Greenville SC Thyroid Doctor Shares How Diet Can Effect Hashimoto’s Disease
It’s estimated that 90% of 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.’ Lifestyle counseling and dietary modifications are important therapeutic tools wellness practitioners may rely on.
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.
Functional 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 wellness practitioners agree, gluten can so predictably trigger an autoimmune attack; it must be completely avoided if a Hashimoto’s patient is serious about regaining their health.
The problematic nature of gluten in the diet of Hashimoto’s patients also points to problems within the traditional medical model for low thyroid care. It’s not uncommon for Hashimoto’s patients who have been told by other health care practitioners, it’s fine for them to eat gluten, because they do not have gluten sensitivity or Celiac Disease (genetic gluten intolerance). This advice is completely at odds with the reality of the serious immune response gluten typically triggers for Hashimoto’s patients, and it’s advice typically based on incomplete gluten testing.
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 wellness practitioners have relied on to help Hashimoto’s patients for years.
