Balance your thyroid

What is thyroid
The thyroid is a butterfly-shaped gland that wraps around the windpipe and sits just below the Adam’s apple. It produces hormones that help control the body’s metabolism- how you burn calories and use energy. This means that the thyroid gland has a direct effect on your weight, energy levels, and your ability to absorb nutrients from food.

When the thyroid produces the right number of hormones, all is well. But when it produces either too much hormone or too little, it can interfere with all these bodily processes. Thyroid disease is almost always treated with medications that regulate the number of hormones the gland produces. But it can take several months for the medication to start working. During this time your body may not be able to adequately metabolise certain nutrients, such as iodine, calcium, fat, and proteins.

Symptoms
Thyroid’s main job is to regulate metabolism. When there’s enough thyroid hormone in your blood, the thyroid “shuts off”, just as an air conditioner turns off when a room reaches the right temperature. When your body needs more thyroid hormones, the gland kicks in again. In people with thyroid disease, this internal switch doesn’t work properly. If you have a condition called hypothyroidism, the gland doesn’t work to produce enough thyroid hormone.

The body stages a slowdown. You may feel cold or tired, your hair and skin may become dry, and you may gain weight. For reasons that aren’t clear, women are 10 times more likely to develop this condition. By contrast, people with a condition called hyperthyroidism produce too much thyroid hormone, causing the body to speed up. Common symptoms include weight loss, a pounding heart, and skin that’s hot and sweaty. Again, women are far more likely than men to develop this condition. Obviously, the different types of thyroid disease require different nutritional strategies while medication is taking effect.

The thyroid gland depends on iodine, which is found in food, to manufacture thyroid hormones. It doesn’t take much. The iodine in your body makes up less than 0.00001 percent of your body weight. But your thyroid can’t do its job without even this tiny amount of this trace mineral. When you’ve recently started taking thyroid medication, it may be recommended that you avoid iodine-rich foods, like shellfish and spinach.

For preventing thyroid disease and nutritional support for a suspected hypothyroid condition
For people with an under active thyroid, the entire body – including the digestion – slows down. This, in turn, can result in constipation, a common symptom in those with this condition. To help keep digestion regular, it’s wise to eat plenty of fiber-rich foods. The fiber in fruits, vegetables and grains helps keep food moving through the system. Eating 3 to 5 servings of vegetables (preferably raw), 2 to 4 servings of fresh fruits, and 6 to 11 servings of whole-grain bread, cereal, or grains every day should provide an adequate amount of fiber.

Those with overactive glands have a risk of developing bone-thinning osteoporosis. To prevent bone problems, it’s important to eat a diet high in calcium. Dairy foods, including milk, cheese, and yogurt, are all good sources, as are green leafy vegetables such as greens and spinach. Having 1 cup nonfat yogurt and 1 cup cooked greens, accompanied by a glass of skim milk, will provide you with the Daily Value of 1,000 milligrams of calcium.

Since people with this condition frequently lose weight, it’s important to eat a well-balanced diet with enough calories to maintain a healthy weight. Eating a plenty of complex carbohydrates, such as whole-grain breads, cereals, fruits, and vegetables as well as skim milk and low-fat or nonfat cheese and yogurt. Members of the brassica family of vegetables, including broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, greens, and turnips as well as soybeans, peanuts, millets, and spinach, contains goitrogens-chemicals that block the thyroid’s ability to use iodine.

With less iodine, the gland naturally produces less thyroid hormone. Since cooking may deactivate the goitrogens in vegetables, it’s good idea, when you’re eating for thyroid disease, to have your vegetables raw. An alterative to eating raw vegetables is to drink them, since juices contain large amounts of the healing compounds. It’s not clear how much you’d need to drink to have a positive effect on the thyroid. Vitamin E assists in the absorption of Iodine. Natural food sources include wheat germ, nuts, fish oils etc.

The mineral Iodine is of crucial importance in the nutritional support of thyroid function. Iodine supplementation can come from tablets. Iodine supplements should be considered with caution. The clinical evidence is that hypothyroid function can be caused by either too little or too much iodine. Most individuals probably get enough iodine from food and multi vitamin-mineral supplements.

By: Jyoti Chabria