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.
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.
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
Yes, 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
Another 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.
