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Natural Treatment for Hypothyroidism

The term “natural treatment” is quite subjective to say the least. For most, it simply means treating their hypothyroidism symptoms with natural supplements and without the use of medical drugs. But should that really be considered natural? When it comes to a natural treatment for hypothyroidism, I believe that there’s a far more “natural” means that are entirely neglected.

When you think in terms of a natural treatment for hypothyroidism, it’s important to grasp the importance of supporting your body’s natural ability to heal rather than relying entirely on supplements.

Supplements definitely have their place but you have to keep in mind that you didn’t become hypothyroid because you are deficient in supplements.

The Importance of Your Diet

Most people fail to understand that your diet is by far the most important factor in any natural treatment for hypothyroidism.

The foods that you eat have far reaching effects when it comes to your thyroid. Your diet dictates your hormones, the health and functionality of your digestive tract, and many other processes that all greatly impact hypothyroidism.

So I want to strongly iterate the point that if your diet is not properly supporting your thyroid then you will never truly heal. And some people can partially compensate by relying entirely on supplementary hormones but this does not offset the damage that is done by a poor diet. And sooner or later, it will catch up with you one way or another.

Below I’m going to outline 3 key components of a truly natural treatment for hypothyroidism.

Balancing Your Hormones

Your hormonal system is far more intertwined than you probably realize. Every hormone tends to affect the others either directly or indirectly. And this is why balancing your hormones is a necessary part of any natural treatment for hypothyroidism.

Estrogen and Progesterone

Hypothyroidism tends to be more prevalent among females and it’s because they naturally produce a lot more estrogen than men do which makes them much more susceptible to the hypothyroid effects of excessive estrogen. But this is also becoming a more common issue with men these days.

Once your estrogen levels get out of balance they tend to cause an exponential problem. And that is because there is a feedback mechanism that causes hypothyroidism to promote the buildup of estrogen while estrogen further suppresses your thyroid. So it’s easy to see how this can cause your thyroid to spiral out of control.

Progesterone on the other hand works to offset the negative effects of estrogen and promote the healthy function of your thyroid.

Insulin and Cortisol

Another pair of complimentary hormones that require balancing as part of the natural treatment for hypothyroidism are insulin and cortisol. And these hormones work together in order to help maintain proper blood sugar levels.

Insulin is important because it plays an active role in delivering key nutrients to your cells as well as helping your liver to store the glycogen it needs to convert your inactive thyroid hormone to its active state.

And cortisol has an opposite effect and should be kept to a minimum as part of your natural treatment for hypothyroidism. Under times of stress and when blood sugar drops too low, cortisol is released to bring your blood sugar back up. But it also has many anti-thyroid effects such as blocking the liver from converting your much needed hormones.

Pregnenolone

I also wanted to touch on the importance of the hormone pregnenolone in this equation.

Pregnenolone is the precursor hormone for all of the highly protective steroid hormones that your body naturally produces. These hormones include progesterone and DHEA. But when you’re hypothyroid, your body can’t produce the pregnenolone that it needs because it requires thyroid hormone in order to do so.

Supporting Your Liver

Few people understand the important role that your liver plays in the whole thyroid process. And so it’s easily a forgotten part of the natural treatment for hypothyroidism.

If your liver is not healthy then it cannot properly store glycogen. And your liver requires a good amount of glycogen or sugar to properly convert your thyroid hormone to its active form to be used by your body.

Also, when your liver is unhealthy, then it cannot properly detoxify all of those estrogens that I talked about above which is such an important part of your natural treatment for hypothyroidism. If your liver can’t detoxify estrogen, then it will continue to build up, making you even more hypothyroid along the way.

When problems like this are not corrected then as the problem worsens, you can easily become more and more dependent on supplements and find that they are losing their effectiveness.

Choosing the Right Supplements

Before discussing the role of supplements in your natural treatment for hypothyroidism, I think it’s important to again reiterate the fact that your diet must come first and foremost. As I mentioned earlier, without focusing on your diet, any sort of hypothyroidism treatment is going to be far less effective.

