Hashimotos question

herblovinmom

I posted this topic/questions in the intro thread as well...

I’ve been hypothyroid since 2011 following my third pregnancy or so they thought at the time. I’m recently diagnosed with Hashimotos since September 2018 when tested by my endocrinologist for the anti bodies, what I’m wondering is how will I know if I found what triggers my immune response? Lowered antibodies? I was told to go gluten free by my endo in Jan and she did say it was lowering and to continue gluten free. She also tested my sugars, cortisol and adrenals. She recommended I eat less carbs and intermittent fast. Which is the most dietary infor I’ve ever gotten from a medical professional. I understand I have an auto immune condition and I don’t want to get another. I’ve recently cut out all sugars and grains completely and I feel good but I’m not due for another lab test until Jan. I’m wondering what are some ways I can tell I’ve removed the auto immune trigger??? Maybe I’m not thinking of this correctly... any input would be appreciated.
Thanks

Fuzzipeg

Hi, I'm so sorry you have been struggling for so very long. Regrettably this is often the way for those who are eventually diagnosed as having Hashimoto's. I hope you are in the US or elsewhere in the world, not the UK or probably most of Europe because here our options are restricted, we have to take the doctor we are given who work to the same boxes unless we can afford to go private so if you can consider changing.

I was able to privately have allergy/intolerance testing which identified my triggers, most often more than one. It is true gluten can be one of the triggers but there are more non are intrinsic to each and everyone with the Hassi problem.

Vegetables, things in the cabbage family, plants which when they go to seed do so with 4 petaled flowers, single or in cluster. Some of these are really good for nutrition elimination comes at a cost in each and every situation. Within fruits and vegetables someone can react to unrelated items, one nut in the nut family (I am not talking peanut allergy here or anything similar) Soy is often added to the western diet. Some nutrition information indicates not everyone has the enzymes to digest it fully. Dairy can be a mine field. You will have heard many saying they are lactose intolerant but what everybody ignores is the casein, the protein which is more problematical, to generalise proteins the things to watch.

Casein comes in 4 variants, 1,2,3, and 4, all are present in all milks but in different proportions. Bovine is dominant in type 4 this milk is least like human lactation. This milk creates a huge animal so the balance is set to give the baby the great start. Human lactation is more type 2, this is balanced to create a normal human weight animal, think goats and sheep, these milks are often better for people anyway because they are similar to mothers milk. Casein types 1 and 3 are least problematical though being proteins there could be an issue in some individuals, I did once scour for information and found non but it may exist.

From my experience with the help of a nutritionist. Is a circular issue, autoimmunity of which Hashi is one of an increasing number of conditions is, we have the symptoms but they go back to the ingestion of the foods in the first place then with none absorption or elimination we reduce the enzymes we need to make. You may have heard the term Leaky Gut, it is often scoffed at. This is when the micro joints in the digestive tract are loosened so larger particles of least digested foods can pass into the blood. All foods should be digested to the level of sugar water, no obvious particles so with incomplete digestion larger particles enter the blood stream.

These larger particles alert the immune system which does its job and tried to eliminate them creating an antibody only for some reason these antibodies can attack our own cells, in Hashi its the thyroid, I assume it is similar with Graves but the action is to increase activity. Hashi in its early stages can put a victim through rounds of hyper and hypo activity which is difficult to live with. In treatment its best to avoid becoming hyper which can happen. Eventually because the thyroid becomes so damaged one becomes permanently hypo. All autoimmunity happens this way and for some because you have one disorder they acquire others.

Improving your digestion and liver function can help. Increasing the acidity in the stomach will help, also as we age we are inclined as a species to make less, Juice of half a lemon in water first thing can help. this should improve acid levels and eventually as it works its way through help with bile flow. I use one of the many products on health food shop shelves to support my acid production too. All to often Gaul stones are part of this but not often identified as complimentary issues by western medicine. I also use digestive microbes because, use of many different medication, antibiotics even the contraceptive pill can reduce your diversity of species.

