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Diet for Hypothyroidism

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Finding the “right” diet for hypothyroidism can be easier said than done. There are tons of diets that all claim to improve your thyroid health, however, they lack the science to back up their claims. And this can be dangerous, especially when many of these diets recommend foods that have been shown to negatively affect your thyroid.

Below I have laid out some general but useful tips that you need to consider when choosing the right diet for hypothyroidism. All of these tips are based on research that accounts for the nutrients required for your body to not only produce thyroid hormone but to also to convert it and deliver it successfully to your cells where it is used.

An Anti-Inflammatory Diet for Hypothyroidism

The best diet for hypothyroidism should be very anti-inflammatory by nature. And this is because inflammation from your diet or any other source, causes stress to your body and activates your body’s natural stress response.

The stress hormones involved with this stress response work against your thyroid to slow you metabolism as means of telling your body to conserve energy so that it can either overcome or outlast the source of the stress.

But when the stress becomes a continuous problem such as eating an inflammatory diet that places your body under daily stress then those stress hormones continuously slow your thyroid which causes many problems.

Do Grains Have a Place in a Diet for Hypothyroidism?

There are many sources of inflammation within your diet but one of the biggest and most common is from gluten containing grains such as wheat. And yes, all grains contain some form of gluten and in some amount. Wheat is just the one that gets the most attention.

Not only that but starchy grains contain sugar chains made up entirely of glucose. And glucose alone will have a much great impact on your blood sugar than many other forms of sugar. So it’s quite common for people who eat a heavy grain based diet to have blood sugar imbalances and oftentimes develop insulin sensitivity, or diabetes.

Anti-Inflammatory Proteins

diet for hypothyroidismYes, protein is good for you and it needs to be a big part of any diet for hypothyroidism. But also keep in mind that not all protein is created equal.

More than a decade ago, our diet used to be quite different. We would make use of the entire animal that we ate instead of merely using a few different cuts of meat. And that included using the bones and organs as well.

Fast forward to today and all we eat are a few cuts of muscle meat which tend to be far less nutritious than other parts of the animal. But more importantly, muscle meats are higher in amino acids like tryptophan, cysteine, methionine, and histadine which tend to promote inflammation.

This is why I always recommend incorporating bone broths and gelatins into your diet for hypothyroidism in order to get plenty of the anti-inflammatory amino acids such as glycine.

Aside from that, the anti-inflammatory proteins have a host of other benefits. They help regulate fat metabolism. They improve your clotting factors. They have even been used for more than 100 years to treat diseases such as diabetes and arthritis.

Saturated Fats

diet for hypothyroidismAnother very important component to any diet for hypothyroidism is saturated fats. The benefits of having saturated fats in your diet are enormous. But you have to break through the invalidated misinformation out there that has led so many people to wrongfully believe that saturated fats are bad.

For starters, saturated fats are easily metabolized. They inhibit the release of histamine which is responsible for much the inflammation within your body. They also counteract the effects of the inflammatory proteins I mentioned above.

But possibly most important to your thyroid, they promote availability of thyroid hormone receptors, allowing your cells to use T3 more efficiently.

Coconut oil is one of the best saturated fats that you can eat. It’s made up almost entirely of medium chain fatty acids such as Lauric acid, which are directly converted into usable energy, instead of being stored away as fat like some would like you to believe.

Butter is another great choice of fat in your diet. Butter contains plenty of nutrients such as vitamin A and vitamin D which are necessary for healthy hormone production.

A Hormone Supportive Diet for Hypothyroidism

Another very important aspect of the best diet for hypothyroidism is that it must support healthy hormone function. And I can’t emphasize this enough.

There are many different hormones within your body that all play different roles. But keep in mind that many of these hormones all interact with each other and many work to balance each other out. And when one hormone becomes out of balance then it can create a cascade of effects that effectively cause many other hormones to become imbalanced.

Take your thyroid hormone as a very simple example. Your body requires thyroid hormone along with vitamin A to convert cholesterol into the cascade of protective hormones including pregnenolone, progesterone, and DHEA.

But when you become hypothyroid and lack thyroid hormone then your body can’t produce enough of these protective hormones which protect your body from a number of different health issues, including cancer.

And I’ll also note that when you lack the thyroid hormone to convert cholesterol, then it should make perfect sense why your cholesterol becomes elevated. And using cholesterol lowering medication to drive your cholesterol lower in the absence of thyroid hormone is not doing you any good. But by following a good diet for hypothyroidism you can effectively increase your thyroid hormone production and naturally lower your cholesterol.

Selenium

Selenium is one of the most important nutrients to your thyroid and the best diet for hypothyroidism will make sure that you eat plenty of foods that are high in selenium.

This nutrient is so important because it’s used readily by your liver to convert your non-active form of thyroid hormone to the active form that can be used by your cells. And if you don’t have enough selenium then you quickly become hypothyroid.

The most notable foods that are rich in selenium as well as other thyroid supportive nutrients is seafood such as shrimp, muscles, crab, etc.

