The big day has arrived and you wake up early. You dress carefully, eat as much breakfast as your stomach will allow, leave a message for your boss to remind him that you will be late. In the car on the way to the doctor's office, you feel a flicker of hope at the thought that the next time you get behind the wheel, you will have a little more control over your life.
Maybe you'll finally get answers to all your questions: why you have trouble sleeping; why you can't control your weight; why you suffer from brain fog ; why your hair seems to be thinning or why you're constantly tired. You hope to finally get some explanation for the hot flashes, cold hands and feet, brittle nails, dry skin, heart palpitations, restless legs, poor memory, blurry vision, muscle weakness, hormonal imbalances, dizziness, tingling and numbness, ringing in your ears, unexplained pain, anxiety, and depression. In the waiting room, you can barely focus on the magazine in your lap as you wait for your name to be called.
The moment arrives. You are led into the examination room, where you take a seat and try to breathe slowly. A few minutes later, the doctor comes in, and after a brief, friendly conversation, you receive the verdict: "You have Hashimoto's thyroiditis."
There's a certain relief in the fact that at least you have a name for what's bothering you... and yet that name doesn't give any clue as to what the problem is. "What is this?" you ask.
"The blood tests we just received showed elevated thyroid antibodies. Together with the elevated thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) levels, the enlarged thyroid that was seen on your last checkup, and the symptoms of hypothyroidism that you are experiencing, everything indicates that your immune system is out of whack. This out of whack is called an autoimmune reaction, and it means that your body is attacking your thyroid as if it were a foreign body. This inflames the gland and destroys it over time, gradually reducing its function."
You drive back from the doctor's office, not feeling like you have answers or any control over your problems, but rather feeling betrayed. How could your own body let you down like this? What did you do wrong to deserve an immune system that attacks you? You don't know what you can trust anymore when you can't even count on your body to be on your side.
Perhaps the above scenario doesn't fully describe your thyroid history. Perhaps instead, you've been diagnosed with Graves' disease, an autoimmune condition that your doctor says causes your thyroid to overwork.
Or you may have been told you have primary hypothyroidism—underproduction of thyroid hormones, which is detected by a blood test or intuitively felt by a functional medicine practitioner who can read the signs. You may have been told you have a thyroid nodule, cyst, or even a tumor.
Maybe when you first went to the doctor, the tests and physical exams didn’t show anything wrong. Then you went to doctor after doctor, searching for answers, and ultimately, you still didn’t find any. You started to lose trust in doctors and in yourself. For a while, you even thought that all your symptoms were just in your head. Then you decided to educate yourself with the latest medical literature and came to your own conclusions about what was going on with your health. You tried changing your diet and felt some relief, even though your days were still difficult and you still didn’t feel completely well.
You may have been hesitant to see a doctor about your fatigue, anxiety, brain fog , and dizziness. You've read a few articles about the thyroid and wondered if it might be the cause of your condition.
Or maybe you are a loved one with persistent, unexplained symptoms or diagnosed thyroid disease. You watch from the sidelines as this chronic illness becomes agonizing, and you wish you could make it all go away and bring back the healthy, vibrant friend or relative you knew.
Or maybe you're a doctor whose heart breaks as you see patient after patient with chronic pain or discomfort. You're up on the latest theories about autoimmune diseases and thyroid health. You read symptoms well, don't accept blood tests as the definitive answer, offer your patients the latest tools to manage chronic conditions, and witness when medications fail to bring relief, all the while waiting for that breakthrough study that will solve the mysteries of the thyroid once and for all.
If your story is similar to any of the above scenarios, you are not alone—you are one of millions who are grappling with the mysterious symptoms that modern medicine is beginning to associate with thyroid disease. While your story is your own and the specifics of your experience are unique and personal, you have much in common with a brave and tireless group of people who will not settle for anything less than the absolute truth about thyroid health.
Why would your body attack itself? If thyroid problems are genetic, why have they only become prevalent in recent generations? How is it possible that all your physical suffering is a figment of your imagination or some kind of whim of the universe?
