Anita Morgan says, "What can be done to reverse hypothyroidism other than taking thyroid medicine?
I've been taking desiccated thyroid Nature-Throid and one drop of Lugol's iodine per day.
My doctor's data hair test shows iodine of 1.0.
However, a drop of iodine in my skin takes a long time to absorb."
I'll throw in a couple things.
If you just look at the nutrients needed to make thyroid hormone, you're looking at enough
protein in addition to enough iodine.
But then also the production of thyroid hormone is a very, very dirty process that requires
an enormous amount of antioxidant support.
Selenium is very important.
But also, if you're looking at antioxidant protection, you're looking at not just things
that we think of as dietary antioxidants.
But you're looking at protein, zinc, iron, copper, manganese in addition to selenium.
You're looking at vitamin C, vitamin E and a whole bunch, sort of a Pandora's box that
you're opening up.
I think that probably the things that stand out the most are protein, iodine and selenium,
but really you have a pretty big network of supportive nutrients in the background.
Of course, everything I just said assumes that you're missing something that you need
to make thyroid hormone, which is not necessarily the case, but I covered part of it.
Do you want to take it from there?
Carrie: Yeah, I was going to just say that on top of that, making sure you understand
the difference between do you have cellular peripheral hypothyroidism.
So many things can get in the way of converting your T4 into your T3.
High estrogen, high leptin, high insulin, high cortisol, low progesterone, low DHEA.
If you have any of these things, you may be deemed hypothyroid, but really, these peripheral
factors play into it as well.
Chris: Okay.
Thank you, Anita.
Let's see.
Anonymous says, "Do you have any experience with iodine restriction for treating Hashimoto's?"
Carrie, do you have any thoughts on that?
Carrie: I don't.
Nope.
Not with iodine restriction for Hashimoto's.
How about you?
Chris: Well, I don't have experience with it, but I'll say that I read about this in
Datis Kharrazian's book Why Do I Still Have Thyroid Symptoms When All My Lab Tests Are
Normal?
I looked at the studies that he cites.
I didn't think they were very convincing.
So there is an argument out there.
Basically the argument is that the Hashimoto's is driven by oxidative stress driving inflammation
that is a result of not being able to protect the thyroid under the conditions that make
thyroid hormone.
If you put more iodine in there, you're going to increase thyroid hormone production.
You're going to increase all of the damaging things that you don't have adequate protection
against.
Back in the day, quite a while ago, there was a very extensive back and forth debate
on the Perfect Health Diet website between a few people on this.
I agree with the conclusions that they came to, which is that under those conditions,
you definitely want to make sure that you're not missing key things that are needed to
protect the thyroid, but as long as you're adequate in those, and chief among them would
be selenium.
But I have to add here that I really don't think anyone should supplement with more than
100 micrograms of selenium if they're not measuring their plasma selenium because you
basically have a 50/50 chance of having too much or too little selenium because the soil
distribution is completely random and plants do not regulate how much selenium they take
up, which is different in principle than every other mineral.
For example, if you have a place where the soil has toxic levels of copper in it, it's
going to increase on average the food copper accumulation by 25% because the plants control
their copper uptake homeostatically, whereas selenium, they don't.
If you have three times the level of selenium in the soil, you're going to have three times
level of selenium in the plants.
I don't think it's wise for people to just throw 200 micrograms a day of selenium in
because they have Hashimoto's.
But I do think it makes sense to say before I'm going to supplement with iodine, I'm going
to make sure that I have selenium and the other things in place that I need to protect
my thyroid gland during the process of making thyroid hormone.
But I think that's the limit to iodine restriction.
I don't think it makes sense to treat Hashimoto's by just completely avoiding iodine because
at some point down the line, you're not going to have any thyroid hormone if you don't have
any iodine.
Just my thought on that.
Okay.
"What are the implications for hormonal balance of following a low carb or ketogenic diet?
Are there concerns to watch for?"
I'll throw a couple things out.
First of all, if you don't have enough carbohydrate to feed your body's demand for it.
Even on a ketogenic diet, your brain's consumption of glucose goes down 75%, but your brain consumes
120 grams of glucose a day when you're not on the ketogenic diet.
Your total demand for glucose is at maximum going down.
The maximum decrease in your need for carbohydrate would be that you could go down to maybe 45
grams a day if you're very keto-adapted.
That's referring to the amount of carbohydrate you need to burn for energy.
You can make that carbohydrate through gluconeogenesis, but one of the key regulators of gluconeogenesis
is cortisol.
If cortisol doesn't normalize your blood glucose levels, you can also get adrenaline pumping
in.
You can throw things off that way.
The other thing is that you won't find this in any textbook on hormones, but insulin acts
on the thyroid gland to mimic about half of what TSH does on the molecular level.
If you look at like how much TSH do you need to make the amount of thyroid hormone that
you need, it's contextual against your insulin level.
Because if you take out the insulin, then you basically need more TSH to make the same
amount of thyroid hormone.
If you're not ramping up the TSH, you will probably have a decline in thyroid hormone.
In fact, if you look at T3 levels on low carbohydrate diets, they tend to go down.
Some carbohydrate diet advocates, there are some people that think low T3 is good for
your lifespan.
I think Ron Rosedale was making this argument at that.
That you want to be on a low carbohydrate diet so that you will lower your T3, so that
you will live longer.
There's that.
Then also elevated free fatty acids, that's one of the facts, and you were talking about
peripheral thyroid hormone metabolism.
One of the factors that determines the actual transport of thyroid hormone into the cell
and binding to the nuclear receptor to affect gene expression is the free fatty acid level.
Thyroid hormone regulates sex hormone production and other things.
I think that you have the potential for decrease in thyroid hormone and sex hormones and an
increase in cortisol.
I'm not saying that happens in everyone, but it's just one of the things that could happen.
I originally was very interested in this because I was talking to someone who was a type 1
diabetic and they were managing their type 1 diabetes by basically eating zero carb,
but their testosterone thyroid hormone levels were low.
Their question was clearly there's a cause and effect relationship, but is it better
to eat carbohydrate and take insulin or is it better to live with low testosterone levels?
Those are my thoughts.
Do you have anything you want to add to that?
Carrie: Well, the one thing that I would add is because I work for a hormone lab and see
thousands and thousands and thousands of them, the number of people that are on a keto-type
diet and their hormones are a mess often, I have a lot of doctors, a lot of practitioners
who were trying keto or something like that, and they call me and they're like, "I feel
terrible.
I feel like everything is a mess."
We run their hormone test and sure enough, it is.
Oftentimes, they're like, "Forget it.
I'm not doing this anymore.
I'm going to quit this."
They'll go and get blood work done for their thyroid, and their thyroid is also a mess.
Again, just like you said, this isn't everybody for sure.
Definitely some very fat-adapted people are doing great and have no issue.
But the number of complaining or irritated or hormonally-imbalanced practitioners that
I talked to who have tried or have been doing keto outweighs the ones that are doing it
testing and feel really good.
However, keep in mind, the patient population I'm seeing, they're calling me because something
is wrong.
If something is not wrong, they're not going to call me.
Chris: Right.
They have hormone problems by default.
Carrie: Yeah.