Thyroid and blood sugar fluctuations

Breaking the Hypothyroidism and Diabetes Cycle

Hypothyroidism and Hypoglycemia

1. Lifestyle choices & a high carbohydrate diet cause blood glucose to boom & bust
2. Glucose boom & bust cycles increase cortisol, a stress hormone
3. Too much cortisol causes hypothyroidism
4. Hypothyroidism causes insulin resistance
5. Insulin Resistance causes higher glucose in the bloodstream
6. High glucose levels causes the body to release more insulin
7. More insulin causes glucose to crash, creating sweets/carb craving
8. Vicious circle: sugar/carb cravings send you back to step #1
9. Beware: sugar-free sweeteners still produce an insulin response even though they are calorie-free, so they still reinforce this unhealthy pattern

Trapped: patients become addicted to sugar and carbohydrates while doing continual endocrine damage. This pattern is a common cluster of symptoms in patients.

The easy way is one you’re probably already familiar with: prescription pharmaceuticals. But, the problem with prescription drugs like Synthroid and anti-diabetic drugs like Metformin/Glucophage is that they artificially bring your body back into alignment without addressing the conditions that led to the problem to begin with. With prescription medications used to treat hormone imbalance, a drug is used to either boost or suppress certain hormones back to their healthy levels. But, simply getting one’s hormones back to a healthy level is not the same thing as actually being healthy. As any diabetic can attest, simply taking insulin or glucophage and continuing life as normal won’t really solve the underlying conditions. Similarly, a prescription for Levothyroxine won’t actually fix your thyroid. That is because these drugs don’t address the complex conditions that led to thyroid and glucose regulation problems. These medications can best be viewed as temporary measures that, while I may prescribe in serious cases, are definitely not solutions.

Since the quick fix of medications only addresses the problem without eliminating the causal factors, the problem will come back even worse in the future. Those who rely only on medications to solve their endocrine imbalances enter a new vicious circle where continually higher doses of medication result in increased side effects and decreased benefits.

Hormone Imbalance in Lean, Active People

• Those with very little body fat may be unable to produce sufficient hormones: fat and cholesterol are the building blocks of hormones. Without those building blocks, hormone levels drop.
• Carbs are converted into energy very quickly, leading to frequently feeling hungry. This need to eat frequently on a very low-fat diet is reflected the very jagged pattern of hormone-damaging blood glucose spikes and crashes throughout the day.
• Continual, jagged glucose spikes puts excessive wear and strain on the endocrine system over time, even among people who lead an active lifestyle.
• BEWARE: some low Glycemic Index foods produce an oversized insulin response. Choose carbs based on a low Insulin Index instead, because this chart compares the hormonal compensation needed balance glucose levels in the bloodstream after eating certain foods.
• People need enough fats, cholesterol and protein in their nutrition plans so they can dampen their glucose spikes/crashes. Fats and cholesterol are also necessary building blocks for healthy hormone production

The last 15% of people won’t easily gain weight on excess carbs or fat. However, whether or not carbs cause gain weight based on one’s genetics or not, the dangerous pattern of spiking blood sugar and increasing hormonal imbalance can happen to anyone. Those most especially at-risk are people with a family history of diabetes or other endocrine dysfunction. For this group, choosing carbs that are lower on the Insulin Index will provide fuel for life while limiting insulin response.

While many generally link weight directly with health, this may not always be true. There are many cases where very lean, active and athletic people can develop hormone imbalances. Further complicating matters, many on traditional athletic or vegan diets may notice increased health, athletic performance and vitality for several years. People on these strict nutrition plans often feel better at first because it causes one to avoid a bunch of junk food while eating a lot more healthy, plant-based foods. But, that’s not the end of the story. Many people who go vegan or adopt a low-fat athletic diet lose weight and feel a lot better. In the long run, their body’s slowly spend all of their natural reserves of hormone-building fats, cholesterol and B-Vitamins. Also problematic, foods in these diets can be higher in carbohydrates, when compared to other meal plans. Strict, low-fat athletes often see a plateau in their performance gains due to unhealthy blood sugar cycles wherein they need to eat every few hours, feel “hangry” (hungry + angry) often and are also depleted of hormone-building fats and cholesterol. For these reasons, I see many otherwise healthy, long-term vegans and athletes present with hormone imbalances that the patient may not suspect because their diet worked so well for them in the past.

