Hypothyroidism Revolution

There’s a big problem within the medical community today with their approach to treating a number of health problems and diseases. And 9 out of 10 times, this problem exists because their treatments are driven entirely by financial interests and NOT the best interests of the patients who are suffering. And their current sub par approach to hypothyroidism treatment is one that understandably fits the bill.

In just a minute, I’m going to give you some important tips that your doctor isn’t telling you about, which are necessary for any successful hypothyroidism treatment. But before I do, I want to talk a little bit about why none of this is even discussed within the medical community.

Hypothyroidism Treatment – Then and Now

Here’s something that most people don’t realize.

Long ago, before the pharmaceutical industry was pulling in over $500 billion dollars (yes, I said billion) each year from drug sales, the doctors at the time were far more successful at treating hypothyroidism than they are today.

Long ago, doctors clearly understood the far reaching effects of hypothyroidism. It was extremely common for doctors to find that hypothyroidism was involved in the majority of their patients’ health problems. And oftentimes, the right hypothyroidism treatment would not only eliminate all of their symptoms, but also leave them with a clean bill of health.

Today, doctors have become far less accustomed to determining the underlying cause of disease. And instead, they have become far too accustomed to treating only their patients’ symptoms. And by using drugs to merely cover up your hypothyroidism symptoms, you do absolutely nothing to improve your state of health. And so it’s very common that you develop newer and more severe symptoms in the process.

Unfortunately, when there’s more than $500 billion dollars at stake each year, there’s no real incentive to heal people. There’s far too much money to be made if people continue to stay sick and develop new and more serious health problems that require the use of even more drugs.

But if we went back to our old ways of using far more effective hypothyroid treatment options, then there would be too few people left to spend all of their hard earned money on a lifetime of prescription drugs.

The Truth About Hypothyroidism Treatment

The truth is that there is so much more that you can do to treat hypothyroidism than what your doctor may or may not recommend.

But as I mentioned above, because the medical community is largely driven by the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry, most patients are sent home with the wrong medication that oftentimes only makes their hypothyroidism worse in the end (more about that below).

A quick search on just about any online medical reference will quickly tell you that there are certain foods and supplements that may affect your ability to absorb many of the thyroid medications that are readily prescribed.

But not a single one mentions any foods or supplements that can directly affect your ability to produce or utilize the thyroid hormone that your body natural makes. In fact, most medical professionals will tell you that your diet has little to no impact whatsoever on the health of your thyroid.

But when start to look at the research, it tells a very different story.

5 Essential Steps for Hypothyroidism Treatment Success

You can throw all of the supplements, medication, etc at your thyroid that you want. But if you don’t get the basics right, then you’re essentially wasting your time. And this is because you are missing the bigger picture.

Below I’m going to cover 5 essential steps that are an integral part of any hypothyroidism treatment if you want to truly restore your life, health, and energy.

1. Start a Hypothyroidism Treatment Diet

There has been a lot of research that demonstrates the important connection between your diet and hypothyroidism. There are certain foods that directly contribute to hypothyroidism and should be avoided as part of your treatment for hypothyroidism. And there are certain nutrients that are necessary for your thyroid to function properly.

So it should only make sense that your diet should play a big role in your hypothyroidism treatment.

One of the best examples of a problem food are the polyunsaturated fats. Research clearly shows that these fats block your thyroid from releasing its thyroid hormones, block your thyroid hormone from being transported properly within your bloodstream, and blocks your cells from properly using your thyroid hormone.

And there are key nutrients that your body needs to effectively produce the necessary thyroid hormones that it needs to keep your cells happy and healthy.

And that brings us to the second step.

2. Restore Your Liver Health

Most of the active thyroid hormone, T3, that your body uses is produced by your liver. But your liver can’t do this unless it has plenty of stored glycogen and certain nutrients, such as selenium.

So if your blood sugar is out of balance and your hypothyroidism diet lacks certain key nutrients then your liver can’t do its job. And even though your thyroid gland itself may not be the problem, your liver can be responsible for slowing it down, resulting in hypothyroidism.

