Chapter
18

Eating Your Way to Health

In This Chapter

  • Cutting down on processed foods
  • Minimizing pesticides and food toxins
  • Going organic
  • Matching foods to your metabolism

Medication isn’t the only way to ensure your health. At least as important is making smart choices about what you eat every day. Foods that are free of toxins, and that work well with your metabolic rate, are especially good for your thyroid … and for your body overall.

If you don’t yet have a thyroid problem, or are in just a mild early stage, changing your food habits for the better may help prevent your thyroid from getting worse. Conversely, if you’re already suffering from thyroid disease, what you eat might help heal and strengthen your thyroid. This chapter will therefore provide advice on what foods to seek out and what to avoid.

Choosing Natural vs. Processed Foods

As explained in Chapter 5, your thyroid is especially sensitive to artificial chemicals and toxins. The more of them you consume, the more they’re likely to accumulate in your thyroid and make it malfunction. It’s therefore always a good idea to favor fresh, natural foods over processed foods.

First, the processing of the food may involve harmful chemicals. For example, it was recently discovered that some manufacturers of corn syrup use mercury-based components, resulting in small amounts of mercury turning up in thousands of snacks, beverages, and other foods that include corn syrup in their ingredients.

Mercury is poisonous to the entire body, but it’s especially harmful to the thyroid because it’s chemically similar to iodine. That means your thyroid will absorb any mercury in your bloodstream and store it. Even though the amount in any one serving of food is minute, over time the mercury can accumulate to a level where it attracts the attention of your immune system and triggers a thyroid autoimmune disease such as Hashimoto’s or Graves’.

If that scenario seems far-fetched, consider that corn growing is heavily government subsidized in the United States, making corn syrup exceptionally inexpensive … and included in just about every type of processed food imaginable. So if you’re straying from natural foods, your daily intake of corn syrup—and bits of mercury—may be a lot higher than you realize.

And beyond the toxins that are accidentally included in processed food, you have to worry about the chemicals that are included intentionally.

Our air, water, offices, and homes are filled with artificial chemicals—there are over 100,000 registered for commercial use in the United States alone.

Many of these substances haven’t been around long enough for us to know what their long-term effects will be. Just as importantly, no one knows how you’ll be affected by the combination of hundreds of chemicals in your daily life that have never been tested together.

So when you check the ingredients label of a processed food and see chemicals listed that no one’s grandmother ever heard of, let alone would make a welcome part of a homemade meal, be aware that consuming that food is gambling with the health of both your thyroid and your whole body.

Thyroidian Tip

If you don’t like reading labels, employ this rule of thumb: Glance at a food’s list of ingredients. If it’s a long list, the food is probably loaded with chemicals … and you should return it to the shelf.

Avoiding Toxins in Produce

Even if you stick to natural foods you’re not home free, because artificial chemicals and toxins are all around us. For example, mainstream farms use a substantial amount of pesticides to keep insects from devouring the food being grown. The levels of the toxins are supposed to be safe for humans, but no one really knows what their long-term effects will be on us.

The simplest solution is to eat organic produce. These are fruits and vegetables grown the old-fashioned way, with no artificial chemicals or poisons. Added benefits are that such produce is richer in nutrients and tastes better.

While organic produce tends to be more expensive, you can typically find bargains via local family farms and farmers’ markets. Two great resources for finding these are the websites Local Harvest (LocalHarvest.org) and USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (Apps.ams.usda.gov/FarmersMarkets).

Another simple technique is to buy seasonably and flexibly. For example, if the peaches you want are priced sky-high in a given week but mangos are on sale, consider buying the mangos instead. Making such on-the-spot substitutions can save you a bundle. (It can even help your health, since seasonal fruit is typically fresher and so contains more antioxidants.)

Then again, you can mix mainstream and organic produce strategically. For example, fruit with hard skins that you discard—such as bananas and watermelons—are less likely to be affected by pesticides, so you can opt to buy those from conventional retailers. However, when it comes to produce that’s typically soaked in pesticides—such as strawberries and spinach—consider paying more for the organic versions.

Also high in pesticides are peanuts and raisins. Especially if you tend to feed these to your kids as snacks, buy the organic versions.

Thyroidian Tip

To access lists of fruits and vegetables that tend to have the highest and lowest levels of pesticides, visit this book’s website at www.CIGThyroid.com.

Avoiding Toxins in Meat

Even more worrisome sources of toxins are beef, pork, poultry, and fish. That’s because the higher you go up the food chain, the more likely it is that an animal consumed toxins and is then passing them along to you when you eat that animal.

For example, modern farms often feed their animals corn—again, because corn is government subsidized in the U.S. and so is very inexpensive. The corn has pesticides that the cows end up consuming and storing in their bodies.