There must be a more meaningful explanation, you think. There must be revelations that make sense of it all – you are sure of that.
And you are right.
Rest assured that your symptoms and illnesses are not your fault.
Did you hear that?! We'll say it again because the self-deception in the opposite direction is extremely strong: your symptoms and illnesses are not your fault.
You did not create your illness. You did not attract or provoke it. You did not make it up. You are not sick because you are crazy, lazy, weak, defective, or bored. You did not provoke your symptoms with bad thoughts or because you were too fixated on fear. You do not come from a defective genetic inheritance. You are not subconsciously holding back your treatment because you secretly crave the attention your illness brings you. Your suffering is not punishment from God or the Universe, nor karma coming back to punish you for something you did in this life or another.
In the same way, your body has not failed you. Thyroid symptoms and diseases are not your body's rebellion against you. It would never betray you. All your body does is work around the clock to support you because it loves you unconditionally.
Thyroid virus - Epstein-Barr virus
The pathogen that Anthony William calls "thyroid virus" is the same one that causes mononucleosis: the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) . A virus that's easily caught in college by sharing drinks and restrooms, that's linked to kissing, and that can leave a person with persistent fatigue, fever, and sore throat for months... Does that sound like mononucleosis (also known as glandular fever or the "kissing disease")? Because it is.
Modern medicine has not yet discovered that mononucleosis is only the second stage of this virus, that the virus actually has four stages, the third of which targets the thyroid gland, which explains over 95% of thyroid problems. (The remaining 5% of thyroid problems come from radiation exposure due to chest x-rays, dental x-rays, etc., CT scans, contamination of food and water supplies, airplane travel, cell phones, the legacy of radiation exposure from our relatives, and the continuous atmospheric radiation emissions from past nuclear disasters.)
You can find more detailed information about the Epstein-Barr virus in the articles:
Epstein-Barr Virus (Part One)
Epstein-Barr Virus (Part Two)
Herpes viruses
Types of Epstein-Barr virus
Epstein-Barr is a virus from the herpes virus family that has been around for over 100 years. During that time, it has passed through many generations of people, mutating into many different varieties and strains along the way. These strains, as Anthony William shares in his books , number over 60 and can be categorized into six groups of increasing severity, with approximately 10 varieties in each group. So far, medical research and science have only found strains of the virus in one of these groups.
Some strains of EBV (those in group 1) are very mild and slow-acting. They may never cause more than a little back pain and may never reach the thyroid gland. Other strains of EBV are more aggressive and fast-growing. They are responsible for some of the most devastating diseases of our time, including multiple sclerosis and various types of cancer. If you want to learn more about these EBV groups, Anthony William discusses them in more detail in the chapter "Epstein-Barr Virus, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and Fibromyalgia" in his first book , The Medium Healer .
These different EBV strains explain why the virus manifests itself so differently in different people. They also explain the wide range of thyroid problems. For example, goiter develops as a result of the first viral strain from group 1. On the other hand, hyperthyroidism and Graves' disease are caused by EBV strains from groups 4 and 5. These are aggressive strains that prompt the thyroid gland to produce extra thyroid tissue in self-defense, which in turn leads to an overproduction of thyroid hormones. EBV strains from groups 4 and 5 are also the cause of thyroid cancer (more on how thyroid cancer develops, expect soon in a separate article - "Thyroid Cancer"). Meanwhile, benign tumors, nodules and cysts can be caused by EBV strains from groups 2 to 6. And Hashimoto's thyroiditis and hypothyroidism can be caused by any strain of EBV from any group.
Stages of Epstein-Barr virus
As we've already explained, EBV has four stages, and thyroid disease develops in stage 3. Understanding all the stages in more detail can help you better understand what you've been through and what you want to prevent.
First stage: Latent stage
When a person is first infected with EBV, or when they are born with it, the virus is in the bloodstream and usually remains dormant. If you are infected with EBV, at this early stage, it probably wouldn't be noticeable. The most severe symptoms you may experience are mild lethargy, very mild fatigue, and a slightly increased susceptibility to colds, flu, sore throats, and earaches. In some people with mild cases of EBV, or those with strong immune systems, the virus will remain in this latent stage, dormant in the bloodstream and causing little or no discomfort, for the rest of their lives.