But it’s also important to talk about the natural effects of aging and other factors that do affect your thyroid, which you might not have complete control over.

As you age, your hormone production changes and you begin to naturally produce less thyroid hormone and many of the protective steroid hormones. And this allows many of the other anti-thyroid hormones to have a greater effect on your health.

And this is when the right supplements and/or medication become a necessary part of even a natural treatment for hypothyroidism.

Fine Tuning

It’s important to find the right supplements and at the right amounts to meet the specific individual needs of your body.

For example, some people need only the thyroid hormone T3. Other’s need some combination of thyroid hormones T4 and T3. And this is a process that can take some time to figure out. But when you do find the right combination the results can be amazing.

It’s also important to keep in mind that as you progress through this natural treatment for hypothyroidism and your other hormones begin to balance, they too will impact the effectiveness of any supplementary thyroid hormone you take. For example, as your stress hormones decrease, your need for thyroid hormone will increase.

Hopefully by now you realize that a natural treatment for hypothyroidism involves much more than just using natural supplements. It involves utilizing your body’s natural healing ability to correct the underlying imbalances and dysfunction that led you to become hypothyroid in the first place.

Hypothyroidism Treatment

There’s a big problem within the medical community today with their approach to treating a number of health problems and diseases. And 9 out of 10 times, this problem exists because their treatments are driven entirely by financial interests and NOT the best interests of the patients who are suffering. And their current sub par approach to hypothyroidism treatment is one that understandably fits the bill.

In just a minute, I’m going to give you some important tips that your doctor isn’t telling you about, which are necessary for any successful hypothyroidism treatment. But before I do, I want to talk a little bit about why none of this is even discussed within the medical community.

Hypothyroidism Treatment – Then and Now

Here’s something that most people don’t realize.

Long ago, before the pharmaceutical industry was pulling in over $500 billion dollars (yes, I said billion) each year from drug sales, the doctors at the time were far more successful at treating hypothyroidism than they are today.

Long ago, doctors clearly understood the far reaching effects of hypothyroidism. It was extremely common for doctors to find that hypothyroidism was involved in the majority of their patients’ health problems. And oftentimes, the right hypothyroidism treatment would not only eliminate all of their symptoms, but also leave them with a clean bill of health.

Today, doctors have become far less accustomed to determining the underlying cause of disease. And instead, they have become far too accustomed to treating only their patients’ symptoms. And by using drugs to merely cover up your hypothyroidism symptoms, you do absolutely nothing to improve your state of health. And so it’s very common that you develop newer and more severe symptoms in the process.

Unfortunately, when there’s more than $500 billion dollars at stake each year, there’s no real incentive to heal people. There’s far too much money to be made if people continue to stay sick and develop new and more serious health problems that require the use of even more drugs.

But if we went back to our old ways of using far more effective hypothyroid treatment options, then there would be too few people left to spend all of their hard earned money on a lifetime of prescription drugs.

The Truth About Hypothyroidism Treatment

The truth is that there is so much more that you can do to treat hypothyroidism than what your doctor may or may not recommend.

But as I mentioned above, because the medical community is largely driven by the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry, most patients are sent home with the wrong medication that oftentimes only makes their hypothyroidism worse in the end (more about that below).

A quick search on just about any online medical reference will quickly tell you that there are certain foods and supplements that may affect your ability to absorb many of the thyroid medications that are readily prescribed.

But not a single one mentions any foods or supplements that can directly affect your ability to produce or utilize the thyroid hormone that your body natural makes. In fact, most medical professionals will tell you that your diet has little to no impact whatsoever on the health of your thyroid.

But when start to look at the research, it tells a very different story.

5 Essential Steps for Hypothyroidism Treatment Success

You can throw all of the supplements, medication, etc at your thyroid that you want. But if you don’t get the basics right, then you’re essentially wasting your time. And this is because you are missing the bigger picture.

Below I’m going to cover 5 essential steps that are an integral part of any hypothyroidism treatment if you want to truly restore your life, health, and energy.

