Correcting your Thyroid Problems- The Functional Medicine Approach

Food is information. Beyond calories, the type of food you will eat will help determine if you are going to be healthy or sick. Functional medicine practitioners realize the value of a whole foods based diet as well as the role that inflammatory foods and food sensitivities can play in chronic disease. As mentioned in the previous blog post, proper gut function is key to a healthy body. Stress and imbalanced gut are precursors to many autoimmune and gut related diseases that weakens our body causing it to break down. One such disease which is affecting young women as well as men all over India is Hypothyroidism which is a thyroid disorder.

Functional Medicine for Thyroid

The thyroid system plays a critical role in your metabolism. Along with insulin and cortisol, your thyroid hormone is one of the big three hormones that control your metabolism and weight.

Most doctors just check something called thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), which doesn’t give a full picture of this gland. In fact, even the interpretation of this test is incorrect most of the time.

Besides TSH, Functional Medicine practitioners take into consideration many factors including free T3, free T4, and thyroid antibodies. We also look for associated problems such as gluten intolerance, food allergies, as well as deficiencies of vitamin D, selenium, vitamin A, zinc, and omega-3 fats.

Correcting these problems requires an integrative approach. It involves more than simply taking a thyroid pill. It involves nutritional support, exercise, stress reduction, supplements, reducing inflammation, and eliminating certain foods to detoxify your body and restore proper gut health.

To integrate all of these elements and create a successful set of techniques to cope with such problems, Functional Medicine is the best approach.

The bottom line is that you should never lose hope. Taking a proactive step and working with trained practitioners can correct many thyroid issues.

Reference articles:

Cooper DS. Subclinical Hypothyroidism. NEJM. 2001 Jul 26;345: 260– 265.

www.drhyman.com