For those who have contracted the more virulent strains of EBV that eventually cause thyroid problems and more, this is just the beginning. In these cases, the virus silently multiplies in the blood, growing for days, weeks, months, or many years, waiting for the right circumstances and the right triggers to develop into a second stage: mononucleosis, followed by infection of organs such as the liver and spleen.
Second stage: War stage
EBV often reawakens and enters a second stage, which begins with mononucleosis, when a person has become seriously ill. That is why college is a prime time for students who party and study late and whose diets have deteriorated since leaving home to contract mononucleosis. Of all the diseases that spread through colleges and universities, none is more common or widespread than mononucleosis—in other words, Epstein-Barr virus in its early second stage. It is not known that 70 percent of all college students contract mononucleosis within their four years of college.
It's entirely possible to get mono before or after college. If you're dealing with a thyroid problem now and have no memory of ever having mono, consider the possibility that you got it as a young child. Although doctors are now starting to diagnose mono in children as young as 6 or 7, it's traditionally been diagnosed in older children. For the most part, it's considered "incorrect" or at least unusual to diagnose mono in a child under six, regardless of what the blood tests show. This is a classic regulatory problem in medicine that has hindered progress. In infants and young children, mono has often been misdiagnosed as "rheumatic fever" or "glandular fever," even though it's actually the same disease: the second stage of infection with the EBV virus.
What happens during mononucleosis is that your body's immune system is fighting the Epstein-Barr virus. At this point, instead of being hidden away like it was in the first stage, when it wasn't causing any problems, EBV now starts releasing a chemical that tells your immune system that there's an invader - it's like a battle-alert signal. EBV's goal here is to destroy your lymphatic system, because that's your body's defense mechanism. Your immune system responds by sending out recognition cells that "mark" the virus cells with a hormone that marks them as invaders in your blood and lymph. It then sends out soldier cells to seek out and kill the marked virus cells.
While this battle is being fought, a person experiences symptoms of mononucleosis, ranging from mild to severe, depending on which strain or variety of the virus they have. These symptoms, such as a sore throat, fever, headache, and rash, are not signs that your body is rebelling against you. They are actually signs of the strength of your immune system trying to protect you. Sometimes these symptoms come and go. This is because at certain times the immune system is able to control the virus, then it needs to rebuild its resources to fight the next battle.
Third stage: Thyroid stage
At this point, some people experience what feels like another mild bout of mononucleosis. This won't show up as mono on blood tests because you've already had mono once before, so doctors will likely see antibodies indicating a past infection and therefore determine that it can't be active at the same time.
Meanwhile, the virus really becomes very active again, flooding the liver with toxins that are released into the lymphatic system and bloodstream and confusing the lymphocytes that protect the thyroid. These are lymphocytes specifically for the thyroid area (and the tonsils, if necessary). Medical research and science have not yet discovered that the thyroid gland has its own personal immune system and that these thyroid-specific lymphocytes are a major part of it. Over time, the virus will distract and deplete the overall immune system to the point that the thyroid's own immune system will be called upon to disperse to other parts of the body to help, which will eventually cause these special lymphocytes to leave the thyroid area. It's like the general's officers pulling out of camp to go to battle, leaving the general exposed in his tent. Given that the thyroid lymphocytes are concentrated elsewhere, EBV cells can take advantage and penetrate the thyroid gland.
Once the virus has settled in the thyroid, the symptoms of mononucleosis will disappear as the virus begins to burrow deep into the thyroid tissue, causing thyroid problems that are so often mistaken for aging, autoimmune diseases, and menopause. At this point, the mature viral cells have actually changed their shape, allowing them to literally burrow into the thyroid tissue, killing its cells and leaving scars.
