About Marc Ryan, L.Ac.

Marc Ryan, L.Ac.

I have Hashimoto’s, my daughter has Hashimoto’s and my entire practice is devoted to studying, researching, treating and helping people recover from this disease.

I’m also a graduate of Cornell University and a licensed acupuncturist and herbalist who practices functional medicine. If you don’t know, this is a marriage of Western diagnostic testing and natural medicine. In addition, I am a two time Hay House author of the books, How to Heal Hashimoto’s and The Hashimoto’s Healing Diet.

I’ve been in practice about 21 years and I have an amazing life today. I’m able to be present for my family, spend time with my kids, walk my crazy dog twice a day.

I have the energy to do all this and to work with lots of people with Hashimoto’s. I’m excited about jumping out of bed in the morning.

Treating Hashimoto’s Is All I Do

I love what I do, and all I do is treat Hashimoto’s. It’s all I want to do.  And there’s no end to the challenges, believe me!

This has enabled me to work with people all over the world and I am fortunate to have the clinical and personal experience to really help my Hashimoto’s patients. Something that mainstream medicine often struggles to do.

But, I didn’t really plan it this way, I didn’t wake up one day and decide to become “The Hashimoto’s Guy”.

I started this website  and our Facebook support group (www.facebook.com/hashimotoshealing about 11 years ago  so that I could share information and support my patients.

My hope was to reach a few hundred people and share some things that I had learned. Since then, this has absolutely exploded.

This site and others that are devoted to helping people heal from Hashimoto’s and other autoimmune diseases have become popular and I’ve come to realize that there are millions of people worldwide suffering from this disease.

Hashimoto’s Is Everywhere

It’s epidemic and many are starting to take notice and are looking for alternatives to the treatment and care that is currently being offered. Because for a lot of us the current treatment approach is inadequate at best and just plain worthless at its worst.

Just to give you a sense of the sheer numbers, I have spoken to or worked with over 5,000 people with Hashimoto’s in the last 11 years.

The majority of these conversations have been free consultations that offer for 2 reasons: firstly, I genuinely want to help these people and secondly, I want to learn everything I can. And what better way than to actually speak to the people who are living with it?

It’s crazy, these are people who reached out to me who know they have this disease. Imagine how many more are out there who have not been diagnosed?

Everyone I talk to, including myself, went a number of years before anyone figured out what was going on with them. Even though Hashimoto’s is so widespread, it is commonly misdiagnosed or ignored.

So I really think we’re seeing the tip of the iceberg. So many are struggling with this.

I Was Once Struggling Too

Trust me, a few years ago, I was one of those people struggling, not knowing what was going on.

Back then I co-owned a really big multi-disciplinary practice. We worked with MDs, chiropractors, physical therapists, acupuncturists, trainers, massage therapists, it was a huge outfit..

It was 4500 square foot space, we had about 12 employees and independent contractors. We had huge, scary monthly overhead. Just thinking about now it makes me stressed. 🙂

And we did well for a few years. And then, like many businesses, the Great Recession hit us hard. And it all crashed. It was incredibly stressful and it took a major toll on my health.

And I’ve seen this in a lot of people I’ve worked with, all that stress was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

 All the Classic Symptoms

I was tired all the time, I couldn’t sleep, I was in pain, I couldn’t concentrate, my memory was shot, I couldn’t focus, my digestion was horrible, my joints hurt, I had gained about 20 pounds of bloating and inflammation, and the worst thing was I had this really bad eye pain that just wouldn’t stop.

Finally I went to a couple of eye doctors and one of them did a battery of tests. At that point they discovered that I had a marker called HLA-B27 which is seen in people with Crohn’s disease and something called Ankylozing Spondylitis, which causes the vertebrae in your spine to fuse.

I had some chronic back pain, but I didn’t really have any other symptoms, so they told me that we’d wait and see and when it got bad  enough, they’d put me on immunosuppresants & pain relieving drugs to completely disable my immune system and, hopefully keep me out of pain.

As a functional medicine practitioner, that made no sense to me. Wait until it’s destroyed and then do something to disable another part of your body?

The truth is, if you have to live through that, it’s a gradual (or sometimes not so gradual) loss of function and quality of life. It’s miserable.

 I’m Not Going that Route

Well… no! No, no. I didn’t want to go that route.

So I actually started treating myself using what I knew from functional medicine, I got on a strict autoimmune diet and took some supplements and through this, I was able to start to get my life back.

Then, something interesting happened, I lost those extra 20 lbs. and because I could actually see my body differently, I discovered some nodules on my thyroid.

I went to see an MD friend of mine and he sent me to have an ultrasound and some blood tests. Thank God, the nodules were not cancerous, but my antibodies were really high and I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s.

And the funny thing was, I was in the same place all over again. Because my doctor said, “Yeah, you have elevated antibodies (at the time my TPO was 1200), but all your thyroid numbers are in the normal range.”

“So we’re going to keep an eye on it and when it gets bad enough, we’ll put you on Synthroid and that will take care of it.”

So, once again. Do nothing until my thyroid is sufficiently destroyed and then act. It was then that the light went in my head and I realized.

 There is Nothing For Us

“Holy crap” I thought to myself, most emphatically “…there is nothing for those of us who are in this in between stage of discovering we have autoimmune disease and major destruction of the tissue that’s being attacked. Nothing.”

This doctor was well intentioned; he was a personal friend. I know he had my best interest at heart. Yet, that was all he had to offer.

It was then that I decided to devote my life to finding other ways of solving this problem and of turning people’s lives around before it was too late.

So I had to really step up what I was doing and I had to study a lot to try and figure out how to heal this because I was determined not to let it ruin my life.

I have kids, I couldn’t just throw in the towel and not support them.

I had to find answers that worked. And I can tell you there is a lot of conflicting information out there and a lot of complete nonsense.

I have had the good fortune to study with some of the best people in the world (like Dr. Datis Kharrazian) and to overcome it myself, to have over 2,000 consultations with Hashimoto’s folks and to help hundreds turn their lives around.

And during this process, I was gradually able to find my way, get away from the stress of my business, find some down time, stop being a workaholic (still working on that), deal with stress better, have fun, do things that weren’t always about work and money and, yet still maintain my income.

4 years and a lot of work later, I have a truly amazing life.

I have plenty of energy, I have very little pain, I have figured out how to effectively treat and reverse the brain fog that really made it hard for me to function and I have decided to commit my life to helping other people with Hashimoto’s turn their lives around.

And it doesn’t have to be so hard for you.

 My Mission in Life

So now, not only is it my profession, it’s my passion, and it’s personal. I’ve been joking with people lately saying it’s a blessing and a curse. A blessing because I really get it, and a curse because I really got it! 🙂

I am telling you all this because I really believe that my higher power has a plan for me and that is to be of service to people who suffer from Hashimoto’s.

Welcome to our website and please let us know if we can help you in any way.

Best,

Marc