Episode 6: The Gluten-Hypothyroid Connection - Is a gluten free diet right for you? Thyroid Gluten Free Diet
Gluten-free diet. (insert dread-filled music here...)
I mean, honestly, any major dietary shift and any sort of food sensitivity is a thing, right? It's a disruption- it requires rethinking and planning and workarounds and everything.
A quick Google search will reveal that gluten sensitivity is on the rise, and it's true- there is a STRONG correlation between Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, which is the most common cause of hypothyroidism, even if not diagnosed.
So it's at least worth considering if it's something that would benefit you...
In this episode, we’re talking about gluten and its impact on the body and how our modern diets play a role in how we feel as people managing hypothyroidism…. and yes, we’ll walk about whether or not a gluten-free diet to manage hypothyroidism is right for you.
Grateful you're here,
Sarah
Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
Hypothyroid Symptom Assessment: http://bit.ly/thyroid-checker
Adrenal Dysfunction Quiz: http://bit.ly/thyroid-tools
Products and Tools to Support GF Living: http://bit.ly/thyroid-tools
Disclaimer: Information shared on this podcast and any referenced websites are not to be taken as medical advice or to be used as a diagnosis or treatment plan for any medical condition. I’m sharing my educated opinions & experience but nothing shared here can be taken on a one size fits all basis and we always recommend you do your own research, talk to your own doctors and practitioners, and take full responsibility for any health & medical choices you make.
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Want to read this episode instead? Here’s the transcript!
Gluten Free Diet
I mean, honestly, any major dietary shift or any sort of food sensitivity is like a thing, right? It's a disruption. It requires thinking and planning and workarounds and everything. The question of "am I gonna have to give up gluten forever?", is for sure one of the questions that I hear most often when working with women who are sorting through their own thyroid issues, and it's true, there are strong correlations between Hashimoto's thyroiditis and gluten and Hashimoto's thyroiditis- autoimmune thyroid disease- the most common, and, likely the cause of your Hypothyroidism, even if you are not diagnosed. This is a valid question that we're gonna get into today. In this episode, we are talking about gluten and its impact on the body and how our modern diets play a role in how we feel as people who are managing hypothyroidism.
And yes, we will talk about whether or not a gluten-free diet might be right for you.
So grab a pen and a notebook, and let's get started with today's episode. Before we jump in this week, I want to share with you the two quizzes that I have available to help you discern what's happening in your body. The first is the hypothyroid symptom assessment, which is an easy way to kind of quantify the very subjective symptoms that are on the long list of things that you often deal with when you're dealing with hypothyroidism. So if you're someone who is just trying to figure out where you're at with thyroid issues, maybe you're not quite sure there's things going on, but they haven't been connected back to thyroid health, then this would be a great place to sort of get a, get a sense of the more subjective things that in conjunction with your more objective blood work can really help you to figure out what's happening in your body.
Secondly, I wanna encourage you to take the Adrenal Dysfunction Symptom assessment, which is totally focused on the adrenal glands, which you can go ahead back another episode, episode five, where I talk about adrenal issues. And this is something that is so closely connected to what's happening with our thyroid that I think it's something that everyone who's dealing with hypothyroidism should take a look at what's happening with their adrenals. They're two short quizzes. They just take you a minute or two to kind of work through, and it's a great thing to come back to after you start working on these issues to kind of see where you're at. And if you've made any gains, you can access both of them if you go to bit.ly/thyroid-tools. And there's also a link in the show notes that you can grab. But super easy, super simple short quizzes assessing the symptoms that are keeping you from feeling good as you move through your days. You can get them at bit.ly/thyroid-tools, and you'll get a measure of where you're at. Welcome to the Natural Thyroid Fix.
