Top 10 Foods That DESTROY Your THYROID

Your thyroid controls everything. Your energy, weight, mood, metabolism. Every single cell in your body answers to it. But there are foods, common foods, that are harming it. And some of these foods can be outright destructive to thyroid tissue, while others merely cripple its function. Now, here's the scary part. Several of these foods are marketed as health foods, and chances are you've had several of them already this week. Hello, health champions. Today, we're going to talk about 10 foods that destroy your thyroid. And these 10 foods fall into three groups. The first group is where the food can have a direct destructive effect on thyroid tissue, that it will actually chip away at the cells of the thyroid. And the second group is where the food doesn't directly hurt the thyroid. It doesn't chip away at the cells. The cells stay intact, but it has some other mechanism where it interferes with or blocks the function of the thyroid, so it can't do its job. And the third group of food is where it has a little bit of both. But as we go through these, I want to ask you to keep in the back of your head throughout, how many of these foods do you think that your ancestors had? And when I say ancestor, I'm not talking about your grandpa. I'm talking about tens of thousands of years ago, because those people had the same DNA that you have today. Number one is gluten, which is a protein that we find in grains, primarily in wheat, which has one of the largest amounts of gluten. And gluten contains a little piece called gliadin. And this gliadin is very similar structurally to an enzyme you have in the thyroid called thyroid peroxidase. And it's the enzyme that actually makes thyroid hormone. But now because they're so similar, and gliadin is viewed as an intruder by your body, your immune system will start going after this gliadin. But because it's so similar, it often gets confused. And while it goes after and starts gobbling up gliadin, it also starts going after your own enzymes and your own cells. So it confuses gliadin with thyroid peroxidase, and it starts going after both. And then it also destroys the cells in the thyroid that contains this thyroid peroxidase. So this confusion can lead to an autoimmune attack. And in fact, the most common thyroid problem in the Western world is called Hashimoto's thyroiditis, which is an autoimmune disease. And this is the primary mechanism that they've established for Hashimoto's. And when your immune system is sensitized like that, it means that your thyroid is going to get systematically attacked every time that you eat something with gluten. And this type of autoimmunity is much more common than people realize, but it doesn't have any symptoms per se. And that's why it's so critical that we go beyond the standard test of TSH, the thyroid stimulating hormone, which isn't even a thyroid hormone, it's a pituitary hormone. And it's a very general, very superficial way of testing the thyroid. We have to test these antibodies to find out if we have an autoimmunity going on. So we have to test the TPO, the thyroid peroxidase, and the TG, the thyroglobulin antibodies. And we know that this is a critical mechanism because when you take people with Hashimoto's and elevated TPO antibodies, every time that they go on a gluten-free diet, we see a drop in these thyroid antibodies. And it's also important that we understand that we're not talking about celiac disease. We're not talking about a severe allergy to gluten. We're talking about a subtle mechanism that sets up autoimmunity. And most of the people with this type of thyroid autoimmunity are not going to have any gastrointestinal symptoms. So let's just review thyroid function real briefly, the main steps. And the whole cascade starts in the hypothalamus, which is the body's main regulator, the main sensor, if you will. And it sends out a hormone called thyroid-releasing hormone that goes to the pituitary. And then the pituitary makes a hormone called TSH, thyroid-stimulating hormone, which is exactly what it does. It stimulates the thyroid to make thyroid hormone, which of course is T4. That is the primary product of the thyroid called thyroxin. And then this thyroxin, the T4 gets out into circulation. And at some point it's going to flow through the liver and the gut, and it's going to get activated. So the liver does about 60% of the activation. The gut does another 20 and about 20% of the thyroid hormone produced has, it's a little bit backward. So it's basically useless, but most of it gets activated in the liver and some of it in the gut. And the active form is called T3. And the vast majority of thyroid activity rests in the T3, even though there's like a hundred times more T4 than T3. The T3 is active. And now the active thyroid hormone gets into circulation and it's going to fit in various different receptors. So virtually every cell on your body has thyroid receptors and the T3 goes in to fit one of those receptors. And it tells that cell how much to do of whatever it is that cell is supposed to do. It's like a thermostat. It's like the accelerator for every cell. So this entire chain has to work for our thyroid function to be there. And we could have interference at every step of the way. And anything that compromises this chain could make you functionally hypothyroid. So the first step that typically happens is if something blocks or inhibits or interferes the pituitary. And if the function of the pituitary is reduced, or if it's sort of deaf to signals, now we're not going to have as much TSH. The thyroid is going to get less stimulation and it's not going to produce as much thyroid hormone. Even if the thyroid gland is working perfectly and it has everything it needs, if the TSH isn't going out, then the thyroid is still going to