Transcription
Hello Health Champions! Today I want to talk about the top 10 foods that can heal your thyroid.
Right away, a lot of people are going to say, "Well, just give me the list, give me the 10 foods, and I will eat those foods and my thyroid will get better, right?" Well, unfortunately, it's not that simple because the body is a very complex system. The endocrine system and the thyroid are incredibly complex and sensitive, and one thing that could help one person get better could actually make another person worse depending on what the particular mechanism and balance is in that person. So, we need to understand a little bit more.
Another thing to keep in mind whenever you're trying to make changes like this is to start very slowly. If you're going to cut out carbs, if you're going to cut out junk food, you don't have to go super slow; you can be pretty drastic about it. But some of the things we're going to talk about in this video, you want to implement very, very slowly.
So, first off, we're going to talk about some of the classical things that people think about with thyroid, such as getting enough iodine in your food. Iodine is necessary because it's a component of the thyroid hormone. The body makes two thyroid hormones: one is called T3 and the other is called T4, and iodine is necessary to make that hormone; it's a component of that hormone. The recommended daily allowance is very, very small. We measure this in micrograms, which are millionths of a gram—so 150 to 290 micrograms. The lower end is pretty much for the average person; the upper end is if you are pregnant, if you're growing, if you have some special needs for some reason. But most people are going to fall within this range here.
By far, the richest source of iodine is going to be seaweed, in particular one called kelp. Believe it or not, a single gram of this kelp has 2,000 micrograms of iodine, so if you eat one gram of this seaweed, you're going to get about 10 times the amount of iodine you need for a whole day. This is why kelp is very popular in natural supplements where they're trying to get some iodine into that supplement because you don't need to put a whole lot in before it becomes a substantial amount. Another kind of seaweed is called wakame, which also has a lot—140 micrograms per gram. So, again, a couple of grams of this will set you for a day. Another one is called nori, which has about 16 micrograms per gram, so if you eat 10 or 15 grams of that, then you also get enough.
But there's also some regular food that has iodine in it. One example is cod, with 120 micrograms per 100 grams, which is about 4 ounces. So if you have 6 to 8 ounces of cod, you're going to get the full recommended allowance for that day. Eggs are pretty good, with 25 micrograms each, so if you have four eggs, that's 100—that gets you most of the way toward your requirement. Dairy has about 15 to 25 micrograms per 100 grams per deciliter, and a cup is about two and a half times that. So you just do the math, you end up somewhere around 50 to 60 micrograms. We have cranberries, which are very rich, with 330 micrograms per 100 grams. Now, keep in mind that cranberries are very tart; they're very sour, and most people would refuse to eat them without a lot of sugar. So if you're going to eat 100 grams of cranberries, you're probably going to eat 100 grams of sugar with it to choke them down, and then that kind of defeats the purpose of trying to get healthy. So just keep in mind these things when you evaluate different foods. Navy beans are another good source, with 27 micrograms per 100 grams, so half a cup would be about 27 or a little bit over 30 micrograms. Half a cup is about 120 grams. Then we have potato with the skin, at 30 micrograms per 100 grams, so a medium-sized potato would give you about 60 micrograms.
So on paper, it doesn't look all that hard to get enough iodine. However, if you don't have access to seafood or seaweed, and you live someplace where the soil isn't very rich in iodine, then it can be very difficult to get iodine. Therefore, in certain areas of the world, there are millions of people—a huge percentage of the population—who are deficient in iodine and hypothyroid as a result. They're just not getting enough iodine to make that hormone. Very often, they end up with what's called a goiter. If you don't have enough iodine, the thyroid gland tries to compensate, and it starts growing. So those people can have a very big enlargement, like a swelling on the front of the neck. That's pretty straightforward—all you have to do in those cases is just provide some more iodine, and the problem goes away. A lot of these problems have been helped by putting iodine in the salt. Most commercial salt is fortified with iodine, and that's not a bad solution because that's helped millions and millions of people to have a better functioning thyroid. However, if you have access to supplements, if you have access to seafood and seaweed, I think it's better to get the iodine that way and then eat a more natural salt to get your sodium and some of the other minerals.