Stage Four: Mystery Disease Stage
As with the transition from stage two to stage three, some viral cells are left behind and causing problems at this point, even as the frontline viral cells have moved on to other areas to cause problems there. In other words, when the virus starts to affect a person neurologically, it usually continues to damage the thyroid gland plus stress the organs it targeted in stage two. Epstein-Barr can even go from stage three to stage four in just one day, meaning it can start to target the thyroid gland and the central nervous system almost simultaneously.
Fortunately, many people never reach this stage. With the help of the information in the books of the Healer Medium, you can prevent a stage one, two, or three variant of EBV from reaching this most devastating stage. And if you have reached stage four, fear not - you have a chance to be cured. The battle can be won.
As more and more mutations make their way into the population, many more people, at younger and younger ages, will reach Stage Four—if they don’t have someone in their lives to share the truth about these conditions. So many people in their teens and early twenties are faced with mysterious symptoms like fatigue, confusion, anxiety, depression, despair, stomach aches, and racing thoughts. Sometimes these problems are ignored, sometimes they are explained away as youthful exuberance, and sometimes they are given diagnoses like attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), bipolar disorder, candidiasis, or depersonalization. These diagnoses are often accompanied by prescriptions that often don’t help because they don’t address the true underlying viral problem. In many cases, young people are misdiagnosed, and what really happens for many sufferers is that they are actually entering Stage Four EBV.
The true purpose of the thyroid gland
This little gland in the front of your neck is not the metabolic mastermind that everyone thinks it is. The thyroid hormones that have been discovered so far and those yet to be discovered do not directly control weight, regulate hunger, fuel your libido, or boost your energy. This concept of metabolism is overly simplistic and outdated. Metabolism is simply a name for the ancient discovery that the body is in a constant state of internal turnover and movement. It is the discovery that we are alive. It is one of those general terms that hides the fact that there is still not much known about it.
The true function and purpose of the thyroid gland is actually much more interesting than the current medical understanding of it. The truth is that the thyroid gland is the information center of the body. It is the second brain. Here's what's most interesting: even when damaged by the Epstein-Barr virus or surgically removed, the thyroid gland can still perform this essential task. Since the rest of the endocrine system is just as well developed, it can replace other parts of it.
As a data center, your thyroid catalogs all the markers of homeostasis in your body. (Homeostasis is the state of physiological balance between your body’s various systems—it means everything when it comes to your health.) Your thyroid records what balance looks, feels, and works for each of you. Messages from every organ and gland are relayed to your thyroid—when necessary, as complaints. Like the Human Resources department in a company, your thyroid processes these reports, collecting and recording data about what’s working well in your body, what’s not, what’s toxic, and what’s not.
Then, day after day, the thyroid uses its memory of homeostasis to send out radio frequency-like waves (not yet discovered or measured by modern medicine) that delegate tasks and responsibilities throughout the body to keep everything in balance. Your thyroid, which is self-sustaining and self-sufficient, uses its intelligence about your personal homeostasis to continually recreate it for you, so that when one system of the body is overworked or compromised, another kicks in to compensate. Because the thyroid sends different frequencies to different parts of the body as needed, it can even provide them with energy—energy that has yet to be weighed or measured by medical research and science.
For example, when the liver loses strength due to disease, the pancreas has to work harder. The thyroid picks up on this message and sends additional frequencies to the liver to recalibrate and support it, while also giving the pancreas additional energy to support it.
Even when the thyroid gland itself is compromised, it can still perform these vital functions.
Thyroid hormones
Of all the things the thyroid does, its least important job is producing the hormones thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3). Remember, medical research and science can only theorize about the effects of T4 and T3 on health. The functions of these hormones have not yet been weighed or measured in any laboratory or study. The physical purpose of T4 and T3 is still a medical mystery and no one has the right to admit or dispute this. This is another theory that is considered truth and law and the door to its investigation is closed - this is what Anthony William calls the closed door theory. While the medical community has until now believed that the production of these hormones is the most important function of the thyroid, theorizing that these hormones have a role in the metabolism of every cell, this is not the case. Yes, the thyroid has a role in regulating all of your cells through its work to promote homeostasis, although this is not entirely dependent on T4 or T3.
