Support Clients with the Thyroid Health Protocol_Final

>> Hello and welcome back. Nice to see you again. Now that you know all about the thyroid and the imbalances that can occur within this gland, in this lecture, we're going to be discussing interventions you can recommend to help your clients get their thyroid health back on track. Healing the thyroid is going to be a big needle mover for your clients with the thyroid condition because the thyroid has an effect on nearly every process in the body from digestion to reproduction to mental health. When it isn't working properly, your clients are suffering. In functional medicine, we always talk about getting to the root cause of the problem. With the thyroid, that means addressing underlying gut and menstrual health concerns as well as stress and toxin exposure. The thyroid health protocol is designed to help you and your clients optimize the thyroid function so they can get back to living their lives. There are five interventions that can help your client improve their thyroid health. Improving gut function, eating a diet that supports the thyroid, stress management, detoxification, and improving menstrual health. Let's look at each of these in more detail. Improving gut function. Gut dysbiosis can interfere with proper thyroid function. When the gut bacteria is imbalanced, food isn't well absorbed. Larger molecules are able to cross through the gut wall and inflammation in the body increases. This can provoke an immune response and can cause autoimmune conditions if left untreated. If the client already has an autoimmune condition, gut dysbiosis can make it worse. To help improve balance in the gut, you can make the following recommendations to your clients. Include fermented foods and/or probiotics in their daily diet, avoid sugar in all of its forms, increase fiber intake, and eliminate gluten. Fermented foods are beneficial for healing the gut. Fresh fermented foods such as sauerkraut, yogurt, kefir, and kimchi can help shift the intestinal flora from the bad bacteria that can affect both the immune system and the thyroid to the beneficial bacteria that can keep the gut in tip-top shape. You can suggest your clients that they add one to two tablespoons of sauerkraut or kimchi to meals each day. These foods may take a little getting used to but the benefits are worth it. You can even encourage your clients to make their own fermented vegetables which can be empowering and fun. The instructions are easy and can be found online on a number of websites. As a reminder, prepared yogurts tend to have a lot of sugar and very little bacteria. Plain, full-fat yogurt is always better, whether dairy or non-dairy. Probiotics are beneficial bacteria that help the gut to repopulate the good microbes and eliminate the bad ones. According to Dr. Izabella Wentz, people with autoimmunity have been found to have lower amounts of probiotic bacteria, lactobacillus and bifidus, and higher amounts of the opportunistic E.coli and proteus bacteria. E.coli and proteus bacterial species are often referred to as opportunistic pathogens because they only become pathogenic when the opportunity is just right. If they are outnumbered by probiotic bacteria, they behave like good citizens of the gut. But in times where they outnumber the probiotics, they may start to damage the gut wall leading to intestinal permeability. This is why probiotics can be so helpful in supporting a client with an autoimmune thyroid disorder. Probiotics can packaged as capsules, liquids, and in/or yogurt-like preparation. Probiotics can have some side effects for clients such as diarrhea, nausea, bloating, and headaches. It's important to recommend that they start at a low dose such as 10 billion colony-forming units or CFUs, and then work their way up to a higher dosage over time to avoid those side effects. Next, avoid sugar because it's not friendly to the gut. Eating sugar increases inflammation in the GI tract and shifts the balance of gut bacteria. Harmful bacteria grow rapidly on a diet of high sugar displacing the good gut bugs. Over time, insulin resistance can develop where the sugar is knocking on the door of the cells but the cells are just ignoring it, the body then makes more insulin but the sugar stays high. This high sugar or high insulin state can contribute to autoimmune diseases such as Hashimoto's thyroiditis and Graves' disease. It also contributes to inflammation in the gut and brain, and it exhausts the adrenal glands, it disrupts the detoxification pathways, and it disrupts overall metabolism. Sugar is hidden in a lot of foods that aren't even sweet such as bottled salad dressings and tomato sauces. It's essential to teach your clients to be good detectives by reading labels so they can find the hidden sugars in their food. Having them learn to check the labels on foods they buy in the grocery store can be empowering because it puts them in charge of taking back their health. Next, fiber is beneficial to the GI tract. There are two types of fiber, soluble and insoluble. Soluble dissolves in water and helps to keep the GI contents moving. Insoluble is more gritty and scrubs the walls of the colon clean as it moves through. You need a balance of both to maintain good colon health. A lot of foods have both soluble and insoluble fibers such as leafy green vegetables, fruits, oatmeal, and lentils. If you have a client who doesn't need a lot of fiber, start them at about 15 to 20 grams of fiber per day and then have them work up to 40 grams per day. Finally, these clients would be best served to eliminate gluten from their diets because it contributes to leaky gut, gut dysbiosis, and autoimmune disease. A key factor in healing the thyroid is to avoid wheat and possibly other gluten products depending on your client's unique sensitivities. Did you know that people with untreated celiac disease are three times more likely to have thyroid disease? And it gets better when they eat a gluten-free