underperform. Then we could have things that are directly destructive and damaging to the thyroid cells, or it could be something that's just blocking the function of the thyroid and the output of the thyroid. We could also have something that blocks the conversion or interferes with that conversion or isn't present that is necessary for that conversion. And we can also have blockage and compromise at the level of the receptor. So keep these in mind as we continue to talk about the different foods so you have a better picture of where this is happening and what to do about it. Food number two is alcohol. And this is where we again want to keep in mind that it's the amount of alcohol. Moderate drinking has not been shown to cause these effects, but we're talking about excess drinking and chronic drinking. So alcohol is toxic to the thyroid follicular cells, the active cells of the thyroid. And alcohol also suppresses TSH at the pituitary, which was the top level we started on the previous slide. Alcohol also depletes zinc, selenium, and magnesium, which are critical for the conversion of T4 to T3. So we can't activate thyroid hormone without those minerals. And large amounts of alcohol can also compromise the integrity of the gut membrane. So we could have increased gut permeability. And that's one of the primary mechanisms for autoimmunity, the risk of food particles and antigens going into places where they're not supposed to be. And then that autoimmunity in turn could result in direct thyroid damage. And number three is any food with pesticides or other endocrine disruptors. So we'll talk about what those are. So we have something called organochlorine pesticides. So this is where you have an organic compound and you combine it with chlorine, which is very, very unnatural. It does not happen in nature. And that's why it interferes with so many pathways. And just a little piece of information for you. The popular sweetener Splenda is an organochlorine compound. So it's closely related to these pesticides. And I don't care how safe they say it is. If something is closely related to those, then I'll stay away from it. Also in this group are BPA. We have phthalates, dioxins, and PCBs. And there's three different ways that these compounds interfere with thyroid function. One is that they interfere with the hormone carriers. The carriers, they're like little vehicles, if you will. Hormones never float around by themselves. They have a vehicle. They also compete with the hormones at the receptor site. And if you have a receptor site, that's like a lock. And this compound or the hormone is a key. And if it goes into that lock and it turns, now that would be the hormone. That's the correct function. But what if something fits into that lock, whether it's the right one or not, and it just blocks it, it doesn't turn. Now it still renders that lock useless because other hormones, other proper keys can't fit into it and do what they're supposed to do. And these compounds also will cause increased inflammation, which does two things. It causes direct tissue damage, but it also sustains any existing autoimmune attack and makes it worse. So one of the easiest ways to combat this or protect yourself, be proactive, is to buy organic food as much as you can. So what you want to focus on is avoid the dirty dozen. Those are the ones they usually repeatedly use the most pesticides, and they change from year to year. So you just do a search on the internet and you focus on the clean 15. Those are the ones that use the least pesticides. So best of course, if you can get everything organic, but at least try to follow the dirty dozen, clean 15. And another easy thing to do is to do your cooking and your food storage in glassware and stainless steel. Don't put hot tomato sauce in a plastic bowl or store it in a Ziploc bag and absolutely do not cook your food in these microwave-ready plastic bags. And the three that we covered, those are the worst because they can actually chip away at the amount of thyroid tissue. So it can be very difficult to recover from that. This next part are foods that they primarily hurt with interference. They reduce the thyroid function by interference, but they can also have some destructive effects. And number four is tap water. And we're going to have just a really quick chemistry lesson. And I know you promised when you left high school or college that you would never take chemistry again, but this is simple and it's going to be very helpful. So in the periodic table, there are different groupings and we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. And that's how many electrons they have in the outer shell. And if they're in the first group, then that one electron is sort of left over. And it's always looking to join someone else. And then if they have eight, those are the noble gases. Those have complete outer shells. And that's why they're so stable. They hardly ever react with anything. And then next to it is number seven. Those atoms are looking for eight. So they have seven. They would love to have one more, which is why they tend to look for something in group one. One is trying to donate something. Number seven is looking for something. And there's a reason for me bringing this up. So when they're in the same groups, they have similar properties. And this becomes very important for thyroid. And they have similar reactivity. So in one and seven, those groups are very, very active. So for example, we have sodium chloride. And here in group one, we find sodium, which has one electron to donate. And we have chloride over here, which is desperately looking for an electron. So they're going to combine, obviously, and make sodium chloride. But now let's focus in a little bit over on this side of the periodic table. And we're going to zoom in and look at group