Eating for Thyroid Health

Hormone health involves so many feedback loops within the body, offering optimal nutrition sets the stage for optimal function

Photo by Adrien King on Unsplash

All the hormones in your body are connected through intricate feed back loops. A deficiency in one will have effects on others. Poor thyroid function leads to fatigue and brain fog with many other symptoms. Thyroid health is closely aligned with adrenal health. So stress is a major unbalancer.

A medical doctor may offer you thyroxine to help your body cope with poor thyroid hormone production but this will further reduce your thyroid’s ability to produce hormones. There are other side effects like osteoporosis. If you have been taking thyroxine for a long time, it will be incredibly difficult to come off it.

A good way to support your thyroid is eat better.

Intermittent Fasting

A current concept in diet is intermittent fasting, the 8/16 method involves eating in an 8 hour window and fasting for 16 hours. In order to achieve this, many people skip breakfast choosing to use their 8 hours of eating in the second half of the day. Apparently, much of the research around this timing involves more men than women. For women, it is advised to eat earlier in the day as skipping breakfast adversely affects thyroid health and will contribute to weight gain. (Recent CPD lecture)

Another method of intermittent fasting is called the 3/12 fast. This is a 12 hour fast, which is easy to obtain, with the added step of finishing eating for the day 3 hours before bed. This is particularly useful if you suffer from chronic indigestion as the food has a chance to “go down” before you lay down to sleep, reducing reflux. It also improves sleep. All that is required to achieve this, is to eat dinner earlier.

Another concept around eating is to eat during daylight hours. Again this supports the adage above.

When I was young, my mother used to have dinner on the table at 5 o’clock in the afternoon. We always complained as we had to be home too early for dinner, but there seems to be research to support this lifestyle habit.

The fasting concept is sound. Lengthening the time of not eating, is beneficial for rest and repair processes performed by the body. If your body is constantly having to break down the food your are consuming because you are constantly eating, less energy is available for building up what your body needs to stay functioning optimally.

Breakfast

I’m a believer in breakfast being the most important meal of the day.

Have you ever heard of the saying

◦ Breakfast like a King,

◦ Lunch like a Prince,

◦ Dinner like a Pauper

Eating in this manner helps to control body weight as food is eaten and used while you are active. The activity will determine how much you eat. It also supports thyroid health.

So what to eat for breakfast?

Many people opt for toast and cereal at breakfast time. This type of food, being based on grains, metabolises into glucose, giving a quick burst of energy and then a mid-morning slump. Therefore it often needs to be accompanied by coffee to give you the get up and go your body is looking for. The cereal and toast breakfast has only been around since the second world war, as a result of scarcity and rationing. These foods are also able to be produced commercially and have a long shelf life. Think about that.

How about bacon and eggs for breakfast? Eggs are one of the premier breakfast foods being vitamin and mineral bullets. They also provide sustained energy. Isn’t bacon full of unwanted fat? No it is not. Before cholesterol levels became a fashion, people ate more bacon and eggs for breakfast and there was less heart disease. Fat is a sustained energy source.

Too busy to make a cooked breakfast in the morning? Introduce the breakfast muffin into your life. Instead of making a quiche or zucchini slice, put the mixture in muffin trays to bake. These can be made in batches on the weekend, then stored in the freezer and a few taken out (preferably before going to bed) to defrost and eat in the morning. You can make a different flavour each week – zucchini and carrot, spinach and feta, mushroom and capsicum, caramelised onion and cheese, bacon and egg! The options are endless.

Why not eat left over dinner? There’s no such thing as a “breakfast food” you can eat anything first thing in the morning.

Have a look at different cultures for what is commonly eaten for breakfast there. In Asia, fried rice is a staple breakfast food. In Turkey bread is still a staple at breakfast time (every meal in fact) but it is served with boiled eggs, fresh cheeses, olives, cucumber and tomato. India has a great variety of breakfast foods using legumes to go with their grains, rounding out the protein profiles for vegetarians.

I do know people who say “I like to start my day with just fresh fruit” but they don’t go out to work for 8 hours a day. If I do this, I only last an hour or two before needing to eat something else. So if you have time for second breakfast, followed by elevenzees (are you a hobbit?) this option may work for you. Otherwise, choose something solid and sustaining for breakfast to get you through the day.

Snacks

Eating more nutrient dense foods in the first half of the day reduces the need to reach for quick fixes to boost energy later. These often include sugary snacks and more coffee. Sugar is the number one product (I’m not going to call it food) that upsets hormonal balance. You will do wonders for your health if you can stay away from sugar. Look at package labels and assess the total % of sugar in it. Some quick foods have 20% or more total sugar content! This will only make you feel worse in the long run. Try snacking on fresh fruit or nuts. It may take time to adjust to these foods but you will benefit so much in the long run.

Plastic

Another important consideration is to watch your use of plastics. Especially, do not microwave food in a plastic container. Microplastics may be absorbed into food and this is more likely in a warm container. Microplastics are known hormone disrupters.

I have another article in the works that will give guidance on the other meals of the day. The basics from my previous article Diet will give some guidance.

Disclaimer: This information is supplied for educational purposes only. Sources include published literature and anecdotal experiences of myself and other men, women and animals. The information is not intended for the treatment of any particular individual person or disease. If you are suffering any particular complaint please consult professional help.