A related problem is that cows were never designed to eat corn, so their intestinal tracts quickly form toxic E. coli bacteria. Farmers therefore also feed the cows anti-biotics to kill the E. coli, and loading up on those isn’t good for you, either.

On top of all that, roughly two thirds of beef cows in the U.S. are fed recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) to make them reach their slaughter weight faster. These hormones are stored in their bodies and passed along to you. There’s such concern about this practice that Canada, the European Union, Japan, and Australia have banned rBGH and no longer import beef from the United States.

The safest approach when it comes to meat—aside from becoming a vegetarian—is, once again, to buy organic. For example, cows raised naturally on grass rather than corn won’t be stuffed with antibiotics or pesticides; and they won’t be fed rBGH, either. In addition, such cows will end up producing leaner meat, with higher-quality fats (such as omega-3 fats, which are good for you)—and will be substantially tastier.

While organic meat is more expensive, you may score deals via local family farms and ranches. To locate pasture-based farms near you that sell grass-fed meat and dairy products, visit the website Eatwild.com.

If buying organic isn’t convenient or affordable, though, you can at least minimize the amount of toxins you’re eating by avoiding the animal’s fat. That’s because toxins tend to get stored in the fat. So buying lean meat, cutting away fat, removing skin, favoring white meat over dark, and so on will reduce your exposure to the unhealthy chemicals that animals consume.

Foods Fitting Your Metabolism

Another way to eat smart is to be aware of which foods are a good fit for your metabolic rate (see Chapter 1). If you’re hypothyroid, your insulin will be less effective at lowering blood sugar and helping convert it into energy. You’ll therefore want to eat foods that can put your body into “calorie burning mode” rather than “food storage mode.”

For example, high-fiber fruits and vegetables (peaches, broccoli, carrots), legumes (pinto beans, chickpeas, lentils), and high-protein foods (white meat poultry, cottage cheese, soy products) will stay in your stomach for a while before moving on to your small intestines, and then your bloodstream. This allows for gradual digestion and low releases of blood sugar, requiring relatively little insulin; and it puts your body into a “calorie burning mode” that’s likely to turn the food directly into energy.

Conversely, sugary low-fiber foods (cookies, donuts) and starchy foods (potatoes, pasta) speed through your system, spending only a little time in your stomach before being converted to blood glucose. Your body reacts to this sugar jolt by releasing a lot of insulin, putting you into a “storage mode” likely to turn a fair amount of the food into fat. Then again, if you’re hyperthyroid and seeking to hang on to weight, foods such as potatoes and pasta are healthy, and eating them may help keep you from wasting away.

You can learn how your body will react to a particular food by checking its glycemic load, which is a measure of how quickly your blood glucose level will rise after eating it. If you’re trying to lose weight, then you’ll favor foods with a glycemic load under 10, and ideally under 6. You can get access to lists of foods and their glycemic loads by visiting this book’s website at CIGThyroid.com.

Thyroidian Tip

If you’re hypothyroid, also try to avoid foods with saturated fats (cake, bacon, butter). First, they’re calorie intensive. And second, they make your cell mem-branes resistant to insulin. That means you’ll need more insulin than usual to process the same amount of glucose; and since your insulin is already inefficient right now, such foods make a bad situation worse and are likely to turn directly into body fat.

Helping Your Thyroid Work

There are two chemicals that have special importance to your thyroid and that you’ll typically take in via food.

The first is iodine, which is a fundamental building block for your thyroid’s hormone production. Inexpensive and low-calorie food sources for iodine include fresh vegetables grown from iodine-rich soil, fish and shellfish, and the seaweeds nori, wakame, and dulse. To learn more, see Chapter 3.

The second is selenium, which plays a role in your body’s conversion of T4 to T3 (see Chapter 1). You can solve a selenium shortage by eating a single Brazil nut daily.

In addition, there are two substances you might consider taking for an ailing thyroid. One is the herb ashwagandha, which has virtually no side effects, and can help heal and strengthen glands—including your thyroid.

Finally, if you need to take thyroid medication, seriously consider desiccated thyroid. In addition to such benefits as being the only medication to provide all four thyroid hormones (see Chapter 3), natural thyroid might boost healing. That’s because when you consume an animal’s gland, the parts of it that aren’t digested will be transported by your immune system to the corresponding gland in your body to strengthen it and help rebuild it.

The Least You Need to Know

  • Your thyroid is especially vulnerable to unhealthy chemicals, so seek natural foods free of artificial substances and extensive processing.
  • Buy organic produce and meats to reduce your intake of pesticides and other toxins.
  • If you’re hypothyroid, eat foods with a low glycemic load.
  • Access lists of foods ranked by pesticide levels, glycemic load, and more at CIGThyroid.com.
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