My son has been taking cold showers for the past month and feeling much better for it - there appears to be various links to thyroid health and cold water treatments - some suggest splashing very cold water over the hyroid area each morning and some go further with a fuller cold bath type immersion.
I am sure no long standing member of this thread is going to believe this will actually cure their thyroid disease but i find the research intersting and may help mental health too so have posted.
If anyone has more direct experience then let me know. There are a ton of other article you can find by searches for various key words..
most relevant section only pasted...to save you reading the full link..
For most modern adults, and especially those with an underactive thyroid (i.e, hypothyroidism), brown fat thermogenesis is never available, so cold exposure results in the body signaling an emergency and initiating shivering.That's why the conventional medical advice for cold sensitivity due to hypothyroidism is to "keep your home warm," and "avoid unnecessary exposure to cold weather (Wentz, 2015). Although this is a prescription for avoiding discomfort, it may be exactly the wrong thing to do to cure Hashimoto's. By doing the opposite of the traditional medical advice and intentionally plunging herself into a freezing ice bath several times a week, Adrienne stimulated her thyroid, signaled her body to recruit new brown fat cells, and cured her Hashimoto's
I like the idea of cold exposure but they reference TSH coming from the brown fat …. after removal of thyroid (total)but TSH is produced by the pituitary not from the thyroid gland …..
TSH is a peptide hormone produced by the anterior pituitary. It consists of two chains: an alpha chain and a beta chain. It has a molecular mass of approximately 28,000 Da. The composition is very similar to other glycoprotein hormones made by the anterior pituitary
I’m sure it says 2 mins in that the brown fat produces the TSH …. I looked again and still think that’s what it says …. Even if it says it’s a correlation …. That is how I understood it …. But thanks for prompting me to look again
and if total thyroidectomy of patient how can they reverse the diagnosis ? Just a thought …. But I’m all for researching and trying anything that might be a benefit… our bodies are amazing machines
you can't ,.... the study that gave the evidence of higher TSH with brown fat just happened to be done on patients with no thyroid .. his understanding and / or his presentation is poor. (or maybe he just can;t think straight cos his nuts are frozen)
but gives no precise details of why she was started on levo eg no TSH/ fT4 / which antibodies , etc.
And no precise details of TSH / fT4 / antibody results after stopping levo . it just infers she had positive antibodies at diagnosis ,, and normal antibodies later. , and felt better.
She clearly felt lots better at the time of writing the article, but it proves nothing much other than that cold improves how she felt .and seems to have improved her allergies / heartburn .... but allergies / heartburn don't necessarily have anything to do with autoimmune thyroid disease eg. i have autoimmune hypo , but don't have any problems with allergies or heartburn/ eosphagitis/ or weight .
Her altered diet (+the cold therapy ) may / may not have had some influence on lowered antibody levels .
And as for the bit about :
" Just sit in the ice.
I also felt immediate relief of the chronic leg pain, which had gotten so bad it hurt to even drive.
IMMEDIATE RELIEF AFTER 9 SECONDS. WOW!! "
Well duh .. it would relieve pain wouldn't it .. your legs go numb if you sit in ice water ..and ice reduces inflammation .. dancers do it all the time . they have barrels of ice back stage to get in during the interval.
The difference beteeen "a cure for hashimoto's" and "a cure for hypothyroidism"....
it's possible that she was put on levo unnecessarily / too early for "hashimoto's" (high thyroid antibodies) , but not hypothyroidism( low thyroid hormone /high TSH) ..... ie. her hypothyroidism wasn't yet bad enough to be causing the problems in the first place , so you wouldn't expect taking levo to improve that situation anyway .
if that was the case then being able to stop the levo doesn't mean a 'cure' of hypothyroidism .
ah yes i see what you mean , he doesn't understand it properly, you're right...
"...what does that suggest ? ... that it is the brown fat , that is at least corrolated ,now according to ben, producing the thyroid stimulating hormone... "
" and that brown fat produced the thyroid stimulating hormone that ...."
He seems to have some basic misunderstandings about hypothyroidism (and his wife's cure) .
The lack of TSH is not the problem in autoimmune hypothyroidism .. we all have plently of TSH .. that is how we got diagnosed..
I'm not sure he properly understands the difference between TSH and 'Thyroid Hormone'
either that.... or he does understand it but he's deliberately oversimplifying in order to sell refrigerated bathtubs ...
personally i'm in agreement about the 'cold thing' being very effective at making us feel and function better and can well believe that includes the HPA axis . I've been doing it myself for yrs on and off in various ways and i've also witnessed very good effects in others ..... but as a for 'curing' autoimmune disease .. i think they are a long way short of proving that~ they are too vague about her test results to show what they mean by 'cured ' (lowered antibodies i assume) ... and stopping levo , but on the page i read she'd only stopped levo a couple of months earlier , but we see many examples on forum of people feeling great for a few weeks /months when they stop levo and then crashing horribly and needing to go back on it .
Once the majority of the thyroid is fibrosed due to autoimmune damage, its not getting fixed no matter how much TSH you make.
So i think the are on the right track about cold immersion being good for you... but the rest of it is sales blurb / or confused.
Now at day 4 - up to about 3 minutes of cold vs 30 seconds on day 1 - once you reframe in your mind that this is doing you a ton of good the body seems to ignore the shock of the cold and the high each day afterwards for the following couple of hours is great
As a warning to some who suffer from poor circulation to hands and feet - after day 1 my fingers when white colour for 2 hours afterwards due to shock of cold water - ie took me ages to get circulation going - this has not happened since so if this happens to anyone else on day 1 - it seems the body can learn to adapt thank good ness !
I will complete this for a complete month and report back - hoping for some results in terms of improved mood and weight and energy levels - let’s see
I like the idea but it is very poorly explained; ‘wrongly’ used words. Seems like pseudo science to me. Sorry. I think there could be something important going on but they do not prove that they understand it.
having done a load of reading about cold water effects and health benefits intend to agree now that this article is either incomplete or wrong in the understanding - so well done to you all for picking up on all this and spurring me into to digging deeper !
The really important link is with noradrenaline and the boost that occurs from the body’s reaction to the cold - these hormones raise mood ,concentration and metabolism with effects not dissimilar to taking more thyroid hormones
So for anyone with ADD or ADHD or fatigue and general low energy the boost in these hormones can make a real improvement
My only motivation for the daily cold showers was for weight loss outcome but the improvements to general mood and positive energy about life seem perhaps much more real and important now …
There is clearly a need for more research here but it seems an important tool in taking back control post hashimotos
One final point is the message to not cross your arms or finish with hot water or towel down right afterwards - much more benefit from allowing skin to heat up to dry naturally No messing as they say here up North …
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