The top five vitamins to reverse hypothyroidism. Hypothyroidism is a condition where your thyroid gland isn’t making or releasing enough hormones. This can slow down your metabolism, trigger weight gain, make you feel cold often, and you may start to lose some of your hair, amongst many other issues. So what’s really going on here?
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What Is Hypothyroidism?
The thyroid is a butterfly-shaped gland in your neck, and it sits just in front of your windpipe.
This gland is very important as it makes important hormones that control many different parts of your metabolism, such as how you digest food, the beating of your heart, your breathing, body temperature, mineralization of your bones, and so much more.
Symptoms Of Hypothyroid
However, when your thyroid stops working properly or it doesn’t release the right amount of hormones, you will begin to experience a range of different problems in your body, such as the thinning of your hair, especially on the outer parts of your eyebrows. You may struggle to handle cold temperatures. You may begin gaining weight all over your body. You may feel depressed or very tired on a regular basis because you’re feeling low.
And some people also develop deep vertical ridges along their nails. The problem is that if this is left untreated, an underactive thyroid can start to form nodules and goiters, which give the appearance of a lump on your neck. Eventually, it can lead to a life-threatening condition where the body’s internal organs start to slow down and they stop working correctly. But why does the thyroid stop working? Well, studies show us that 90% of the time, hypothyroidism is usually caused by Hashimoto.
This is an autoimmune disease where the immune system attacks the healthy tissues in the thyroid by mistake. This usually happens because there’s some type of damage in the lining of your gut. Undigested proteins from your food, like gluten, can start to leak into your blood, causing inflammation and an overactive immune system that starts to identify your thyroid as a threat by mistake.
This triggers inflammation and damage in your thyroid gland. You can also get hypothyroidism when your liver isn’t filtering out toxins properly, or it could be caused by a lack of certain nutrients in your diet like selenium or iodine.
For these reasons, today we will be exploring five vitamins that can be used to help repair your thyroid gland and restore the normal hormone balance. You’ll also be learning about some simple lifestyle changes that you can make to fix the root causes of thyroid problems. Bear in mind that I’m using the words vitamins broadly to include minerals and nutritional supplements that you can use to restore your thyroid gland. Just a quick reminder this article is for educational purposes only, so do speak to your doctor if you have any medical concerns.
Selenium
The first item on my list is very important selenium. If you wish, you can take a supplement containing 200 micrograms of selenomethionine or selenocysteine once per day to improve the health of your thyroid Gland. Selenium is one of the most important trace minerals that’s needed to convert the inactive thyroid hormone called T3 into the active form called T4. Basically, taking a supplement of selenium can help to speed up the conversion process for people who have a slow thyroid.
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Studies also show that taking selenium can reduce thyroid antibodies to prevent your immune system from attacking the thyroid and causing further problems. It’s important to note that women in particular tend to suffer from hypothyroidism eight times more than men, especially after pregnancy, which could be caused by a hormonal imbalance from too high or low estrogen levels. But selenium can help to balance out these hormones by improving the health of your liver and boosting the antioxidants in your body called glutathione.
Bile Salts
The second supplement on my list is called bile salts. Many people aren’t aware that 80% of thyroid hormones are actually converted inside your liver and not the thyroid gland itself. So just taking thyroid medication often doesn’t fix the root cause of the problem, which could be a problem with your liver or your gallbladder. For example, you may have a fatty liver, gallbladder stones, or a build-up of toxins such as mercury in your body, which is causing inflammation and blocking the conversion of thyroid hormones.
So if you’d like to improve the health of your liver, you may consider taking salts in the form of a supplement, where you can take two capsules before each meal of the day. This helps to thin out the liquid bile in your liver to help activate the conversion of T4 to T3. And it will also help to detoxify toxins from your body like mercury, other heavy metals, and harmful chemicals from your food that may be irritating your thyroid gland.
Vitamin C Complex
Let’s jump back now to number three, which is the vitamin C complex.
As I explained earlier in the article, 90% of thyroid cases are caused by Hashimotoes, where your body is attacking itself because your immune system is overly active. This often happens because the lining of your gut has become damaged from eating grains and flour-based foods like bread, pizza, popcorn, cereal, biscuits, cakes, pasta, etc.
You see, a protein called gluten that’s found in grains damages the intestines, causing these little holes to start opening up, which will allow toxins and undigested food into your blood. Your immune system doesn’t recognize these proteins that are leaking in, so it starts to attack them throughout your body, triggering inflammation and different health problems. What’s very interesting is the tissues in your thyroid have a similar protein structure to gluten.
So your body starts to attack the thyroid gland, thinking that it’s a foreign invader, like a virus or a pathogen. And this is where vitamin C is essential. The real vitamin C complex contains bioflavonoids which help to boost collagen in the body and heal the lining of your gut. If you’re looking for a boost, you can take 1000 milligrams of vitamin C in acerola cherry capsules daily, or any powdered fruit blend. However, don’t expect the over-the-counter vitamin C supplements to work if they just contain sorbic acid on the ingredients list.
