tool to be used at the right time. It can be helpful. But you know, just eating one meal a day can be very stressful for your body, for your thyroid and then you're still gaining weight. You wonder why. 

 

Or even the other pieces like the extremities feeling really cold, your hands and feet are constantly cold. Again, those symptoms, there's a clear thyroid sign, and it can be so interrelated, the fatigue, the weight gain, the low energy, it could be blood sugar related, it could be thyroid, it could be both. Again, the chicken or the egg, we don't know, it could be both influencing each other.

 

But those are the most common symptoms. I see the energy and the fatigue, but hair loss, that's very thyroid related, hair loss. Everyone wants their hair. I was losing it at one point, and I was like, stay here, stay here. Brittle nails, as well. And even a lot of feelings like anxiety, depression, and even those symptoms you would think are very separate, but they all are interrelated to how well your thyroid functions, and how well your blood sugar is. That's like the foundation work that I do with all my clients.

 

If you lost hair, what is your blood sugar and how is your thyroid influencing it?

 

Dr Ritamarie (09:16)

I like that approach, and that's how I look at it, too. And also you mentioned earlier about stress, and if your clientele, who are corporate and busy entrepreneurs or executives, whatever, stress is high, and stress is high for everyone right now. The world is a stressful place and cortisol levels are climbing.

 

The intimate connection between thyroid and adrenal. I'd love to address that a little bit. I talk a lot about the fact that we look at thyroid as a thyroid problem, but it's not. Usually not in thyroid, it's a functional thyroid problem. It's the symptoms of low thyroid function, because even though the body might be producing enough thyroid hormone, it's not activated, and it's not getting into the cells. 

 

So I'd love to chat a little bit about what you see as that interconnection.

 

Divya Gupta (10:11)

Yeah, absolutely. You just hit the nail on its head. It‘s never a thyroid issue. It's just a yellow canary in the coal mine, right? It's usually a liver. It could be a gut, especially with Hashimoto's, immune related, that leads to hypothyroidism, or adrenals, as well. And yes, we live in a stressful world. I have a lot of clients in Silicon Valley and they have stress.

 

It's like stressful days. I have to lay off people, or they have a big team. And I have been through that world, and it's just how life is right now. And unfortunately, our body, it reacts the same way, whether we're running away from a tiger, or we are just handling a difficult situation or a conversation, the stress, our body, stress is stress. It's very black and white. There is no gray area there.

 

And when it comes to the thyroid and adrenals, again, they're super connected, Your cortisol. Cortisol is not a bad thing. We all need cortisol. You know, it gets such a bad rap, but it's good. It's a hormone that a body produces. We needed to get out of bed. That's what gets us going. 

 

What I'm seeing a lot is, the rhythm is very dysregulated. It's like super low in the morning when it's supposed to be high when I run the hormone panel. And super high at night when it's supposed to be low. And it's super dysregulated, or they are just clearing out the cortisol so fast. They're producing enough, but they're just clearing it out. Your body's just using it up, because it's so stressful. 

 

And I compare your thyroid and cortisol as the accelerator and the brake. I haven't tried it, but I don't think anyone can, if you can understand. Can I run the car if I press both? Probably not. Is my car going to go too far? Physics, will it spin in place? I don't know. I've never tried it. I don't want to try it, but your car's not going to move.

 

Similarly in the body, if your cortisol is constantly high, because stress is driving it, or it could be high blood sugar which is a very stressful environment for the body. Your cortisol is high, your thyroid is going to take a backseat, because it just thinks we are in a fight or flight state, and thyroid is like, okay. Cortisol needs to be the shining armor right now. 

 

What happens is we are constantly in, if you're constantly in a stressful state, if the cortisol is constantly high, your thyroid is always getting sluggish, and it's like, okay, I'm not needed here. And the function reduces, and the second domino starts to fall. 

 

So, adrenals are very, very closely connected. So we do need cortisol for the thyroid to function well, as well, but not the constant state where it's high all the time.

 

Dr Ritamarie (12:50)

Right. And interestingly enough, we sometimes label hormones as good or bad, right? So cortisol, bad. Insulin, bad. But the truth is, we die without them. So it's the Goldilocks. I talk about the Goldilocks situation. Too little is not good, too much is not good, but just right is. 

