“I’m finally free from tiredness!”

For years, Adrienne Klein, 41, suffered from mysterious thyroid problems that didn’t respond to meds— until she discovered the sneaky culprit and easy fix that restored her health in no time

Mom, can we please go swimming today? You don’t even have to swim with me, you can just relax and watch,” Adrienne Klein’s daughter, Marissa, pleaded. “We had an indoor pool with a waterslide a mile away from home, but I was always apprehensive about taking Marissa,” Adrienne shares. “Just packing up everything we’d need was so draining, so I had to say no. I felt terrible for disappointing her, and to make matters worse, I couldn’t figure out why I was so exhausted in the first place.

No more to give

“Every day, I tried my hardest to push through the fatigue, but it was nearly impossible. My then-husband didn’t understand why I was always so tired, and he was frustrated that I couldn’t keep up with the house and other responsibilities. I know the fatigue played a role in our divorce.

“My exhaustion also made it challenging to run the accounting firm my mother and I owned. We had to buy a couch for the office lobby—not for our clients but for me. On many mornings, I’d come to work and be asleep within an hour. Thankfully, it didn’t affect our bottom line, but I did stop taking on new clients because I couldn’t handle any more work.

“As tired as I was, though, I couldn’t sleep at night. I also had joint pain, I gained weight and my hair started thinning. I was diagnosed with an underactive thyroid, and later, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, an autoimmune disease. Yet despite taking thyroid meds, the fatigue persisted.

“When I asked my endocrinologist why I was still so tired, he ordered blood work but concluded my medication was working because my thyroid hormones were within the normal range. I asked if there was anything else I could do to feel better, and he suggested eating less and biking. I felt like a bad patient—he implied I wasn’t doing anything to improve my condition, but I was! I obsessed over calories, eating 1,200 or less a day. And I was weight training in the gym every day, which was hard because I was so tired.

“Every six months when I returned for checkups, the doctor increased the dosage of my thyroid medication. I grew more and more frustrated and wondered, How long can I keep doing this? One thing was for sure: I needed

to find someone who would really listen to me—and fast.”

Energy to spare!

“I started doing my own research and stumbled across the book Stop the Thyroid Madness by Janie A. Bowthorpe. I read that doctors should order a comprehensive thyroid panel that includes testing for a variety of thyroid hormones, and I found a new doctor who agreed to run the tests. Again, results were normal. But I convinced him to put me on natural thyroid medication because I read that worked for some people. Within a few weeks, the fatigue improved a bit…but I was still dragging, so I asked if a diet change might help. He said there was no evidence that it would—but I wasn’t ready to settle for feeling less than my best, so I kept searching for answers.

“I consulted a naturopath next, and she said diet absolutely could play a role—in fact, she said gluten was likely the cause of my symptoms and suggested I eliminate it. That surprised me, but I figured it was worth a try.

“I learned that gluten can be in a lot of foods beyond wheat products— everything from barbecue sauce to chicken. I installed a phone app, The Gluten Free Scanner, and completely eliminated gluten from my diet. Within a week, I had more energy and my other symptoms were gone. I even lost 12 pounds!

“At my next doctor’s appointment, tests showed my thyroid antibodies went from 720 down to 220, which meant my body was no longer producing a thyroid-harming immune response.

“Around the same time, I went back to school to become a holistic nutritionist and learned how gluten and slow thyroid are linked. It turns out gliadin—the protein in gluten that causes gluten intolerance— resembles thyroid tissue. Since my body thought gliadin was a foreign invader, it went on attack each time I ingested it, and my thyroid ended up under attack too.

“Now that I have energy, I’m busy building my nutrition business, and I’m the resident nutritionist for Thyroid Refresh (ThyroidRefresh.com). Giving up gluten was a small fix I could have made years ago and spared myself a lot of suffering, so I want to help others avoid the same experience.

“I also fell in love with a caring, supportive man. And now when my daughter asks me to go out, I’m all in!” —as told to Julie Revelant