Foods For Managing Hypothyroidism (incl. Hashimoto’s)

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Foods for Managing Hypothyroidism

For any unfamiliar, hypothyroidism is the condition of having an underactive thyroid gland. The thyroid gland lives at the base of the front of your neck, and, as the name suggests, it makes and stores thyroid hormones. Those are important for many systems in the body, and a shortage typically causes fatigue, weight gain, and other symptoms.

What causes it?

This makes a difference in some cases to how it can be treated/managed. Causes include:

  • Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, an autoimmune condition
  • Severe inflammation (end result is similar to the above, but more treatable)
  • Dietary deficiencies, especially iodine deficiency
  • Secondary endocrine issues, e.g. pituitary gland didn’t make enough TSH for the thyroid gland to do its thing
  • Some medications (ask your pharmacist)

We can’t do a lot about those last two by leveraging diet alone, but we can make a big difference to the others.

What to eat (and what to avoid)

There is nuance here, which we’ll go into a bit, but let’s start by giving the one-line two-line summary that tends to be the dietary advice for most things:

  • Eat a nutrient-dense whole-foods diet (shocking, we know)
  • Avoid sugar, alcohol, flour, processed foods (ditto)

What’s the deal with meat and dairy?

  • Meat: avoid red and processed meats; poultry and fish are fine or even good (unless fried; don’t do that)
  • Dairy: limit/avoid milk; but unsweetened yogurt and cheese are fine or even good

What’s the deal with plants?

First, get plenty of fiber, because that’s important to ease almost any inflammation-related condition, and for general good health for most people (an exception is if you have Crohn’s Disease, for example).

If you have Hashimoto’s, then gluten (as found in wheat, barley, and rye) may be an issue, but the jury is still out, science-wise. Here’s an example study for “avoid gluten” and “don’t worry about gluten”, respectively:

So, you might want to skip it, to be on the safe side, but that’s up to you (and the advice of your nutritionist/doctor, as applicable).

A word on goitrogens…

Goitrogens are found in cruciferous vegetables and soy, both of which are very healthy foods for most people, but need some extra awareness in the case of hypothyroidism. This means there’s no need to abstain completely, but:

  • Keep serving sizes small, for example a 100g serving only
  • Cook goitrogenic foods before eating them, to greatly reduce goitrogenic activity

For more details, reading even just the abstract (intro summary) of this paper will help you get healthy cruciferous veg content without having a goitrogenic effect.

(as for soy, consider just skipping that if you suffer from hypothyroidism)

What nutrients to focus on getting?

  • Top tier nutrients: iodine, selenium, zinc
  • Also important: vitamin B12, vitamin D, magnesium, iron

Enjoy!

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  • 7 Steps to Get Off Sugar and Carbohydrates – by Susan Neal

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    We will not keep the steps a mystery; abbreviated, they are:

    1. decide to really do this thing
    2. get knowledge and support
    3. clean out that pantry/fridge/etc and put those things behind you
    4. buy in healthy foods while starving your candida
    5. plan for an official start date, so that everything is ready
    6. change the way you eat (prep methods, timings, etc)
    7. keep on finding small ways to improve, without turning back

    Particularly important amongst those are starving the candida (the fungus in your gut that is responsible for a lot of carb cravings, especially sugar and alcohol—which latter can be broken down easily into sugar), and changing the “how” of eating as well as the “what”; those are both things that are often overlooked in a lot of guides, but this one delivers well.

    Walking the reader by the hand through things like that is probably the book’s greatest strength.

    In the category of subjective criticism, the author does go off-piste a little at the end, to take a moment while she has our attention to talk about other things.

    For example, you may not need “Appendix 7: How to Become A Christian and Disciple of Jesus Christ”.

    Of course if that calls to you, then by all means, follow your heart, but it certainly isn’t a necessary step of quitting sugar. Nevertheless, the diversion doesn’t detract from the good dietary change advice that she has just spent a book delivering.

    Bottom line: there’s no deep science here, but there’s a lot of very good, very practical advice, that’s consistent with good science.

    Click here to check out 7 Steps to Get Off Sugar, and watch your health improve!

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  • The Plant-Based Athlete – by Matt Frazier and Robert Cheeke

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    If you’re already a seasoned plant-based athlete yourself, you can probably skip this book; the 60 recipes at the end would still provide value, but there is the “No Meat Athlete Cookbook” that you could hop straight to, in any case.