 

And the sad part about cortisol when it's elevated, and it does raise your heart rate, and raise the blood pressure, and affect blood sugar, release blood sugar from stores, elevate your blood sugar, cause insulin to go up. There's a whole cascade of things that happen with cortisol, but people get to the point. And we don't know when we cross that no return, because a lot of the fatigue symptoms are happening all along, because of autoimmune interactions. But all of a sudden, we're not making enough cortisol. 

 

So if you've ever tested somebody, and you think they're going to be really high, and you test, and they're flat-lined, it's because they have come through a process of it being too high. And now they can't even make enough. And that's when the real drop dead exhaustion can happen. We want to catch people, before they get there. 

 

But you know, the thing that I think about with thyroid though, is when we have too much cortisol or too little cortisol, that conversion from the bound form of thyroid, which is not active, to the free form of thyroid doesn't happen very well. And then the conversion from T4, more of the what's made and what's kind of keeping it stored, into T3, which is what activates the cells, that conversion doesn't happen very well. And that's something I see so overlooked in Western medicine that nobody's testing. 

 

I just talked to somebody today. What's your T3? The doctor wants to put me on T4, because my T4 is low. And yes, it sounds low, but what's going on with your T3? We don't know. And I'm taking Armar thyroid, or something, and then she wants to switch me to just T4. Why do you want it? It didn‘t make sense, right? 

 

So we have to be looking at all of the factors. Like you said, we connect the dots between these two, but everything is interconnected. And the whole specialization thing, right? Go to the gastroenterologist, go to the endocrinologist, go to the thumbologist.

 

Divya Gupta (15:15)

I'm looking at some blood work from clients where they're on thyroid medication. They don't have antibodies. They actually are more in a hyperthyroid state, and the reverse T3 is super high. Your body's putting on the brakes. Again, I'm like, it's the liver, adrenals, your blood sugar. And your gut and your liver are just raising the alarm, and the doctor just prescribed medication, which is not doing any good. 

 

To your point, it's not about giving the thyroid hormone which is the inactive T4, can your body convert it? Okay, maybe it's converting it. Can your cells absorb it? That's another piece of information that we're looking to break down.  It's a puzzle piece, what's going on. 

 

Even you and I, we’re not just looking at labs. If it was so easy to interpret and just know what to do, everyone would do it. It's understanding, with the symptoms, and what could be, is it brain-based hypothyroidism? Is it cellular-based?

 

Why is the thyroid not functioning? And stress. Yes, stress is huge. But there's infections, internal bacterial infections going on that could drive up internal stress.

 

Dr Ritamarie (16:21)

Yes, yes. And what you said earlier about the reverse T3, right, being high. If you run a lab on somebody, and you see that the free T3 is low, and the reverse T3 is high, and we want to just, let's give them T3. Right? Why not? Tell us why not.

 

Divya Gupta (16:40)

So reverse T3 is, as the name says, it's just the opposite of T3. It looks like T3. And for the body, for the cells, it can even bind 

 

Dr Ritamarie (16:53)

Yeah, it just has iodine bound in a different position, that's all.

 

Divya Gupta (16:56)

But it doesn't do, it doesn't have the same vitality and the same zest that T3 has. It doesn't do that. And the body does that. It's like the brick. The body does that when the body converts T4 to T3, depending on how much we need, right? So the body does the conversion.

 

And when it sees that, it sees a lot of stress going on. There's a lot going on. It's okay. I'm going to stop the conversion, because this person is in a fight or flight state where the cortisol is probably taking the role. I'm going to stop this conversion. So it converts it into reverse T3 so that your body can rest, the others just rest. We need some of it.  The body needs to rest. 

 

We need some reverse T3. But then when it's constantly in that state, and reverse T3 goes out, it's like your body is envisioning that you are in a lot of stress. And it just thinks, this is not the time to digest the food. This is not the time to do X other things, run your metabolism, or everything else that T3 helps us do. So, it just converts to reverse T3, and I see that quite a bit. The reverse T3 is high. So that's why it's important to see all the labs and not just TSH or just T4.

