Many people are experiencing the symptoms of hypothyroidism in their daily lives without even realizing it. As a result, their symptoms multiply for months or years. Educating yourself on thyroid issues can make all the difference. Read on to learn my best tricks to support your thyroid!
Nutrition for Thyroid Recovery with Caroline Stahlschmidt
Take Down Your Hashimoto's Thyroiditis
Why You're at Risk for Thyroid Disease After 40
Peri-menopause - the 5-10 years leading up to menopause - is a common time to be diagnosed with a thyroid condition.
In this article, I’d like to address these questions:
• Why then?
• Why more in women?
• What can be done?
Peri-menopause may begin in your late 30s or early or mid 40s. You may notice that your PMS is worse. You may have spotting between periods. Over time, your periods will likely get more dramatic, with missed periods and heavy periods.
Other symptoms may be popping up too, like anxiety, brain fog and weight gain. You may be thinking, “these sound like thyroid symptoms,” and you could be right!
But before we explore the thyroid connection, let’s cover what is normally happening during peri-menopause.
What is Peri-menopause?
Peri-menopause is, in short, the opposite of puberty. In puberty your ovaries are waking up to start your reproductive years. Your brain and ovaries are learning to work together to coordinate a monthly cycle, and often the first few reproductive years are hormonally unstable.
In peri-menopause, the brain-ovary relationship is starting to shut down. The ovaries are closing up shop, but the brain keeps knocking at the door, trying to get the shopkeeper working again.
The sex hormone that needs to rise sufficiently in the first half of the month is estrogen. It is produced by the ovaries as they also grow eggs. If you produce enough estrogen and release an egg, you’ll ovulate. And if that egg is healthy and hearty, you’ll produce a good amount of progesterone in the second half of your cycle. (The egg sac, or corpus luteum, makes progesterone after ovulation.)
How Your Thyroid Could Be Impacted in Peri-menopause
Even though both estrogen and progesterone are declining in peri-menopause, progesterone declines more dramatically in this stage. This leads to a condition called ‘estrogen dominance.’
Too much estrogen can prevent the thyroid hormone from getting to where it needs to go and can prevent it from converting to its active form. For some women, their thyroid symptoms are simply a result of this high estrogen interfering with thyroid hormone activity. We’ll talk about how to address estrogen dominance shortly.
Another thing estrogen effects is the immune system. Estrogen is associated with stimulating the TH2 branch of the immune system (1). TH2 is short for T Helper cell type 2, a lymphocyte (immune cell). TH2 is part of the adaptive immune system, which mounts a specific attack against pathogens.+ Adaptive immunity is usually a good thing, but it can also lead to autoimmunity if the antigen activity is directed towards itself.
As estrogen is the dominant sex hormone in women, this helps to explain why autoimmunity and thyroid disease is more common in women.
As we age, we also experience decreased immunity, and a tendency towards TH2 response.
“In the aged, however, naive cells are less likely to become effectors. In those that do, there is a documented shift towards a Th2 cytokine response.
The elderly have impaired ability to achieve immunization but much higher levels of circulating autoantibodies, (due to the lack of naive effectors) impaired response to viral infections, increased risk of bacterial infections, and increased risk of both neoplastic and autoimmune disease.” (3)
However, there is hope and action we can take to keep estrogen in check!
What To Do
1. Improve Gut Health
If you’ve studied the thyroid, you know that gut health is key to prevent an autoimmune response and to convert thyroid hormone effectively. Did you know it’s also important to clear estrogen dominance? One way your gut helps clear estrogen is through the estrobolome, “the aggregate of enteric bacterial genes whose products are capable of metabolizing estrogens.” (4)
You can be friendly to your gut by avoiding:
• Genetically modified foods (GMO) - These kill off friendly bacteria
• Sugars - These feed troublesome bacteria
• Unnecessary antibiotic use - This kills everything, with bacterial imbalance often resulting in its wake
You can be friendly to your gut by including:
• Small amounts of fermented foods like sauerkraut or kimchi
• A wide variety of fibers from salad greens, fresh spices, berries, etc.
• A long period from an early dinner to breakfast - lets your gut bacteria grow in peace!
2. Boost Progesterone
Progesterone helps keep estrogen in check, so boost it by giving your body ingredients to make hormones.
