Gluten intolerance has been getting a lot of attention lately but did you know that it might be adversely affecting your thyroid function? A recent study reported in the American Journal of Gastorenterology showed that in select cases, hypothyroidism improves when people avoid eating wheat.
As you may know, gluten is a substance found in wheat and other grains that gives bread flour it’s elasticity and chewiness. Have you ever had a flour burrito where the tortilla seemed to stretch without tearing? That’s from the gluten.
Once upon a time, we humans gathered and hunted for our food. We ate game, nuts, berries, and fruits. Relatively recently we have begun cultivating and storing crops such as wheat. We’ve gotten so good at raising wheat that most Americans now eat it almost every meal.
Magnifying that already great imbalance is the processing the wheat goes through before it goes into the food we eat. The outer covering is stripped away and the remainder is ground down into the refined flour we use for baking. We buy it because it’s delicious and plentiful and cheap. It makes delicious bread, cereal, doughnuts, pastries, spaghetti, sandwiches, pizza, buns, and muffins, and so on. But as with other addictive substances (crack, alcohol), just because some people like the way it makes them feel doesn’t mean that it’s good for them.
Another great difficulty is all the “-cides” we’re getting with all that wheat (like insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides). Wheat is even dusted with pesticides when they it’s loaded into silos for storage. Studies have found levels of those same pesticides in the final product of flour and bread sold in the stores.
A small percentage of our population have Celiac disease. Their sensitivity to gluten is so great that it causes a destruction and flattening of the mucosa of their intestines. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg of people that are having trouble from eating too much wheat. Likewise, people with hypothyroidism that shows up on thyroid blood tests are also the tip of the iceberg of people that have low body temperatures due to slow metabolisms.
The study mentioned above demonstrated that for some people there is a link between eating wheat and having poor thyroid function. If that can happen in tip-of-the-iceberg cases you know it can happen in more mild cases. Perhaps you should avoid wheat for several weeks and keep a daily journal of body temperatures and how you feel. You might be amazed by how much better you feel. You can eat rice, beans, lentils, fruits, vegetables, nuts, corn, potatoes, millet, quinoa, and others. For more information you can Google “gluten free diet.”
C Sategna-Guidetti MD PhD, U Volta MD, Prevalence of thyroid disorders in untreated adult celiac disease patients and effect of gluten withdrawal: an Italian multicenter study,
The American Journal of Gastroenterology (2001) 96, 751–757
I have been hypothyroid for 15 years, was prescribed Levothyroxine, did not help,( I believe it also drained calcium from my bones, recent bone density test show thinning severe) Now taking Armor Thyriod, still not feeling well… Also diagnoised with Fibromyalgia past 6 years forced to go on disability. AM totally frustrated with medical treatment so far, hoping you offer better solutions????
Diane,
T3 only treatment is vastly different that T4-containing treatment. Armour has T4. Many people with Fibromyalgia feel much better when their temps are normalized with T3 therapy. No treatment works for everyone but T3 is helping a lot of people frustrated on T4.