The second type of food is selenium-rich foods. Selenium is another mineral that is critical for thyroid function because selenium helps the conversion of T4 to T3. T4 has four iodine atoms on it, and selenium helps pop one of those off to make T3, which is the active form. About three-quarters of this conversion happens in the liver, and it is dependent on healthy liver function and proper bile flow and so forth. The other 25% happens in the gut, so you need to have a healthy gut and a healthy microflora, and then those bacteria will convert another 25%. But of course, you still need selenium to make that happen. Again, the recommended daily allowance is very small—55 micrograms.
One source would be Brazil nuts, with 540 micrograms, so almost 10 times as much as you need from one ounce. A single Brazil nut would basically give you enough for the day. So I would be careful with Brazil nuts in general because a lot of people tend to be sensitive to them, and I'm not exactly sure why; it's just something that I find. Even though it has tons of nutrients, I wouldn't eat massive amounts of it. But you don't have to either because it's so dense. Another form is sardines, and one can of sardines would have about 52 micrograms of selenium. One can would basically give you what you need for the day. Eggs are a good source, with 18 micrograms each, so if you eat four of those, then you're already above your daily allowance. Sunflower seeds are a pretty good source at 15 micrograms per ounce.
Now we want to switch gears a little bit because everything so far has been about the building blocks—the iodine and the selenium—that the body needs to make thyroid hormone. But that has nothing to do really with damage to the thyroid. Most thyroid problems have to do with things that damage the thyroid, so we need to figure out what are those damaging factors, what are those causes, and how do we avoid them and how do we reverse them? If you look at a list, if you look at a video, if you Google "foods top 10 lists," "top 50 lists for foods to help your thyroid heal," they're all going to be listing foods that are high in iodine and high in selenium. They're not going to address the iceberg, the big piece that is under the water, under the surface.
So here are some of the things that can cause damage to your thyroid. One would be radiation, so excessive radiation is not good. Another would be chronic stress. High levels of cortisol will keep the thyroid from healing. This isn't just the thyroid; this is why chronic stress is so devastating because in that state of stress, your body is not prioritizing healing; it's prioritizing defending itself against dangers outside of you. That's what stress is—it's a real or imaginary state of danger. Then it's going to allocate all the resources to defending you instead of healing you. Like we talked about, nutritional deficiencies can be a problem. Initially, that is just a necessary component that keeps the thyroid from working. But in severe cases, if it goes on year after year, these deficiencies can also cause damage to the thyroid. We have chronic inflammation, which is also associated with chronic stress. They typically go together, but chronic inflammation will also damage the thyroid. The two causes of inflammation that can damage the thyroid are autoimmunity and viral infection. There are some bacterial infections that can cause damage also, but they're kind of rare, and that would be something causing an abscess on the thyroid. Most of it is going to be viral infection, but the vast majority is going to be autoimmunity. That accounts for something like three-quarters of the thyroid problems that we have in the Western, in the developed world today, meaning if it's not an iodine deficiency, then it is probably autoimmunity. I can't tell you how many people come through the clinic; we test these thyroid antibodies on everyone on every blood test because it's so common. People who have absolutely no idea that they have a problem still have these antibodies show up. There's probably over a third of the people coming through that have these antibodies, so that's how common it is.
Another thing that can cause damage is metals and toxins. Here, we're talking about millions of different compounds that can do damage. We have industrial pollution, but then we also have herbicides and pesticides and plastics. There are thousands of these that we get every day in our food and water. The damage that they do is by being endocrine disruptors. The endocrine system is your hormone system; your thyroid is a hormone gland; it makes thyroid hormone. A lot of these endocrine disruptors—all these toxins—they will look similar to the shape of the molecule that is the thyroid hormone, and therefore they're going to mimic the action and displace the thyroid hormone. It's going to compete with it or displace it, and that's how it disrupts the body's hormone function. These toxins, of course, also cause oxidative stress that can damage the thyroid and the tissue itself directly.
These are the most common causes, but this video is about the food. So now we need to understand which of these factors could be related to food. Of course, we already talked about the nutritional deficiencies; that's primarily iodine and selenium. But then all the others that have to do with food are chronic inflammation, autoimmunity, and the metals and toxins. We make sure we get clean food, organic as much as possible, and also that we avoid environmental things that can cause oxidative stress and act as endocrine disruptors. Like I mentioned, if you were to do a search on the internet for foods that can help the thyroid, unless you just read thousands of articles, you're only really going to find those related to these nutritional deficiencies and the foods that we just talked about in the first two categories. This is the typical idea of thyroid health. However, we're going to talk about the rest of them, which affect the majority of people.