The thyroid hormones themselves are not the most important. Think about it: If underproduction of thyroid hormones were truly the defining aspect of so many thyroid conditions, why wouldn’t the condition go away when someone started taking hormone replacement medication? Ask the millions of women on thyroid medication if they haven’t already struggled with weight gain, hair loss, fevers, insomnia, and so on, down the list, since starting hormones. Some of them may have felt some improvement while taking the medication—mostly because they also improved their diet and exercise programs. However, the vast majority of these people will say that their symptoms haven’t gone away. That’s because these symptoms are viral, not hormonal, so hormones don’t fix them.
T4 and T3 do play a role in your health, though. Science is not clear on their true functions, which are to keep the immune system balanced to prevent under- or over-reaction to stimuli, help maintain body temperature, and support the pancreas. However, there are very few actual symptoms that occur when the thyroid gland does not produce enough of these two hormones.
Essentially, T4 and T3 are steroid compounds, and when your thyroid is underactive and weak, your body has built-in mechanisms to compensate for this loss. Your thyroid sends a signal to the rest of your endocrine system and other supporting organs for help. For starters, a healthy, functioning liver will have a “storage container” of T4 that can also be converted to T3, so it will release these hormones if your thyroid is underactive and struggling. In fact, converting T4 to T3 in the first place is much more a function of the liver than the thyroid. If you’ve heard that you have a conversion problem, know that it has to do with your liver—it’s probably overloaded by EBV, combined with other toxins like pesticides and heavy metals or prescription drugs. Liver dysfunction is the real cause of thyroid hormone conversion problems.
If your liver is compromised due to EBV or other factors, your pancreas will increase its secretion of the hormone insulin to help convert T4 to T3, as well as its production of enzymes to enhance the digestive process. In addition, your adrenal glands will kick in with their own, specially designed steroid blend to replace and mimic the reduced thyroid hormones. (This adrenaline blend will not be detected as thyroid hormone in blood tests because it is a slightly different composition. Since no one is aware that the body has this hormone replacement system, blood tests are not designed to detect it, and it remains under the radar.) The end result is that in most cases, you are protected from feeling the effects of reduced thyroid hormone production.
Thyroid-related hormones, known as thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) and thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH), also play a role, and the body also has powerful ways to replace them when something goes wrong. TSH is the school bell that tells everyone to go to class. It is produced by the pituitary gland and is responsible for telling the thyroid to produce T4 and T3. And TRH from the hypothalamus is what tells the pituitary gland to release its hormone in the first place.
In this case, the hypothalamus is your body's defense mechanism. If something happens to damage the pituitary gland, the hypothalamus can actually mimic TSH, telling the thyroid to produce T4 and T3. This is another of the body's backup systems. In rare cases, the Epstein-Barr virus attacks the hypothalamus, disrupting this process, but this happens very rarely.
The most important function of the thyroid gland is its function as an institutional memory and peacemaker between all organs and glands, and for this it does not require T4 or T3 or their signalers TOX or TSH. Rather, the thyroid gland produces two additional thyroid hormones that have not yet been discovered by medical research and science: Anthony William calls them R5 and R6. (There is a good chance that scientific research will also call them that, although even if they give them a different name, they will still be the same hormones.) They play a key role in the radio-like frequencies that the thyroid gland emits in its messages and monitoring of the body.
There are other safety measures in place here. These hormones are virtually indestructible, and the liver stores reserves of them. And as with other thyroid hormones, the adrenal glands can produce adrenaline mixtures that mimic R5 and R6 when needed.
We tend to stick with what we know and focus on it. It's like the fact that sunlight provides us with a whole host of health benefits, yet the focus is only on vitamin D. The medical fixation on current thyroid medications plus the well-known hormones T4, T3, TSH, and TOX will one day fade as new research emerges about supplemental thyroid hormones and the true, essential function of the thyroid in your body. Right now, we're still at the level of, "Here, take this pig or synthetic thyroid and be on your way." We've come this far in over 100 years. One day, medical research will piece together the missing pieces of the puzzle of the thyroid's true purpose in the body. In the meantime, you know it, and it's crucial to your healing.
