I am new to Barbell Medicine podcast and working through the backlog so my apologies if these questions have already been addressed.
Basic question: Are there any lifestyle changes to dealing with hashimotos that would be beneficial for reducing the autoimmune response of hashimotos, protecting from thyroid cancer risk, and ideally restoring thyroid function?
Background: I’ve had Hashimotos for > 10 years. On levothyroxine 175mcg for it. When untreated I had very peculiar symptoms which completely go away when treated with levothyroixine: a slight headache that occurs at a certain time of day located above the eyes and nausea that would result in vomiting one time, followed by loss of the headache and nausea. When treated things seem “normal” but I do have a few mystery symptoms that may or may not be related: dry skin and a chronic rash on my chest, but life is “normal” and not debilitating from this. Currently 205 lb bodyweight with an aim at continuing to lose body fat (38 inch waist). Currently lifting barbells 4x week. No dedicated conditioning yet, but planning to add some soon. I weigh all my food and log it, so if there are specific dietary interventions that would be helpful I would be happy to try them. Supplementing 10,000 IU Vitamin D3 and 1000mg Vitamin C daily, and 5g creatine mainly because I asked a few people who I like and they said it was a good idea. Planning to add magnesium for the same reason.
Thanks for the post and welcome to BBM. The symptoms you described, e.g. headaches, nausea, skin changes, etc, are very common with untreated Hashimoto’s disease. As far as your question:
Not really, no. Claims are often made to the contrary, but these are not based in existing scientific evidence.
A few other suggestions:
Would not be supplementing vitamin D at that dose (or at all). See here.
Thank you for the suggestions. I’ve cut out the Vitamin D and C supplements and it is helpful to know that a time I was low in Vitamin D a while back was likely a symptom of having been untreated for Hashimotos at the time. I’m working around recurring knee problems that began as a high school runner so actively researching ideas to reintroduce cardio. I’ll likely get some kind of bodyweight circuit or something. I’ll dig around your existing content while looking into it.
Sad to hear there is no lifestyle change on the Hashimtos but it is what it is.
Yeah, I wish there were more we could do/recommend. There are lots of folks in the “functional medicine” space who make all sorts of claims around this and various supplementation regimens, although we don’t have a ton of great supporting evidence for most of them. Selenium supplementation is a common one, for example, and there is some evidence that selenium can reduce levels of anti-thyroid antibodies, but it does not seem to generate an improvement in thyroid function based on the existing research so far (source).