Interesting article of how our ancestors used thyroid hormones

[Justiina]

Next article made me think is thyroid disease partially caused by change in diet/habits.

forefronthealth.com/survivi...

If our ancestors somehow understood the connection of eating thyroid gland/brain to get thyroid hormones to boost up fertility and health I can't help thinking that is something we need. Back then thyroid issues has been different , less toxins etc but still apparently relatively common. That makes me think has it been instinct or what , have they instinctively eaten thyroid gland/brain after stressful events and illnesses.

I am not saying going back to cavemen would be the solution, but modern medicine hasn't actually fixed the problem.

[christa1]

thank you justiina for this link. great article and wonderfull responses.

growing up on a small farm, we allways eat everything of the slaughtered animal. everything from head to toe!

[Justiina in reply to christa1]

Thats cool!

I think that's how it should be. I know two people that have had very bad adrenal fatigue and they have been on low dose cortisone ,but once they started to eat kidneys and liver their symptoms improved so much they could ditch the cortisone. So eating certain food in this case the organs could be what's needed during stress.

Problem is that many people doesn't want to eat everything

[Angel_of_the_North]

Eat brains ... (I don't suppose anyone else has seen Lex, but still). Not a good idea to eat (human) brains as you tend to get kuru. When I was a kid, it was common to feed children on lamb brains (as well as liver and kidney and heart).

[Justiina in reply to Angel_of_the_North]

I wouldn't eat anyone's brain!

Yeah it was relatively common not so long ago to eat organs of animals. Partially was necessary because less food available but i assume eating all organs not just the meat has helped to survive through famine as organs provide so many nutrients.

[helvella]

It is a pity that it doesn't go on to discuss the location of thyroid glands in fish (given a picture of fish head soup) - a sub-subject of some interest:

researchgate.net/publicatio...

[Justiina in reply to helvella]

I had no idea fish even had it

[helvella in reply to Justiina]

All vertebrates have some form of thyroid and make thyroid hormones.

I think some invertebrates .. Hey, why should I just go off "thinking", look it up, you fool helvella! So I did:

bmcevolbiol.biomedcentral.c...

Even as far back as 1935 some of this was appreciated:

open.bu.edu/bitstream/handl...

And, mostly inaccessible:

journals.sagepub.com/doi/ab...

[Justiina in reply to helvella]

Thanks for the links, that's interesting! I have always been thinking thyroid is related to mammals and that's it. But on the other hand if we think of evolution then thyroid must be related to other species as well.

[helvella in reply to Justiina]

My own pet theory (sorry, guess!) is that very primitive organisms needed to protect themsleves from iodine. After all, pure iodine is a potent substance that can kill most living cells. Once the abilty to react any iodine to make it relatively safe had been developed, those organisms started to use the iodine-containing substances they produced in various ways. Over hundreds of millions of years, the whole process became what we see today in mammals - a fiendishly complex process that affects all our cells.