6 Ways to Help Support Hashimoto’s & Feel Your Best

Autoimmune diseases like Hashimoto’s thyroiditis occur when your immune system goes haywire and attacks your healthy tissues (in this case, your thyroid). What you eat can have a huge impact on Hashimoto’s and other autoimmune conditions and boost your metabolism. In this episode, you’ll learn about the “healthy” foods that can contribute to autoimmune thyroid disorders, the connection between blood sugar imbalances and Hashimoto’s, and the trifecta to eat at every meal to support your thyroid. Plus, JJ discusses the misunderstanding about cruciferous vegetables and thyroid problems, the controversial nutrient for thyroid health, the most important thing to do for thyroid function, how intermittent fasting affects your thyroid (and why you want to be cautious about doing it), and the link between thyroid function and toxins, gut issues, and nutrient deficiencies. Whether you have an autoimmune condition like Hashimoto’s or want to keep your thyroid and immune system healthy, this episode provides simple action steps to support your health… one forkful at a time.

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ATHE_Transcript_Ep 485_YT 39
JJ Virgin: [00:00:00] Hey, this is JJ Virgin. Thanks so much for joining me. This is Ask the Health Expert. In each episode, I put the Power of Health in your hands and share ways to get healthy, lose weight, heal your gut detox, and lots more. So you can look and feel better fast if you'd rather watch the video. Hey, I did put on my makeup and do my hair, so check it out on my YouTube channel.
Autoimmune diseases like celiac, Hashimotos thyroiditis, multiple sclerosis and type one diabetes are caused when your immune system goes haywire and attacks your healthy tissues. And even if you need medication, you may be surprised how much you can heal if you make food, your medicine. Because what you eat, [00:01:00] when you eat and why can have a huge impact on autoimmune conditions.
In this video, I'm gonna share the top six dietary hacks I recommend specifically to heal your Hashimotos and boost your metabolism, because low thyroid is one of the most common autoimmune conditions out there. But if you're dealing with another autoimmune condition, these tips can help you too. So be sure to watch the end because number.
It's probably one you have never heard before. Hey, it's jj. Today we're gonna talk about the really common autoimmune condition called Hashimoto's thyroiditis or Hashimoto's disease. It happens when your immune system doesn't recognize your thyroid and attacks it, and it usually causes hypothyroidism or underactive thyroid so that the result.
Is that your thyroid gland can't make enough thyroid hormone, but on rare occasions, Hashis can actually cause hyperthyroidism, which means your thyroid is actually overactive. [00:02:00] In the United States, Hashimotos affects about five people out of a hundred, and it's most common around among middle-aged women, but really anyone can develop it and there are specific blood tests to help diagnose it.
So if you suspect you have it, be sure to see a functional medicine doctor to get those. Okay, so you probably know your thyroid is a butterfly shaped gland located at the base of your neck, just below your adams apple. It produces hormones that help regulate a lot of functions in your body and mainly your metabolism.
So if your hypothyroid, your thyroid, can't keep your metabolism rub to where it needs to be, then you're not turning your food into energy very well and your body's function slow. When that happens, you get hit with symptoms like fatigue, increased sensitivity to cold, dry skin, muscle aches and joint pain, depression, brain fog, swelling of your thyroid, which is also called a goiter, puffy face, [00:03:00] and even hair loss.
Holy smokes. How's that for things to deal with every day? And those are just a few of the symptoms. But here's the good news. Recent research has highlighted the positive impact diet can have on Hashimotos. So if you wanna support your thyroid function and reduce your symptoms, what should you eat? Well, there are some universal things to try first, but it may take some time and some experimenting to land on what works best for your body.
Chemistry. I like to use diets short term and therapeutically to do just that. You see what you're gonna do when you do a diet is you're gonna make sure that you journal while you do it and really pay attention to how you feel so you can connect the dots between what you're eating. And how you feel to see what's working.
I've worked with thousands of other people with, with Hashimotos, and I gotta tell you, many of them like me, have had a lot of success with healing [00:04:00] swaps, the ones that I'm gonna recommend. So if you've been eating a standard American diet with lots of our fine grains, sugar, dairy, soy, and ultra processed dirty foods, you're hammering your thyroid and your blood.
So you have to make some changes, and here's something that may surprise. Being a vegan or a vegetarian doesn't necessarily mean you're doing much better. If you're a plant based eater, you may be inadvertently making matters worse because those diets can be sometimes pretty carb heavy, and if you're overdoing the carbs, you can exacerbate those blood sugar issues.
And some non meat protein sources like legumes, eggs, dairy, grains, and soy can actually be reactive with Hashimotos and also tough on your GI track if you're trying to heal leaky gut. So if you're leaning on them for protein, you may have to test and pull them out of your diet for a while to see how you do.