    For most readers, there will be plenty of value from start to finish. We get a quick ground-up tour of nutrition basics, before getting into restructuring diet to optimize it for performance.

    There is less in the way of “Vegans struggle with…” and more in the way of “People think vegans struggle with…” and explanations of what vegan athletes actually eat. The book does include science, but isn’t too science-heavy, and relies more on modelling what plant-based superathletes enjoy on a daily basis.

    To that end,if the book has a weak point, it’s perhaps that it could have stood to include more science. The book comes recommended by Dr. Michael Greger, whose nutritional approach is incredibly science-heavy and well-referenced, and this book is obviously compatible with that (so they could have!), but in this case Frazier and Cheeke leave us to take their word for it.

    Nevertheless, the science is good whether they cite it or not, and this book is quite a comprehensive primer of plant-based athleticism.

    Bottom line: if you’re wondering how to optimize the two goals of “eating plants” and “being a powerful athlete”, then this one’s the book for you.

    Click here to check out The Plant-Based Athlete and upgrade your health and athletic performance!

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  • Gut Renovation – by Dr. Roshini Raj, with Sheila Buff

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Unless we actually feel something going on down there, gut health is an oft-neglected part of overall health—which is unfortunate, because invisible as it may often be, it affects so much.

    Gastroenterologist Dr. Roshini Raj gives us all the need-to-know information, explanations of why things happen the way they do with regard to the gut, and tips, tricks, and hacks to improve matters.

    She also does some mythbusting along the way, and advises about what things don’t make a huge difference, including what medications don’t have a lot of evidence for their usefulness.

    The style is easy-reading pop-science, with plenty of high-quality medical content.

    Reading between the lines, a lot of the book as it stands was probably written by the co-author, Sheila Buff, who is a professional ghostwriter and specializes in working closely with doctors to produce works that are readable and informative to the layperson while still being full of the doctor’s knowledge and expertise. So a reasonable scenario is that Dr. Raj gave her extensive notes, she took it from there, passed it back to her for medical corrections, and they had a little back and forth until it was done. Whatever their setup, the end result was definitely good!

    Bottom line: if you’d like a guide to gut health that’s practical and easy to read, while being quite comprehensive and certainly a lot more than “eat probiotics and fiber”, then this book is a fine choice.

    Click here to check out Gut Renovation, and renovate yours!

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  • Knitting helps Tom Daley switch off. Its mental health benefits are not just for Olympians

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    Olympian Tom Daley is the most decorated diver in Britain’s history. He is also an avid knitter. At the Paris 2024 Olympics Daley added a fifth medal to his collection – and caught the world’s attention knitting a bright blue “Paris 24” jumper while travelling to the games and in the stands.

    At the Tokyo Olympics, where Daley was first spotted knitting, he explained its positive impact on his mental health.

    It just turned into my mindfulness, my meditation, my calm and my way to escape the stresses of everyday life and, in particular, going to an Olympics.

    The mental health benefits of knitting are well established. So why is someone famous like Daley knitting in public still so surprising?

    Africa Voice/Shutterstock

    Knitting is gendered

    Knitting is usually associated with women – especially older women – as a hobby done at home. In a large international survey of knitting, 99% of respondents identified as female.

    But the history of yarn crafts and gender is more tangled. In Europe in the middle ages, knitting guilds were exclusive and reserved for men. They were part of a respected Europe-wide trade addressing a demand for knitted products that could not be satisfied by domestic workers alone.

    The industrial revolution made the production of clothed goods cheaper and faster than hand-knitting. Knitting and other needle crafts became a leisure activity for women, done in the private sphere of the home.

    World Wars I and II turned the spotlight back on knitting as a “patriotic duty”, but it was still largely taken up by women.

    During COVID lockdowns, knitting saw another resurgence. But knitting still most often makes headlines when men – especially famous men like Daley or actor Ryan Gosling – do it.

    Men who knit are often seen as subverting the stereotype it’s an activity for older women.

    Knitting the stress away

    Knitting can produce a sense of pride and accomplishment. But for an elite sportsperson like Daley – whose accomplishments already include four gold medals and one silver – its benefits lie elsewhere.

    Olympics-level sport relies on perfect scores and world records. When it comes to knitting, many of the mental health benefits are associated with the process, rather than the end result.