• Hemp Oil - I’ve been very impressed with how 1 T of hemp oil a day helps my own peri-menopausal hormones
• Borage Oil - This oil, usually in pill form, has gamma linoleic acid (GLA) to spark hormone production
• Maca- This adaptogenic root herb helps boosts hormone production and can benefit your energy levels and sex drive
3. Help Out Your Immune System
If aberrant immunity could be a problem in your case, add some components that can balance your TH2 activity:
• Omega 3 - Omega fatty acids have a balancing effect on the immune system and decreases inflammation. (5) Quality matters with omega 3, so do research to find a good brand.
• Vitamin D- Vitamin D deficiency is found at higher levels in people with autoimmune thyroid disease. (6) Talk to your doctor about getting your vitamin D tested and restoring it to a level around 60-80 NG/DL through sunshine and vitamin D3 supplementation.
Learn more about the thyroid at perimenopause from experts like Dana Trentini, Dr. Tom O’Bryan and Heather Dubé at the free, online Hormone Balance After 40 Summit!
The summit happens live June 5-11, 2017, but recordings will live on after the live summit.
Hormone Balance After 40 Summit
BUY the Hormone Balance After 40 Summit package here!
References:
1. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ben/cdtia/2004/00000003/00000001/art00010
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_immune_system#T_lymphocytes
3. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/775536_2
4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3264051/
Cooking Up Love for Your Thyroid with Chef and Health Coach Andrea Beaman
Andrea Beaman did not always eat so well. Microwave dinners and toaster pizzas were on the menu. Eventually she was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.
Also her dear mom had breast cancer that had spread, and she was given not long to live. In looking for solutions for her mom, she turned to whole foods and healthy mindset.
Andrea later went on to be on the first season of Top Chef, after being encouraged by one of her cooking students. Andrea did not own a TV, and had no idea what she was getting into, so it turned into quite an adventure!
Some of Andrea's many get quotes:
"Autoimmunity can be healed."
"Don’t wait till you’re in the grave to make a change."
"Cooking at home and feeding others is so valuable."
On pesticides..."the difference between the bug and us is size."
"This century is about thyroid. 50 years of women not eating fat, not getting minerals carried by fat got us here."
"I value the doctors. If I go outside and get hit by a bus, please take me to the doctor, don't take me to the health food store."
"Fad diets are always missing some food group."
Vegans- Get adrenal exhaustion.
Paleo- Missing starches needed for microbiome, which backs up liver. Starches feed the mitochondria.
Nourishing Thyroid Health is Andrea's online educational program on the thyroid. Learn about:
Preparing foods
How the endocrine system works
Environmental toxicants
How to heal the digestive system
How to heal the adrenals
The emotional and spiritual aspect of thyroid health
Includes:
Guest expert modules
Live coaching calls
Please check out the program here: https://tinyurl.com/thyroid123
Andrea's Top Five Take-aways:
Eat clean- get toxins out
Support your energetic body with exercise of some sort, inc. tai chi, yoga
Destress- set boundaries
Get some sun- get outdoors
You’re worth it!
Andrea and I also recorded a short video on youtube that is super fun. You can access it below, for your own mini-cooking lesson with Andrea.
The two books that inspired Andrea in those early days are:
Physician Heal Thyself by Hugh Faulkner
The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton
Listen below.
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Food as Medicine with Pharmacist and Health Coach, Ahn Nguyen
Dr. Anh Nguyen always wanted to be a pharmacist, and enjoyed many aspects of the work. But she realized people were just getting on more and more medications, and were never really coming off of them.
She was curious about how she could help people come off medications safely, and how to use food as medicine instead.
This led her to study health coaching and functional medicine. She also got interested in bodybuilding and started to train for competitions. Meanwhile she was dealing with illness in her family, which led to her own compromised health.
She shares some of her learnings with us on this interview. Here's what we talk about:
How to approach pharmaceuticals in a safer way
How pharmaceuticals can cause nutrient depletions
How pharmaceuticals can cause thyroid symptoms
Which nutritional supplements she recommends to restore thyroid health
and much more.
Dr. Anh hosts a popular weekly podcast called Food As Medicine that you can find on iTunes or through her website, Dranh.com.
I was her guest on episode 49, talking about Fertility After Age 35.
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