I have severe anxiety. Particularly health anxiety. And my thyroid hasn’t been right since having my little boy 2.5years ago. I have struggled ever since.
I was doing okay anxiety wise and trying to eat more for 3 week or so and then the acid started and my tsh went over within a space of a week. I have started taking iron supplements again the last few days.
I was eating pumpkin and sunflower seeds with every meal trying to be healthy and more whole meal bread than normal too and I have read that these can can deplete vitamins and minerals due to containing phytate acid. I have stopped the seeds and less bread the last few days but my anxiety is getting worse each day again.
I have just taken one kalms tablet to test it and I can already feel my anxiety levels going up even more 😞
stomach acid and reflux. I had this earlier in the year badly when I lowered my thyroid meds too much and it went when I put it back up.
My thyroid (TSH was improving 2.1 and going down) at the drs a few weeks ago and then the following week the acid started and lead me to to a private blood test as I suspected it was due to my thyroid and it had gone up to 4.7 which was a couple of weeks ago on Monday.
The only thing I have done is eat a bit more as I was eating enough and having severe anxiety and I was eating more wholemeal bread and pumpkin and sunflower seeds with every meal too trying to be healthy. I have read about phytate acid and that binding to vitamins and minerals and it preventing absorption of them into the body and wonder if that is what’s happened. My iron levels have dropped so I’ve started taking the iron supplement again over the last few days. Trying to eat really healthy still with less bread and no seeds. The acid is a bit better than it was so hoping it will continue to improve.
I spoke to the dr about my private results and they said that my levels were good a week before so not to increase it.
When I did increase it slightly for one day my anxiety got even worse. My t4 levels are also high so I feel like I suffer symptoms of an under and over active thyroid at the same time 😞
1. When we are hypo - i.e. low T3 - we tend to have low stomach acid. But, the symptoms are the same as high stomach acid - i.e. acid reflux. Low stomach acid will mean that you are not able to digest your food correctly, and therefore will not absorb nutrients as well as you should.
2. You say your FT4 is high, but have you ever had your FT3 tested? Could be you're a poor converter and your FT3 is low. Anxiety can be a hypo symptom. But if you're a poor converter, the solution is not to increase T4 (levo) even further, because too much T4 is not a good thing, either. And can sometimes make your conversion worse.
So, seems to me you need full thyroid testing:
TSH
FT4
FT3
Antibodies if not already done
vit D
vit B12
folate
ferritin
But I doubt that many of your problems are due to the seeds or the bread. Eating, and what we eat, is important to a certain degree but it won't solve everything. And you can be nutritionally deficient even on the best of diets. What's more, a 'healthy' (hate that word!) diet is a very personal thing. What's 'healthy' for one person is poison for another. So, go with what you want to eat and what you enjoy, and forget other people's ideas about what is 'healthy' and what is not.
no I’m not supplementing them. I have been eating a really good balanced diet of late and that has improved them. It’s only since I started eating raw seeds and more bread that it seems to have gone to pot.
I am hoping the iron tablets get to work soon and start to bring my t3 back up as it did last time and then the acid issue will rectify and then I can continue to eat more foods again. Only been taking iron for less than a week so far.
I am having to take movicol at the moment. To get things moving which I don’t think helps with the absorption of nutrients either does it. One thing has a knock on effect to the other and my anxiety is bad which isn’t helping either. I took kalms the other day and it did calm me down but not sure if that will affect anything further. It’s valerian root.
I take the lavender kalms, I have have found them mildly helpful for anxiety. Multiple pharmacists have assured me there is no interaction with any of my meds and I can't find a single warning on the internet, which is unusual as most meds have someone who has had a bad reaction or interaction.
My thyroid was all over the place when the perimenopause started. HRT helped, but magnesium and upping my iron levels were the game changers for smoothing things out with my thyroid.
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