 

Dr Ritamarie (18:04)

Yes, yes. And sometimes when we see that the T3 is low, the free T3, we want to look at all the possible causes of that, right? And so if it's because there's leaky gut and the gut is a mess, well, we want to fix the gut, because 25% of that conversion happens in the gut. 

 

If we see it's a sluggish liver, we want to fix that. Why is the liver sluggish? We want to look at the external stressors and reduce the toxic load. 

 

So, you're right. If it was just a matter of interpreting labs and providing a substance, whether it's a drug or an herb or a nutrient, to fix that imbalance, then it would be easy, but it's not, because we have to figure it out. The body's smart. And it turns things off when we don't have the capacity, right? When we don't have the reserves to do it. 

 

So whenever you see a low T3 and a high reverse T3. And even if you don't test reverse T3, because most of us actually don't test it, you can just know what it's going to be based on the T4 level and the T3. Then you have to look at why, right? 

 

Is it a selenium deficiency? Maybe. Well, give them some Brazil nuts, and let's test it out. Is it a leaky gut? Is it a gut dysbiosis situation? Those things have to be affected and fixed anyway. Is it a liver thing? Is there too much toxicity?

 

And if you correct all of those, then more than likely that T3 is going to come up, because the danger is gone. And now, okay, we can function normally.

 

Divya Gupta (19:39)

And you when it comes to the liver, blood sugar, it's so huge, because people don't realize it. Your liver plays a very big role with blood sugar regulation. So that's foundational. Fix your gut, fix your liver, fix your blood sugar and inflammation, right? 

 

And it's never just one thing, unfortunately. Everyone has a little bit of everything going. And you know, there's always a way to fix it, but I think the hardest is the stress and the nervous system regulation piece, because it's a mindset piece as well, because while your body needs to feel safe. I talk a lot about that. There is stress, and I want to go away. 

 

Before we started recording, I was just talking about how life has been with a newborn. And it's stressful. And I'm like, I have to stop myself spiraling, and look at the bigger picture. Look at the bigger picture. Be thankful, grateful, the gratitude practice.

 

Dr Ritamarie (20:41)

Gratitude practice. Yes, it is so important. And that's easy with a newborn, right? You hold the little baby in your arms while they're sleeping, and you go, why was I so upset about this? But when they're screaming and yelling, and you're trying to deal with the other child, and all this, it's stressful, and we don't make light of that. We really do need to be addressing all that. 

 

But I want to reverse back to testing, right? So a lot of times, when you go to the doctor with the symptoms of brain fog, and low energy, and your hair is falling out, and they run tests, they have one test that they run for thyroid, which is TSH, which is thyroid stimulating hormone produced by the pituitary. And then if it's below 5, or 4.5, or whatever lab ranges they're using, they say you're fine. And then they want to give a prescription for depression, a prescription for high cholesterol, a prescription for constipation.

 

Because I mean, you have to think in terms of it, you have to put it all together. If it looks like a thyroid situation, it is, but what I think medicine doesn't recognize is functional thyroid imbalance. They're like, your thyroid's fine, your pituitary, but is it? Number one, because I don't think that test really tells, but number two is, yeah, maybe it is, but your cells are not getting the support they're needing from it. 

 

So when you do labs on people, and you want to look at the thyroid and the blood sugar, what are the bare minimum tests you recommend? And what's the Cadillac of tests?

 

Divya Gupta (22:17)

I've heard it. It's all in your head. Your TSH is 3, maybe you have somebody listening, maybe it's 3.5. It's all in your head, and they send you back home. Just eat less and work out a bit more. You’ll lose the weight. And as I said, some prescriptions for other pieces, right? 

 

And, maybe they have tested the blood sugar, and you say, it's fine. It's 95, it's fine.

Fasting glucose, it's fine. But nobody tests them two hours after breakfast when it could have spiked up to 180, and you could see something is off, right? 

 

So, we touched upon a few. So when I'm looking at labs, especially for thyroid, we want the full thyroid labs. You want the TSH, which is, as you said, the pituitary hormone to the thyroid, “Hey, produce some hormone.” That's a start. We need the free T4. I look at free T3, which are the hormones that are produced by the thyroid after they get the signal. And 70 to 80% of it is T4, which is inactive. And a small amount of active, but we talked about how our body will convert it as we need it. So that's why it doesn't produce a lot of T3 as well and get those. 

