Here is where one of the most important factors to take care of if you have Hashimoto, is the diet.
When I went with my first doctors and endocrinologists, I never heard anyone mentioning the importance of the gut in autoimmune disease.
The typical and most common treatment for Hashimoto is to take Levothyroxine, test your TSH levels every 3 months and adjust if needed and that is it.
Well, if you have read any other of my posts about Hashimoto Thyroiditis or the Psychological Symptoms of Hashimoto, well that is bullshit.
Or partially.
What you eat is crucial to heal Hashimoto, or at least to reduce the symptoms that you might have.
Each and every individual has its own microbiome and their immune response will be different according to their body.
So here is where I want to remark the importance of a personalized Hashimoto diet.
If you are already googling Hashimoto Diet, to see if there is any recommendation that you can get from different websites, let me tell you that they are not really taking into consideration your uniqueness.
Most of the online recommendations are general recommendations for a Hashimoto Diet.
I did searched for Hashimoto Breakfast ideas, but in some they mentioned to include Egg, and actually I can’t eat Egg according to my food sensitivities test.
So my first recommendation is, of course if it is in your possibilities, to go with a functional medicine doctor, or a highly specialized doctor that can ask you to test your food sensitivites that will show which ones generate an autoimmune reaction on you.
Reminder: Take this article as an friendly advice, not medical, I am not a doctor, but I bet I already have more experience than many conventional doctors who are not healing people and just letting them down.
I do have my theory that the use of Antibiotics, and probably other prescription drugs are obviously affecting the Gut lining and turning it into a leaky Gut, but probably Doctors won’t tell that story.
Gluten should be removed from a Hashimoto Diet, since it has gliadin, a protein that can filter through the gut to the bloodstream and is similar to the Thyroid tissue.
Therefore when the immune system is working against this, they will target as well the Thyroid tissue since it is similar to it, bringing as consequence thyroid and hormonal imbalance.
Of course again, it will depend in your body and your autoimmune response, but most of Hashimoto’s patients remove gluten.
Gluten as well causes inflammation in the gut, as Endocrine Web states.
Your gut health is a large determiner of your overall health. Gluten is not a villain, but for some, the overconsumption of gluten-containing junk foods can trigger and worsen an inflammatory response.
Things I wished I knew earlier once I was diagnosed with Hashimoto, or even before!
It is really important to have a personalized Hashimoto Diet in order to heal and have a better life quality.
When I decided first to do more research about Hashimoto and why I was not feeling ok even if my TSH, T3 and T4 levels were normal, I started to do my research on Google.
And I do think most people with autoimmune diseases search on Internet because conventional doctors are not really understanding how to treat chronic diseases.
As I can say, it gets chronic because we are not taking care of what gets into our guts.
For example, if we are unaware that bread, or even wheat bread is doing as well bad to us, we will keep eating it, since we have the idea that wheat bread is better and healthier than white bread.
And we have to search for answers by ourselves that some doctors are not giving.
That is why I remark again, if you can, try first to do your food sensitivities test to find out your autoimmune response. This will be a huge step to really knowing what affects directly to you. Of course you can do an elimination diet, but sometimes it will be hard to identify what exactly affects you, since sometimes autoimmune responses takes longer to show symptoms.
And probably here is another of the most important tests to do if you have Hashimoto Thyroiditis.
The thing is that in general this test might be quite expensive.
So if going to a lab to test for Food Sensitivities and see which foods create anitbodies reaction is not an option by the moment, then you can start by creating an elimination diet.
I did this test in Germany, but my doctor here in Mexico was also going to ask for the Food Sensitivities test.
Overall, a Hashimoto Diet recommends to leave out Gluten, Dairy and Egg, but every person is different and unique, and what might have a reaction on me, might not be the same for you, so listen to your body.
In my case, Casein, a protein found in Dairy, was not on my reactions list, plus having a glass of low fat milk for me is not a problem.
Here I share with you the list of foods that I reacted for antibodies.
Group 1 is food that I can eat daily. Group 2 is food that I could intercalate. Group 3 is food with moderate antibody reaction. Group 4 is food with high antibody reaction.
Using this test, I started to create my Hashimoto Diet.
It is a personalized Hashimoto Diet, because it came out from my labs, and not just from what the doctor said, or what it is recommended in general for all Hashimotos.
While being back in Mexico, I also realized that beans were a trigger for me, therefore I also left them out for my Hashimoto Diet.
Of course it is way easier to build a Hashimoto Diet if you know exactly which foods are your autoimmune triggers.
Again, take this list as a overall recommendation or ideas, you are unique and you might have different autoimmune responses.
The crucial and important vitamin D.
While living in Germany, and I tested for vitamin D, I was actually pretty low.
Once back here in Mexico, my functional medicine doctor didn’t test back again until several months after I started the treatment with him.
Vitamin D plays a crucial role in people with Autoimmune diseases.
Historically, vitamin D has been associated with the regulation of bone metabolism. However, increasing evidence demonstrates a strong association between vitamin D signaling and many biological processes that regulate immune responses. (Yang et al, 2013)
Vitamin B has another test that I have done and that I was also on low levels.
Also, it is worth mentioning that Homocysteine could be in higher levels, so you might also prefer to test that and for sure you will have to increase your Vitamin B.
In patients with autoimmune hypothyroidism, vit-D and vit-B12 deficiency should be investigated at the time of diagnosis and periodically on follow-ups. (Aktaş H.Ş., 2020)
Zinc, Copper and Selenium are mentioned to be important for a good thyroid function.
In a study, it is mentioned that the blood concentration of essential trace elements, especially the ratio of Copper, and Selenium may influence directly thyroid function in patients with Hashimoto Thyroiditis and overt hypothyroidism. (Milutinovic et al 2016)
Pregnenolone is a hormone naturally produced in the body by the adrenal gland. Pregnenolone is also made from cholesterol, and is the starting material in the production of testosterone, progesterone, cortisol, estrogen and other hormones. Because the body uses it biochemically as starting material, pregnenolone is sometimes referred to as a “precursor” or “pro-hormone”. (USADA)
I actually didn’t knew what this hormone was and that it even existed.
My functional medicine doctor asked me to test for Pregnenolone and of course by my surprise as was at a very low level, so he suplemented me for Pregnenolone.
Overall, make sure that your doctor is testing more than just your TSH, T3, and T4, because you might have other nutritional defficiencies that might be affecting you.