I'm Sarah Geisinger, a holistic lifestyle and nutrition coach and former hypothyroid mom who has reversed her thyroid disease using a natural approach to thyroid health. Trust me, I know what it feels like to move through life in a brain fog, needing a nap by mid-afternoon and constantly be cleaning the hair you've lost outta the shower drain. Do you know what I'm talking about? If you're here, I bet you do. So if you're ready to reject the notion that this tired hypothyroid life is as good as it gets and start implementing simple natural strategies to live a vibrant symptom-free life, then this is the podcast for you. Let's dive into today's show.
Gluten Free and Hypothyroidism
Okay, so I am just diving into this topic. This is maybe one of the topics that instills the most dread into people who are working through unraveling their thyroid issues, and that is this, "do I have to go gluten free for the rest of my life if I have thyroid issues?" <laugh>, I know, I know the thought of giving up bread and pasta and traditionally, or regularly made baked goods just like grandma used to make them, and all the good things that totally sounds like torture and well, maybe not torture, but it's at least enough to give you pause. "Do I really feel bad enough to give up gluten? "And I know I get it. I was in the exact same spot way back when I was working through resolving my thyroid issues for the first time I was reading something. I can't even remember what it was, where I came across the idea, just the suggestion that was made that if you have Hashimotos thyroiditis, which is again, the most common reason for having low thyroid, then it would be really impactful for you to move, make a move to adopt a gluten-free diet.
And yeah, I think that it was just kinda like crickets. No, not gluten! I distinctly remember making a list, like in my journal, a pro-con list, reminding myself of what actual symptoms I had and how bad I was really feeling and sort of measuring whether or not it would be worth it to not be able to eat a slice of homemade bread again or just casually snack on whatever baked good I had made the previous weekend, or really to just have to pay attention to what food I was putting in my mouth, like ever <laugh>. And I gotta tell you, I have never met a baked good that I didn't like. Like even a bad cookie is better than no cookie at all in my book. And this is actually still very true for me, by the way. I just make better baked goods with better ingredients that work, work well for my body, but that is still a very dangerous, dangerous place to be <laugh>. Anyhow, that's an aside. I don't need to go on.
Any sort of restrictive diet can just be straight-up annoying, right? It's, there's the planning, the rethinking, the swapping things, learning new ways to prepare food or to cook and figuring out what works for you and, and then paying attention to what you're ordering and asking questions of the poor waiter waitress when you are out to eat, basically, in thinking through kind of all of these things, it had to be worth it to me. That's what I was really measuring out when I was making that list in my journal. Like, do I feel bad enough for the annoyance that making radical dietary changes would, would be. I dug in, I decided that really what I needed to learn, I needed to understand was the reason why gluten-free diets were beneficial when you have autoimmune thyroid disease.
And so by digging in and understanding why and kind of what was going on that wasn't just, then it helped me to be able to, to clearly decide and discern whether it was applicable to me and something that would be a good move. That's what I'm gonna share with you today. I'm not here to tell you what to do. You do, you <laugh>. I am not here to assign some like dietary dogma to your life, but I am going to share my experience. I'm gonna share what research demonstrates what the, that the data demonstrates the impact of gluten and thyroid I issues. And then I'm gonna encourage you to just kind of honestly evaluate what you need to do in this area and adjust your life accordingly, because you get to decide how you want to use this information.
I feel like my job is to offer you information and you get to decide what you wanna do with it. I wanna, as we dive in here to all of this and kind of the nitty gritty of, of this episode with gluten and thyroid and how it, it kind of interacts with the body. I wanna start out by reminding you about the connection between Hashimoto's thyroiditis and hypothyroidism. So Hashimoto's thyroiditis, it's, I know it sounds like a dish you might order at a Japanese restaurant. It is not Hashimoto's. Thyroiditis is an autoimmune disease. It's an autoimmune disease where the immune system is attacking your thyroid. And this is actually the most common cause of the symptom that we call hypothyroidism. Now, oftentimes people are diagnosed as hypothyroid, and that really is just a descriptor of what is happening in their body. What they don't have enough thyroid hormones.