You see, sorbic acid is only 5% of the true vitamin C complex, and you’ll need the whole vitamin C in its entirety to help heal your gut. I recommend just getting the real vitamin C complex from your food, such as cabbage, sauerkraut strawberries, bell peppers, and cruciferous vegetables.
Iodine And Zinc
Now, let’s talk about some more trace minerals that are vital for normal thyroid function iodine and zinc. Trace minerals are essential nutrients that we need in very tiny amounts, but they help other enzymes in your body to perform thousands of chemical reactions. I’ve already talked about how important selenium is for your thyroid, as it helps to remove free radicals that are created when your body makes thyroid hormones in order to lower the inflammation and help with the conversion.
However, zinc is another important mineral that plays a key role in helping the thyroid to synthesize new hormones, whilst iodine is one of the raw materials that makes and is a part of T3 and T4, the main thyroid hormones. To get more of these into your diet, you can simply start eating seafood like sea kelp, nori, kombu, Irish moss, mussels, clams, crab meat, and oily fish two to three times per week.
You can also take liquid trace mineral drops in a glass of water and take sea kelp capsules to boost the amount of these trace minerals in your body. All of these also contribute to healthy skin, hair, eyes, and nails, as they support the thyroid in controlling cell growth, division, and collagen production.
Vitamin D3
Finally, I’d like to talk about one vitamin that’s often overlooked vitamin D3. Consider taking 10,000 international units of vitamin D3 per day, along with 100 micrograms of vitamin K2. This help to balance hormones and lower inflammation in your thyroid gland. You see, vitamin D is actually a hormone that helps to modulate and control your immune system to prevent it from turning inwards and attacking your thyroid by mistake.
Studies show that people who have a hypothyroid condition are often deficient in vitamin D because they simply don’t get enough sunshine or their body isn’t making enough. Taking higher doses of vitamin D3 is often used by functional doctors to treat autoimmune conditions like Hashimoto’s.
As a bonus, vitamin D also improves the function of the liver in balancing out hormones and detoxifying harmful substances that may be triggering inflammation in the thyroid. Please make sure that you speak to your doctor about using some of these natural remedies before you make any changes to your diet or your medication.
Causes Of Hypothyroidism
Right, now that you’ve learned about some of the nutritional supplements that can be used to treat hypothyroidism and how you can test for it, let’s explore what causes this problem in the first place. As I mentioned earlier, eating too much gluten or grain-based foods tends to damage the lining of your gut, triggering an autoimmune reaction in your thyroid.
Another cause is eating too many deep-fried foods and inflammatory vegetable oils as these damage the intestines and the liver, causing inflammation and toxins to build up in the body. 80 % of thyroid hormones are converted inside the liver, so the liver disease can also slow down thyroid function, especially if you’re overweight. Prolonged mental stress, overtraining, or menopause can cause your cortisol levels to rise too high, which signals the thyroid to make fewer hormones.
Simply not getting enough iodine or selenium into your diet from healthy foods may also be preventing your body from synthesizing thyroid hormones. Certain medications like statins, diuretics, antibiotics, or blood pressure meds can all cause hormonal changes that weaken your thyroid.
How To Overcome Hypothyroidism
Now that you know all of these, let’s explore six lifestyle tips to improve the health and function of your thyroid.
- One, cut out all of the grains, vegetable oils, and gluten from your diet, including bread, popcorn, canola, soy, corn oils, biscuits, pasta, tortillas, rice, etc. You’ll want to do this for at least 90 days. You can help to restore the lining of your gut by consuming bone broth, raw garlic, Keifer, Sauer Kraus, and low glycemic berries.
- Two, eat anti-inflammation organic foods like steamed broccoli, cauliflower, leafy greens, radishes, celery, and Brazil nuts. Eat pasture-raised eggs, wild salmon and sardines, grass-fed beef, organic pork, and shellfish rich in trace minerals.
- Three, don’t go on a low-fat diet as your body requires certain fats to make hormones. Virgin cod liver oil, pasture-raised egg yolks, and grass-fed butter are all excellent sources of retinol, which helps to activate certain thyroid receptors.
- Four, if you suffer from a lot of mental stress and you feel tense, consider taking ashwagandha capsules and drinking lemon barn tea. These are natural, ancient adaptogen herbs that help to lower cortisol, stress, and estrogen levels that may be causing a hormonal imbalance.
- Five, use some of the supplements seen in today’s article, especially the bile salts, to improve the conversion of T3 to T4 inside your liver. Look for a supplement that contains bile acid factors, bile salts, ox bile, or toddle. All of these can help to clean the liver and the intestines by eliminating toxins and undigested proteins.
- And six is very important, start to do timed eating. Eat all of your daily calories in a six-hour window, allowing your body 18 hours to fast. You can still eat the same amount of calories that you would during the day, just limit your eating to this narrow window of time. This triggers autophagy, which helps to lower inflammation, calm down an overactive immune system and prevent further thyroid problems.
Thank you so much for reading my article today, and as always, I wish you great health and wealth, wealth and happiness.