So the health of your liver is another major consideration when it comes to your hypothyroidism treatment.

3. Improve Your Lifestyle Management

Most people take their lifestyle for granted. But the truth is that your lifestyle can be a determining factor in whether or not your hypothyroidism treatment is successful or whether you continue to become even more hypothyroid.

And no matter how you look at it, it always boils down to stress.

But most people don’t realize what stress actually does to the health of your thyroid. For starters, it starts an entire cascade of hormonal reactions within your body, many of which are inflammatory and cause even more stress.

Your stress hormones also play an active role in suppressing your thyroid. It does this by both inhibiting your liver from converting T4 to active T3, as mentioned above, and by increasing the conversion to the hormone, Reverse T3, which effectively blocks your thyroid function.

And the more stressful our lives become, the more important it becomes to keep stress to a minimum as part of your hypothyroidism treatment.

4. Balance Your Blood Sugar

Speaking of stress and stress hormones, one of the fastest and most common ways to increase your stress hormones is to allow your blood sugar to drop too low.

When this happens, your body increases your stress hormone, cortisol, which is responsible for breaking down your muscle tissue in order to raise your blood sugar back up.

But as I’ve already mentioned above, cortisol works against your thyroid.

So, balancing your blood sugar should be an extremely important part of any hypothyroidism treatment.

3. Use the Right Thyroid Supplement(s)

Once you get your diet right, liver healthy, stress hormones under control, and blood sugar balanced, then your thyroid will begin to function far more effectively. But for some, it still might not be quite enough to get their thyroid health completely back to normal.

And only then is when thyroid supplementation can come in handy as part of your hypothyroidism treatment.

Your entire hormonal system is very complex and oftentimes hormonal feedback pathways can really inhibit your thyroid hormones from returning to normal levels. And in these situations, supplementing with the right thyroid hormones can help restore proper hormonal levels rather quickly.

But not all thyroid supplements are created equal. And some have no business being part of any hypothyroidism treatment plan.

For example, iodine is oftentimes the wrong choice of supplementation which can actually cause more harm than good.

And the medical community continues to prescribe T4 only medication when research clearly shows that it is not effective for the majority of people. And too often, this additional T4 will actually make you even more hypothyroid which is very counterproductive when it comes to hypothyroidism treatment.

The key is to find the right combination of hormones that your body needs to restore balance.

Hypothyroidism Treatment Results

It’s also important to consider that there are also factors that affect how fast or slow that you begin to see the results of implementing the steps mentioned above in your hypothyroidism treatment plan.

For example, it can vary largely due to a woman’s cycle. This is because of the role that estrogen and progesterone play in her ability to handle certain nutrients in her diet. It’s not uncommon for her symptoms to return when estrogen peaks during her cycle. But it normally only takes a cycle or two before things begin to stabilize.

If you can get a handle on these 5 essential steps for hypothyroidism treatment success then you will be well on your way to not only seeing improvements with your hypothyroidism but also with fully restoring your health and energy.

When it comes to hypothyroidism, there are a lot of thyroid treatment options to consider. But most of the available options do hypothyroidism sufferers an injustice by relying entirely on taking a pill to solve their thyroid problems. But the way that your thyroid works is far more complex than that. So this pill popping approach is really an inadequate attempt to solve a much bigger and deeper problem.

We’ve become far too accustomed to popping pills to solve all of our health problems when there is always an underlying cause that really needs to be addressed. And hopefully it makes perfect sense that you didn’t become hypothyroid or suffer from any other health issue because you somehow became deficient in pills. It just doesn’t work that way.

There are many thyroid treatment options available today but they all have their flaws. And one major flaw that I see is that all of them are one-size-fits-all approaches to a very complex problem. If you really want to correct the underlying problem(s) then you have to take an in depth look at what is truly going on with your body.

Individualized Thyroid Treatment vs. One Size Fits All Approach

For decades now, the conventional medical community has been promoting T4 only thyroid medications as the best thyroid treatment option, but with sickening results. Not only has T4 alone been ineffective but it has actually been responsible for making many people even more hypothyroid and worsening their hypothyroidism symptoms.