So they are called hypothyroid. But the reason, the most common cause for that is actually Hashimotos. 90% of people who are hypothyroid actually have Hashimotos, but they've just maybe never been diagnosed. And this is because a lot of times, and this is, I feel like this is changing, there are more and more doctors out there who are testing for the antibodies, but oftentimes the reason people are not diagnosed with Hashimotos, but are diagnosed with hypothyroid is that the doctors just don't test for the antibodies. And determining if your body is cre if your immune system is creating antibodies to attack your thyroid, that's really the factor. That's the, like the diagnosing indicator for Hashimotos because it is demonstrating that your immune system is in fact attacking the thyroid. And the reason that oftentimes this, these tests aren't done is because it wouldn't change the treatment protocols that most traditional endocrinologists or general practitioners, lots of different very kind of traditional Western medicine doctors, their treatment protocol doesn't change based on what is causing you to have not have enough thyroid hormone.
Hypothyroidism is seen as a thyroid problem instead of what it really is. Oftentimes it is the an immune system problem where it's the immune system that begins attacking your body's own tissues, in this case the thyroid. So Hashimotos is where the, the autoimmune disease, where the immune system is attacking the thyroid, and it is oftentimes just treated by sort of filling in the gap and, and patching up the symptom, the not having enough thyroid hormone problem. And it's treated oftentimes by giving just a thyroid hormone replacement, a medication treated as a deficiency in thyroid hormone rather than getting to the root cause and kind of calming down the immune system and stopping that attack. Hashimotos is also, it's not just the most common reason for hypothyroidism, it's actually the most common autoimmune disease in America. Of all the autoimmune diseases that are out there, of all the different ways the immune system can freak out and attack your body, Hashimotos is the most common.
However, it often doesn't get treated as an autoimmune disease like working at calming down the immune system. It's treated as the result that that hypothyroidism. And so what that means is there are a large number of people who are being treated, quote air quotes. I keep using air quotes. I've done this in a number of episodes. I'm not sure how many episodes in it will be until I realize you can't see me while listening to a podcast <laugh>. So here I am with my air quotes by myself, but it means that a large number of people are being, quote, treated, but they don't feel better. And so this is because of a disconnect. This is the disconnect is that there is oftentimes the belief that it doesn't matter where the hypothyroidism is coming from. A false belief, I'll, I'll say it doesn't matter where the hypothyroidism is coming from because there's nothing you can really do to impact the immune response.
What's happened with the immune system is doing. And so you just kind of let the immune system go on attacking the thyroid until it burns it out and just keep patching up the dam that's left with that need for thyroid hormone by continuing to increase thyroid medications. And then you continue to do that until the ts h the thyroid stimulating hormone shows up in a range where you want it to be, even if you don't feel better. And this is incredibly common, like I tell you to raise your hand, but again, I can't see you, so, but you could raise your hand if your tssh is in the normal range, but you don't feel good. And that means that there, this is a massive problem and it means that there's a lot of people running around with normal quote, normal TSH numbers and they still feel like crap.
Oh, I should also note, because I know that there are a number of people who come to this podcast curious and they're maybe are tired or can't lose weight or have just a couple of the symptoms that get associated with hypothyroidism. And so I should note here that half of people who have hypothyroid are not diagnosed at all. So it is entirely possible that you have symptoms. You could either be what's called subclinical, like just, you know, within the normal range, but a low normal in your what your levels are at. You could have display symptoms, but your blood work could look totally, totally normal regardless about half the people who have hypothyroidism in the United States anyway, the western world really are not diagnosed at all. It's like that's a problem. So if you're here and you're not feeling good, these are things that you can apply.
That's why I like to give small simple things at the end of each episode that you can do because you can start to make simple shifts that if you are kind of on the border or maybe you're just bor borderline hypothyroid, that's really a great point to start making a run at some of these l easy interventions because you can have a much easier time at reversing this in the very early stages. So this is also everything that I just talked about with Hashimotos and hypothyroidism. This is why you will hear me over and over again. Just sort of make the assumption that if you're listening and you have hypothyroidism, then you actually have Hashimotos thyroiditis. Even if you've not been diagnosed, you actually have autoimmune thyroid disease, even if you haven't been tested for it, because the research continues to demonstrate that somewhere around 90% of people who have hypothyroidism actually have Hashimotos thyroiditis.