Vitamin A

As I mentioned above, vitamin A plays a very important role in your hormone production. And it also plays an important role with your thyroid function.

Too little vitamin A will suppress your thyroid, making you hypothyroid. But too much will also do the same when it’s not properly balanced with thyroid hormone.

So it’s important to make sure that your diet for hypothyroidism allows you enough vitamin A to not only promote healthy thyroid function but to also ensure that your body is capable of producing the necessary protective hormones to keep your thyroid healthy.

Vitamin E

Vitamin E plays a little bit of a different role when it comes to supporting your thyroid. There are many foods that should be excluded from your hypothyroidism diet because they tend to directly affect your thyroid function.

One example of a food that will negatively affect your thyroid and should not be allowed as part of your diet for hypothyroidism is polyunsaturated fats. These fats work to suppress your thyroid and block the use of thyroid hormone by your cells. And vitamin E is one nutrient that can really help offset the anti-thyroid effects of polyunsaturated fats.

But it also does much more than that. It also helps balance the negative effects of estrogen which also works against your thyroid. It is anti-inflammatory, prevents the degeneration of organ and muscle tissue, and is a proven factor for preventing heart disease and miscarriages.

A good hypothyroid diet doesn’t have to be overly complicated. It just has to naturally support your body’s needs so that it can produce and utilize its thyroid hormone effectively and efficiently. And it should go without saying but it’s a necessary component of any good treatment for hypothyroidism.

The healthy functioning of your thyroid is essential for life. The healthier your thyroid, the longer and healthier life you will live. So regardless of whether or not you are experiencing any major symptoms of hypothyroidism, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of eating the right diet for hypothyroidism to not only reverse the various health problems you might have but to also ensure that you live a happy and healthy life.

Hypothyroidism Causes

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There’s a lot of confusion and misunderstanding floating around regarding the cause of hypothyroidism. Most people are led to believe that the underlying cause of hypothyroidism is some sort of defect to the thyroid gland itself. But the truth is that there are multiple hypothyroidism causes that all need to be addressed as part of any successful hypothyroidism treatment protocol.

Is Your Thyroid Gland Really the Problem?

It’s true that most doctors are trained to believe that 95% of hypothyroidism is a matter of a sluggish thyroid gland that is incapable of producing enough thyroid hormone to support your body’s needs. And you can’t necessarily blame them because on a very superficial level, it makes sense.

But if that were the case, then 95% of hypothyroidism patients who were put on supplemental Thyroxine (T4 thyroid hormone) would respond favorably and their hypothyroidism symptoms would simply disappear. And doctors prescribe T4 because that’s the primary hormone that your thyroid gland secretes.

But the results of prescribing T4 have been far less than impressive. In fact, they have been outright horrid.

The majority of patients who are put on T4 medication get no relief. Many even get worse. And most doctors fail to come to terms with the fact that this form of treatment is more of a problem than a solution. So, they continue to ignore the various other hypothyroidism causes and reassure their patients that the medication is working but that there are some other “unrelated” problems that they now need to investigate.

The Truth About Hypothyroidism Causes

The truth is that there’s an entire long process that occurs between the time that your thyroid gland produces its hormones and the time that those hormones get delivered to your cells for use. And if any part of this process is broken then the end result is… hypothyroidism.

So, it becomes much easier to see that there are a number of hypothyroidism causes that you have to account for if you really want to correct the problem.

But it gets even deeper than that.

Unfortunately, when any one single part of this process is broken, all the other parts suffer as well, much like a domino effect. So it’s not as easy as fixing the one little broken link in the chain. Once this process is thrown off, you have to work to restore functionality to the entire process to get it working properly again.

And that’s why it becomes so important to address all of the hypothyroidism causes at the same time.

And while TSH levels are high in the majority of hypothyroidism cases (but not all) this is not necessarily an indication of a problem with your thyroid gland. If any part of the process becomes broken then your thyroid gland is going to naturally down regulate and stop producing so many hormones. And it’s important to use the right thyroid function test before basing a diagnosis off of TSH alone.

But it’s easy to point the finger at your thyroid as the problem and that’s a big mistake that most people and doctors make.

Below I’ve listed the 3 main parts of this process to give you a much better idea of what can go wrong and the various hypothyroidism causes involved with each individual part.

Hypothyroidism Causes Related to Thyroid Hormone Secretion

When it comes to your thyroid gland, there are a few factors that affect its ability to secrete the thyroid hormones that it produces (aside from other broken parts of this process).

Iodine Deficiency

One such issue is an iodine deficiency. But in industrialized countries now days, this is actually one of the very rare hypothyroidism causes. And supplementing with iodine should be approached with extreme caution because you can easily experience iodine toxicity based on many of the popular recommended dosages out there. And this can actually have a number of negative health effects and make you even more hypothyroid in the end.

So it’s important to always get appropriate testing to determine your true iodine levels instead of using a shotgun approach of iodine supplementation.