And it has taken more than 60 years but conventional medicine is now starting to realize that most people who suffer from hypothyroidism do in fact benefit more from a combination of T4 and T3 hormones. But most doctors are still practicing the same old ineffective methods because old habits die hard.

Many people have found that they do far better on thyroid extracts such as Armour Thyroid which have been used for more than 100 years. Armour is a combination of both T4 and T3 in ratios that more closely resemble how thyroid hormone is produced and secreted by your thyroid gland.

One word of caution regarding Armour Thyroid is that although it had been the natural thyroid medication of choice for decades, it has more recently been sold and reformulated which has raised many questions to its effectiveness as a thyroid treatment today.

But the biggest problem is that both of these are one-size-fits-all approaches to dealing with hypothyroidism. It’s essentially saying that your body has a problem producing and/or delivering thyroid hormone to your cells so we’re just going to give you more hormones in a pill instead of trying to figure out why your body can’t get the job done itself.

A far more effective thyroid treatment approach is to look at each patient individually and determine why is it that they can’t manage their own thyroid function to begin with.

This would involve looking at everything that influences your thyroid including…

Diet
Gut Function
Liver Function
Hormones
Stress

You would be amazed at the effects that a good hypothyroidism diet can have on improving thyroid function. And more often than not, it’s a poor diet that is a major contributor to your hypothyroidism to begin with.

By looking at and identifying the problems in all of these areas, you can actually tailor an individualized hypothyroidism treatment program specifically to a person that will have a far more drastic effect on not only their thyroid but also their health.

Below are some of the more common but largely unknown hormonal factors that play a major role in suppressing your thyroid and affecting most thyroid treatment options.

Underlying Hormonal Factors that Affect Thyroid Treatment

Estrogen Dominance

Far more women than men suffer from hypothyroidism and it’s primarily because women naturally have higher levels of estrogen hormones in their body. But the truth is that almost anyone who is hypothyroid is going to have an imbalance of estrogen. And this is because estrogen and hypothyroidism go hand in hand.

Estrogen in general is well known to suppress your thyroid gland from secreting thyroid hormones. And when your liver doesn’t get the thyroid hormone that it needs, it can’t properly detoxify estrogen. So this causes estrogen to build up in your body which further suppresses your thyroid gland.

This continuous process puts you in a hypothyroidism hole which can be very difficult to get out of which is why addressing excessive estrogen needs to be a very important step in any comprehensive thyroid treatment plan.

Blood Sugar Imbalances

Your liver needs sugar for a number of very important processes. And when it comes to your thyroid, your liver requires sugar in order to convert inactive thyroid hormone T4 into the active T3 hormone.

And when you become hypoglycemic which is common with hypothyroidism then your liver can’t store the sugar it needs to do this. But I only know of a few select practitioners who even touch on the importance of certain sugars with thyroid treatment.

In the end, your body increases its own stress hormones in order to break down your muscle tissue to convert it into sugar for your body to use.

Stress Hormones

Blood sugar problems are only one mechanism for elevating stress hormones and really need to be accounted for with any truly effective thyroid treatment. But any form of stress whether it be, dietary, mental, emotional, physical, etc will elevate your stress hormones.

And when your body is under stress, it tries to conserve energy by suppressing your thyroid and lowering your metabolism.

Your stress hormones play the role of blocking your liver from converting T4 into T3 as well as blocking your cells use of T3. When the stress is chronic, this can cause T4 to build up in your body which also further suppresses your thyroid gland and worsens your symptoms of hypothyroidism.

Very few, if any, doctors or practitioners really focus on these different sources of stress in their patients’ lives and how these sources of stress are often some of the main hypothyroidism causes.

But also keep in mind that these are just a few of the common hormonal influences that affect your thyroid. There are many others that all have a cumulative effect of suppressing your thyroid and making many thyroid treatment options far less effective. And oftentimes this can hold you back from making real progress and getting real results with your hypothyroid symptoms.