That's the reason that they don't have enough thyroid hormone whether or not they've been actually diagnosed. So you'll hear me make that assumption, and that's because that's what the research shows, and I think that is it's good to, good to point out with the research shows on to gluten.
Gluten and Thyroid Connection
So what is gluten? First of all, gluten, it's a com a combination of proteins that are found in grains. It's most commonly associated with wheat, but it actually is in rye, it's in barley, it's in spelt. There's a, it's actually in a lot of things, it's most often associated associated with wheat because of the high level of gluten that's in wheat. So gluten has it's a pretty strong trigger for Hashimotos. So if you have thyroid antibodies, if that immune system is attacking your thyroid, then going gluten free is likely one of the top things that you can do to work at reducing the number of antibodies that are in your body.
So slowing down the attack that your immune system is mounting against your thyroid. There's a couple things that kind of play into this. So gluten can actually trigger leaky gut, which leaky gut is also known as intestinal permeability. It is something that, it's basically where the gut lining, there's inflammation in the gut and that inflammation kind of causes the gut lining to swell and yeah, expand and contract would be, that's better words <laugh>. And so when that happens, there's little holes in the gut lining, and so the gut can no longer keep the good things in the gut and it can no longer keep the bad things out that shouldn't be in the gut. And so this becomes problematic. This is sort of like a chicken and egg thing, but there is probably, if you got to this point where you have thyroid issues, you probably had some level of gut imbalances along the way, you've probably already had some inflammation in the gut.
And then adding gluten in can just sort of be the, the thing that finally pulls the trigger and causes the cascading symptoms to mount into what can become autoimmune thyroid disease. Inflammation is basically public enemy number one as far as chronic disease is concerned. And so in this case, in the case of leaky gut, it just makes it so that the gut, the gut lining cannot do its job of keeping the in, well, gluten in this case, really any other food item that's supposed to be in your gut, keeping it in your gut and not in your bloodstream. And so when that happens, it creates more inflammation in the body by just allowing that crossover of the things, the, the good things that are supposed to stay in the gut, to stay in the gut, and the other things to stay out and vice versa, they need to, the, the gut lining's job is to keep everything in its correct place, but inflammation makes that challenging when gluten enters in, when it crosses through that gut lining and enters into the bloodstream, the immune system rightly sees it as a foreigner.
It sees it as like an invasion attack. and the gluten molecules are, you know, as they're floating around in the bloodstream where they shouldn't be, the immune system does what it's supposed to do and it mounts an attack. It starts attacking the gluten molecules, which is great. It's what it's supposed to do. However, gluten molecule structure is very similar to thyroid. And so this is something called molecular mimicry where these two things look very similar. And so the immune system, while it's attacking the gluten doing its job, it also then starts attacking the thyroid because they look so molecularly similar. And so this is where things start to become a problem and why one of the most common factors or triggers for autoimmunity is can be gluten. Another are other, other things that trigger autoimmunity. There are things like pregnancy and the hormones that go along with it.
There are many, many triggers of autoimmunity that are linked to this immune system being a little dysfunctional. There can be toxic toxic exposure, whether like serious, like heavy metal exposure or like, you know, living next to a nuclear power plan or even just mild consistent chemical exposure that can be enough to trigger autoimmune issues. Stress can actually trigger autoimmune issues. Stress can impact lots of the, lots of different things in our body, like the gut lining, especially Hashimoto's thyroiditis. The connection here because of the, the way that the molecules look with gluten and thyroid, this is why this is, this can be a real problem. The way that I see it is that there are two really big reasons to consider going gluten-free if you have hypothyroidism, and they are this, number one is this issue with inflammation. The chronic inflammation, like I said, is public enemy number one when it comes to all chronic disease.
