After hitting the wall with my health last month due to increased stress associated with COVID, homeschooling three kids and having to close our clinics temporarily, my stress hormones went through the roof! As a consequence, my thyroid function dropped, and I was feeling emotionally and physically weak, and I gained weight, particularly belly fat.
The number of patients I’ve treated for hypothyroidism, Hashimoto’s disease, hyperthyroidism and Grave’s Disease has tripled over the last five years. The reduced nutritional value of our food (particularly trace minerals), increased toxic load, and stress are the main culprits, in my opinion. Many are now living in emergency mode or ‘fight or flight mode’ most of the time with over-revved Triple Warmer Meridians leaving no energy left for us to heal. For thousands of years, Traditional Chinese Medicine has been used to help restore health and vitality. A meridian is like an ‘energy highway’ in the human body which can be traced throughout the body; they flow inside the body (not on the surface), they exist in corresponding pairs, and each meridian has many acupuncture points along its path.
For your thyroid to be well (and your entire hormonal system for that matter) you need to get the right fuel in to nourish your body system, support the function of your organs and reduce your toxic load; both mind and body.
Your Thyroid Function
Your thyroid function also relies on keeping your Seven Pillars of Wellness in balance: sleep, movement, environment, nutrition, supplementation, body balance and mindfulness.
Many symptoms of hypothyroidism (an underactive thyroid) are the same as those of other conditions, so it can easily be confused for something else.
Symptoms usually evolve slowly, and you may not realise you have a medical predicament for several years.
Common symptoms encompass:
- tiredness
- being sensitive to cold
- weight gain
- constipation
- depression
- slow movements and thoughts
- muscle aches and weakness
- muscle cramps
- dry and scaly skin
- fragile hair and nails
- loss of libido (sex drive)
- pain, numbness and a tingling sensation in hand and fingers (carpal tunnel syndrome)
- irregular periods or heavy periods
I was on 150mcg of thyroxine for around 20 years, and last year I cured myself of my thyroid condition. Western medicine is unable to do that (although excellent at treating other conditions), so I found my answers in complimentary naturopathic medicine.
Last month my levels dropped significantly due to external circumstances, so I simply started my 100-day reset to rebalance this master gland. Even after one month, my thyroid was back functioning again, I felt strong physically & emotionally, and I lost 7kg!
10 Tips To Rebalance Your Thyroid
Here are my top tips on how to rebalance your thyroid, combat stubborn body fat, reduce your stress hormones, get well and stay well.
1. Reduce Stress Hormones
Your entire endocrine system is dependant on your adrenal function and how much adrenaline that is in your system most days. One way you might experience this is adrenal fatigue, where you feel tired in the day, and then you’re wide awake when you need to wind down at bedtime.
Getting your mindfulness pillar in place is essential to battle this. Choose a daily prayer or meditation each morning to calm your nervous system. Start your day in a relaxed state, fully present in love and gratitude instead of going straight to emails and reading something stressful that triggers your system into emergency mode.
Your body can also get addicted to adrenaline, and even if you don’t have a stressful event, your mind’s negative thinking can create one for it is used to operating daily under so much stress.
A Simple Exercise to Calm Your Triple Warmer Meridian
Calming your Triple Warmer (TW) Meridian and nourishing your spleen meridian is vital. Since your TW works to keep you alive and protect you from danger due to 21st-century living, it needs to be reminded each day that your life is not in any real danger, it’s just work or personal stress, and it can relax.
Here’s a practical way to calm your Triple Warmer Meridian:
- place your fingers over your eyes, pause and count to 5
- move your fingers out to your temples
- trace your fingers around your ears
- run your fingers down your neck
- hold your traps at the top of your shoulders, pause and count to 5
- finish with your hands crossed over your heart, pause here for a few minutes.
This exercise will calm your TW down, and you can easily repeat it throughout the day to get out of the fight or flight mode and train your body to relax.
2. Balance Your Blood Sugar Levels
With increased stress levels, many are craving foods with a high GI rating such as sugar, bread, pasta, desserts and chocolate. Habitually eating high GI foods will exaggerate your emotions and make you feel more out of balance.