diet. In fact, some people have even seen a complete remission in their autoimmune thyroid condition after removing gluten from their diet. Talk about healing through nutrition. Okay, so to recap what we've covered so far, one way to improve thyroid function is to support optimal gut function. You can do this by consuming fermented foods and probiotics avoiding all forms of sugar, eating more fiber, and eliminating gluten. Now let's talk about creating a diet that supports thyroid health. There are foods that your client can eat that are very supportive of thyroid health. These include cruciferous vegetables, Brazil Nuts, sea vegetables, and wild-caught fish. Have you heard that cruciferous vegetables are bad for thyroid health? Well, the fact is these veggies are actually beneficial for the thyroid despite their lousy reputation. Cruciferous vegetables have gotten a bad rep for people with thyroid issues, they've been called goitrogens which are foods that cause the thyroid to enlarge and sometimes malfunction. What we have learned since is as long as iodine levels in the body are adequate, the benefits far outweigh the harm. That being said, it is still better to eat them cooked rather than raw. Some popular cruciferous veggies include broccoli, kale, cauliflower, collard greens, and Brussels sprouts. Your clients can eat these lightly steamed for the best benefit, although roasted or broiled are also excellent ways to eat them. Brazil nuts are a natural source of selenium. Selenium is a trace mineral that the body needs to convert T4 to T3, the active form of thyroid hormone. Selenium is also needed to increase glutathione and antioxidant made in the body that keeps the immune system and particularly the thyroid antibodies under control. Three Brazil nuts a day is enough to get the recommended amount of selenium. For maximum benefits always buy organic Brazil nuts and soak them overnight in spring water. Sea vegetables are a great source of natural iodine, as well as trace minerals and antioxidants. Well, there is iodine in iodized salt, it isn't the best source of iodine for your body to use for production of thyroid hormone. Instead sea vegetables are one of the best ways get iodine and a variety of other minerals from your diet. They may sound a little adventurous or even off-putting to clients who are used to eating the standard American diet, but with a little bravery and an open mind, they can become a tasty addition to a healthy diet. A great foray into sea vegetables is to have your clients try a seaweed salad next time they visit a Japanese restaurant. From there, they can start experimenting at home in their own kitchen. Sea vegetables usually come in a mixed bag and need to be soaked for a little while to remove some of the salt. They're great served in a salad and soups or one-pot dishes like stews. Another option is dried sea vegetables such as dulce which can be bought in granule form in a shaker and used to season food. And kombu can be added to soups, stews, or beans while they cook. By putting a two to four-inch piece in the pot along with your food and then chopping it up and throwing it back in at the end, clients can supercharge whatever dish they're making with natural iodine and minerals. You can recommend that your clients try to eat sea vegetables one to two times per week. Help them experiment with the types and preparations that they like best. Wild-caught fish, especially salmon is another great source of iodine and healthy fats. In addition to having almost the entire recommended daily intake of iodine, wild-caught salmon is also a good source of the coveted anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids. As previously discussed, it's critical for your clients to balance the omega-6 fatty acids that are more common in their diet with omega-3 fatty acids to help keep inflammation at bay. Finally, in addition to iodine and selenium, the thyroid needs zinc, magnesium, copper, and iron along with vitamins A, B12, and D in order to function its best. Please see the handout, The Thyroid Health Protocol, for more details on these critical nutrients. Now let's move on from foods and discuss the effects of stress on the thyroid. Stress dials down thyroid function. As you now know that HPA axis and the HPT axis are very much interconnected. During times of stress, the HPA axis instructs the adrenals to make cortisol. This cortisol then affects the pituitary making it slower to send out its signals, TSH production then decreases, so the thyroid doesn't get the signal that it needs to make more thyroid hormone. This can result in decreased levels of thyroid hormones which can lead to hypothyroidism. Often, acute stress like the death of a loved one or an illness in the family can push a person into thyroid dysfunction, partly because of the connection between the HPA and the HPT axis, and because stress uses up important nutrients, like selenium and magnesium, which are critical to thyroid function. Chronically high cortisol levels can also contribute to autoimmune disease, and as we've discussed, almost all thyroid disease is autoimmune based. Just as there are a million ways for you to get stressed out, there are a myriad of ways to help your body relax. Some suggestions are deep breathing exercises, yoga, especially yin yoga, meditation practice, prayer, taking the time to read fiction, creating a grounding morning routine and/or relaxing bedtime routine, quality time with friends, journaling, Epsom salt baths, using essential oils, and walking barefoot on the earth or beach. All of these practices have an incredible impact on how your body responds to stress. Finding the things that most resonate with you and start to implement them into your routine, trust us, your thyroid and your body will thank you. Now let's move on to toxins. There are many toxins that can affect the thyroid, so detoxification is key. These include the chlorinated chemical compounds such as PCBs, dioxins, and