Greenville SC Thyroid Clinic Explains How Diet Can Effect Hashimoto’s Disease
Many people who have low thyroid function have the autoimmune disease known as Hashimoto’s. While medications are the first-line defense typically used by doctors to alleviate the symptoms of low thyroid, managing Hashimoto’s requires a much different approach. This is because there is no pharmaceutical solution for Hashimoto’s, and successful management is often multi-faceted.
Functional wellness care can provide that multi-faceted approach, as it involves considering the patient’s condition, as a whole, instead of just a ‘thyroid problem.’ Dietary modifications in particular are extremely important in the successful management of Hashimoto’s disease. In fact, changes to the diet can be considered the first line of defense for many in their struggle with Hashimoto’s.
Wellness practitioners may differ in their approach to dietary modifications for Hashimoto’s patients, but nearly everyone agrees the place to start is with the elimination of gluten. Whether you have digestive sensitivity to gluten or not, gluten has been shown to trigger a response in the immune system—exactly what you want to avoid if you have autoimmune disease!
Gluten is a prime example of how dramatically diet can affect Hashimoto’s disease. When gluten is introduced into the body of a Hashimoto’s patient, the body responds to the ‘invader’ by attacking the thyroid. Something as simple as consuming a bit of gluten can hugely exacerbate the problem Hashimoto’s patients are already experiencing. Most practitioners agree, gluten can trigger an autoimmune attack.
An over-reliance on the value of tests or ‘numbers’ without in-depth exploration and consideration of how patients feel is a major stumbling block for many low thyroid patients undergoing physicians’ care. Imagine the Hashimoto’s patient who’s been told her thyroid is ‘fine,’ as her TSH levels have been normalized, but she continues to eat gluten regularly since tests show, she has no gluten sensitivity. Her symptoms will not only likely continue, they may even worsen.
This patient will have hit the traditional medicine brick wall, unless her practitioner happens to choose to look beyond the accepted protocol for thyroid patient care, take her complaints about ongoing symptoms seriously, and explore the benefits of dietary modifications that functional wellness practitioners have relied on to help Hashimoto’s patients for years.