Insulin Index, Gut Flora & Physical Movement:

The Insulin Index is a food chart that indicates how different foods affect insulin levels in the body. In contrast, the Glycemic Index shows how foods affect blood sugar, but not what those foods do to the more important Insulin Response. For patients seeking better hormone balance, I often recommend choosing foods lower on the Insulin Index rather than the Glycemic Index because this is the most direct natural way to start taking control of one’s endocrine responses and start the process of undoing the dangerous process of insulin resistance.

Yogurt’s dirty little secrets:

• Lactose in dairy is a carb
• Fruit added to yogurt is a carb
• Most yogurt has tons of added sugar so it’s up with candy on the Insulin Index

The Lowdown: while plain yogurt has some beneficial properties, the yogurt consumed by most Americans is so overloaded with carbs and added sugar that it may do more harm than good

While most people are aware that the foods we eat affect our health, fewer understand how the millions of bacteria that live in our digestive tract influence our health positively or negatively. Overgrowth of the types of gut bacteria that break down carbohydrates is tied to inflammation, autoimmune conditions and heart disease. Inflammation and autoimmune symptoms caused by imbalanced gut flora are like a second-wave attack on the thyroid already compromised from imbalanced blood sugar.

Unfortunately, the common medical advice for gut health is to eat yogurt for the probiotics. The problem is, what most consider “yogurt” contains the carbohydrate lactose and is then loaded up with fruit and sugar/corn-syrup. Loaded down with all those extra carbs, yogurt may actually create more gut health problems than it solves. Not only this, but dairy can also contribute to excess phlegm and inflammation.

Probiotics for digestive health have recently become mainstream. But, what more people need to realize is that the totality of our nutrition is what will have the largest effect on gut health. Despite products like yogurt and probiotic supplements flooding the market, there has been very little information for the general public about just how much we can transform gut health via what we feed our microbiome.

Simple Gut Health Principles

• Balance carb intake by incorporating plenty of protein and some fats into your nutrition plan
• Too many carbs cause an overgrowth of gut bacteria correlated with heart disease, inflammation, autoimmune disease & thyroid problems
• Choose slow burning carbs (low on the Insulin Index) to reduce damaging blood-sugar peaks and crashes
• Eat a variety of vegetables daily for nutrition & to feed more healthy gut flora
• Physical movement helps a lot
• Beware: Yogurt has probiotics, but is often stuffed with carbs/sugar
• Beware: antibiotics kill off healthy gut flora

Medical research shows that diets that are too high in carbohydrates or fat can negatively affect the delicate balance of our gut microbiome. When we eat food, we are not the only ones doing the eating. Inside our digestive tract, countless beneficial bacteria aid in the digestion of the foods we consume. Some bacteria help break down sugars, others fats and proteins. Because each type of bacteria helps digest certain types of food, some types of bacteria will become much more prevalent while others will decline in numbers, depending on the balance of foods eaten.

Each type of natural gut flora affects our health in a different way. For example, the “Western Diet” of processed foods high in refined carbohydrates and saturated fat feeds gut bacteria known to cause inflammatory conditions, endocrine imbalance, heart disease and autoimmune conditions. Gut health is very complex, and we’ve only just scratched the surface. But, hopefully this has provided enough insight to make some healthy changes that will produce noticeable results.

Movement is life. Rather than focusing on exercise that may seem like a chore, or something that doesn’t fit with their lifestyle, I like to incorporate movements that align with the life that I want to live. Find a way to move that is enjoyable and/or rewarding in some way and stick with it. Physical movement improves the body’s response to insulin, lowers blood sugar, lowers thyroid-damaging stress hormones, improves mood and increases quality of life. If exercise is your thing, go for it! If not, find activities that involve physical movement that you enjoy and incorporate those activities into a daily and weekly routine.