How Does Someone Protect Their Thyroid?

how does someone protect their thyroid so so the question about what we can do to make sure that we protect our thyroid a few things number one I would say is that we need to make sure we have a source of iodine in the diet and you know the vehicle that that has been used to to provide the population with iodine is iodized salt and when people become more concerned about health they get concerned about using iodized salt because of some of the components that are added to the salt to keep it flowing sometimes things like aluminum can be added so they’re eliminating often iodized salt and and so they need to make sure they have an alternative source of iodine if they’re not using iodine you can buy some iodized salt like iodine sea salt and other I die salt that don’t use the the the harmful agents that allow the salt to be free-flowing but if you’re not using that and and we want to limit our salt intake so I can understand people not wanting to use that we can use seaweed but again seaweed is actually really concentrated in iodine especially certain types of seaweed like kelp and so you have to be a little bit knowledgeable about how much to use so for example the dried kelp powder that you can buy as a sort of a sprinkling for your food we’re looking at between probably a tenth and a sixteenth of a teaspoon it’s not a lot the upper limit for iodine is eleven hundred micrograms the recommended intake is about a hundred and fifty it’s a little higher during pregnancy and lactation but for most people it’s up for most adults it’s 150 and so it’s just a small amount that’s needed if you are you know averse to using seaweed of any sort then probably iodine drops or multi with iodine would be a reasonable option there is some iodine in our food depending on the soil content and so on but it can be a little bit of a a risky thing if you’re not if you’re not getting some sort of more concentrated iodine source and in Europe it’s actually even worse because the the soil content tends to be lower than it is in North America so that’s number one number two is I think it’s really important to protect your yours body’s ability to produce hormones and so we don’t want to be over consuming refined foods we don’t want to be over consuming sugars we don’t want to be getting too much visceral fat which can compromise our whole system of hormone production we want to be exercising regularly we want to be eating a lot of healthy foods and some people worry about what we call goitrogenic foods because a lot of healthy foods are have boy trojans in them and so things like soy and flax and and all kinds of cruciferous vegetables which are our primary provider of of you know things like isothiocyanates that induce phase two enzyme systems to help us get rid of harmful compounds that float around in our bodies and so these are powerful foods they contain goitrogens but goitrogens i just want to say this boy trojans are not a concern if you have enough iodine in your diet so we can have a variety of these foods are not worried about them it’s when were iodine deficient or we’re not eating enough iodine that goitrogens can just compound the problem so I think that you know basically we we need enough of the the key you know a number of key nutrients which are important for hormone production but those nutrients generally we get enough of when we eat a variety of whole plant foods and I think it’s a valuable thing to include enough nuts and seeds as well because they tend to be really good sources of some of the trace minerals that we don’t get in as great of quantity in other plant foods