Instead, choose good sources of protein and fat at each meal, such as nuts, avocado, seeds, plant milk, wild fish, lentils, organic chicken, hummus, olive oil or organic eggs.
Aim to mainly eat foods with a GI rating of 55 or less. Your thyroid and all of your endocrine systems hate sugar and high GI as it exaggerates your current imbalances. Balancing your blood sugar levels by intentionally choosing the right GI rated foods is essential.
3. Use Food As Medicine
Add ashwagandha & liquorice root to your diet to support the thyroid and your adrenals as they both act as adaptogenic herbs. Chinese medicine has used these ingredients for thousands of years to help you adapt to and deal with stress. If you are unable to add these to your diet, try our Adrenal Complex Capsules.
Selenium has potent antioxidant-like functions. Studies have indicated that selenium helps balance out T4 in your body hormones. A daily therapeutic dose of selenium has been proven to benefit thyroid function.
Daily Support For Your Thyroid:
- Eat five brazil nuts per day.
- Take daily probiotics. Probiotics are vital as thyroid conditions have been linked to leaky gut syndrome, where a protein like gluten can leak through the stomach and get in the bloodstream and cause inflammation throughout the body. Still, it can also cause inflammation of the thyroid gland. Probiotic-rich foods such as coconut or organic kefir, kombucha, kimchi, sauerkraut are useful.
- Nutritional Supplements If eating probiotic-rich foods is hard for you, try the Rejuv Digestive Complex Powder. It will not only boost your probiotics but XmissingXwordX your probiotics and heal leaky gut syndrome.
Proteolytic Enzymes reduce inflammation, especially if you have an autoimmune-related thyroid condition like Hashimoto’s disease, so taking proteolytic enzymes like bromelain from pineapple can help.
The hormone Leptin is made by adipose cells that helps regulate appetite, control of metabolism, energy homeostasis, activation of immune cells, and is vital for the regulation of your thyroid hormones.
Natural ways to increase your leptin include:
- Eat Omega-3 rich foods such as sardines/ fatty fish and avocado (or use Rejuv Omega 3-6-9 or Antarctic Krill Omega 3)
- Increase your fibre with more green veg
- Get more sleep
- Reduce your sugar intake
- Add HITT training to your movement schedule.
Last but not least, make sure you also eat foods high in Zinc and B vitamins such as salmon, trout, seafood, nuts, seeds & chickpeas.
4. Increase Your Trace Minerals
With over-farming, our food is often low in trace minerals. Seaweed is a great way to increase your mineral content as is eating organic raw veg but don’t wash all the dirt off (if you know it is from a trusted source).
If this is too hard, I formulated our Rejuv Sea & Soil Greens Capsules to give you all the missing trace minerals from the sea and the soil and what I used to heal my thyroid.
I take The Super Elixir Greens as my base and add on these capsules on top combined with these other lifestyle hacks in this blog to balance my thyroid.
5. Get Enough Sleep
Sleep is essential to allow our nervous system to rest, detoxify & heal from the toxic load we build up and carry every day.
Your thyroid, metabolism and entire endocrine system need sleep to dispel the excess adrenaline so you can restore homeostasis. Sleep also supports your immune system, prevents illness, disease and premature ageing.
Poor quality or limited sleep regularly is linked to reduced immune function and is also related to weight gain and thyroid issues.
I love to drink a cup of WelleCo Sleep Tea, or I make myself Rejuv Moon Milk each night before bed. Here’s what you need:
- 1 cup of unsweetened plant milk
- 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon of turmeric
- 1 pinch of nutmeg
- 1 pinch of ginger
- 1 teaspoon of coconut oil
Warm the milk and mix with all ingredients in a blender or stir into a mug. NOTE: The milk should NOT BE HOT, but warm, as the heat will kill some of the benefits of the other ingredients.
See our sleep blog for more information on how to improve your sleep.