number seven. So those are called halogens. And that comes from two words. One is halo, which is Greek, means salt. And gen is something that can generate. So halogens are something that makes salt. And the first one we're interested in, obviously, is iodine, because iodine is what makes thyroid hormone. But we also want to understand what else is in this group, because they're like part of the same family. They're very similar, very similar properties and similar reactivity. So we have fluoride or fluorine, we have chloride or chlorine, depending on which form, if it's ionic or it's elemental form. And we have bromide or bromine. So in tap water, virtually all tap water in the world, unless you have a well, is going to have fluoride added to it. And there is something in the thyroid called the sodium iodide symporter. So it's a transport system that grabs on to sodium and co-transports various different compounds. And it's made for the purpose of concentrating iodine for the thyroid, to bring it in so we can make thyroid hormone. And this transport system is specifically designed for us to get iodine, which is the raw material for the thyroid hormone. T4 has four of these atoms and T3 has one. So we make T4 and then we pick off one iodine and we have the active form. But now fluoride, as we said, it's part of the same family. It's very, very similar. It has the same number of electrons in the outer shell and so forth. It's a halogen. So fluoride is going to compete in this NIS. It's going to compete with iodine. And you can think of it as a bus that only has so many seats. But if fluoride comes along, even if it's not invited, but it just kind of jumps the bus and grabs half the seats. Now we only have half as much availability of moving iodine in to the thyroid. And with less iodine transported, obviously we're going to have a reduction, a proportional reduction in thyroid output. But here's the problem. This transport system was made for iodine and iodine is very safe. It's the unique salt. It's a unique type of halogen to make thyroid hormone. None of the other halogens actually have a function in the body. Whereas iodine has a very critical function. Now the problem is fluoride is extremely active. Like we said, the one things in group one and group seven are extremely reactive. They're just looking for something to basically blow up with. And therefore it's going to create oxidative stress inside that tissue where it's not supposed to be. And we're going to have some thyroid destruction. So fluoride is one of those things that will both have a competitive effect and a direct way to destroy tissue. And the next halogen is chlorine. And I called it 4B because it's similar but still sort of different. So we need to understand this. And one of the most abundant minerals, one of the most abundant elements in the world is sodium chloride. We have trillions of tons of it on the planet and a huge portion of the body, relatively speaking, is sodium chloride. And in your body it's present at millions of times the concentration of iodine. So if chlorine or chloride was to compete with iodine then we would never get any iodine into the thyroid. Every single seat on the bus would be taken, guaranteed. So somehow this NIS, the symporter transport system, has learned to tell the difference between sodium chloride, the chloride from sodium chloride, and the other halogens. Because otherwise it'd be impossible to get any iodine into the thyroid. So chloride does not compete. However, chlorine, which is what they add to the water, is a poison gas. It's very, very toxic. And when they add it to the water some of it's going to get into the body. So we do have the effect of a toxin but we do not have the effect of competition of chlorine. So the damage here is from oxidative stress and that of course can also do damage directly to the thyroid tissue and to this enzyme, to the TPO, thyroid peroxidase. Number five is bromide and this is the next halogen. It's the one closest to iodine. So it's a little bit larger molecule and it's more similar in its effect to fluoride than it is to chlorine. And it is a known toxic. They used to have it in orange soda and in red all the time. But they found out how toxic it is and now it's restricted to a large part. But even though it's restricted, it's not banned and therefore it is still used in some commercial baking. Now bromide will compete with iodine in this transporter system. So it can displace iodine and reduce the thyroid function that way. But bromide also can accumulate in the tissue. So once it gets into the thyroid, it can actually stay there. It can displace the iodine in the hormone. So the thyroid goes on and makes hormone and it thinks it's using iodine but it's actually using bromide. And now the thyroid is producing absolutely useless hormone. So bromide can also reduce thyroid function by competing for space. But it is also very highly reactive. Not as reactive as fluoride but close. And therefore it causes oxidative stress and it can directly destroy thyroid tissue that way too. Food number six is industrial seed oil. It's this mass-produced oil called vegetable oil. Even though it is actually made from seed and grain and legumes. So the most common ones are canola, soybean oil, corn oil, sunflower oil, and safflower oil. And these will increase the oxidative stress on the body because they're so harshly processed that they're oxidized already when you buy them. But another thing that they do is the polyunsaturated fatty acids called PUFAs. They can actually do two things. They can block the conversion of T4 to T3. So we talked about that how critical it is. Without that conversion we don't actually get the active form of the hormone. And it will do that primarily in the liver. And these polyunsaturated fatty acids can also compete