And if you're open to it, you may even want to [00:05:00] consider reintroducing some clean animal protein. Emphasis is on clean, right? Also, one last thing for vegans. If you have Hashimotos, you can be prone to nutrient deficiencies. So you have to be really careful. Make sure you're supplementing, especially with vitamin b12.
Now you can take a supplement like Reignite Wellness, B12 Boost. It's made with a high dose of 5,000 micrograms of methyl cobalamine, which is the most natural activated form of b12. It's really well absorbed and has a high retention rate in the body. So tune into your needs there. Super important. Okay, with that said, let's get into my six hacks for Hashis.
Number one, you'll pull the potentially inflammatory and reactive foods from your diet. I call them the high five foods, and that means gluten, dairy, and especially soy. Soy is linked with autoimmune thyroid disorders, and those three foods tend to be the most problematic for people with thyroid conditions.
So removing them can be a [00:06:00] big jump. They can give a good reduction in your symptoms. Here's. Reactive foods can trigger an inflammatory response in your GI tract, which can then lead to mal absorption of nutrients and leaky gut. So they just fire up your immune system and then it keeps attacking your thyroid.
So if you're having symptoms like acid reflux, bloating, joint pain, anxiety, or brain fog, those symptoms may be your body trying to tell you that you're reacting to these high five. , you just may not have connected the dots because sometimes the reactions can take a couple hours or even a few days to manifest.
When I wrote the Virgin Diet, I wrote it for this very reason that we have to pull these foods out, give our body time to heal and recover, because then when you come back and test them, you can really start to see what those foods are doing for you and whether they work for you or not. All right, number.
you wanna address any blood sugar [00:07:00] imbalances by lowering your sugar impact, because if you have Hashimotos, you may also have adrenal fatigue from blood sugar imbalances. So that means limiting sugar. And some of the high sugar impact carbs, So this would be things like fruit juices, fruit juice, concentrates, the ultra processed foods, all the white flour, crackers, cookies, breads, et cetera.
Number three, increase your intake of protein, good fats, and fiber. I call this the trifecta, and the reason I put these things together, the protein, the fat, and the fiber, is because it's going to help you have amazing blood sugar, balance, and satiety, and you gotta have those if you're gonna follow a program.
Clean protein, healthy fats and fiber are also big in the Mediterranean diet. And a recent study suggested that eating similar to the Mediterranean diet may help protect your thyroid too, plus like it's delicious. [00:08:00] Number four, you'll add nutrient dense foods that can help benefit your thyroid, like fermented foods is one, and that's one I've been really working on getting a little bit in every day.
I've been focusing on things like almond yogurt. I haven't progressed to kimchi sauerkraut yet. I admit it. Hopefully you. I see it as an advanced move, but fermented foods can help get you along with probiotics, can help really get good bacteria in your gut microbiome. And then eating in some different prebiotic foods.
And that would be things like chickory, inulin, or onions that provide fertilizer, food for the good bacteria in your gut. Of course. Fiber is another key one in here because fiber is super important for feeding the good bacteria in the gut and also helping detoxify the body. Now let's talk about cruciferous vegetables because people believe they're bad for the thyroid function because of goitrogens, but you know what, that's not true for most people.
Plus the fiber in them helps [00:09:00] detoxify that. So one of the really cool detoxifying, well it's really, it's not a vegetable, it's herb cilantro. Now, . I actually have that gene that hates cilantro. I kid you not, but if you do not have that or you can hide it, then cilantros amazing because it's a natural key later, so it can bind the toxins to help get them out of your body.
So it's a great thing to throw into that guacamole if it doesn't taste like soap to you, which it does to me sadly. Berries are another one that I want you to include because they're incredible source of antioxidants and blueberries especially are rich in a source of something called myo inositol. And this is a nutrient that's been shown to improve thyroid function and blood sugar.
Okay, number five, hack. You gotta limit fish high in mercury and maybe not just limit, like stop it all together. Because studies have shown that mercury can impact your thyroid function. So even though [00:10:00] those fats in the fish are good for you, you don't wanna make a good thing bad by increasing your toxic burden by eating foods that are fish that are high in mercury.
So one of the, some of the ones that you'll wanna avoid are things like swordfish Chilean sea bass, tuna, and stick with fish like salmon. And halibut. So look online. Here's the, the go-to on this is search online for Fish High and Mercury and cuz they'll rate them low, medium, and high and focus on the low.
It's generally the smaller fish. You're better off if you will eat sardines bonus points for those. Cuz that's definitely one. That's a good one. Number six. Here's the controversial one. Controversy alert limit foods high in iodine. What you probably heard, just the opposite, right? Well, you do need iodine, your diet, but you don't wanna overdo it like everything else.
