Diet/supplement changes for 2019

[Danielj1]

I feel I got to a point of being a but "stuck" over the last couple of months - with no obvious vitamin/mineral deficiencies I had got my TSH down to 2.7 over a 2 year period (started at 30) and T3/T4 all look in the right ranges. I have not checked TPO for a long time - will do so over the next few months.

So I rethought all the things that in isolation seemed to help and have come up with a plan to pull them altogether- the result is the following:

1) Morning porridge scrapped and replaced with yoghurt/fruit/honey and whenever possible celery/spinach/carrot juicer - I have finally adopted the medical medium advice from the book I read before Christmas

2) Selenium supplement scrapped and replaced with 3 organic brazil nuts each day - taking less than 3 seemed to have little to no impact. It literally takes about a week of this switch and trust me I will never be going back.

3) Restarted kelp supplement - this is the RDA only. This is absolutely not recommended for anyone with hashimotos, I simply know the benefits are so important I am managing the risks by taking sufficient selenium in the brazil nuts (plus B1) to ensure there is no damage to my thyroid.

4) Use expensive magnesium citrate supplement 500 mg per day and not cheap non branded from web-very noticeable difference imvho

5) Use maintenance level vitamin D, now my blood tests are in the middle of the range

6) Skip lunches wherever I can and tend to eat more food later in the evening - this suits my pattern. I fully accept this may the exact reverse for others.

7) Abandoned a strong B combination vitamin and only use B1 100mg -B12 is shown to be in range

All I can say is that I do not know what part of the above I can credit for the change, but it is for me an important step forward and is making a real positive improvement to my training intensities/energy levels/mood etc....

[BadHare]

Are you ok with raw spinach? I am as I excluded cruciferous veg for a while before re-introducing cooked then raw, but it's still a potential goitrogen.

Not all brazils have selenium, so check you're eating ones which are. Someone suggested a brand a while back, but I can't remember which as I switched to a Mg/Ca free mineral complex as I have these separately.

Is kelp ok?

Magnesium citrate isn't as bioavailable at chelated or bisglycinate, though it would still be good if you suffer from constipation. Have you tried transdermal Mg?

Is a maintenance dose of D3 enough? The Endocrine Council recommends 2,000iu a day & the Vitamin D council 5,000iu a day. I aim for somewhere inbetween, more in winter, less in summer if I see sufficient sunshine.

Restrictive eating times suit me, so I skip breakfast & don't eat late.

We're all different, so what works for some of us won't be the same. though we do all need the cofactors that are important for healthy hormones & everything else.

[Danielj1 in reply to BadHare]

Thanks for the helpful comments - will think them all over.

D is 2000 as a dose

[BadHare in reply to Danielj1]

You're welcome!

Maintenance dose here seems to be 800iu.

[Danielj1 in reply to BadHare]

The organic brazil nuts from tescos have 37microgms for a quantity of 3 nuts i.e. 65% of RDA - this is a lot smaller than the 200 microgms tablet I was taking as if often provided in supplements. The issue I now discover with selenite version is that only 50% gets absorbed - so perhaps taking 65% of RDA with high absorbancy may be quite sensible.

There is an earlier thread where someone took 3/day and found this was too much and cut back/changed approach. On the basis of these figures I will press on for now.

Kelp remains a huge controversy - what it does positively I have not remotely found from anything else. I do accept I may have to revise this if the risk/reward does not turn out to be correct.

Porridge has turned out to be a huge surprise - there is everything in favour of having this for breakfast. Perhaps it simply failed to suit both me and my wife and we are both on fruit/yoghurt now.

[SeasideSusie Remembering in reply to Danielj1]

The issue I now discover with selenite version is that only 50% gets absorbed

Which is why selenium l-selenomethionine or a yeast bound selenium are recommended. Selenite and selenate are inorganic forms and can be toxic in high doses. Selenium l-selenomethionine and yeast bound selenium are more natural and organic forms.

I don't live anywhere near a Tesco, does their pack of brazil nuts say where they were grown?

[Danielj1 in reply to SeasideSusie]

Thanks, is it easy to find a yeast based supplement? I only found selenite version. - perhaps I need to browse more widely.

The advertising on the label makes a great play about their location on the heart of the amazon rain forest - so does not really answer your question.

An interesting follow up question for me is whether the yeast based versions have the added minerals eg copper and zinc that the raw nuts have.

There are also a load of claims for wider benefits - I will post a link.

I genuinely have no idea if all these claims are justified.

[SeasideSusie Remembering in reply to Danielj1]

Parts of the Amazon has good selenium content in the nuts grown there, particularly Eastern Amazon, even then it varies considerably per nut.

honey-guide.com/2012/11/19/...

(It's a rather old article but can't find anything more recent)

I was using a yeast-based selenium from Cytoplan but it doesn't contain added minerals

cytoplan.co.uk/selenium

I have a muesli with a high nut and see content daily which I think may take care of copper and zinc.

[Danielj1 in reply to SeasideSusie]

Again, thank you for the further information. I suspect from your bar chart tescos source from western brazil as the numbers line up on this basis.

draxe.com/brazil-nuts/

I will try to dig further over the benefits of the various approaches....

[danym]

do you take any meds? or the supplements helped decreased the tsh?

[Danielj1 in reply to danym]

75 Levo - just does not fully work for me hence extreme lengths to find further support from diet etc

I found it such a struggle to move from 50 to 75 I pretty much vowed I would stop there - GP does not want me to increase either

[danym in reply to Danielj1]

have you thought about adding t3 med or ndt to levo?

[Danielj1 in reply to danym]

I half thought but GP would only support T4 and nothing else - so I will stick by the “rules” as they say.

If I finally get to the point of running out of ideas with all this alternative stuff then I can consider your suggestions.

Let’s see how the next couple of months pan out ...

[Danielj1 in reply to Danielj1]

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...

I am very late in the day to join the juicing cause, but having found just about every alternative supplement for the gut a total waste of space - I am putting my expensive juicer to work with a vengeance.

The wierdest thing after a couple of weeks now of doing this is the total sense of feeling full all day and not being hungry and needing any snacks.

I am hoping this will be the link to losing some decent weight now...

[Danielj1 in reply to Danielj1]

On the slog of recovery back from the Hashimoto diagnosis, it is rare to have a major breakthroughs.

One such breakthrough occurred today. A very unexpected personal best on the treadmill on the 45 minute interval repeat. I have not being doing anything like the training I did 6 months ago when I set the last PB.

My reading of the benefits of B1 is in lactic acid clearing - and this I believe is what has changed - you can run faster without pain or distress and quicker recovery afterwards.

If so, B1 is an absolute miracle for a Hashimoto sufferer in getting their sporting life back.

And please do not take any of the above as advice As none of the above may apply.

[Danielj1 in reply to Danielj1]

liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/...

verywellhealth.com/hashimot...

in the world after taking B1 hunger pangs are rather nicely diminished - the world is calm and the hope for getting your old life back seems much more likely.