at the hormone receptor site. So again it can fill in the receptor and block it and make it unavailable for the hormone. So we reduce the hormone activity because the hormone can't get to the lock so to speak. But then some people get very concerned and some people have proposed that fish oil is really bad because it is also a polyunsaturated fatty acid. But we have to realize that there's a big difference between different polyunsaturated. So it is actually the problem is about first of all the quantity of oil. With fish oil with the EPA and the DHA you're going to get a teaspoon or a tablespoon. Whereas with these commercial oils we're consuming them up to about 40 liters per year per person. But the other big factor is what type of polyunsaturated fatty acid is it. And the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 is what really matters. And whereas all these commercial oils have a very very high omega-6 to omega-3 ratio. Fish oil has a very low ratio. It actually has a whole lot more omega-3 than omega-6. So the ratio is like 1 to 5 instead of 20 to 1. So it's a factor 100 to 1 in terms of how that ratio affects you. So even though both omega-6 and omega-3 are polyunsaturated fatty acids and even though a lot of people will just kind of throw them in the same category whether it's a seed oil or whether it's a fish oil. Functionally and the way that they affect inflammation in the body they're really total opposites. Number seven is sugared and processed carbs. Processed starches and grains primarily. And the reason is that once you have a chronic dysregulation of your blood glucose meaning it's too high and you have constant blood sugar swings. Now what's going to happen is you get a And what they have found is that cortisol high levels of cortisol will inhibit the TSH at the pituitary level. So like we talked about a few slides back if we lower if we inhibit interfere with the production of TSH now the thyroid could be perfectly healthy it could have everything it but the TSH isn't telling it to do anything. Only a portion of the orders are going through so the thyroid is going to significantly reduce its output. The second thing it does is that it pretty much always results in insulin resistance which affects the vast majority of the world today and insulin resistance will reduce liver function. With significant insulin resistance we start getting fatty liver infiltration and now the liver isn't working as well as it's supposed to. And if you remember we said that 60 percent of the conversion from T4 to the active T3 happens in the liver. So if we have a reduced liver function we're also going to have a reduced conversion. Another thing that sugar does is that it depletes zinc and selenium. Sugar is completely devoid of nutrients so anytime you eat it you're going to rob your body of these nutrients. Your body is going to borrow from the last time you ate something that had any nutrients in it. And with less of those minerals then you can't make hormone the way you're supposed to because they're essential co-factors for both the synthesis of thyroid hormone for the TPO and for the conversion from T4 to T3. And this is also critical and common so that's why in my mind you want to test TSH which they do standard but that is so inadequate by itself. You also have to test the antibodies and you have to test the T4 and the T3 levels separately because then you can see if you have a whole lot of T4 but not so much T3 now you know that probably the thyroid is working it's making the T4 but you're not getting the conversion down so you're still functionally hypothyroid even though the T4 is there and everything else seems to be working. And number eight is goitrogens and I almost put a question mark on this because it sort of is a real thing but most people have blown it way out of proportion and some people are scared of good things because they don't understand this. So a goitrogen is something that can cause a goiter and a goiter is an enlarged thyroid gland that results from the lack of iodine. So if you don't have enough iodine then the thyroid gland is going to grow to try to grab on to every little molecule of iodine you can and if you have really low levels of iodine then it's going to grow into a goiter. So some of these plants, cruciferous vegetables, they found out that if people lived in areas where there were low iodine so they were marginally deficient in iodine and they ate tons of these cruciferous vegetables then they would make their goiter worse. They would generate a goiter or they would make it worse if they ate these vegetables raw. And here's how that works. So these cruciferous vegetables they contain something called glucosinolates and if you chew these raw then there's some enzymes and some things going on that turns this into a goitrin. And this is an interesting word because it sounds a lot like goiter and so a goitrin is something that generates a goiter and they came up with that name because they observed that people that ate a lot of raw vegetables they could develop a goiter. So it's not that it just happens to be similar they named it that before they knew any of these mechanisms. And this goitrin causes a mild inhibition of the activity of TPO so you're making less thyroid hormone. Also there's a weak competition with iodine for the uptake. So it's not a very potent mechanism but if you're borderline deficient in iodine and you eat a ton of these vegetables you will definitely make it worse. But here's the thing to understand that this effect goes away almost completely almost 100 percent when you cook the food. So the glucosinolate does not turn into goitrin if you cook it. Another important distinction to understand here about these vegetables is that it only competes. It doesn't actually destroy or harm the thyroid in any