6. Movement & Grounding
As mentioned above, to improve your leptin levels, add HITT training a few days a week to your movement schedule. That said your thyroid and metabolism love breathwork and any cardio that shifts trapped energy through your throat area, where your thyroid lives.
We recommend the exercises and app by Wim Hoff or any breathwork, cardio such as walking, running, dancing, singing (and humming is also excellent) and also supports your thymus gland.
Your thymus and thyroid glands are both great friends and love food rich in Vitamin C such as kiwi, berries, dark leafy greens & broccoli.
Getting your hands or feet in or on the earth is also essential for your thyroid as this can reset your electrical circuits and reduce the toxic environmental load from WiFi & Electromagnetic Fields (EMF). Both WiFi & EMF upsets your thyroid, entire endocrine system and metabolism.
If grounding is arduous for you, I also have grounding products in my home including grounding sheets on all of our beds that fit under your linen, grounding mats, so it’s like my feet are on the grass while I work, grounding socks and grounding shoe devices. For more information, visit the Groundology website.
See our blog on toxic environmental load.
7. Reduce Your Heavy Metals
The thyroid gland is highly sensitive to mercury accumulation. Even low levels of mercury may lead to thyroid inflammation, body temperature impairment, hypothyroidism, and depression by occupying the iodine binding site and inhibiting or altering hormone action. The best way to deal with your heavy metals is to remove all high mercury-containing foods such as tuna and take super greens every day. If your levels are high, you would need to take something like our Rejuv Sea & Soil Greens for 100 days to mop up all excess heavy metals.
8. Detox Your Liver
Thyroid hormones which are released by thyroid gland regulate different metabolic processes in the body. By increasing the basal metabolic rate (BMR), thyroid hormones play an essential role in regulating thermogenesis. The liver works hand in hand with the pancreas and gallbladder to support thyroid function.
The thyroid is crucial before I embark on any naturopathic thyroid or hormonal treatment. I always clean and nourish the liver first. See our blog on how to love your liver and supplements like the Liver Cleanse Pack to support this process.
9. Reduce Your Thyroid Triggers
The thyroid can go out of balance due to physical and emotional triggers such as;
- Epstein Barr Virus (EBV) can trigger thyroid disease and lead to thyroid disease. You can easily have an EBV test, and this is key in my thyroid healing protocols
- Neurotoxins, pesticides & herbicides
- Mold
- Mercury based dental amalgams
- Mercury from your diet
- Zinc deficiency
- B12 deficiency
- Home cleaning chemicals
- Emotional trauma
- Prescription medications
- Recreational drug use
- Financial strain
- Professional carpet cleaning & dry cleaning
- House paint
- Insomnia
- Insect bites and stings
10. Deal With Your Inflammation
Chronic inflammation in your body is linked to almost every significant health condition and disease known. It is the production of free radicals that may cause damage to healthy cells if your antioxidant levels are not sufficient. When this ratio is out of balance, you can increase your risk of thyroid disease, obesity and hormonal imbalances.
There is an array of many small things that add up to create a systemic inflammatory response throughout your entire body system. Eating inflammatory foods, leaky gut, poor blood sugar regulation, low hydration, poor sleep, high stress, shallow breathing, limited exercise, toxic environmental load, poor body balance with your muscular and skeletal systems and a shortage of mindfulness practices, will all affect your inflammation levels.
I love turmeric for inflammation so add curcumin married in with piperine each day is you have a thyroid condition, suffer from hormonal imbalances or struggle to lose weight. Getting these ratios is vital, so choose curcumin like our Rejuv Organic Turmeric Blend for the best anti-inflammatory effect. If you have pain in your body as well, consider a product like our Bone & Joint Complex.
Your Next Step
You can join me on my Complete Health Reset to rebalance thyroid, metabolism and overall health. It only took me one month before my thyroid was back functioning again, and I felt strong, physically & emotionally, and I lost 7kg!
- Order a Urine Test Kit, and we’ll analyse your levels for free.
- Order individual Rejuv & WelleCo Nutritional Supplements or order a pack based on your goals:
