Vegan diet on levothyroxine

[Vegan51]

I am a vegan, age 70, and about to undergo a thyroidectomy to treat a papillary carcinoma. I am wondering as a vegan what I will be able to eat when taking levothyroxine. I understand foods such as soya, tempeh and tofu are not allowed, in addition to walnuts, broccoli and cabbage, all of which I enjoy. Does anyone have any guidance? With many thanks in advance.

[greygoose]

You don't need to give up walnuts, broccoli and cabbage, that's a myth. They won't have any effect on your levo.

Soy is the bad guy, because it blocks the uptake of thyroid hormones by the cells. But goitrogens (walnuts, etc.) only affect the thyroid. So, if you don't have a thyroid, they're not likely to affect you in any way.

Apart from that, just make sure you take your levo on an empty stomach, wait at least one hour before eating or drinking anything other than water, and two hours before taking any other medication or supplements. Iron, magnesium, calcium, vit D and oestrogen should be taken four hours away from levo.

[Vegan51 in reply to greygoose]

Thank you! that is so helpful... sorry to ask another question but I forgot to mention chocolate and potato skins which I also read should be avoided.

[bantam12 in reply to Vegan51]

Well I'm a chocoholic and it's done me no harm. My advice is eat whatever you like and enjoy, life's to short 😉

[greygoose in reply to Vegan51]

Good lord! Potato skins? lol Whatever next! I've never heard either of those before, and fail to see why potato skins should be avoided. With chocolate, possibly it's because of the soy lecithin it contains? But, soy lecithis doesn't affect everybody. Depends how much chocolate you eat, of course, but the lecithin content is very small. So, unless you feel some effect of some kind, I really wouldn't worry about it.

[greygoose in reply to greygoose]

I'd be interested to know where you read all this...

[Vegan51 in reply to greygoose]

This is the website where I saw advice about potato skins and chocolate

everydayhealth.com/thyroid-...

[bantam12 in reply to Vegan51]

That is a low iodine diet for pre radio active iodine treatment, doesn't need to be followed after that.

[greygoose in reply to Vegan51]

Ah, OK, I understand. I haven't read it all, but surely the low-iodine diet is for before the operation, not afterwards. Not when you're on levo. Because if you had to be on a low-iodine diet, you wouldn't be able to take levo. Levo is the thyroid hormone T4. Thyroid hormones are made up of iodine plus L-tyrosine. So, one molecule of T4 contains 4 atoms of iodine. One atom is removed during the conversion of T4 to T3.

So, don't worry about potato skins and chocolate, they don't contain much iodine, anyway.

[helvella Administrator Thyroid UK in reply to greygoose]

Managed to find a possible reason:

The reason why potato skins (and navy beans and a host of other things) was that a study by Pennington in the early 90s gave high values for iodine for them. This data was published and appears all over the web despite the fact that the authors admitted that their 'method was not well behaved'. Their work was taken over by the FDA and much more consistent data is published in my first link above.

inspire.com/groups/thyca-th...

We would have to consider the iodine available to the potatoes! I have read that Jersey Royals used to be fertilised with much seaweed - but not so much now. I suspect at least some potatoes have next to no iodine.

[greygoose in reply to helvella]

We-ll, I don't know about that. Given that a lot of doctors and lay-people believe that all you have to do for a hypo condition is throw iodine at it, one would rather expect them to be encouraging the eating of potato skins!

The skin is only a very small portion of the potato, so even if it were rich in iodine, you probably wouldn't get much from it.

[Vegan51]

Thank you for your responses to my questions... I am finding this so helpful as this is all so new to me.