way and you could kind of tell that because it actually makes the thyroid grow larger which isn't a great thing because it shouldn't have to do that but it's essentially very healthy thyroid tissue. It just doesn't have enough iodine which means that as soon as you supply a little bit of iodine then everything goes back to normal. And like I said it's only an issue if you are deficient or borderline deficient in iodine. So eat your vegetables. Don't eat a ton of them raw. If you eat some raw broccoli then sprinkle some iodized salt on it. And number nine is very similar to what we just talked about in terms of mechanism but still they are completely different and we'll see why. And soy has something called isoflavones and there's two in particular called genistein and dadesine. I promise you don't have to remember that. And just like the goitrin they inhibit this TPO but they do it more strongly than the goitrin does. But here's the big difference. Cooking does not help. These isoflavones are very very stable and they're not going to change depending on how you prepare or cook it. The only version that's slightly better is if you ferment it like in miso or tempeh then the amount of isoflavones go down slightly but they do not go away. But here's the problem. Most people are going to eat their soy in terms of processed products as supplements and food bars and food replacements. And those are going to use soy protein isolate primarily. And here we have a concentrated form of these isoflavones. So we're getting way more than we would just from soy. Another issue with soy is besides interfering with the thyroid these isoflavones are phytoestrogens which means that they're plant versions of your human estrogen. They're going to fit into your estrogen keys and they're going to in many cases actually act like a working key. So it's like you have an over dominance of estrogen and you can start disrupting your hormone system in more ways than just thyroid. Now the best food for a baby is breast milk. If you're a newborn that's nature's perfect food. But some people don't want to breastfeed or they can't breastfeed and then there's all these substitutes. And at first they were using cow's milk but a lot of people develop a lot of babies and people develop allergies because cow's milk is pasteurized or powdered or dried and it's been altered in so many ways. So then they go to soy milk substitutes. And here's the problem that in baby formulas they use the soy protein isolates of course and now that baby is getting a much higher dose per weight per body weight than an adult would from eating protein supplements. And knowing what we now know there's a lot of questions about the thyroid development for the neonatal for the very young baby. How are their thyroids going to develop if we inhibit if we interfere with them from day one. So a lot of people will compare the cruciferous vegetables and the soy sort of as equal and say well they both interfere with thyroid function. But hopefully you've seen enough now to see that cruciferous are okay especially if you boil them and soy is probably something you want to stay away from. And number 10 is a surprise to most people that you could actually shut down your thyroid with excess iodine even though it's something it has to have in small quantities. Too much is not good. So there's something called the Wolf Tchaikov effect which fortunately it's very rare but I just want to mention it so we get a little perspective. It's a built-in protective mechanism so if you get a huge spike in iodine then the thyroid shuts itself down as a defensive mechanism. Because if you try to process all that iodine it would probably create a huge hormone imbalance and probably burn itself out in the process. But nature is smart so a healthy thyroid will reset itself and start working again in a couple of days as soon as that spike is gone. However a weak compromised or an autoimmune thyroid may not be so lucky. It may not be able to reset itself and then that safety shut off could become persistent. And I'm mentioning this because even though iodine deficiencies are way more common than an excess of iodine, if you're not paying attention and think about it there are ways that you could get too much. So iodized salt of course has iodine and that's what they're going to use a lot of in processed foods. Some people eat seaweed and products from the sea, algae-based product. If you take concentrated iodine supplements and then there's also iodine-based sanitizer. So if you use the combination of all this and didn't pay attention you could work your way up to an excess. So the lesson to remember is that more is not better. Yes we have to have an appropriate amount but then beyond a certain limit it actually does more damage. And the thyroid gland is very sensitive tissue. It's a tiny tiny gland it only weighs like an ounce or less than that and it does so much. Sometimes we liken it to a canary in the coal mine which is where coal workers working they put a little canary down there because it was more sensitive than the coal workers for gas leaks or pollution or toxins. So if the canary croaked then they knew it was time to get out of there. Well the thyroid's a little bit like that in the body because it's very sensitive and very often it croaks or it starts to be weak or unhealthy long before other organs. And it just means we have to pay attention to what it tells us. We got to measure we're going to get the proper blood tests and we have to take care of it maybe a little bit more delicately than some other organs. If you enjoyed this video you're going to love that one. And if you truly want to master health by understanding how the body really works make sure you subscribe hit that bell and turn on all the notifications so you never miss a life-saving video.