Your thyroid and hormone issues – A Functional Nutrition view

Your endocrine system

Your endocrine system is a set of organs that work together like a symphony orchestra to excrete hormones. Hormones are fat-based molecules that act as messengers throughout your entire body. They play a critical role in the growth and development of your body, regulating your mood, organ function, reproduction and metabolism.

Endocrine organs include the pituitary, hypothalamus, thyroid, para-thyroid, adrenals, pineal, reproductive organs, pancreas and pituitary. These organs release hormones directly into the bloodstream, which transports them to all the cells in the body like a long-distance communication system.

Your thyroid

We hear a lot about the thyroid. This is largely because our population is experiencing a significant amount of thyroid dysfunction. This is because every cell in the body has receptors for thyroid hormone, so when something goes wrong, we truly feel it. That said, many thyroid problems still go undiagnosed. Often we assume thyroid problems only happen with women, but men can also suffer.

Thyroid hormones are responsible for basic body function, impacting all of our major systems and acting directly on our brain, gut, gallbladder and liver, cardiovascular system, body temperature regulation, and bone, glucose, protein and red blood cell metabolism.

A Functional Nutrition approach – getting to the root cause

According to functional or integrative medicine, the two major causes of thyroid disorders are nutrient deficiency and autoimmune disease, including Hashimoto’s disease and Graves’ disease.

Nutrient deficiency is where your body’s cells don’t have access to the right kinds, or sufficient amounts, of nutrients to function optimally. Thyroid autoimmunity is where your thyroid is attacked by your own immune system. 

Why do we experience nutrient deficiency? Because we eat nutrient-poor and high-carbohydrate diets. This can lead to shortages of iodine and selenium, vitamins D and A, zinc and Omega-3 fats, which are all important for good thyroid function.

As for autoimmunity, this begins in your gut. Poor digestion can lead to intestinal permeability or leaky gut. This is where large undigested food particles widen the normally tight gut junctions and get through to your blood stream. There they go unrecognised and are tagged as hostile, prompting your immune system to attack them.

Gut microbes are important too because they help regulate intestinal permeability, nutrient absorption and immunity. A diversity of good bacteria will help keep pathogens in check.

More on the gut-thyroid connection

Our gut microbiome is now considered an endocrine organ, possibly even more powerful than our endocrine glands. It controls the production of, and inhibits or supports, hormonal balance. Around 40% of our hormones are made in our gut, which is where 70% of our immune system also resides. Additionally, gut bacteria help convert the hormone T4 hormone into its active form of T3.

Importantly, our gut microbes also control oestrogen via the excretion of beta-glucuronidase, an enzyme that deconjugates oestrogens into their active forms. When gut dysbiosis occurs, beta-glucuronidase can produce a deficiency or excess of free oestrogen, potentially leading to oestrogen-related conditions.

Diet and lifestyle can support your thyroid

Diet, lifestyle and supplement strategies can help address nutrient deficiency and autoimmunity, the two leading causes of thyroid disorders.

Diet

• Consume plenty of iodine-rich foods – sea vegetables, organ meats, seafood, eggs

• Consume selenium-rich foods – brazil nuts, ham, fish, beef, turkey, chicken

• Avoid high amounts of goitrogens – bok choy, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, kohlrabi, mustard and mustard greens, radishes, turnips – which increase the need for iodine and damage the thyroid gland

• Avoid foods that can trigger autoimmune responses like gluten, dairy, soy and corn

• Consider avoiding a very low-carb diets as this can lower thyroid function

Heal your gut

• Heal your gut to bring balance and promote optimal functions by killing off pathogens (bacteria, yeast and fungi, parasites), healing your gut lining, raising good bacteria levels and restoring gut immunity

• Eat gut-loving foods like these

Lifestyle

• Manage stress, which when chronic can impair thyroid function. Here are some tips

• Get some sun, which can help protect you against autoimmune disease

Supplementation

• Iodine and selenium – it’s best to get these from food sources, but in cases of significant depletion, supplementation might be necessary. Iodine must be supplemented very carefully with autoimmune disease as it can trigger a flare

• Vitamin D supplementation may also be required when sun exposure is inadequate

A word on testing

You may have had thyroid testing done. The problem is that often blood tests only examine TSH or thyroid stimulating hormone levels. This shows the amount of TSH being released by the pituitary gland to stimulate the thyroid gland into producing more hormones, which it does by liberating iodine combined with tyrosine to produce T4 and T3. Sometimes, however, the problem is deeper than a lack of TSH.

What if something goes wrong with the conversion of the more abundant T4 into the four-times stronger T3? T3 is the active thyroid hormone most needed to perform thyroid functions. Around 40% of this conversion happens in the liver, with 20% each taking place in the digestive tract and peripheral tissues and the final 20% being converted to an inactive from of T3 called reverse T3 (rT3). What if you have gut or liver problems as described above and this conversion falters? This will impact your rT3 amount and how your body conserves energy. Stress, diabetes, injury and some drugs can also alter rT3 levels impacting your energy levels.

Also, bare in mind that the range of thyroid hormones you see in lab tests reflect the levels of all the prior people tested in that lab. If everyone has healthy hormone levels, this will be reflected. Conversely, if everyone has unhealthy levels, this will also be reflected. Functional nutrition considers optimal levels for function i.e. the level you need to feel best.

It is possible to have blood testing done would shows these other markers, includingT3, T4, free T3, free T4 and thyroid antibodies, a possible indicator of thyroid autoimmune disease. I conduct blood chemistry testing in my practice.