Food group number three is omega-3 fatty acids. The reason they can help the thyroid is that they can reduce inflammation. This is not in a sense like a medication that would be anti-inflammatory, but most people are deficient in omega-3s and they have excess omega-6s, which are pro-inflammatory. So by balancing out omega-3s and omega-6s a little bit, we can normalize inflammation, which means in the end that the effect is going to be anti-inflammatory. There are not a whole lot of foods that contain omega-3s; that's the problem. Fatty fish is by far the best source because it has the final product—these EPA and DHA fatty acids that the body is looking for. A plant source would be chia and flax seed, but it's a different type of omega-3. This can potentially become those good fatty acids, the EPA and the DHA, but the body converts them very poorly. So it's better to eat the fatty fish or to take a supplement. Nevertheless, chia and flax can be hugely beneficial. They have a lot of different good properties, and if you get enough of it, some of these fatty acids are going to be converted to the good stuff. Another good source that I often talk about in my egg videos, of course, is eggs. They have a lot of DHA; you can get a significant portion of your daily omega-3s just by eating a few eggs.
Another thing that can help control inflammation is to get healthy fat food. We've had this fat phobia for about 50 years or so, where people are afraid of fat because they're afraid of calories. But the fact is, there are good fats and bad fats, and the good fats are some of the best sources of energy. It's the clean burning fuel; it's low inflammation on these foods. Avocado would be a fantastic form of healthy fats. I want to help you understand a little bit more about these healthy fats by looking at the proportion of the different fatty acids and talking about what they might do. We have the green here, which would be MUFAs (monounsaturated fatty acids), the pink would be saturated fatty acids, and the yellow would be PUFAs (polyunsaturated fatty acids). All of these are good when they are good—when they're unspoiled, when we haven't damaged or destroyed or oxidized them, then all of these are good. But the one that we've focused a lot on lately is the monounsaturated because that is very high in things like the Mediterranean diet. If we compare avocado with olive oil, for example, we see that they're almost identical in composition. The vast majority is going to be monounsaturated; they have some saturated and a tiny little bit of polyunsaturated fatty acids. These polyunsaturated are very easily oxidized, so as long as you eat them as part of a food that hasn't been oxidized, hasn't been overheated, hasn't been processed, then that's still okay. But we want, in these foods, the majority to be the monounsaturated. Then we look at some animal products, which would be eggs and grass-fed meat. These are also very healthy sources, and people talk about eggs and meat as having only saturated fat when, in fact, they have equally as much monounsaturated as they do saturated and even a little bit of polyunsaturated. But again, that's okay if it is part of a whole food.
The next one is chia seeds, and as you can see, it's a completely different composition of fats. You have a little bit of monounsaturated, a little bit of saturated, and almost all of it is going to be polyunsaturated. Very often, we're told that these are the healthy fats—the polyunsaturated—that you should eat vegetable oils made from soybean and safflower and sunflower seeds because they have more—not this extreme—but they have more of this composition. But the key to understand is that it's healthy as long as it's inside the seed. The shell, the hull of the chia seed, protects it incredibly efficiently. So as long as that seed is whole and you dump a few tablespoons in water and it swells up and you drink it, then those polyunsaturated fatty acids are protected from heat and light and oxygen, and they're going to be healthy for you. Now some of these are going to be omega-3s, some of them are going to be omega-6s, but that's okay as long as it's part of a whole food. But if you were to grind it up or if you were to make an oil out of this and leave it unprotected from light and oxygen, then these oils, these sensitive omega-3s, are going to react and go rancid in a matter of hours. That's the problem with the vegetable oils that they sell. If you eat the sunflower seed whole, it's okay. When you make oil of it, now you damage that fat very, very quickly. So as long as this food is protected and you eat it in its natural state, or if you grind it and eat it immediately, now those are okay.
I want to show you one more food, which is macadamia nut, because it is the only food that looks like this. I've never seen a nut that comes even close. It is almost like olive oil and avocado, pretty much. It has most of its fat—the vast majority—from monounsaturated. It has some saturated and virtually zero polyunsaturated. This is why macadamia nuts and macadamia oil are very stable, just like olive oil; it doesn't go rancid very quickly.
