Supporting Your Thyroid for Improved Health
An underachieving thyroid is an all-too-common problem, with an estimated 20 percent of women and 10 percent of men suffering from it. It’s easy to test yourself to see how well your thyroid is performing.
Measure your basal metabolic temperature. You’ll need an oral thermometer, clock, paper, and pen. Before bedtime, if it’s a mercury thermometer, shake it down to below 95 °F, and put all your tools on your nightstand. When you wake up, before anything else, place the thermometer in your armpit and hold it close to your body. Wait ten minutes and then read and record your results. Do this for three days in a row to get a three-day average. The average normal range is 97.8 °F to 98.2 °F. Lower temperatures may reflect an under-performing thyroid, and higher temperatures may reflect an overactive thyroid. If your average temperature is outside the normal range, share your recorded numbers with your doctor.
What to Feed Your Thyroid
If you have less than optimal thyroid function, you must return to basics by supplying your thyroid with everything it needs to do its job. Your thyroid gland, like all glands, must make its substances from raw materials circulating in the blood, and the blood gets those materials from your foods and supplements. Our thyroids respond sharply to a lack of food, slowing way down in conjunction with limited calorie intake or starvation.
Make sure you’re taking a quality multinutrient. It’s great insurance, because inadequate amounts of nutritional elements—including copper, zinc, selenium, manganese, several of the B vitamins, and vitamins A, C, and E—can contribute to a less-than-perfect thyroid. Additionally, two nutrients that directly nourish the thyroid are iodine and tyrosine. Too little or too much iodine can impair thyroid function (including thyroid hormone production). In fact, the only confirmed use for iodine in the body is in the formation of thyroid hormones. Without sufficient iodine, the thyroid can produce only limited amounts of hormones.
One way to get iodine is to regularly eat seafood—including such sea vegetables as kelp and dulse. (Most health food stores have a selection of dried sea vegetables, ready for rehydration at home.) Another way is to use iodized salt or a whole, unrefined salt—such as Celtic Sea Salt, which naturally has iodine in it. You could take a liquid iodine product called Iosol (Formula II). While I have yet to see a patient with hypothyroidism rebalance the thyroid with Iosol alone, supplementation with this product ensures you’re getting measurable amounts of iodine each day.
In addition to iodine, thyroid hormone production requires the amino acid tyrosine. While the body can make some tyrosine from another amino acid called phenylalanine, most of your tyrosine will have to come from foods—including meat, dairy, eggs, almonds, avocados, and bananas. If you have low thyroid function, you should consult with your doctor about using a tyrosine supplement for two to three months to get your body back in balance. While it’s nontoxic, supplemental tyrosine can have significant interactions with some medications and other health conditions—so be sure to use it under your physician’s guidance. I suggest starting with 500 mg of supplemental tyrosine a day at bedtime—taken with a small carbohydrate meal to prevent the tyrosine from competing with other amino acids for absorption.
As I mentioned, natural tyrosine is found in such protein sources as meat, dairy, eggs, and almonds—which is good, because eating some protein at every meal may help improve and normalize your metabolism (which, in turn, will aid in normalizing your thyroid function). Protein is also needed to transport thyroid hormone through the bloodstream to all your tissues.
Our thyroid makes at least four hormones that we know of (T1, T2, T3, and T4). The majority of hormone secreted by the thyroid is T4. Additionally, 80 percent of T3 is made in the body by converting T4 (with the remaining 20 percent made directly by the thyroid). Based on my clinical experience and research, it appears that not everyone converts T4 to T3 efficiently. In fact, experience has shown there is only a small number for which T4-only therapy works well and relieves symptoms.
I believe it is best to replace something the same way nature makes it. If you have a prescription for thyroid hormones, you can get them tailored to you by a compounding pharmacy. I find that people do well on a time-released T3 formula because it just makes sense to introduce a hormone into the body gradually, the same way your thyroid would release it.
Nature’s Alternatives
The most common natural therapy is Armour Thyroid. It comes from pigs, is standardized, and is effective for many. It contains a greater ratio of T4 to T3 than humans produce, so make sure your doctor is monitoring your T3 levels, and adjusting as needed. However, my favorite natural thyroid drug is Naturethroid. It is similar to Armour but contains hypo-allergenic binding ingredients and no unnecessary fillers.
Both Armour Thyroid and Naturethroid contain standardized levels of T4 and T3, and it is assumed they also have T1 and T2 in them since these hormones are present in the whole thyroid gland (but Armour and Naturethroid have not been tested for T1 and T2 at this point).
Once you start on the natural thyroid drugs, you may feel the difference in hours, sometimes days, and certainly within four to six weeks. While all thyroid-related problems may not disappear or improve overnight, you can expect early positive progress with energy and cognition. Mood, skin, and nail improvements may take longer.
Beware These Thyroid Blockers
There are a handful of foods that can interfere with the absorption and utilization of iodine in your body. They are cabbage, kale, broccoli, turnips, cauliflower, mustard, lima beans, corn, peanuts, pine nuts, and millet. They do not present a problem when cooked, as this neutralizes the effect. If you eat a lot of one of these items raw, however, it is perhaps best to moderate your intake.
Polyunsaturated oils, abundant in the standard American diet, can also interfere with thyroid function. Unsaturated oils affect the thyroid gland adversely on several fronts, from blocking thyroid secretion and damping your tissues’ response to the hormones, to inhibiting thyroid hormones’ movement through your circulatory system. Eat more olive oil and fish oil, and beware of pre-packaged foods, often loaded with low-grade polyunsaturated fats.
Be aware, as well, that environmental pollution such as pesticides, mercury, and fluoride can impair proper thyroid function. Fluoride may inhibit thyroid performance, and mercury can displace selenium, a nutrient necessary for the critical conversion of T4 to T3.