1. Start a Hypothyroidism Treatment Diet

There has been a lot of research that demonstrates the important connection between your diet and hypothyroidism. There are certain foods that directly contribute to hypothyroidism and should be avoided as part of your treatment for hypothyroidism. And there are certain nutrients that are necessary for your thyroid to function properly.

So it should only make sense that your diet should play a big role in your hypothyroidism treatment.

One of the best examples of a problem food are the polyunsaturated fats. Research clearly shows that these fats block your thyroid from releasing its thyroid hormones, block your thyroid hormone from being transported properly within your bloodstream, and blocks your cells from properly using your thyroid hormone.

And there are key nutrients that your body needs to effectively produce the necessary thyroid hormones that it needs to keep your cells happy and healthy.

And that brings us to the second step.

2. Restore Your Liver Health

Most of the active thyroid hormone, T3, that your body uses is produced by your liver. But your liver can’t do this unless it has plenty of stored glycogen and certain nutrients, such as selenium.

So if your blood sugar is out of balance and your hypothyroidism diet lacks certain key nutrients then your liver can’t do its job. And even though your thyroid gland itself may not be the problem, your liver can be responsible for slowing it down, resulting in hypothyroidism.

So the health of your liver is another major consideration when it comes to your hypothyroidism treatment.

3. Improve Your Lifestyle Management

Most people take their lifestyle for granted. But the truth is that your lifestyle can be a determining factor in whether or not your hypothyroidism treatment is successful or whether you continue to become even more hypothyroid.

And no matter how you look at it, it always boils down to stress.

But most people don’t realize what stress actually does to the health of your thyroid. For starters, it starts an entire cascade of hormonal reactions within your body, many of which are inflammatory and cause even more stress.

Your stress hormones also play an active role in suppressing your thyroid. It does this by both inhibiting your liver from converting T4 to active T3, as mentioned above, and by increasing the conversion to the hormone, Reverse T3, which effectively blocks your thyroid function.

And the more stressful our lives become, the more important it becomes to keep stress to a minimum as part of your hypothyroidism treatment.

4. Balance Your Blood Sugar

Speaking of stress and stress hormones, one of the fastest and most common ways to increase your stress hormones is to allow your blood sugar to drop too low.

When this happens, your body increases your stress hormone, cortisol, which is responsible for breaking down your muscle tissue in order to raise your blood sugar back up.

But as I’ve already mentioned above, cortisol works against your thyroid.

So, balancing your blood sugar should be an extremely important part of any hypothyroidism treatment.

3. Use the Right Thyroid Supplement(s)

Once you get your diet right, liver healthy, stress hormones under control, and blood sugar balanced, then your thyroid will begin to function far more effectively. But for some, it still might not be quite enough to get their thyroid health completely back to normal.

And only then is when thyroid supplementation can come in handy as part of your hypothyroidism treatment.

Your entire hormonal system is very complex and oftentimes hormonal feedback pathways can really inhibit your thyroid hormones from returning to normal levels. And in these situations, supplementing with the right thyroid hormones can help restore proper hormonal levels rather quickly.

But not all thyroid supplements are created equal. And some have no business being part of any hypothyroidism treatment plan.

For example, iodine is oftentimes the wrong choice of supplementation which can actually cause more harm than good.

And the medical community continues to prescribe T4 only medication when research clearly shows that it is not effective for the majority of people. And too often, this additional T4 will actually make you even more hypothyroid which is very counterproductive when it comes to hypothyroidism treatment.

The key is to find the right combination of hormones that your body needs to restore balance.

Hypothyroidism Treatment Results

It’s also important to consider that there are also factors that affect how fast or slow that you begin to see the results of implementing the steps mentioned above in your hypothyroidism treatment plan.

For example, it can vary largely due to a woman’s cycle. This is because of the role that estrogen and progesterone play in her ability to handle certain nutrients in her diet. It’s not uncommon for her symptoms to return when estrogen peaks during her cycle. But it normally only takes a cycle or two before things begin to stabilize.

If you can get a handle on these 5 essential steps for hypothyroidism treatment success then you will be well on your way to not only seeing improvements with your hypothyroidism but also with fully restoring your health and energy.