 

I get total too. Total T4 and total T3, just to see how much total a body is producing and then what is the free? What's available, as well? Because sometimes I'll see

if the body is not converting the T4, the total starts looking higher, because it starts backing up, because the conversion is not happening. 

 

We have the TSH, free T4, free T3, total T4, total T3, and then also the reverse T3. I can say, I know what's going to happen, but sometimes it's really, really low, too. And sometimes I see super high, does it say it? When people see it, I'm like, your body is stressed. You know, it's putting the brakes on. You have a hormone. We really need to work on the stress angle. 

 

Everyone should get antibodies too, right? Just to rule out if there's an autoimmunity that is behind your hypothyroidism, which is then a gut related issue and immune related issue. 

 

It's not your thyroid. So it's totally separate, because 90 to 95% of cases are of hypothyroidism, have Hashimoto's behind it, autoimmunity. And they just slap you a Synthroid medication, which is just replacing the hormone. It's doing squat for your gut, or your autoimmunity, or for antibodies. And the more antibodies you have, the more inflammation you have. And the more you get one autoimmune condition, you are three times like to get another one.

 

So yes, the antibodies, TPO and TPG getting those antibodies as well. So that's a full thyroid panel. 

 

Thank you for the reminder. Baby brain. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (25:00)

Yeah, baby brain, because I know that was a big important part for you with Hashimoto's. 

 

Divya Gupta (25:05)

That's what happened to me. I had Hashimoto's at 25. And again, I talked about the whole gallbladder connection to the liver. The doctor comes in, but they gave me Synthroid, and off you go. And my antibodies, I remember looking at it, Dr. Ritamarie, it was at like 4,000.

 

It was so high. And I tested, even my endocrinologist I go to, she ordered, she’s like, you don't need to test your antibodies. Once you have Hashimoto's, you'll always have it. I'm like, just test it, because I want to see with whatever I'm doing, is it coming down? Now it's in the low hundreds, or it's come down to double digits, and I'm still working on getting them to below. So it can come down. 

 

And when it comes to blood sugar, again, just like TSH, is a golden standard. Again, in Western medicine, they just use fasting glucose. Which again, the normal range is pretty wide, but that could just be, I had a holiday week. I had some crazy meals. My fasting glucose could look a little bit higher than it is. So it's really getting a hemoglobin A1C, which is more like three months' average of your blood sugar, a better indicator of where you are. Also fasting insulin. That is super important, too. 

 

And recently, I’ve been looking at so many labs, apart from those three, when it comes to blood sugar, I also like to look at LDH. And even at the carbon dioxide, as well, levels too, because that can also indicate, even though those three other numbers may look optimal. But I see dysregulation, or low LDH and low carbon dioxide, I'm like, maybe the glucose is not really getting into the cells.

 

And it's the whole lactic acid production. It's not as effectively optimized, as well. So I started looking at blood sugar from all of those angles, and at a minimum, get your insulin, get your hemoglobin A1C, get your fasting glucose levels. Otherwise you're just looking at opening credits for a movie and judging the whole movie. That's what Western medicine is doing.

 

They may sometimes get hemoglobin A1c, but they never do insulin.

 

Dr Ritamarie (27:15)

That's the piece that gives you like a three decade head start on seeing that there's a problem. Because the body's good at regulating. If your levels of insulin are high, the blood sugar is going to look totally normal. The A1c is going to look totally normal. What's not going to look normal is your postprandial glucose curves. And that's where getting a CGM helps. So let's talk about CGMs a little bit.

 

Divya Gupta (27:40)

I absolutely love that tool. It can sometimes be stressful. And if I don't know you were like me, data obsessed. Every time I eat, I'm like, checking my app. What's going on? But I'm like, just use it as information. Like everyone every six months, get it for a month to see how you're doing. 

