Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis and My Treatment Update!

Although my last post on Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis was a long standing one, it was on purpose! Getting a battery of testing, preparing for a TRUE gluten free diet, and beginning to create an action plan are all good things, even if it did take many months to establish. I figure, I’ve lived this long with all these symptoms, why not make my next attempt to beat them be a good, strong one. Well, I think, with the help of my doctor, I will!

Now, before I move on, I always believe a good link to exceptional material is in order when writing a new post. So, here is the “winner” this time:

I have to whole heartedly thank Wellness Underground for faithfully interviewing doctors and nutritionist, many with ground breaking information as done here conducting an interview with Dr. Thomas O’Bryan. This interview describes gluten sensitivity brilliantly and has been one of my favorite interviews in the last few months on the subject of Hashimoto’s Disease:

http://thedr.com/images/uw11011.mp3

Now, with that aside, I have some updating to do.

How can I say good-bye to this?

Well, after listening to the radio show above, you will understand. This is a favorite loaf of whole wheat sourdough bread I made last summer using wild yeast and a long fermentation as I learned through this fantastic, traditional foods online sourdough eCourse by GNOWFLINS which I highly recommend to anyone. I used this method hoping to break down the gluten. What I haven’t done yet though is heal from the damage already present. Perhaps I will come back to this in the near future. I have always enjoyed baking. However, gluten has been linked very strongly with Hashimoto’s Disease as a main “trigger”. When people struggling with Hashimoto’s go on a TRUE gluten free diet, the autoimmune response shows a drastic decrease. Even more importantly, other symptoms minimize and the thyroid begins, most often to kick in. This is great news for so many sufferers.

So although I haven’t actually gone gluten free (I have waited because I am a perfectionist and I want it to be a truly gluten free situation), I cannot yet report on my own progress. However, I CAN report on something very exciting for me.

I have been taking Vit. D supplements for about 4 months, taking my monthly blood tests to check the progress and I am up from 16.8 in September 2010, to 55.2 now, in March 2011! Even more exciting is that for the first time in years, my TSH has not gone up in the spring, in fact it has gone DOWN. It has gone from 25.81 in July of 2010 to now, 12.37 in March of 2011. Let me emphasize that I have not tried to concentrate so much on my TSH this year as the real purpose of my journey has been to find a root cause for Hashimoto’s and a way to hit it there! I feel I have and hope to see that number go down further in the near future! 🙂

Now the real excitement in this statement comes from the fact that I haven’t done anything different yet in my diet! I have only changed the Vit. D supplementation and I am using a Glutathion topicial cream given to me by my doctor which I have been using since November! My meds have no changed and I even have gone a bit crazy with gluten since I know I will be off of it soon.

Very soon I will be entering the gluten free world and will be able to track my progress then. However, in the short term, I will be completing a more difficult gluten free, sugar free, grain free, soy free, dairy free and “other” free, diet which should prepare my digestive system to heal more quickly while feeding myself probiotics and other important nutrients along the way. It will consist mainly of good sources of grass fed meat sources and plenty of vegetables excluding the high starch kinds like white potatoes and beans, and eating cultured non-dairy.

This will be a good time for me to take notes and report back to the blog after I am finished with that stage of my journey. Of course, I will have my doctor monitor my TSH during this time as I am paranoid of going hyper. Let’s hope my next post has even more exciting progress.

Hope to hear from you too! Thank you to all who comment on my blog. It encourages me to continue on to provide resources and help for those benefiting by it.

Mo