It's like the root cause thing. And we need to do everything that we can to lower our levels of inflammation in our body. And so because inflammation can come from a lot of different places, that it means that we have a lot of opportunities to lower inflammation, stress, toxins, food we eat. But food is one of the biggest contributors because it's something that one we do so consistently, <laugh>, we're eating all the time, all day, every day, right? And the we're we're eating often. So food can be a big contributor. And two modern versions of a lot of what we eat are unfortunately very inflammatory. And kind of combine that with our modern ways of prepping food. And we've got a recipe for highly inflammatory food, specifically wheat I'll talk about since we're talking about gluten. The one of the main reasons that that wheat and gluten is such a problem is because we are much more exposed to the gluten proteins in wheat than ever before.
And so this is interesting, the celiac disease is where you have total gluten intolerance. You have no choice but to be gluten free. That's the only solution to it that is, you know, and you get really, really sick if you encounter gluten and you have celiac. There's a statistic that shows that there's a worldwide rise in celiac disease and it's on the same trajectory. It's occurring at the, it's occurred at the same time as the introduction of a different wheat. So this is something that, I mean, this is years ago, it's called the Green Revolution in an effort to be able to provide more food for the world. There was a guy named Norman Borlock. He won a Nobel Prize for creating a new version of wheat that produced a higher yield. It produced more wheat, which is, it was like a dwarf version of wheat and it didn't topple over and you, it made more of the wheat.
Well, what we used to make bread, it produced more, but it in it inadvertently also had a much higher gluten content. So new wheat, the modern wheat has a much higher gluten content than what humans have actually evolved to be able to digest. And so there's some researchers in Holland who've done a lot in terms of studying this specific thing. And what they have found is that the gluten proteins that are responsible for celiac disease are exponentially more in modern wheat than any variety of wheat that was grown over a century ago. And so the simply the presence of that protein that stimulates celiac disease, it's much, much higher in modern wheat versus a more traditionally grown wheat that was grown about a hundred, you know, a hundred years ago or so. So this research is just kind of demonstrates that the new version of wheat is actually making, it explains the reason for such a rise in gluten intolerance and issues that are related to gluten, modern wheat is kind of making us sick.
That's that. The second thing is oftentimes modern wheat includes chemicals that are used to grow the wheat and then increase the production of wheat. It's often sprayed with glyphosate, which is roundup like the weed killer right before a harvest to help improve the speed of the harvest and the yield of the crop. And so this is pretty common practice, especially here in the United States. And there has been just a massive increase in use. In 1987, there was only 11 million pounds of glyphosate, that chemical that's in Roundup used on US farms. But now in 2023 there has, there's nearly 300 million pounds of glyphosate applied each year. So that's a huge ratcheting up of the amount of chemicals that are applied to wheat. Well, this is, that was to all US farms each year. That's a lot. And we know that glyphosate in increases inflammation.
It's a toxin that has all kinds of implications. You can do a lot of research on that. Again, we'll talk about that in another episode, but that is a, that, that can be a big deal. There's quite a few studies that are connected with glyphosate and the increased rates of disease. And so we know for sure that prolonged exposure to chemicals increases inflammation. So you kind of have these two things, the modern variety of wheat and the chemicals working in tandem to increase inflammation. And so that is kind of working against you. And here's the thing, if you are not intentionally eating a heritage variety of wheat, something like e corn emer spelt or a number of red wheat varieties, then you are for sure eating a modern variety of wheat, which has that additional high gluten content in it. And, and if it's not organic, then it is most definitely sprayed with glyphosate.
This also includes any packaged or prepared foods that you're eating if you're buying crackers or cookies or pasta. If they are not for sure these non-modern, these heritage forms of wheat, then they are for sure the modern, more higher gluten containing wheat and they are likely sprayed with glyphosate if they're not organic. So you've got those two things working in tandem and many times those things are making up at least a part of our diets if we're not really paying attention.