Excessive Estrogen

One of the very common hypothyroidism causes today that affects your thyroid’s ability to secrete your thyroid hormones is excessive estrogen levels. And this goes for both men and women although it’s more of a problem with women since they naturally have higher estrogen levels.

When estrogen is in excess within the body, it deactivates the proteolytic enzymes that are responsible for signaling your thyroid to release its hormones. So the thyroid hormones tend to build up within the gland and many times leads to goiters and Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis.

Progesterone Deficiency

The hormone that is responsible for opposing and balancing estrogen is progesterone. And one of the many beneficial roles of progesterone is to activate the same proteolytic enzymes that estrogen deactivates.

And a deficiency in progesterone oftentimes goes hand in hand with excessive estrogen.

Hypothyroidism Causes Related to Thyroid Hormone Conversion

Your thyroid gland produces primarily the inactive T4 hormone that must be first converted by your liver into the active T3 hormone in order to be used by your cells. And because this process is responsible for producing about 2/3 of your active thyroid hormone then it can be a major player among the various hypothyroidism causes.

Protein Deficiency

Hopefully you are well aware of the fact that protein plays an important role in your diet. And when you don’t get enough protein in your diet then your body begins to break down your own muscle tissue in order to get the protein that it needs. But this comes with a price.

The process involved in breaking down your muscle tissue requires the use of your body’s stress hormones. And when these stress hormones rise, they also block the conversion of T4 into T3 making this one of the hypothyroidism causes.

Low Carb Diets

There’s a lot of controversy out there regarding the healthiest diet. Some claim that low-fat is the only healthy diet. And others argue that carbs are the problem. But in reality, both are wrong.

But low carb diets can really cause some problems with your thyroid. And this is because your liver requires carbs in your diet in order to convert T4 to T3. So it’s safe to say that carbs are not necessarily the problem. It has more to do with eating the wrong carbs vs. the right carbs.

And this is where a good science based hypothyroidism diet comes into play. But you have to be careful because not every hypothyroidism diet is created equal. And some are flat out bad.

Lack of Salt

Let’s move back to the topic of stress for a minute.

One problem that goes hand in hand with hypothyroidism is the inability to retain sodium within your cells. When you become hypothyroid, your cells easily take up water and sodium is readily eliminated.

But sodium plays a number of very important roles in your body, one of which is to help keep stress hormones levels low. So, your stress hormones are naturally going to be high with hypothyroidism and if you’re not getting enough salt in your diet to then you won’t be able to keep those stress hormones under control.

And as I already mentioned above, stress hormones are another one of the hypothyroidism causes.

Over-Exercising

Keeping along the same topic of stress, many people over-exercise which only places more stress on your body. In fact, it has been shown that over-exercising with hypothyroidism can actually stop your body’s production of the active thyroid hormone, T3, immediately.

So if you think more exercise or working out harder is going to do the trick then think again.

Hypothyroidism Causes Related to Thyroid Hormone Utilization

There are a few hypothyroidism causes that affect your body’s ability to properly utilize thyroid hormone. But few have the far reaching effects of these.

Polyunsaturated Fats

Poly Unsaturated Fats are a major contributing factor with hypothyroidism. They can easily be put into the category that affects thyroid hormone secretion because they do play an active role in suppressing the thyroid gland from secreting its hormones. But these fats also have more far reaching effects.

Polyunsaturated fats also work by blocking the transportation of your thyroid hormone in your bloodstream. So, this means that even less of the needed hormone is actually making it to your cells.

And to make matters worse, once your cells do get the little bit of thyroid hormone, these fats make your thyroid hormone less effective within your cells. So it requires even more thyroid hormone to keep your metabolism and cells healthy.

And with the prevalence of polyunsaturated fats in everyone’s diet today, it’s very easy to see that this is another one of the major hypothyroidism causes of today.

Miscellaneous Hypothyroidism Causes

Of course, there are so many other hypothyroidism causes that it’s impossible to list them all. But there are a couple of others that I think are worth mentioning because they do shed some light as to why hypothyroidism is so common.

Natural Aging

As you age, there’s a natural shift that occurs in your hormone levels, thyroid hormone included. And as your body naturally decreases its hormone secretion, then it becomes more and more important to get these necessary hormones from other sources, such as this.

Diet

Our diets have changed drastically over the past century and unfortunately, it’s been entirely for the worse. And this has become another one of the bigger hypothyroidism causes of today.

We use to utilize the entire animal that we ate including the various organs, bone, etc. And many of these parts that we now discard without thinking use to be very rich in thyroid hormones. So we use to get a good amount of thyroid hormone directly from our diet. And that meant that our thyroid gland didn’t have to produce quite so much on it’s own.

Hopefully this gives you some insight into how complex this issue really is and that it’s not as simple as saying that your thyroid itself is the problem. Instead, you have to consider the entire process and all of the hypothyroidism causes that can be involved along the way if you ever want to truly be successful at healing hypothyroidism.