Number five is probiotic foods. These are things that can affect your gut health, that can stimulate and help your microbiome. By providing bacteria, by replenishing and growing bacteria, and providing seeds for bacteria, you can help your overall gut health. Why is that so important? Because gut health is the strongest factor identified in relation to autoimmune disease. Like we said, most thyroid disease is autoimmune. So if you have a thyroid problem, chances are very, very high that you have poor gut health. That's probably the number one thing that you want to work on would be gut health. A few examples here would be things like kimchi, sauerkraut, yogurt, kefir, buttermilk, etc. We also have kombucha, and we have miso and tempeh. Even natural cheese is actually grown with bacteria, so as long as it's natural and they haven't pasteurized it or changed it in any way, then that can also help.
Now, the thing to keep in mind and where I said to make changes slowly is that depending on your balance of bacteria, which ones you have a lot of and which you don't have so much of, and which pathogenic bacteria are overgrown, some people could be helped by this, and some people could get worse. Because if you stimulate, if you put some things in that cause growth of certain things, that might inhibit others. There's just going to be a lot of variety. So make changes slowly and observe what happens.
One thing we want to understand is that when the thyroid goes bad, when the thyroid gets damaged and starts underperforming, it doesn't do that in isolation. These health challenges are part of the bigger picture. The whole body cooperates—all the systems in the body work together. By the time we notice a problem, very often there's decades of damage from multiple different factors, such as antibiotics and environmental toxins and pesticides such as glyphosate. Also, from processed foods. Like we mentioned before, stress is a big component of this. Also, this certain pandemic that we've had globally. In some cases, you get an infection and then you get over it. In other cases, you get what's called long COVID. These symptoms last, or they don't seem to resolve fully. The reason is that they start affecting a lot of different systems in the body. Especially the gut is where they have found changes that affect you long-term. Because of this, there is no quick fix. There is no one probiotic, there's no one vegetable that you can just eat a ton of and all your problems will go away. That might work for one in a thousand, but we're going to try to help most people. That's where we want a comprehensive solution. Nutritional deficiencies could be insulin resistance creating inflammation. It could be dysbiosis, imbalance in the gut, which is an enormous problem. The way that manifests very often is that you have a low diversity—you don't have enough different strains. A healthy gut is supposed to have several hundred different strains in certain proportions. Not only that, but there are some keystone species—there are certain groups of bacteria that you depend on. They kind of police the rest of the bacteria and keep them in check. So if you have enough of these keystone species, then they can make the others work better. But if you're missing or if you're low in a lot of them, then that's where a lot of the chaos begins. We're learning more and more every day about how this bacterial balance affects your immunity. Most of your immune system is actually in the gut, in the gut-associated lymphoid tissue. A lot of the metabolic signaling, a lot of the inflammatory signaling has to do with what's going on in the gut. A lot of the health challenges, a lot of the issues people are dealing with, are getting more and more complex. It's not as simple as it was even 10 years ago, or much less 20 years ago. What I have found is that we need to address it at many different levels.
Over the last few years, I have developed something called Nexus Body Testing. I've researched and we've tried in the clinic the different types of testing that can be the most comprehensive and complete solution to help people deal with this. Now, very recently, we launched Nexus Body Testing. The beauty of that is that we can do this remotely. We had thousands of people contact the office, and most of them were not able to travel because it gets very costly. With this, you can stay where you live, and we can still work with you. We'd love to work with people all over the world, but for now, this is going to work primarily in the continental United States, where we can ship different tests back and forth. In this program, we're going to start off with comprehensive blood work. This isn't just a few markers that are standardized. We're going to look far beyond that to metabolic markers, including insulin. We're going to look at inflammatory levels. We're going to look at a cholesterol NMR panel. We're going to look at thyroid immune antibodies and so forth. Then one of my doctors is going to review this and sit down and have an individual consultation with you and explain exactly what they found. As part of the follow-up, you're also going to get individual coaching calls, because nothing about health is a one-time thing. It's a process that we need to follow through on. The next thing is we're going to test the ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids in your cell membranes and see what your inflammatory status and your brain health is. Then we're going to also do maybe the most important part, the biggest change in our program—we've started doing a complete DNA analysis of the biome, your microbiome. It's only been a few years since they sequenced this. These are brand new tests, and all of these tests are going to be included in this individual consultation so that you really understand what's going on. After all of that is done, we're going to do some further testing and get some personalized supplementation for you so that you don't have to spend a ton of money just randomly trying to figure out what works. We're going to tell you and show you what you need to take. Part of this program is also a follow-up. Weekly in the beginning and down the road as things stabilize, probably every two, every three, every four weeks. But it's a continuous follow-up and coaching so that you're not left on your own. It's not just a one-time thing; we follow through and see where this is going and make all the adjustments that we need to make. It's not a small commitment. There's a lot of testing, and this program is going to take several months, probably the better part of a year to really get through. But like I said, these problems have developed over decades, so it's not going to be a quick fix. If you're ready to really do something about it, I'll put some information down below where you can contact my clinic.
