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You are here: Home / Archives for Hashimoto’s

Why going ‘gluten-free’ is not enough

September 22, 2014 by drchrista Leave a Comment

Gluten-free is all the rage now with major restaurant chains offering gluten-free menus and even the smallest grocery stores having aisles dedicated to gluten-free products. With the proliferation of gluten-free offerings, one might be tempted to think we are making healthier choices.

This is not the case.

I remember when I first started working with Hashimoto’s patients. After delivering the news that their thyroid condition was in fact an autoimmune condition, I informed them that they needed to go gluten-free in order to prevent their bodies from making antibodies that attacked and destroyed their thyroid gland. Knowing that this can be quite a drastic change for some people, I tried to encourage them by reminding them that this was an opportunity to eat healthier by filling out their diets with vegetables instead of processed wheat products. What quickly became apparent though, is that people simply started swapping their processed wheat products for processed gluten-free products.

Let me be plain: Gluten-free foods are NOT health foods.

  1. Gluten-free products are highly processed. It takes the marvels of modern machinery to make something made of rice flour to not taste gritty and chalky.
  2. Gluten-free foods are high in sugar. What’s the best way to cover-up that chalky taste? Sugar. Lots of it!
  3. Gluten-free foods are terrible for blood sugar regulation. Another way to improve the taste & texture of a gluten-free food, besides adding a lot of sugar, is to using highly refined starches like cornstarch, potato starch & tapioca starch. These are very fine powders that are often a solution to that ‘gritty’ texture of rice flour. The problem is that they are so refined, there is nothing to digest and their carbohydrate content hits the bloodstream very quickly, provoking an insulin spike. This is very hard on the pancreas and is the same mechanism that leads to the development of Type II diabetes.
  4. Gluten-free foods use refined vegetable oils. Fats are another way to cover up the chalky taste & texture. This wouldn’t be so problematic if we were using heat-stable, traditional fats like coconut oil or butter. However, most refined foods have refined fats in them like canola and soybean oil. These oils are not stable at high temperatures and have gone through a complex treatment process to deodorize and clean them before they are even sold to you. Why would they have to go through this process? Because they are so delicate, they become rancid just going through the extraction process. They have to be cleansed and deodorized or they would be too disgusting to eat. While the smell may be gone, the artery-destroying free radicals and inflammation-promoting omega 6 fats are not. Avoid these.
  5. Gluten-free foods are not a good source of nutrients. This is a problem with any processed food. Processing removes and/or destroys the nutrient content. The more highly processed, the more of the nutrients that have been destroyed. Compared to vegetables, grains aren’t that great a source of nutrients to begin with. Refining them further into flours and even starches, removes what little there was to begin with. If health is really your goal, its best to swap out gluten-free wanna-be foods for real, whole foods that are naturally gluten-free. Like vegetables 🙂

It’s for the above reasons that I started recommending a Paleo-type diet when I need my patients to go gluten-free. Paleo is about whole, real foods. It’s also about healing the gut. Because here’s the other thing I began to notice when my patients just started swapping their processed wheat products for gluten-free processed products: they started developing sensitivities to other grain products- particularly the ones that they started consuming more often in the processed gluten-free foods. In the scientific literature this is known as ‘cross-reactivity.’ This occurred because the underlying problem- often a leaky gut- was not fully healed by simply switching to a ‘gluten-free’ diet.

I also noticed this pattern in my Celiac patients. Their symptoms greatly improved on a gluten-free diet, but they still didn’t feel fully well or healthy until they started eating more whole foods and less processed food. Again, years and years of irritation and inflammation in the gut could not be fixed simply by going gluten-free. All grains needed to be eliminated and more nutrient-dense foods like vegetables and bone broth needed to be added.

If a product has to be labeled ‘gluten-free,’ its probably not healthy for you. If health is truly your goal, you would be better off investing in naturally gluten-free foods like animal products, vegetables, fruits and nuts.

Filed Under: Functional Medicine, Gluten-free, Nutrition, Paleo diet Tagged With: autoimmune, carbohydrates, gluten-free, Hashimoto's, hypothyroidism, inflammation, Paleo diet

5 things you should know if you’ve been diagnosed with Hypothyroidism

July 19, 2013 by drchrista 1 Comment

  1. thyroid glandIn the U.S., the most common cause of hypothyroidism is Hashimoto’s autoimmune thyroid. It is estimated that this autoimmune disorder is the cause of 80-90% of hypothyroid cases. This means that in most cases of hypothyroidism, the health of the immune systems must be addressed in addition to the function of the thyroid gland itself!! If you are only taking thyroid medication, you’re missing the actual problem.
  2. You can have all the symptoms of hypothyroidism and still have blood work that comes back as ‘normal.’  The lab ranges for ‘normal’ TSH are based on a statistical average and do not represent what is an optimal range for health and feeling good. It is quite common for people to have all the signs and symptoms of hypothyroidism and yet, be told it can’t be that because their lab work is ‘normal.’ If this is your case, you should seek out a functional medicine doctor who can help you understand what is really going on with your thyroid gland.
  3. You can have all the symptoms of hypothyroidism without anything being wrong with your thyroid gland itself. The thyroid gland doesn’t function in isolation. To begin with, it is controlled by the brain. The gland itself only makes thyroid hormone, which then has to travel to every cell in the body, enter that cell, and then travel into the nucleus of the cell where it has its effect. Just like a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, if there is a problem anywhere along the line, the whole process breaks down and results in the same symptoms. If you have hypothyroidism, you need to have a full thyroid panel done periodically, including TSH, T4, T3, T3 uptake and TPO antibodies at the very least.
  4. Diet can be an important part of managing your symptoms. Especially if you do have Hashimoto’s autoimmune thyroid, adoption of a gluten-free diet can have a big impact. Eating gluten actually causes more antibodies to be made to the thyroid tissue, causing more destruction of the gland over time. This can be a common reason why you have to keep upping the dosage of your thyroid medication. Eliminating gluten and adopting an anti-inflammatory diet can go a long way toward helping you keep your thyroid gland intact as well as managing your hypothyroid symptoms.
  5. You can do more to take charge of your hypothyroidism other than just take another pill. While ditching the medication altogether may not be in the cards for you, by managing your immune system through proper diet and lifestyle changes, you can control your symptoms and slow the development of the disease. Using a more holistic strategy may also help prevent the future development of other autoimmune diseases.

Filed Under: Functional Medicine, Gluten-free Tagged With: gluten-free, Hashimoto's, hypothyroidsim

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Dr. Christa

I am a Chiropractor helping patients to have less pain, move with more freedom and ease, and have more energy for the things they love. More…

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