 

And because we all have our own bio individuality, right? How foods react, How I break down certain foods is very different from how you break down. And just knowing which foods really spikes your blood sugar can give you so much more information of, “Okay, my body does not like this. It's spiking the blood sugar.” So you can regulate that and identify those foods. And for me, when I'm not wearing it, right now, because with breastfeeding, eating, I put everything into my mouth when I get hungry.

 

But when I wore the CGM for a couple of months, being Indian, lentils was such a big part of my meal. And every time I would eat lentils, blood sugar spiked to 170, 180. And I was like, okay, obviously I'm having some grains, and I mean, I'm balancing it with good animal protein, but still it would spike. And I'm like, okay, bye bye to lentils, or in very small quantities or occasionally.

 

So I would not have made that change if I had not seen that data on the CGM. And it's a healthy food. I'm not saying that the lentils aren’t very healthy, soak and sprout them. And it provides a lot of fiber and a lot of B vitamins. But for me personally, my body was not liking it. 

 

Again, with my autoimmunity, again, lentils and oxalates play a role as well. How we process it. So that's why I love CGM of getting that very individualized data of how a certain food is working for you. And you can also relate it to how you're feeling, start making that connection. I had a huge blood sugar spike, and then the crash came after. And you can see it on the chart that they provide. And you know exactly what you ate and log your food. And that's the best way to change behaviors. When you see it and know exactly. 

 

And when you're in a stressful situation. Even though you haven't eaten anything, but you're having a stressful conversation, you can see the blood sugar spike.  

 

My clients will be like, I exercise, and my blood sugar spikes. Which is good. That's good stress. That's what we want. We're teaching the body the resilience of going up and down. That's good stress. But information can be so empowering, as long as they don't obsess over it. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (30:20)

Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And stress and then the cortisol levels make it go higher. And I deal with that a lot with my clients. 

 

So to wrap up, most of the people that listen to our podcast and watch our YouTube channel are health practitioners, holistic health practitioners. And some of them are coming from allopathic medicine, just starting to dig in. And some of them are health coaches and naturopaths and a whole wide range of things. 

 

Where would you, in closing, if you had a couple of little bits of advice for practitioners who are like, I haven't been thinking about that connection, where do they start?

 

Divya Gupta (31:00)

You know, listen. First for me, listen to your clients or patients. Listen to their stories. Sometimes they give you bits and pieces that don't even come out in the form. I get the most information during sessions, because I'm like, wait a minute, you didn't tell me, you didn't put that in the form. So listen to your client to the symptoms that will come a lot. 

 

And then really looking at them. I think everything is connected to everything else.

 

So really looking at the whole picture. For me, my niche and what I specialize in is the thyroid. So most of my clients know they have a thyroid issue, but I'm like, okay, why did it happen in the first place? So what happened? So really connecting those dots between the foundation. 

 

So thyroid is just the tip of the iceberg. So start looking at what's underneath, the liver, the adrenals, the gut. Until we work on these pieces, nothing else will matter. And the stress piece. So that is my advice. 

 

Just start looking at all the data, start listening to your clients, so you can really connect the dots. Help them connect the dots. And empower them, so they can make the changes, because that's the hardest work. And I tell my clients, I wish I could do the work for you. I wish I could. I just can't. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (32:19)

You just can't, but you can identify areas that they can do the work, and it's up to them to do it. And the more you know about how it all connects and how to put it back in balance. And we don't go from allopathic medicine, which is kind of a this-for-that approach, which is you have this condition, here's the medication. You have this condition, here's the process. 

 

It's less of a this-for-that. It's more about what's the interconnectedness, and what are all the imbalances that are producing this symptomatic picture. And I think that for the most part, if we come from allopathic medicine, and we say, we're going to do holistic medicine, we're going to do nutrition, but you keep the allopathic mindset of this for that, you're just going to be trading drugs for herbs or foods, right?

 

And it doesn't work that way in the body. The body is this interconnected set of symptoms and systems. And every little thing you see on a lab or on a health intake form should be triggering your database and your brain to go, let me think about this. This might be a problem. This might be an underlying thing. Let me ask about these things. And then you get the interconnectedness. And it's really important for us to do that.