    Daley says knitting is the “one thing” that allows him to switch off completely, describing it as “my therapy”. https://www.youtube.com/embed/6wwXGOki–c?wmode=transparent&start=0

    The Olympian says he could

    knit for hours on end, honestly. There’s something that’s so satisfying to me about just having that rhythm and that little “click-clack” of the knitting needles. There is not a day that goes by where I don’t knit.

    Knitting can create a “flow” state through rhythmic, repetitive movements of the yarn and needle. Flow offers us a balance between challenge, accessibility and a sense of control.

    It’s been shown to have benefits relieving stress in high-pressure jobs beyond elite sport. Among surgeons, knitting has been found to improve wellbeing as well as manual dexterity, crucial to their role.

    For other health professionals – including oncology nurses and mental health workers – knitting has helped to reduce “compassion fatigue” and burnout. Participants described the soothing noise of their knitting needles. They developed and strengthened team bonds through collective knitting practices. https://www.youtube.com/embed/dTTJjD_q2Ik?wmode=transparent&start=0 A Swiss psychiatrist says for those with trauma, knitting yarn can be like “knitting the two halves” of the brain “back together”.

    Another study showed knitting in primary school may boost children’s executive function. That includes the ability to pay attention, remember relevant details and block out distractions.

    As a regular creative practice, it has also been used in the treatment of grief, depression and subduing intrusive thoughts, as well countering chronic pain and cognitive decline.

    Knitting is a community

    The evidence for the benefits of knitting is often based on self-reporting. These studies tend to produce consistent results and involve large population samples.

    This may point to another benefit of knitting: its social aspect.

    Knitting and other yarn crafts can be done alone, and usually require simple materials. But they also provide a chance to socialise by bringing people together around a common interest, which can help reduce loneliness.

    The free needle craft database and social network Ravelry contains more than one million patterns, contributed by users. “Yarn bombing” projects aim to engage the community and beautify public places by covering objects such as benches and stop signs with wool.

    The interest in Daley’s knitting online videos have formed a community of their own.

    In them he shows the process of making the jumper, not just the finished product. That includes where he “went wrong” and had to unwind his work.

    His pride in the finished product – a little bit wonky, but “made with love” – can be a refreshing antidote to the flawless achievements often on display at the Olympics.

    Michelle O’Shea, Senior Lecturer, School of Business, Western Sydney University and Gabrielle Weidemann, Associate Professor in Psychological Science, Western Sydney University

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Thinner Leaner Stronger – by Michael Matthews

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    First, the elephant in the training room: this book does assume that you want to be thinner, leaner, and stronger. This is the companion book, written for women, to “Bigger, Stronger, Leaner”, which was written for men. Statistically, these assumptions are reasonable, even if the generalizations are imperfect. Also, this reviewer has a gripe with anything selling “thinner”. Leaner was already sufficient, and “stronger” is the key element here, so “thinner” is just marketing, and marketing something that’s often not unhealthy, to sell a book that’s actually full of good advice for building a healthy body.

    In other words: don’t judge a book by the cover, however eyeroll-worthy it may be.

    The book is broadly aimed at middle-aged readers, but boasts equal worth for young and old alike. If there’s something Matthews knows how to do well in his writing, it’s hedging his bets.

    As for what’s in the book: it’s diet and exercise advice, aimed at long-term implementation (i.e. not a crash course, but a lifestyle change), for maximum body composition change results while not doing anything silly (like many extreme short-term courses do) and not compromising other aspects of one’s health, while also not taking up an inordinate amount of time.

    The dietary advice is sensible, broadly consistent with what we’d advise here, and/but if you want to maximise your body composition change results, you’re going to need a pocket calculator (or be better than this writer is at mental arithmetic).

    The exercise advice is detailed, and a lot more specific than “lift things”; there are programs of specifically how many sets and reps and so forth, and when to increase the weights and when not to.

    A strength of this book is that it explains why all those numbers are what they are, instead of just expecting the reader to take on faith that the best for a given exercise is (for example) 3 sets of 8–10 reps of 70–75% of one’s single-rep max for that exercise. Because without the explanation, those numbers would seem very arbitrary indeed, and that wouldn’t help anyone stick with the program. And so on, for any advice he gives.