flame retardants, as well as, you know, estrogens like BPA and phthalates. All of these chemicals bind to cells in our immune and endocrine systems as well as the delicate tissue in our thyroid glands damaging our function. Radiation and electromagnetic frequency or EMF are also just as harmful. Additionally, the most studied thyroid disrupting heavy metals include mercury, cadmium, and lead. Heavy metals disrupt thyroid function in a number of ways. They interfere with iodine uptake into the thyroid, they mess with the conversion of T4 to T3, and they block thyroid receptors from receiving thyroid hormone. The best treatment is avoidance. The more your clients can limit their exposure to these toxins, the better off they will be. The body's natural detoxification can be improved through a clean diet, filtered water, and avoidance of radiation and EMF. Let's talk about each of these further. A diet of grass-fed meats, wild-caught fish, and organic vegetables helps limit toxin exposure. Commercial farming methods introduce a lot of endocrine disrupting chemicals in the food. Farmed fish, conventionally grown fruits, vegetables, and grains, and conventionally raised meats are a huge source of persistent organic pollutants which stick around for a very long time in our environment. Over time, they accumulate in our bodies causing significant damage. Encourage your clients to seek out whole foods that are organic and ethically-raised as much as possible. Cost of organic at local food is often a consideration here, so it's important to be sensitive to your client's financial constraints and help them figure out how to eat clean on a budget. Drinking water contains many endocrine disrupting chemicals and heavy metals. Tap water is a source of many contaminants including large amounts of chlorine and fluoride. Unfortunately, even bottled water often contains some of these contaminants. Plus, the plastic bottle they come in is a source of BPA and other plastic softeners, which are equally toxic to the thyroid. There are many products for purifying water available on the market ranging from simple carbon filters to reverse osmosis systems to solid carbon block systems. The best system is the solid carbon block which slowly filters water through a dense carbon filter, removing almost all contaminants without removing the minerals. Berkey makes the best known of these filtration systems, but even the simple carbon filters remove most of the chlorine and are a good start. Also, be sure to recommend either stainless steel or glass water bottles to your clients as well, and encourage them to ditch any plastic cups that they use at home. The thyroid is sensitive to electromagnetic frequency, so measure should be taken to reduce exposure. Electromagnetic frequency waves are generated by all electoral products. Some of the biggest household sources of EMF include cordless phones, cell phones, computers, wireless networks, electrical wiring, and even old metal pipes. It's difficult to eliminate EMF in our modern world. The most important time to decrease it is during sleep. This means no cordless phones or cell phones in the bedroom, computers power down, and turning the wireless network off at night. This is good for your clients to do whether they have a thyroid condition or not. They should also use the headset when speaking on the phone and keep their phone away from their bodies, that means no cell phones in jeans pockets. There are a number of EMF blocking products on the market these days for cell phones and computers that your clients may also want to consider using. We discussed grounding or earthing when we covered the adrenals and stress management. This technique can also be highly beneficial to counteract the effects of EMF. And finally, regulating the menstrual cycle and balancing out any estrogen dominance can help to heal the thyroid. Estrogen dominance has a detrimental effect on the thyroid, and thyroid abnormalities can have a negative effect on the menstrual cycle. It's all one big feedback loop. For your clients, this means keeping estrogen levels as close to normal as possible to avoid creating a cycle of thyroid and menstrual irregularities. We've already talked about some of the best ways to improve estrogen dominance, so we'll review that again here briefly as part of this protocol. If your client is on birth control pills for contraceptive purposes, explore if she is open to consulting with her healthcare provider about trying a non-hormonal birth control option like the ParaGard IUD, FemCap or diaphragm, or fertility awareness method based birth control. Estrogen mimickers or xenoestrogens like BPA and soy should be eliminated or greatly reduced. Alcohol should be reduced or eliminated as it impairs liver's ability to process estrogen effectively. A B complex supplement with activated B6, B9 also known as folate, and B12 should be taken daily. And antibiotics should be avoided to maintain healthy gut flora, as unhealthy intestinal bacteria cause estrogen to be re-circulated in the body. Now we've talked about all five areas that are essential to addressing an underlying thyroid imbalance. To recap, these are improving gut function, eating a diet that supports the thyroid, stress management, detoxification, and improving menstrual health and estrogen dominance. You can use this thyroid health protocol as guidance for working with clients who have thyroid imbalances. But remember, one step at a time and be sure to take into account each individual's unique make-up, needs, and circumstances. To help you implement this protocol with your clients, we've included The Thyroid Health Protocol handout for more information and guidance, so be sure to check that out. Hopefully, you are feeling more comfortable with ways to support and improve your client's thyroid health. Be sure to stop by the Facebook group with any questions or client success stories you have. Thanks so much for watching, and we'll see you soon.