How Can Paleo and Vegan Diets Both Be Good for the Thyroid?
15 Dec 2025 · 11 min
This is a JJ Virgin podcast episode (July 2, 2021) that asks whether Paleo and vegan diets can both be good for the thyroid. After sponsor ads, JJ introduces Dr. Alan Christensen, a board-certified naturopathic endocrinologist, who explains that differing iodine intake across diets may explain why some people improve on paleo/AIP or vegan diets. Dr. Christensen reports estimated daily iodine intakes: Standard American Diet ~538+ µg, safe intake ~50–200 µg, improvement often seen under ~100 µg, AIP ~72 µg, and vegan ~40–50 µg. He points listeners to iodineinventory.com to calculate iodine from foods and describes the Thyroid Reset Diet as intentionally low in iodine to improve thyroid disease in some people.
Questions this episode answers
July 2, 2021
About 538 or more micrograms of iodine per day (considering ranges).
Approximately 50 to 200 micrograms per day.
Probably under 100 micrograms per day.
About 72 micrograms per day (typical day's intake).
Chapters
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Can Paleo and Vegan Diets Both be.
Good for the Thyroid?
This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition expert and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Roberta emailed how can Paleo and vegan diets both be good for the thyroid? That is an interesting question and I went and got the perfect person to answer this question. I've got my longtime friend Dr. Alan Christensen, aka Dr. C with me today. He's a board certified naturopathic endocrinologist and New York Times best selling author and his latest book, the Thyroid Reset Diet, really dives deep into iodine thyroid how to heal your thyroid. So stay with us. We will be right back with the answer.
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There are many stories of people who have gone on paleo diets or autoimmune paleo diets, or vegan diets, or gluten free diets or gluten free dairy free diets and they felt that their thyroid function has gotten better from that. Now there's also many who have tried any of those diets and not seen it helpful. What we know from medical research is that those on autoimmune paleo diets, they've not been shown to change thyroid levels, but they did improve thyroid symptoms in some people. And we also have multiple studies showing that vegans have much lower rates of thyroid disease, both hypo and hyperthyroidism. There have been studies on gluten free diets for those with and without celiac disease, and in groups they don't seem to help thyroid function. But nonetheless there are individuals who who have said yeah, that did work for me, however, and I've struggled with that. I believe people, I don't doubt that their experience is valid, but yet the group studies have not shown anything quite like that except for vegans. And then I realized that what I've talked about with iodine, there's a common thread. We now know that reducing iodine enough can reverse thyroid disease for some people. So I put together some databases showing how much iodine is in certain foods. You can find this on iodineinventory.com There's a free app that you can plug in various foods and see what your iodine intake is. And I built standard menus using the most popular foods for the standard American diet, the autoimmune paleo diet and vegan diets. And so plugging in breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, salt and then the amounts and then the iodine content. I did the math. So the standard American diet, well, and there's a range on these things too because iodine levels can vary a lot. So considering the range and being generous with that, the standard American diet could easily have 538 or more micrograms of iodine on a given day. A safe amount is probably about 50 to 200 micrograms. And a range that might improve thyroid function is probably under 100 micrograms. So I did the same exercise with the autoimmune paleo diet. You know, most popular AIP breakfast, most common AIP lunch, dinner, and then typical amounts of iodine in those foods. What I came with was about probably 72 micrograms for a typical day's intake. So way less than the standard American diet. So those that have gone paleo or autoimmune paleo, they've plummeted their iodine intake. And that's because some of the biggest outlying iodine sources are egg yolks, dairy foods, processed grains, and certain types of seafood and certain salts. And many of these get cut out on AIP diets, so they end up being lower. Now, vegan diets, same thing I did the exercise of most popular vegan breakfast, lunch, dinner, average iodine intakes, the vegan diets probably run around 40 to 50 micrograms of iodine per day. And same thing, they've cut out the dairy foods. If they're reasonably healthy, they've cut out the processed grains, they've cut out the seafood and the egg yolks. So a lot of these big sources are not there. So these diets have probably improved thyroid function because they've inadvertently been low in iodine. Yet that wasn't their stated goal and it wasn't done with intention. And so because of that, I think that's why the results have been inconsistent. One could be on a vegan diet and still consume iodized salt, especially sea vegetables, and get a whole lot more. And on autoimmune paleo diets, one could also consume the sea vegetables by some guidelines, or consume high amounts of seafood, or consume some highly iodized salt, and they could end up getting more than a safe amount. But I think this has relevance for those who have cut out things on vegan or autoimmune, paleo or gluten or dairy free diets. I think that's why all these things have sometimes, but not always helped with thyroid disease, if someone's lucky, they end up stumbling onto a lower iodine diet by doing so. So with the thyroid reset diet, it's all set up to be low in iodine. And if someone already is vegan or AIP for other reasons. That's totally cool. They don't have to change. There's some small things they can take into account to make sure they are consistently staying at a good iodine target, but they don't have to give up the habits they've already gone with. And if someone else is just on a healthy diet and they don't want to be stricter than they need to be, they just want to focus on their thyroid, it's actually pretty easy because there's no massive food groups to cut out. You know, all the food groups have some parallel substitutions that are pretty easy to make. But the exciting thing is that we now have strong evidence that diet can improve thyroid disease.
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