Sometimes yeast overgrowth, I have heard this disparaged by UK medics, can contribute to the mix. High sugar/carb, for some even small amounts of sugar can drive some least helpful microbes, this is where sugar/carb control comes in. These least helpful microbes can cause binging. Its highly controversial in general medicine but go functional and it really helps. Believe it or not when I stopped feeding these unhelpful things I was able to eat more and loose the inflammation they were creating. Increasingly the role of our microbes is being better understood, they can be seen as our second brain in the advanced science fraternity, influencing our desire of sugar, mood and so much more. B12 deficiency can happen because one lacks the right microbes and then later lack the enzymes. Could be worth testing. I now use digestive enzymes for most this will be over kill for the problem, because of how long I was left undiagnosed I became unable to make them or enough of them.

I hope I have given you an outline. If you can achieve intolerance/allergy testing rather than the hit and miss of generalisation this will be your best path. There are many thyroid support sites which contain information which can help you. Stop the Thyroid Madness has been about for too many years, it does lean towards the use of desiccated thyroid products, in my view this is because when a substantial amount to of damage has been done to the thyroid, after years of not being diagnosed, there can be insufficient personal tissue left to function with the synthetic products. STTM gives good information. Hypothyroid mom is another good site. There are national support sites and the information is virtually the same in all, expressed in different ways may be but it over laps and is sound.

Ensure you have the right vitamins and mineral levels for you, no one else we are all different.

All the very best, read all you can relating it to you, there is so much to discover that we are not told. Wishing you the very best of health, it is there for you.

My hope is you can still avoid the extended issues I was unable to.

herblovinmom

@Fuzzipeg Thank you for the very knowledgeable information you have shared.. I am in the US but I am a self pay patient so my treatment options are limited to what I can afford to pay for. That being said I do see an endocrinologist and I do get labs every 3-6 months. My symptoms swing from hypo to hyper and then usually crash back to hypo. My levels were good for quite some time but I still always struggled with symptoms, after my last pregnancy is when my thyroid was all out of balance and I decided to see a specialist. My levels have been steadily getting closer to “normal range”. I have been gluten free since January 2019. I still struggled with weight gain and digestive issues and anxiety and depression so my doc recommended low carb/low sugar in April and that still wasn’t helping as much as I’d like so I decided to go grain free/sugar free in September. I feel a lot better physically but I have noticed an increase in allergies, itching, sensitive skin, dry skin, dry eyes, and I’m not sure if it’s from my diet or if my immune system is just whacko. I do take digestive enzymes with ox bile and I take liver supplements and 5 htp as well as p5p along with my Synthroid 88 mcg and daily multi and sometimes I remember my b’s. I can’t put anything in my face anymore these days due to itching. It’s driving me crazy. Lol, I’m thinking I might need to remove dairy from my diet. I don’t consume much dairy or soy but I’m thinking I haven’t removed an allergen due to my increasing allergy symptoms. I don’t know. I suppose I could add more supplements 🤦🏼‍♀️ the amount of supplements I take in a day could possibly be considered a Meal. Ha!
Thanks again for your advice and information. I appreciate it...

Fuzzipeg

Begging your pardon, I've been beset with computer issues.

I'm sorry you are in such a pickle. May be you could find reading from the sites of Dr Chris Kresser, he is well trained, Western and Chinese Medicine as well as acupuncture. Dr David Jockers, a religious man, his site is good too, he advocates Keto. Then Dr Josh Axe he is an interesting read as well. They all take a functional perspective, put simply, explores why the body is doing this and what it takes nutritionally to improve things. In order to pay for the free information to be online the do advertise different products which no one needs to buy but in my view if they make information available for free they can't charge their real world patients for that.