Gluten and Thyroid Antibodies
The other reason to really consider, aside from just inflammation to consider going gluten-free is that if you're dealing with hypothyroidism, the molecular mimicry thing, this is a big reason to consider going gluten-free. And this is where the molecule of the gluten protein in your bloodstream looks super similar to the molecule of your thyroid hormone and your thyroid in your, in your body.
And so this becomes problematic because your immune system just can't tell the difference. And it's rightly creating antibodies when it detects the gluten in the bloodstream and attacks and handles it, but then gets mixed up and starts producing antibodies that attack your thyroid. And that puts you in a situation where your body is fighting against itself. Those elevated thyroid antibodies, they speed up at the rate that your thyroid's getting attacked. And so the more antibodies you have, the heavier the attack on your thyroid. These are things, these, these main reasons, one, wanting to lower inflammation and two, that you've got your, your immune system is kind of confused with gluten and thyroid going on. It's kind of creating these two really good reasons to consider avoiding gluten. This is really the real question. Do you need to give up gluten if you have Hashimotos?
Should I Go Gluten Free If I Have Hypothyroidism?
And I guess a secondary question is, do you need to be gluten free forever <laugh>? So the short answer is yes. Yes. You should give up gluten and go gluten free if you're diagnosed with Hashimotos thyroiditis or, if you have elevated thyroid antibodies. So if you have been tested for antibodies or if you have been diagnosed with Hashimotos thyroiditis, I mean again, I'm not gonna tell you what to do, but there's a very strong correlation between gluten and what's happening in your body specifically. And one of the biggest things you can do to tip the scales in the right direction is to reduce the antibodies in your body that your immune system is creating against your thyroid. Reducing gluten is - I don't wanna say it's simple because it's not, it's tricky to do that, right? It's a big, it's a big shift if that's not something that you're doing already.
It is important and it's really effective. The research shows that it's really effective. And so if that convinces you, if that's helpful in convincing you, then, then know that your efforts are really going to be effective in reducing thyroid antibodies that your body's producing. So if you haven't been diagnosed with Hashimotos or you haven't had your antibodies tested, then you should <laugh> to see where you're at because if you, if you are one of the 90% of hypothyroid patients who is hypothyroid from because of the autoimmune disease, Hashimotos, then gluten-free is something that you're gonna want to consider. And then once you know that start to shift your diet at least for a time, for a time, you do need to completely avoid gluten to avoid triggering those autoimmune attacks on your thyroid gland and to start lowering inflammation. It can oftentimes, it can take up to 18 months for the inflammation, especially in your gut to calm down on a gluten-free diet.
So it does take time and in that time you should start to see if you get some blood work done that you're seeing a reduction in your thyroid antibodies. Many times people with Hashimoto's disease experience really quick results in a matter of weeks of coming off gluten and start to notice differences in how they feel it real. Again, this depends on so many factors of the individual, but it really is something that you can have some noticeable gains pretty quickly. And I recommend getting, getting blood work, especially when you're actively working on trying to resolve thyroid issues. I recommend getting your blood work done, your, your, your antibodies tested and, and your thyroid levels tested about every six months or so. And when you do that, you should see a decrease in your thyroid antibodies as a result of being gluten free. There's just going to be less in your body for your body to attack or for your immune system to attack.
And obviously there are other foods that can contribute to inflammation in the intestine in the body in general, along with gluten, things like dairy eggs, soy, there's you, you could have specific allergens that are you're dealing with that, you know, i I don't at all. and vice versa. And that can just be the way, that's the way that it works. That we are all bio-individual. It's important to maybe get some food sensitivity tests done to identify what your body might be reacting to in addition to gluten. But gluten is a really surefire bet to start working through. So once you start to see a reduction in your symptoms and your body starts producing those antibodies to your thyroid, then you can consider doing what we like to call like a gluten challenge where you test out eating a small amount of gluten once those thyroid antibodies have calmed down and you're not in like a state of a flare, you can test out eating a small amount of gluten and paying attention to how you feel and then determining if it works for you.
