What to Eat, When to Eat, and Why for Autoimmune Disease

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Autoimmune diseases like celiac, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, multiple sclerosis, and type 1 diabetes are caused when your immune system goes haywire and attacks your healthy tissues. And even if you need medication, you may be surprised how much you can heal if you make food your medicine first. Because what you eat, when you eat, and why can have a huge impact on autoimmune conditions. In this video, I'm going to share the top six dietary hacks I recommend specifically to heal your Hashimoto's and boost your metabolism because low thyroid is one of the most common autoimmune conditions out there. But if you're dealing with another autoimmune condition, these tips can help you too. So be sure to watch to the end because number six, it's probably one you have never heard before. Hey, it's jj. Today we're going to talk about the really common autoimmune condition called Hashimoto's thyroiditis or Hashimoto's disease. It happens when your immune system doesn't recognize your thyroid and attacks it. And it usually causes hypothyroidism or underactive thyroid. So the result is that your thyroid gland can't make enough thyroid hormone. But on rare occasions, Hashis can actually cause hyperthyroidism, which means your thyroid is actually overactive. In the United States, Hashimoto's affects about five people out of 100 and it's most common among middle aged women. But really, anyone can develop it and there are specific blood tests to help diagnose it. So if you suspect you have it, be sure to see a functional medicine doctor to get those tests. Okay, so you probably know your thyroid is a butterfly shaped gland located at the base of your neck just below your Adam's apple. It produces hormones that help regulate a lot of functions in your body and mainly your metabolism. So if you're hypothyroid, your thyroid can't keep your metabolism revved to where it needs to be. Then you're not turning your food into energy very well and your body's functions slow down. When that happens, you get hit with symptoms like fatigue, increased sensitivity to cold, dry skin, muscle aches and joint pain, depression, brain fog, swelling of your thyroid, which is also called a goiter, puffy face, and even hair loss. Holy smokes. How's that for things to deal with every day. And those are just a few of the symptoms. But here's the good news. Recent research has highlighted the positive impact diet can have on Hashimoto's. So if you want to support your thyroid function and reduce your symptoms, what should you eat? Well, there are some universal things to try first, but it may take some time and some experimenting to land on what works best for your body chemistry. I like to use diets short term and therapeutically to do just that. You see what you're going to do when you do a diet is you're going to make sure that you journal while you do it and, and really pay attention to how you feel so you can connect the dots between what you're eating and how you feel to see what's working. I've worked with thousands of other people with Hashimoto's and I gotta tell you, many of them like me, have had a lot of success with Healing swaps, the ones that I'm gonna recommend. So if you've been eating a standard American diet with lots of refined grains, sugar, dairy, soy and ultra processed dirty foods, you're hammering your thyroid and your blood sugar. So you have to make some changes. And here's something that may surprise you. Being a vegan or a vegetarian doesn't necessarily mean you're doing much better. If you're a plant based eater, you may be inadvertently making matters worse because those diets can be sometimes pretty carb heavy. And if you're overdoing the carbs, you can exacerbate those blood sugar issues. And some non meat protein sources like legumes, eggs, dairy, grains and soy can actually be reactive with Hashimoto's. And also tough on your GI tract if you're trying to heal leaky gut. So if you're leaning on them for protein, you may have to test and pull them out of your diet for a while to see how you do. And if you're open to it, you may even want to consider reintroducing some clean animal protein. Emphasis is on clean, right? Also, one last thing for vegans, if you have Hashimoto's, you can be prone to nutrient deficiencies. So you have to be really careful. Make sure you're supplementing, especially with vitamin B12. Now you can take a supplement like Reignite Wellness B12 Boost. It's made with a high dose of 5,000 micrograms of methylcobalamin, which is the most natural activated form of B12. It's really well absorbed and has a high retention rate in the body. So tune into your needs there. Super important. Okay, with that said, let's get into my six hacks for Hashis. Number one, you'll pull the potentially inflammatory and reactive foods from your diet. I call them the high five foods, and that means gluten, dairy, and especially soy. Soy is linked with autoimmune thyroid disorders, and those three foods tend to be the most problematic for people with thyroid conditions. So removing them can be a big jumped that can give a good reduction in your symptoms. Here's why. Reactive foods can trigger an inflammatory response in your GI tract, which can then lead to malabsorption of nutrients and leaky gut. So they just fire up your immune system and then it keeps attacking your thyroid. So if you're having symptoms like acid reflux, bloating, joint pain, anxiety, or brain fog, those symptoms may be your body trying to tell you that you're reacting to these high five foods. You just may not have connected the dots because sometimes the reactions can take a couple hours or even a few days to manifest. When I wrote the Virgin Diet, I wrote it for this very reason that we have to pull these foods out, give our body time to heal and recover. Because then when you come back and test them, you can really start to see what those foods are doing for you and whether they work for you or not. All right, number two, you want to address any blood sugar imbalances by lowering your sugar impact. Because if you have Hashimoto's, you may also have adrenal fatigue from blood sugar imbalances. So that means limiting sugar and some of the high sugar impact carbs. So this would be things like fruit juices, fruit juice concentrates, the ultra processed foods, all the white flour, crackers, cookies, breads, etc. Number three, increase your intake of protein, good fats and fiber. I call this the trifecta. And the reason I put these things together, the protein, the fat and the fiber, is because it's going to help you have amazing blood sugar balance and satiety. And you got to have those if you're going to follow a program. Now. Clean protein, healthy fats and fiber are also big in the Mediterranean diet. And a recent study suggested that eating similar to the Mediterranean diet may help protect your thyroid too. Plus, like, it's delicious. Number four, you'll add nutrient dense foods that can help benefit your thyroid. Like fermented foods is one, and that's one I've been really working on getting a little bit in every day. I've been focusing on things like almond yogurt I haven't progressed to kimchi or sauerkraut yet, I admit it. Hopefully you will. I see it as an advanced move. But fermented foods can help get you along with probiotics, can help really get good bacteria in your gut microbiome and then eating in some different prebiotic foods and that would be things like chicory or inulin or onions that provide fertilizer food for the good bacteria in your gut. Of course, fiber is another key one in here because fiber is super important for feeding the good bacteria in the gut and also helping to detoxify the body. Now let's talk about cruciferous vegetables because people believe they're bad for the thyroid function because of goitrogens. But you know what? That's not true for most people. Plus the fiber in them helps detoxify that. So one of the really cool detoxifying. Well, it's really, it's not a vegetable, it's an herb is cilantro. Now I actually have that gene that hates cilantro. I kid you not, but if you do not have that or you can hide it, then cilantro is amazing because it's a natural chelator. So it can bind to toxins, help get them out of your body. So it's a great thing to throw into guacamole if it doesn't taste like soap to you, which it does to me.