    The style is… A little flashy for this reader’s taste, a little salesy (and yes he does try to upsell to his personal coaching, but really, anything you need is in the book already), but when it comes down to it, all that gym-boy bravado doesn’t take away from the fact his advice is sound and helpful.

    Bottom line: if you would like your body to be the three things mentioned in the title, this book can certainly help you get there.

    Click here to check out Thinner Leaner Stronger, and become thinner, leaner, stronger!

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  • Gymnema Sylvestre: The “Sugar Destroyer”

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    The Leaf That Stops Sugar From “Working”

    Gymnema sylvestre, whose botanical name in Greek and Latin means “naked thread of the woods”, and is in various Indian languages referred to be names that translate as “sugar destroyer”, has the most prosaic name in Australia: the Australian cowplant.

    In English it’s mostly called by the Greek “gymnema” though, so that’s what we’ll call it here.

    You may be wondering: “the sugar destroyer?”

    And no, it doesn’t actually destroy sugar. But it does do quite a bit of sugar-related stuff. Here’s the science for it…

    Blocks sugar receptors in your tongue

    This is what it is most well-known for, and it is a topical effect, so you won’t get this from a pill, but you will get this from the leaves, or from drinking it as a tea made from the leaves.

    The effect last several hours, during which time your ability to taste sweetness will be reduced, which not only makes sweet foods less appealing because they’re no longer tasting sweet, but also, once you get used to it, when you actually do taste sweet foods, they will now taste too sweet.

    So, it doesn’t just temporarily curb cravings; it offers a long-term escape from such, too.

    You may be wondering: “what about artificially sweetened foods and drinks?”

    And the answer is: yes, it blocks perception of the sweetness of those too:

    Effects of sweetness perception and caloric value of a preload on short term intake ← this study used gymnema as the sweetness-blocker, testing sugary drinks, aspartame-sweetened drinks, and unsweetened drinks

    Blocks sugar receptors in the gut, too

    Long story short: this slows down the absorption of sugars from the gut, thus resulting in a gentler blood sugar curve, minimizing spikes, and (because of the body’s use of blood sugars as it goes) overall lower blood sugar levels.

    Want the long version? Here it is:

    Effect of Extended Release Gymnema Sylvestre Leaf Extract (Beta Fast GXR) Alone or In Combination With Oral Hypoglycemics or Insulin Regimens for Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes

    Benefits beyond sugar-blocking

    It also prevents the accumulation of triglycerides in muscles and the liver, as well as decreasing fatty acid accumulation in the blood. In simpler terms: it lowers LDL (“bad” cholesterol”, including VLDL). As a bonus, it increases HDL (“good” cholesterol) while it’s at it.

    The vast majority of the studies for this are on rats and mice though, of which you can see very many listed in the “similar articles” under this systematic review of studies:

    A systematic review of Gymnema sylvestre in obesity and diabetes management

    We did find one good quality human RCT, testing gymnema along with several other treatments (they found that each worked, and/but using a combination yielded the best results):

    Effects of a natural extract of (-)-hydroxycitric acid (HCA-SX) and a combination of HCA-SX plus niacin-bound chromium and Gymnema sylvestre extract on weight loss

    (the title says “on weight loss”, but rest assured the study also gives information about its effects on total cholesterol, LDL, HDL, overall triglycerides, and serum leptin levels, as well as excretion of urinary fat metabolites—suffice it to say, they were thorough)

    Is it safe?

    It has a good safety profile in general, but if you are diabetic, proceed with caution and discuss it with your endocrinologist, since it will be affecting your blood sugar levels and insulin levels. While it’s probably not enough to replace metformin or similar, it is enough that taking it carelessly could result in an unexpected hypo.

    Similarly, if you have any heart condition and especially if you are being treated for that with medication, do speak with your cardiologist since its antilipemic action could potentially lower your cholesterol more than expected, and doctors don’t like surprises.

    An Evidence-Based Systematic Review of Gymnema (Gymnema sylvestre R. Br.) by the Natural Standard Research Collaboration

    As ever, no list of contraindications will be exhaustive, and we can’t speak for your specific situation, so checking with your pharmacist/doctor is always a good idea.

    Want to try some?

    We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon ← we’ve linked to a tea version of it so you can enjoy the full effects; if you prefer capsule form, you can click through from there to shop around 😎

    Enjoy!

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