I don't like the way we are told we need to be in the normal range. Normal range will mean nothing to the body which wants to be at the higher end and can only make the lowest, its so frustrating. STTM is critical of how the numbers game was set up and I'm inclined to agree. Based on samples without diagnosed status tells you nothing. Your t4 is supposed to bring your dietary intake up to a good level for you over all. I think the recommended daily amount suggested is something like 300 mg, if you are not getting the difference in your diet you will still have a short fall. Not to mention t4 does not suit everyone and then there is the conversion issues, some genetic other because the balance of minerals is not good enough. It is only after conversion that the t3 can work well t4 only becomes active after conversion when it is t3. low t3 can underpin mood issues, depression and the like, something out of a London University showed a connection between t3 being low in anorexics. When you have your blood tests taken, do you have t4, t3 and reverse t3 measured or is it simply tsh? Reverse t3 will never do you any good, usually its insufficient of some mineral. Ask for copies of your results. working from tsh only tells you nothing May be you should look another doctor is it is at all possible. I know what you mean about supplements being a meal in themselves.

Look through the supplements you use and see if they contain dairy, gluten and what ever. There are some brands which say they are this or that free, you could be best placed to use something from those companies. Some people can take 12 months to feel the full benefits of Gluten free, re-contamination sets some right back to the beginning. When it comes to giving up dairy it can take three months if there is an issue to see results though I was improved within hours,

Additional issues could be your body requires something you are not getting in your diet because of your exclusions. Just thoughts not necessarily correct.

I'm wondering if you might have Histamine intolerance, it causes itching and much more. The site Healing Histamine is very helpful. There are several others which I can't bring to mind. The best way to describe it, the person needs really fresh foods because its a problem of being more sensitive to things going off only before they do. One nutritional site, Janice something says b6 and vit c promote the production of DAO histaminase, which is one of two hormones which breakdown histamine, she also says you can achieve this from sprouting peas but I found that too complicated keeping rotation. If you do your research, match your symptoms to the list and if you have concluded histamine could be an issue you could try something like DAOsin, its usually sold for helping eat chocolate or something.

Rather disappointingly I have realised salicylate intolerance can also be part of eczema. Its the pits, restricts the fruits and veg one can eat. There are several sites which will tell you about it. Dietary Salicylate is similar to aspirin, many plants use it to protect themselves from moulds and mildews, some of us are more sensitive to dietary amounts not only pills. the e-book, "food can make you ill" covers this and other least likely issues like oxalates. Reaction can be so complex.

Good luck.

ElizabethKalmbach

1. If you can afford to, switch to as many organic fruits, vegetables and grains as possible. (I'm not saying you need to eat more of any one of them, I'm saying that as much as you can afford to - switch to the organic version of what you're already eating.) A friend of mine is a researcher who is currently working on projects that have been linking increasing instances of autoimmune disorders to the use of pesticides in the food chain - not just in the food growing stage, but also in food storage. In particular, fludioxonil, (a fungicide, being used to keep post-harvest food from MOLDING) is being implicated in the creation of oxidative stress, which can trigger an up-tick in mitochondial damage and auto-immune disorders. Not just ONE autoimmune disorder, but a seemingly random assortment of MORE.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30458269

2. It may be worthwhile to have some specific antibody tests done to look for things like gluten intolerance and milk allergies, rather than just guessing and wasting time progressively eliminating foods that are perfectly fine for you.

3. It may be worth while to visit an allergist to help eliminate other things that are exacerbating your situation.

herblovinmom

@ElizabethKalmbach
Thank you for sharing your insight. I appreciated the info. I do currently eat a lot of organic produce, what’s available anyways, I usually check the dirty dozen recommendations every year and make choices accordingly. I can’t afford to feed my family grass fed, organic, free range, wild meats. I do when I can but it is sparingly. I am currently grain free/ sugar free and feeling really good. I’m hoping the increase in allergies was environmental and not more food sensitivities. When I see my endocrinologist at the end of January I will ask her about testing me for some common food allergies.
My face itching and chest hives and mostly cleared up. I just can’t use anything but coconut oil as moisturizer and I have changed my body/face soap to Dr. Bronners Castile/hemp bar soap. I’m thinking of removing my fluoridated toothpaste and checking to see if my RO filters remove fluoride from our tap water. All for the health of my skin and face. I’m open to other suggestions if you have other advice. Thanks again.