The connection with the adrenal glands
Now back to the thyroid virus. What does all this mean in relation to EBV? That you are extremely resilient. Despite all the disruption that the virus tries to create by targeting your thyroid, it cannot destroy it. Your thyroid and the backup systems that support it are too developed for EBV. Even if your thyroid is gone because the virus has damaged it so much that you have surgically removed it or "killed" it with radioactive iodine, it can still do its job.
All this compensation that the body has to do when EBV goes after the thyroid gland creates some problems elsewhere. First, the EBV attack shakes up the immune system, then it starts to wear it down. That's one of EBV's goals: to try to disrupt homeostasis and throw off the immune system.
And when the thyroid doesn’t produce enough hormones, the adrenal glands (the most important part of the endocrine system) have to push out the replacement steroid we mentioned earlier. It’s a truly remarkable process: Think of the adrenal glands as the most advanced chef or chemist on the planet, able to formulate an exact recipe to mimic the missing ingredient. It’s truly remarkable how these fake thyroid hormones are actually shape-shifting chemicals that replace exactly what your body needs. That’s why people can walk around with hypothyroidism and not experience a single symptom—even from latent EBV. The adrenal glands are both compensating for low thyroid hormones and giving you extra juice to function while the virus is trying to drain you. No matter how exhausted or tired your adrenals are, they will always compensate for the thyroid. This mechanism is built into the human body, and the only factor that can interfere is if something terrible happens to your adrenal glands and you lose them completely.
This adrenal compensation process is absolutely necessary. Without it, you couldn't function. The downside is that, as I mentioned, the Epstein-Barr virus loves all that extra adrenaline; it's one of its favorite foods. So even though your body is doing a miraculous job of keeping itself in balance so you can get through each day, EBV isn't ready to give up. It's still hungry, and it's still targeting your central nervous system—unless you know how to stop it.
An important step in understanding EBV well enough to stop it is to discover how and why your specific symptoms and conditions occur. Now that you know about EBV triggers, its types and stages, and how powerful the thyroid and the systems that support it are—now that you can see that the thyroid was never behind your illness, it’s time to see the details of how the virus has been behind your symptoms and conditions all along. You’re about to discover one of the most important elements of how to finally heal yourself.
The article uses materials from Anthony William's book "Healing the Thyroid Gland" . More articles on the topic are coming soon to our blog!
Other articles about the thyroid gland:
“Thyroid Diseases – Explaining Your Symptoms (Part 1)” ;
“Thyroid Diseases – Explaining Your Symptoms (Part 2)” ;
“Thyroid Diseases – Explaining Your Symptoms (Part 3)” ;
“Thyroid Diseases – Additional Complications (Part 1)” ;
“Thyroid Diseases – Additional Complications (Part 2)” ;
“Thyroid cancer” ;
“[Video] Do you have Hashimoto's thyroiditis? – Anthony William speaks” ;
“Anthony William on insomnia and sleep problems in thyroid diseases” ;
“Anthony William's Tips for Treating Sleep Problems and Why Bad Dreams Are Good” ;
“Why are women more susceptible to thyroid diseases” ;
“Healer Medium's 90-Day Thyroid Therapy (Part 1)” ;
“Healer Medium's 90-Day Thyroid Therapy (Part 2)” ;
“The “divination tests” for the thyroid gland” ;
“Anthony William on Thyroid Medications” ;
“Anthony William on life without a thyroid gland” ;
“Anthony William reveals the truth about iodine” ;
“Anthony William reveals the truth about zinc” ;
“Powerful Healing Foods for the Thyroid” ;
“Which foods to avoid with thyroid diseases” ;
“Herbal remedies and nutritional supplements for the thyroid gland” ;
“How celery juice helps with thyroid diseases” ;
“Tea for treating the thyroid gland” ;
“Leben Broth for the Thyroid” ;
“Healing juice for the thyroid gland” ;
“Healing smoothie for the thyroid gland” .