For many people when they're not in an autoimmune flare and their thyroid numbers are stable, they find that they can handle like being gluten light where they're making wise choices around gluten eating, eating organic wheated, or largely avoiding it as an or using digestive enzymes to help their body process it appropriately. You know, those sorts of things. Eating it using heritage forms of wheat, eating sourdough where it's more, it's more prepared in a way that there's less gluten sourdough, just has less concentrations of gluten and then normal bread, because the leavening process breaks it down, breaks down a lot of the gluten. It's not gluten free, but it breaks down a lot of the gluten. For some people though, remaining gluten free for life is the best call for their health. You just don't know until you try. You don't know until you try taking gluten out and you don't know until you let everything calm down and then reintroduce it and see today I as usual wanna give you a few things that you can do to start moving the needle on how you feel.
And again, these aren't gonna be all you need to do or maybe have massive impacts in one shot, but that's the deal when approaching thyroid or really any health issues from a holistic perspective, these are always a culmination of small steps combined together to create a massive impact. The first thing that I would encourage you to do today is determine if your immune system is producing antibodies to your thyroid. So if you've had recent blood work, you can look, you're looking for your thyroid antibodies and so you'll see them right there listed in your blood work. And if you have elevated thyroid antibodies, then that means that your body, your immune system is attacking your thyroid. And if you've been diagnosed with Hashimoto thyroiditis, and that means that somewhere along the way some practitioner did some testing that demonstrated that among other things, you can use other diagnosing tools, but the antibody test is the most common.
You can take a look at that. If you've never had your antibodies checked, then you should get that done either by talking to your doctor to get that testing, the for thyroid antibodies or by using one of the at-home testing services that I have linked in the show notes or at bit lee slash thyroid tools. And so there, those are like a simple PIM prick on your finger and you put them in like a little container and then send that off just from home and then you'll have direct access to that. That can be an easy way to get the testing that you need. That is a good option. And the links in the show notes are at bit.ly/thyroid-tools. Okay. And then number two, if you have Hashimotos or your testing reveals that your immune system is producing thyroid antibodies, then start making moves to head towards a gluten-free diet at least for a few months.
The research and the connections are just too strong to not pay attention to it and it would be silly to just to not consider it. And I get it, making a major lifestyle shift like moving to gluten-free is a big overhaul with a lot of serious rethinking about what you're gonna be eating. And I know that can be overwhelming, but it is worth it to start seeing more of a shift in your symptoms and you, this is really an area where you can make some big gains. So there are definitely more resources than ever available for people who are gluten free. And so I have a number of them linked in the show notes and bit.ly/thyroid-tools. And again, when you, when you head to that website, I'll send you a list of my favorite gluten-free snacks to get you started because for me that is the hardest thing, sticking with the gluten-free stuff when I was just wanting something quick to grab.
So hopefully that helps you. Okay, so there we have it. I wanna encourage you again to head to the show notes. Take those little symptom checkers that I have, those quizzes, start connecting the dots on how you're feeling. If you're looking for tools to support you as you consider gluten free or trying to get some testing, you'll find those also at bit.ly/thyroid-tools. And so you can head there. I hope that you are able to apply some of these things today and make some small shifts towards feeling healthy and good because I am a firm believer that when you do it that way, when you make those small shifts, when you focus on doable lifestyle shifts, living a symptom-free life is totally possible. And I want that for you.
Real quick before you go, if this show has helped you in some way, then I know that it'll help others too. So please head over to iTunes, subscribe, and then leave a review so that more women can find health and healing too. And do you know that you can have an incredible impact on the women who deal with thyroid issues in your circle? Yep, that's right. All you have to do is take a screenshot of this podcast, tag me @natural.thyroid.fix, and post it in your stories. Let's light a path for all the other hypothyroid mamas looking for hope and healing and to just feel like themselves Again, I'll look forward to connecting with you over on Instagram until next time on the Natural Thyroid Fix.