Sugar: How Bad is Bad? Part 4: Sugar Screws Up Your Thyroid
The thyroid gland produces hormones that help regulate many different processes in the body from metabolic rate to heart and digestive function. The hormones secreted by the thyroid also assist with muscle control, brain development, mood, and bone maintenance. When sugar hits the body, it can cause dysglycemia, throwing the blood sugar pendulum too far one direction (hyper or hypoglycemia), and thus impacting thyroid.
Hyperglycemia is defined as too much glucose in the bloodstream, usually caused from over-eating sugar and processed foods (i.e. a high carbohydrate diet). Insulin, produced by the pancreas, moves the excess glucose out of the bloodstream and into the cells so the body’s mitochondria can convert it into energy. While sugar and carbohydrates do provide quick energy, it isn’t sustainable. That’s why when we eat carbs, we feel hungry shortly after and want more (see the blog post on “Embrace the Fat” to learn more. Kindling carbs/fat logs - will be made in canva and be a pinterest share).
When hyperglycemia occurs too often, the cells can’t keep up and they stop listening to the chemical messenger (insulin). This causes the pancreas to make more insulin, a cyclical pattern that eventually leads to insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, and type 2 diabetes [1]. Then the thyroid kicks into gear, releasing hormones so the gut can attempt to absorb the extra insulin [2]. With repeated hyperglycemic episodes and insulin surges, the thyroid gland becomes overworked and starts to break down. Destruction of the thyroid gland decreases thyroid hormone output and can cause autoimmune thyroid.
A diet high in sugar causes rapid blood sugar spikes, and with that comes rapid blood sugar crashes, better known as hypoglycemia. In a body with a well-balanced diet (enough healthy fats and protein along with complex carbs), blood sugar levels drop gradually. During this process, the pancreas produces a hormone called glucagon, which assists in returning insulin back into the bloodstream. However, if the diet is high in sugar and levels drop too low too fast, glucagon cannot work fast enough and the body sees this as a fight or flight situation. Now the adrenal glands get involved and flood the system with cortisol and epinephrine. Here cortisol acts as glucocorticosteroid hormone to assist the real glucagon in returning insulin levels to normal.
If hypoglycemia occurs too often, the excess cortisol (acting as glucagon) can suppress the pituitary gland’s function. When the pituitary gland gets bogged down, it can no longer produce enough or any TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone). Without TSH, the thyroid cannot produce thyroxine (T4) causing complications throughout the body such as increased heart rate, slowed digestion, suppressed growth hormone, and fertility issues due to suppressed sex hormones. All of this can throw the body into HPA-D
Hyper and hypoglycemia due to high sugar diets wreak havoc on many of the body’s systems. Some of them can recover over time, but when the thyroid starts to shut down... there’s no coming back from that. Once you start taking medication to regulate your thyroid, you have to be on those pills for the rest of your life. Is that really what you want for your health?
Stay away from the sugar. It should be a treat, not a lifestyle. It’s okay in small doses every now and then, but don’t make a habit of eating it every day or multiple times a day. Your body is worth more than that.
Sugar is bad.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16530289
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jtr/2011/439463/
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Heidi Toy Functional Medicine Blog
Did you know most people didn’t have refrigerators in their homes until well into the 1900’s? It wasn’t even invented for large scale commercial use until the mid 1800’s [1]. So how did people keep their milk cold and make their food last longer? Fermentation. It sounds like a gross concept, because we often associate fermentation with a bad odor, but foods like cheese, yogurt, sauerkraut and pickles are all fermented foods. And those aren’t gross, are they? Well, some might disagree with me about sauerkraut, but that’s beside the point. Fermented foods are digestive aids. Microscopic living organisms in fermented foods help extend the food’s shelf life, enhance flavor, and help the body absorb minerals. These organisms pre-digest the food, getting rid of harmful components, and create more vitamins and enzymes than the food began with. Enzyme-rich foods have many benefits including [2]: Increase digestibility of food we eat Boost immune system Increase alkalinity; neutralizing pH levels Provide a healthy balance of friendly flora in the gut (Learn more about your microbiome in my other blog posts ) Tone the colon and help with elimination Control cravings for unhealthier foods Eliminate toxins and undigested wastes in the body In the “old days,” people use to ferment all kinds of foods through pickling, canning, pasteurization and added salt. Nowadays, however, large scale fermentation has lost many of its nutritious benefits due to the need for speed to get the product on the shelf as fast as possible and as cheap as possible. The only true fermented foods you will find are sauerkraut, kombucha, yogurt and kefir, beans, wine and beer, some meats (such as salami and pastrami), legumes and nuts (such as tofu, soy sauce and miso), sourdough bread, and various kinds of vegetables [3]. Fun facts about sauerkraut: The Germans “stole” it from the Chinese! Sauerkraut (probably not labeled as such for the Chinese, but the same recipe) was one of the main foods for those who built the Great Wall of China. Genghis Khan brought it to Eastern Europe during an invasion. It also contains high levels of vitamin C, and sailors often took it on long journeys to prevent scurvy.
How can we best keep blood sugar stable? Do what our body is designed to do – use fat for energy. Our species did not survive the Ice Age because of vanilla coffee lattes and cheesecake. Throughout most of our history, we ate a diet that was likely 50-70 percent fat. Look at the old family photo albums, specifically pictures of people in the first half of the 1900s, before we had so many processed foods. You won’t see many fat people--in fact, most look darn skinny. If they lived on the farm, they ate lots of eggs, meat, milk, and vegetables out of their own backyards. “Diet foods” were non-existent. Heart disease was almost non-existent. Our metabolism is designed to work much better with fats better than with sugar. Fats provide the slow and steady fuel our body likes to use for energy. Think of fats as a slow-burning log on the fire. One log (i.e. one meal containing fats) lasts for hours. Starchy carbs, on the flip side, are like kindling. You constantly have to throw more twigs (chips, pasta, bagels) to keep the fire burning. The first step is to know your sugars by reading the labels, and then avoid said sugars as much as possible.
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Omega-3 and Omega-6 are considered “essential” fatty acids because they cannot be produced by the body--we get them from the food we eat. They are biologically active upon ingestion, which means the body utilizes them right away and cannot store them up for later. They are essential because they help with both inflammatory and anti-inflammatory responses.
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