It's all about having the right amounts being in balance, so you probably won't need to supplement with it. And you'll also wanna watch how much you're getting in your diet. [00:11:00] So you don't wanna go adding in iodized salt or eating a lot of dairy or seaweed. Plus, remember, dairy could be a trigger for the autoimmune disease too.
Quite often it is. Now the most important thing to do in focusing on your diet is to help your thyroid function put the fire out by calming the inflammatory response in your diet. So that's gonna be all about swapping out the foods that could be hurting you for foods that can heal you. And one more dishonorable mention I have to talk about when we're talking about inflammation or all.
Bad seed oils. So one of the big things that you can do that can really help here is to make an oil change. And you really have to watch out for things like canola oil, corn oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil. These are highly processed pro-inflammatory oils that we wanna swap out for extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil.
Okay, now let's talk when. Then [00:12:00] there's that timing of when to eat these healing foods, and it turns out eating in sync with your body's clock, eating according to circadian rhythm, can help you better manage Hashimotos because it may help lower inflammation. So intermittent fasting has become popular.
You've probably heard about it, especially because it can help with healing. Cellular detox, lowering inflammation and weight loss, and you might be tempted to go, Okay, I'm diving into intermittent face fasting because weight gain is often one of the things that you struggle with when you have Hashimotos, but, Be aware because fasting can affect your thyroid since fasting directly impacts your metabolism.
Basically, your thyroid hormones drop when you're fasting. So if you have thyroid issues, you gotta be cautious about intermittent fasting. But there's also some amazing benefits, so it's probably worth giving a try, but I want you to. Kind of [00:13:00] slowly tread into it. So here's how you're gonna do it. First you wanna just lock in a 12 hour overnight fast, and we should be doing this anyway.
Like, I don't even count this as intermittent fasting. That means stop eating three to four hours before bed and. Eat breakfast, you know, an hour or so after you wake up there. Easy peasy. That's nailed the 12 hour fast. The next thing that I want you to do is go from, you know, three meals and, and snacks, just to three meals.
That is super duper important. Get rid of like eating and snacking all day long. That's important. And then you can see how you feel if you wanna shorten that window to 14 hours or 16 hours. But you may find just kicking out the snacks because you're eating by the plate. A protein, fat, and fiber. Right that we talked about, that satiety and blood sugar trifecta and getting that 12 to 14 hour fast will do what you need.
Because it is really important. We do not want to get your thyroid to start to think you're into starvation mode and then [00:14:00] impact your thyroid hormones and put you at a risk for gaining more weight. So be careful here. Tread cautiously and pay attention. Again, connect the dots between how you're feeling and what and when you're eating.
Now, when you do eat breakfast, break fast, right? I wanna make sure that you do it by the plate. Right. So that's protein, fat, and fiber. And for, for me, that's always a nutrient dense, loaded smoothie because I know that I can put in my all in one protein powder. I add some healthy fats with things like fresh gum, flax, almond, or coconut or flax milk.
Maybe a little avocado little bit of a slightly green banana. Some berries. So it's really easy to make sure I get the protein, fat, and fiber without adding a bunch of sugar in right and right out of the gate. That means that my blood sugar is balanced and I've got great satiety, and that's super important.
For helping you with Hashimotos, and I also don't have any the High five foods in there. Now, here's what else is important. [00:15:00] According to the researchers eating a higher calorie breakfast and then going a little later on calories for dinner might also help you better manage your Hashimotos. All right?
These hacks that I just gave you, they're gonna give your thyroid the love it deserves, and hopefully help you feel better fast. So to recap, you're gonna limit the inflammatory foods. Dirty, processed carbs and sugar and gluten, dairy, eggs, corn, soy, peanuts. You're going to limit the fish, high mercury, and the fit foods high.
In iodine, you're gonna increase your protein, fat, and fiber, and other nutrient dense foods that support your gut. And then to take it further if there are any other things impacting your thyroid function. Make sure you're removing toxins from your daily routine. Adding nutrients if you're deficient, balancing your adrenals and addressing any gut related issues like candida or SIBO .
Thank you so much for joining me, and if you don't know me, I'm JJ Virgin. I'm a four times New York Times bestselling author, [00:16:00] most notably of the Virgin Diet and a fitness hall of Famer, and I have lots more to share with you to help you get your thyroid back on track, which of course is gonna help you get healthy.
And lose weight if that's your goal. So check out the rest of my What to Eat, when to eat, and why series for more. And thank you so much for being with me. I'll see you next time.
For more info on this and other health topics I cover or to rate review, find me on Instagram, Facebook, and my website, jjvirgin.com. And don't forget to subscribe to my show so you won't miss a single episode. Go to subscribetojj.com. Thanks again for being with me this week.

 

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