The next thing for the thyroid is to start understanding how do we heal that gut. What is it going to take long term? These are some of the things that you would learn in the program as well. Prebiotic foods—these are things that will feed the bacteria. Probiotic is the bacteria, the seeds, but we have to create an environment for those seeds to grow. That's where the prebiotics come in. Two examples would be garlic and onion. They have a lot of something called fructooligosaccharide, which is basically food for those bacteria. We have leeks that have another type of fructooligosaccharide called inulin. We have asparagus, we have Jerusalem artichokes, which also have inulin. We have barley and oats that have a different type of prebiotic called beta-glucan. Here's one more example of something that can be really, really beneficial, but it could totally mess you up if you take a lot of this right off the bat, especially if you have something called SIBO or small intestine bacterial overgrowth. Because now you're going to have a lot of food—it's going to be like a buffet for these bacteria growing in the wrong place, and you're going to blow up like a balloon and not be very happy at all. These things need to be introduced very, very carefully.
Another example is high-fiber foods, number seven. Here we have chia and flax again, excellent sources of fiber. One ounce will have 10 grams of fiber, so it's like almost a third, over a third of the seeds are actually fiber. We have apples and pears—they have about five grams for the average-sized fruit. We have lentils and black beans, about 15 grams per cup. We have broccoli, five grams per cup. Raspberries, eight grams per cup. Avocado, 10 grams for each avocado. All of these are great examples, but again, if you have SIBO, it's not just the inulin and the FOS, but all forms of fiber can feed these bacteria depending on where the bacteria are and what kind they are. This is why some people swear that vegetables are poison and that they can't eat any of them, and they're probably right. They can't eat them right now. They need to gradually start moving their gut and their body to the point where these will be beneficial instead of just making them blow up.
Number eight is foods rich in polyphenols. These could be things like blueberries, green tea, walnuts, olive oil, dark chocolate, red wine, and coffee. Isn't it great that we can have a few vices left and still be kind of on the narrow path? Pecans are another good source. Polyphenols are very interesting—they don't feed the same way that the FOS and the inulin and the fiber do, but they can be critically important. They can feed some bacteria, typically the ones that we want—the keystone species, the beneficial ones—but they can actually work like an antibiotic. They can be like a poison to the pathogenic, to the bad bacteria, so it can work both ways there.
Number nine is anti-inflammatory foods. These are some things that can directly help calm down inflammation in the gut. They don't necessarily have nutrients that will benefit you, that will get out into the body, but they do their job in the gut lumen by manipulating the bacteria and by calming down the inflammation and assisting the gut in healing. Turmeric, so curcumin is a good example. Ginger, garlic, and various forms of berries can all have that effect. A lot of these will do it with specific compounds; others will do it through antioxidants. Other examples are things like leafy greens, tomatoes, nuts, and also different types of peppers.
Number ten is gut-healing foods. These are foods that contain nutrients that can act as repair materials, as building materials. We have bone broth, we have cabbage, we have aloe vera. Again, ginger and L-glutamine is an amino acid that has been shown to actively participate in healing. Then we also have licorice root, slippery elm, and marshmallow root. These are examples of things that, if you get a gut-healing supplement, if they put together a powder, then these powders are probably going to contain several of these different ingredients, and they can be beneficial. But again, you don't want to try to address this from just one angle because the problem, most of the time, is rather complex, and it didn't develop quickly. So you want to address it from all the different angles that you can.
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