Transcription
Hey everyone, Dr. David Clark. Today, I'll be talking about the absolute worst food that you can eat if you have Hashimoto's.
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All right, so what do I mean when I say the worst foods that you can eat if you have Hashimoto's? Well, specifically, I'm going to be talking about foods that we know cross-react with thyroid peroxidase. So, let me give you the background in case you're not familiar with this. So, Hashimoto's, of course, is an autoimmune condition where the immune system attacks an enzyme inside the thyroid gland that's called thyroid peroxidase. Why does that matter? Well, your thyroid gland uses thyroid peroxidase to make thyroid hormones. So, if you have Hashimoto's, what happens is over time, your thyroid peroxidase levels drop, and so your ability to make hormones drops, and eventually, you become hypothyroid. And sometimes that's evidenced by an elevated TSH along with the low T4. Sometimes the symptoms precede that, and for example, people can start gaining weight even though they're trying not to, they lose hair, they start to become depressed, they get extra sleepy, they have constipation. There's a whole list of symptoms that can occur. That's what Hashimoto's does. Hashimoto's destroys thyroid peroxidase. It also can destroy this other stuff called thyroglobulin, but we're not even going to talk about that. We're just going to talk about the foods that are a problem for thyroid peroxidase.
So, I mentioned ago, a minute ago, I mentioned this thing called cross-reactions. I need to explain what that is. It's basically where the antibodies for one thing can stick onto another thing that's not the first thing because to the immune system, thing number two looks like thing number one. I always tell people that antibodies, in case you know what those are, antibodies are basically like little, um, you know, Post-it notes that your immune system makes to stick onto something. Now, look, we make antibodies to all kinds of things. That's kind of how our immune system surveils things. The problem is when we start making a lot of antibodies. There are a lot of Post-it notes for something. And in Hashimoto's, the immune system is making a lot of Post-it notes to stick onto thyroid peroxidase inside the thyroid gland. I've got a lot of other videos on Hashimoto's, so you can understand kind of like the different flavors of Hashimoto's. But today, we'll be talking about why are certain foods really bad for Hashimoto's? Well, it goes like this. In laboratory studies that have been done, I'll try to link those for you guys, we know that there are certain foods. Their chemical structure looks very similar to thyroid peroxidase. And so, if your immune system is already attacking thyroid peroxidase, and then you eat something that looks very similar to thyroid peroxidase, you can actually promote more attack on your thyroid gland by eating those foods. Hope that makes sense. If it doesn't, I try to clarify in some comments. I have some other videos on that as well.
But let's kind of run through the list here, right? So here's the, uh, the dirty, what is this, eight or nine foods? I'll start at the bottom, which is kind of something most people wouldn't think of, but cod. Yeah, the fish cod has been shown to cross-react with thyroid peroxidase. The next one on the list is mushrooms. Mushrooms have a similar molecular structure, at least enough that the immune system can get confused between that and thyroid peroxidase. The next one on the list is P lectin. Lectin is basically just a substance that all plants have, but P lectin in peas is very, very similar to thyroid peroxidase. The next one is lentils, which are kind of similar to peas. And after that, we have milk. And let me stop all of you right here and say, it doesn't matter if it's organic or raw or pasteurized or butter, cheese, yogurt, milk. All milk products have certain proteins in them that are very similar to thyroid peroxidase. Yes, you may be able to tolerate milk, but we're talking about things that could be happening beneath the surface, molecularly, biochemically, that you're not even aware of. The reason I pause that is every time I bring up milk, people always say, "What if it's raw? What if it's organic? What if it's yogurt?" None of that really matters. We're trying to be really safe here, and so this is the food that you want to be avoiding, and it's milk in all forms.
The next one on our list is corn. After that, we have kidney beans, which is a little bit of a shock. But beans, kind of like the peas and the lentils, they have some lectins in them, and they have something in them called phytohemagglutinin, and that is what really seems to cross-react with thyroid peroxidase. After that, we have number one, and you probably would have guessed this if you know anything about my channel or anything I've talked about, is wheat. Now, specifically, it's something in wheat called wheat germ agglutinin. But for all practical purposes, that means wheat in all of its forms.
So, why would you avoid these things? Well, you would avoid these things if you know you have Hashimoto's, right? If you want to be like super safe, avoid the potential of all this cross-reactivity happening, you would avoid all these foods. Now, to be fair, just because it can cross-react doesn't mean that it is cross-reacting in every person. And also, there's no need to try to do IGG food sensitivity tests for these things. That's a totally different issue, and I don't know if I should get into this now or not, but largely IGG food sensitivity testing is a waste of time. And I guess maybe I should do a video on that to explain that bold statement. But we're talking about it's kind of like a food sensitivity test and reverse. We know from studies that have been done that these foods look like thyroid peroxidase, and if you're already making antibodies to thyroid peroxidase, you want to avoid things that could kind of stoke the fire. And so you'd want to avoid all of those foods.
Now, that being said, maybe you do, maybe you don't really need to avoid them. But there's a certain kind of a, there's sort of a pathway you've got to follow to find out if that's really the case. So, yes, you could eliminate all these right now if you wanted to. But the chances are, a lot of you probably don't have to eliminate all of them. But I'll guarantee you, almost anyone with Hashimoto's should for sure be off of wheat/gluten and should be off milk. Or these other things would kind of remain to be seen. But that's one of the things we do with patients is we take them through a process where you kind of figure that stuff out.
So, if you have Hashimoto's and you're not feeling good, you're still taking medication, but you still don't feel good, and you know your quantities look good, but you don't feel good, like your TSH is good, T4 is good, T3 is good, but you don't feel good. You've got depression, you've got problems losing weight, you have muscle and joint pain, you have anxiety, you have brain fog, you have constipation, you've got GI disturbances. If you've got that, but your labs look good, this is something you need to be working on, I think. So please make sure you're working with a provider, a doctor that understands what I just told you about. And I guess I'll say this, I can almost guarantee you, most doctors you take this information to, they're going to say that has nothing to do with it, right? But that's not correct. It's just not correct. For too long, people have been told that, "Yeah, you know, you got Hashimoto's, what you eat doesn't matter." And I've got to tell you, I've been doing this for a long time, and the research says that that attitude of that's just not correct. It just isn't correct.
Now, if you have Hashimoto's and you feel great, don't worry about it. But if you have Hashimoto's and you still have symptoms, this is an aspect of your care that you need to be working on with someone. So make sure you're choosing a doctor and working with a doctor that understands that these are the worst foods for Hashimoto's. And I'll put a slide up here again, the list for you guys, so you guys can see it. Uh, and I'll see you next time.