6 Foods You Absolutely Need To Avoid If You Suffer From a Thyroid Disorder

If you are diagnosed with a thyroid condition or you fear you have the symptoms of one, be sure you avoid these 6 foods because a thyroid disorder can have a significant impact on your energy, weight and overall health.

Sugar

Maintaining proper blood sugar levels by avoiding products that contain refined sugar is of vital importance, especially if you are suffering from autoimmune thyroid disease. In fact, these sugary foods can severely affect your pancreatic function, thus leading to insulin resistance, which in turn can harm your thyroid. This can also significantly reduce your hormone levels. When it comes to sugar, it’s important to bear in mind that less is more.

Fried Foods

If you are already taking thyroid hormone replacement medications, foods with high amounts of trans fats can seriously obstruct their effectiveness. These foods can also have a negative impact on the natural production of thyroid hormone in your body.

As mentioned above, fried foods are abundant in trans-fat, so if you are taking thyroid medication, be really careful of how much fried food you eat in one day. In fact, some medical practitioners recommend cutting out fried foods from your diet.

Soy

Soy can be consumed, but only moderately. This could inhibit your body’s absorption of the treatment in case you’ve been treating hypothyroidism with synthetic thyroid hormone.

It’s recommended to wait for at least four hours after taking thyroid medication to consume soy so that you allow enough time for your body to metabolize each substance individually. This is also true of some nutritional supplements, including magnesium and calcium pills as well as antacids containing aluminum hydroxide or calcium. Moreover, those affected with an iodine deficiency can even experience decreased thyroid function due to the isoflavones in soy.
Cruciferous Veggies
Although cruciferous vegetables are essential for any healthy diet, these are best avoided in case you’re treating a thyroid condition, at least for a while. Other healthy vegetables can step in during this time.

This however is only a possible concern when dealing with an iodine deficiency and when cruciferous veggies take a significant part in your diet. So, provided you include a variety of nutriments in your diet that provide all the nutrients you need, your daily broccoli intake is nothing to be worried about.

Coffee

Coffee should be your last choice for a morning refresher if your thyroid health is an issue. Although moderate amounts of coffee consumed daily are nothing of concern, excessive coffee intake can seriously affect your adrenal glands, which in turn causes a number of different thyroid conditions and adrenal fatigue. What happens when you drink coffee is that your adrenal glands release the epinephrine and norepinephrine hormones. If you took up this habit of drinking coffee excessively at a young age, this could be the right time for you to start cutting back.

Gluten

As gluten contains gliadin, a protein which is foreign to the human body, your thyroid health is always at risk when consuming foods with gluten. Your thyroid has an enzyme which is very similar to gliadin – transglutaminase. So when you consume gluten, your immune system triggers an attack response on gliadin and on the similar enzyme in your thyroid. In fact, your thyroid can suffer damage for approximately six months after you consume gluten. In case of an autoimmune thyroid disease, regular screening for Celiac disease and gluten intolerance is highly recommended.

Whatever your food choices, have in mind that keeping your thyroid healthy is of vital importance for your overall health. Although some of the foods given here, like fried foods, are generally considered unhealthy and are best avoided whenever possible, other foods, such as cabbage, provide more health benefits than risks.

If you really want to maintain your quality of life, it’s important to incorporate your thyroid health into an approach to overall health as this will give you the right balance of all the nutrients you need while cutting down or cutting out foods that could really damage your health.

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30 Second Pulse Test To Tell If Your Thyroid Is Being Affected By Food Allergies

Generally, the average person knows little about thyroid disorders and their harmful effects upon health. Plus, there are many diseases and illnesses that have similar symptoms and it can be difficult for a doctor to make a quick diagnosis.
Thyroid disorders can produce a multitude of symptoms that can affect any or every part of the body. It is therefore important to have a thyroid function test to rule out any possibility of thyroid abnormalities.

Food sensitivity and environmental allergies can significantly disrupt your thyroid function.

Checking your pulse on the inside of your wrist, below your thumb can help you determine whether your thyroid is functioning properly and what food or environmental factors to avoid.

How you do the test:

• Put 2 fingers of your other hand on the artery pressing lightly. (See picture).
• Don’t use your thumb as it has a pulse of its own.
• Count the beats for 30 seconds, then double the result so as to get the number of beats per minute.

How you interpret the results:

1. If your pulse is constant (plus/minus 1 or 2 beats) for 3 consecutive days, then your thyroid is fine, which means there are no food allergens that compromise its function.
2. If your pulse taken when standing is stronger than your pulse when sitting, it could mean a possible food or environmental sensitivity.
3. If your daily maximal pulse differs for more than 2 beats from day to day, you are showing signs of sensitivity unless you are suffering from an infection.
4. If your pulse is 6 beats stronger than your average maximum after consuming a particular food or meal, you are showing intolerance to that food or some ingredient in that meal.
5. If your pulse rate is not normally the slowest before rising, after your night’s rest, it could generally indicate that there’s an allergen in your environment such as dust, dust mites, or something else in your sleeping environment – perfume, your mattress, your pillow, etc.

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How To Diagnose Common Thyroid Symptoms and Treat Thyroid Disease

Some of the latest researches show that 1 in 8 women aged to 65 have some form of thyroid disease which makes it being the most common. About ¼ of women in peri-menopause are diagnosed with hypothyroidism when insufficient amounts of thyroid hormones are produced.

