hypothyroidism: should I avoid milk and soy?

[gedebe]

Read that calcium in milk and soy will impair the absorption of Levo, is this true?

Also vegetable from cruciferous family should be avoided, this almost omit most of the easily obtained vege here in my country in Asia. What vege are safe then?

healthcentral.com/slideshow...

[SeasideSusie Remembering]

Also vegetable from cruciferous family should be avoided

It doesn't say that, it says

You don’t need to stop eating these healthy foods, but if you are hypothyroid or iodine-deficient, avoid overconsuming these vegetables raw, in large or concentrated form, i.e., raw smoothies.

Steaming or cooking, however, makes these vegetables much less likely to negatively affect your thyroid.

As for milk and soy, if you read what it says about those it explains clearly what you should do.

[Josephineinamachine]

Hi Gedebe I gave up soy several months after starting Levo. It did make a positive difference to how I felt after a few weeks. Love my cauliflower and broccoli though - I eat plenty of veg and that doesn’t affect my absorption so wouldn’t worry too much about that. I don’t drink cows milk or have yogurt because this is quite high in sugar and can make me puffy (also might be a bit intolerant).

[fuchsia-pink]

I would ALWAYS avoid soy full stop. As SeasideSusie says, you need to eat improbably quantities of cooked cruciferous vegetables to do harm, so not worth worrying about.

You are best taking your levo just with water, with nothing else (eg milk, coffee, food) an hour afterwards or two hours beforehand to get best absorption. Beyond that, some people with Hashi's (by far the biggest cause of hypothyroidism) find gluten-free and/or dairy-free helpful - but others are fine with both

[greygoose]

All this food advice can be very confusing, so we have to sort the wheat from the chaff:

* If you took your thyroid hormone with a large glass of milk, it would probably affect your absorption, yes. But, if you take it with water, and wait an hour, milk shouldn't be a problem. However, some people are lactose intolerant and should there for give up dairy altogether.

* The cruciferous family thing is about goitrogens. Goitrogens are substances found in some fruit and veg that impede the uptake of iodine by the thyroid. These substances are found in a long list of fruit, veg and nuts, including the cruciferous family, fruit like strawberries and pears, nuts like walnuts and almonds. But, you would have to eat an awful lot of them for them to have any effect - the effect being the formation of a goitre due to the thyroid expanding to trap more iodine. If you take thyroid hormone replacement - levo, etc. - your thyroid stops working so doesn't need iodine, anyway, so they are really nothing to worry about. So, ignore that, and carry on enjoying your veggies.

* The exception is soy. Soy is a goitrogen, but also has other effects: it impedes the uptake of thyroid hormones by the cells. So, you can have very high levels of T4/T3 in the blood but still be hypo. So, soy is best avoided altogether. It's not a health food, anyway, and can cause lots of other nasty health problems. So best avoided.

[penny in reply to greygoose]

There are lots of lactose-free products available these days.

[gedebe in reply to greygoose]

thanks for the easy to follow narrative, just that for soy for I am an Asian, it is one of the common food like tofu, miso, tempeh

[greygoose in reply to gedebe]

True, but I don't think you eat as much of it as the average vegetarian/vegan in the UK. A lot of people think of it as a health food. Which it isn't. Plus, in the UK, it's everywhere in processed foods in the form of soy flour, soy protein, soy oil, etc. You cannot buy a loaf of bread in England that doesn't contain soy flour. It's over-kill. Plus, you eat mostly fermented soy, which is possibly better - except for tofu, of course. Plus, not all Asians are hypo and struggling to get better. So, I think we need to take all that into consideration.

[Josephineinamachine in reply to greygoose]

I was drinking soya milk in tea and coffee. I drink a lot of tea was getting through a litre of soya milk a day. When I stopped I had a few weeks of feeling strange which I put down to the medication working more effectively. It felt like a dose increase. Was very noticeable.