 

Divya Gupta (33:32)

That's how I came to know. The more labs I see, the LDH and carbon dioxide, you know, the labs. The blood sugar looks fine, but they have all the symptoms of hypoglycemia, like the reactive hypoglycemia. And they're like, yes, after the meal, they have the crash, and they have the cravings. And I start looking at the LDH, it's always depressed, even functionally depressed. And the carbon dioxide is always low. They’re very acidic and then it's not going to work well. And so it's just making those connections of what could be going on even though the labs, other labs look very optimal. 

 

Dr Ritamarie (34:04)

And the labs are good, and it's a matter of knowing which labs to run to go beyond the conventional little box and run the other labs that give more of a functional look and to know how to deal with optimal versus lab range. That's a big thing too. 

 

Thank you so much for being here. 

 

Divya Gupta (34:26)

Thank you for having me.

 

Dr Ritamarie (34:28)

I appreciate it. We'll put any links you have. Do you have any particular things, websites, social media that people can check out?

 

Divya Gupta (34:36)

I'm on Instagram. Maybe folks can find me there at underscore Div Gupta. (_divgupta). And, the labs that I just talked about, the thyroid labs, I have a free guide, because I want everyone to feel empowered, and be your own CEO. 

 

So if you go to my website, you can grab this free guide where I list all the symptoms, at least most of the symptoms of hypothyroidism, which can be plenty, because it affects every organ in your body. And, and all the six labs that I mentioned and the optimal range is not just the standard.

 

The optimal ranges are there. So pull out to your labs, pull out that guide, and see where you are. And maybe you are not optimal, and that's why you have all the symptoms even though your doctor is saying fine. So grab that guide. Yes, so that's where people can find me.

 

Dr Ritamarie (35:20)

Thank you, thank you. So I work a lot with this area, as you know, and as our listeners know. And I think that it is overlooked, and we need to put it together. And we can't just take the conventional wisdom, so to speak, about thyroid and about adrenals and having them be separate problems. We really need to be looking at the connections, right? And that's where I believe that we all should understand how the body works and how the hormones interconnect with each other. 

 

So we also have resources out there. Check the show notes. I have a thyroid function guide, and a cardiovascular lab testing that has all these labs in it. So feel free to go there and figure that out and test those out. 

 

Divya Gupta (36:02)

You just mentioned something that's triggered me. The adrenals, especially as women, we get into perimenopause and menopause and wonder why they start getting more feeling, more thyroid, because your ovaries retire, and your adrenals take over, and they're too tired by them to take on more responsibility. Then your thyroid starts raising the alarm. And that's when a lot of women come into get checked.

 

Dr Ritamarie (36:30)

It's very common. A lot of women do experience it either in pregnancy, right after pregnancy, or as they go through menopause, wherever there's a big hormonal shift. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Thank you for pointing that out. That's super important.

 

Divya Gupta (36:45)

Because I just went through it. The estrogen tanks right after giving birth. And it's almost like menopause. That's when a lot of people feel all the hypothyroidism until it takes time to balance it off. So yeah, don't ignore the adrenals and the thyroid.

 

Dr Ritamarie (36:57)

Yes. Great connection. No, super important, super important that we get under control, and we get out of the sympathetic dominance overload that's destroying, basically destroying health and being, being aware, And looking at our clients and seeing, are they in this mode? And how do we help them to transition out of that mode? They don't need another supplement. They don't, well, not that they don't, They do probably need another supplement or herb. 

 

What they need is that lifestyle, that attitude shift, the ability to say, I need to slow down, right? I can't do it all. I'm not Wonder Woman, Wonder Man. 

 

So, as functional health practitioners, we are constantly at the forefront. And we're the future of healthcare. I firmly believe that this functional healthcare is the future of medicine. We're not going to continue with this symptom driving, symptomatic relief stuff. So we need to really focus on this.

 

That's why I've dedicated my life to empowering people to take back their health, but also empowering practitioners to help people take back their health and be there, like you said, the CEO of their life and root cause. 

 

So if you're ready to take your practice to the next level, I invite you to go over to inemethod.com, learn more about insulin, thyroid, and everything else hormone related. 

 

So check the show notes for important links.

 

And let's continue that movement, right? Let's reinvent healthcare and transform our healthcare system for ourselves and our clients. 

 

Until then, next time, shine on.