Thyroid hormones are necessary for the growth and development in children. They send signals for the production of all growth factors in your body, virtually including:

• Somatomedins (skeletal tissue growth)
• Erythropoietin (involved in the development of red blood cells)
• Nerve growth factor
• Epidermal growth factor

The poor thyroid function has been linked to a wide array of serious health conditions from fibromyalgia and irritable bowel syndrome to infertility, autoimmune diseases ad thyroid cancer.

Our thyroid gland is a butterfly-shaped organ located in the neck. As all gland thyroid produces hormones which are secreted into the body and help it use energy so that it maintains the brain, heart, muscles and other organs and keep them working properly. It produces three types of hormones:

• Triiodothyronine (T3)
• Thyroxine (T4)
• Diiodothyronine (T2)

These hormones interact with other hormones, including insulin, cortisol and sex hormones such as estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. The thyroid dysfunction is a complex issue with many variables and many potential underlying causes like the following: If your thyroid dysfunction is caused by factors such as these, detoxification and changing your lifestyle to avoid hormone disrupting chemicals may be the key components for a successful intervention.

Estrogen dominance – Midlife hypothyroidism can be related to some underlying estrogen dominance and then taking thyroid hormone fails to address the root of the problem.

Medications – Certain medications like steroids, barbiturates, cholesterol – lowering drugs and beta-blockers, too can disrupt your thyroid functions when the most appropriate remedy may not be to add thyroid hormone.

Endocrine-disrupting chemicals – These include lead, mercury, phthalates and bisphenol – A (BPA) and they have been linked to early menopause and thyroid problems.

Bromine exposure – They can be found in pesticides, plastics, bakery goods, beverages. They contain brominated vegetable oils (BVOs) and flame retardants also have a disruptive effect on the thyroid function.

Bromine, fluoride and chlorine are all in the same family as iodine, so it’s logical that they can displace iodine in your thyroid gland.

Fluoride – It is still routinely added to water supplies, but back in the 1970s it was used in Europe to reduce thyroid activity in hyperthyroid patients.

According to a 2006 report by the National Research Council of the National Academies, fluoride is “an endocrine disruptor in the broad sense of altering normal endocrine function.”

This kind of an altered function can involve your thyroid, parathyroid and pineal glands, as well as your adrenals, pancreas and pituitary.

Altered thyroid function is associated with fluoride intakes as low as 0.05 to 0.1 mg fluoride per kilogram body weight per day (mg/kg/day) or 0,3 mg/kg/day with iodine deficiency.

Fluoride has the ability to:

• Mimic thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH)
• Damage the cells of your thyroid gland
• Disrupt conversion from the inactive form of the thyroid hormone (T4) to the active form (T3).

Symptoms of hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid) are:

• Loss of energy, fatigue and general lethargy
• Muscle and/or joint pain
• Weight gain
• Hair loss
• Decreased sweating
• Forgetfulness, impaired memory and inability to concentrate
• Sleep apnea
• Coarse or dry skin and hair
• Bradycardia (reduced heart rate)
• Decreased appetite
• Decreased hearing
• Mental impairment
• Emotional instability
• Blurred vision etc.

The most common way to diagnose thyroid dysfunction is by measuring how much of the thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) your pituitary gland excretes. When your thyroid doesn’t produce sufficient levels of thyroid hormone, your pituitary sends out THS to encourage the thyroid to increase production.

In order to get a fuller picture of your thyroid health, you should use the following laboratory tests:

TSH Test – The higher your level of TSH, the higher the likelihood that you have hypothyroidism. The ideal TSH level is between 1 and 1.5 milli-international units per liter.

Free T4 and Free T3 – The normal level of free T4 is between 0.9 and 1.8 nanograms per deciliter. T3 should be between 240 and 450 picograms per deciliter.

Thyroid Antibody Testing – It includes the thyroid peroxidase antibodies and anti-thyroglobulin antibodies. These two measures help you to determine if your body is attacking your thyroid or overreacting to its own tissues (i.e. autoimmune reactions). Unfortunately, conventional physicians nearly always leave this test out. Still, you can do it yourself if your doctor refuses to include it.

Basal Body Temperature – There are a few different protocols about this test. Still the most commonly used is the Broda Barnes System, which measures your body temperature at rest.

TRH Stimulation Test for more difficult cases – TRH can be measured using the TRH stimulation test. TRH helps identify hypothyroidism that’s caused by inadequacy of the pituitary gland.

Reverse T3 – While reverse T3 (RT3) is metabolically inactive, elevated levels may indicate that heavy metal toxicity is affecting your thyroid function.

When it comes to thyroid hormone replacement the most recommended medications are:

Bioidentical thyroid hormones – the most recommended ones are Nature-Thyroid and Westhroid. They’re made from desiccated pig thyroid glands and contain the full spectrum of thyroid hormones: T4, T3, T2 and T1.

Synthetic hormones, like Synthroid (generic brand: Levothyroxine) which only contains T4. One of the trickiest parts of thyroid hormone replacement is finding the ideal dose. This requires a typical fine-tuning over a period of time with regular blood testing to see how the dose is affecting your thyroid hormone levels and keeping track of your symptoms. The two key signals that you’re taking too much hormone are excessive sweating and rapid heartbeat, as well as heart palpitations. If you get any of the symptoms, you’re getting too much thyroid and you certainly need to cut back on the dose.

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