Sadly.

Berries are another one that I want you to include because they are incredible source of antioxidants. And blueberries especially are rich in a source of something called myo inositol. And this is a nutrient that's been shown to improve thyroid function and blood sugar. Okay, number five, hack, you gotta limit fish high in mercury. And maybe not just limit like stop it altogether because studies have shown that mercury can impact your thyroid function. So even though those fats in the fish are good for you, you don't want to make a good thing bad by increasing your toxic burden by eating foods that are fish that are high in mercury. So one of the some of the ones that you'll want to avoid are things like swordfish, Chilean sea bass, tuna, and stick with fish like salmon and halibut. So look online. Here's the go to on this is search online for fish high in mercury because they'll rate them low, medium and high. And focus on the low. It's generally the smaller fish you're better off if you will eat sardines. Bonus points for those because that's definitely one that's a good one. Okay, number six, here's the controversial one. Controversy alert. Limit foods high in iodine. What? You probably heard just the opposite, right? Well, you do need iodine in your diet, but you don't want to overdo it. Like everything else, it's all about having the right amounts and being in balance. So you probably won't need to supplement with it. And you'll also want to watch how much you're getting in your diet. So you don't want to go adding in iodized salt or eating a lot of dairy or seaweed. Plus, remember, dairy could be a trigger for the autoimmune disease too. Quite often it is. Now, the most important thing to do when focusing on your diet is to help your thyroid function. Put the fire out by calming the inflammatory response in your diet. So that's going to be all about swapping out the foods that could be hurting you for foods that can heal you. And one more dishonorable mention I have to talk about when we're talking about inflammation are all those bad seed oils. So one of the big things that you can do that can really help here is to make an oil change. And you really have to watch out for things like canola oil, corn oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil. These are highly processed pro inflammatory oils that we want to swap out for extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil. Okay, now let's talk when. Then there's that timing of when to eat these healing foods. And it turns out eating in sync with your body's clock, eating according to circadian rhythm can help you better manage Hashimoto's because it may help lower inflammation. So intermittent fasting has become popular. You've probably heard about it, especially because it can help with healing, cellular detox, lowering inflammation and weight loss. And you might be tempted to go, okay, I'm diving into intermittent fasting because weight gain is often one of the things that you struggle with when you have Hashimoto's. But beware, because fasting can affect your thyroid. Since fasting directly impacts your metabolism, basically your thyroid hormones drop when you're fasting. So if you have thyroid issues, you got to be cautious about intermittent fasting. But there's also some amazing benefits. So it's probably worth giving a try. But I want you to kind of slowly tread into it. So here's how you're going to do it. First, you want to just lock in a 12 hour overnight fast. And we should be doing this anyway. Like, I don't Even count this as intermittent fasting. That means stop eating three to four hours before bed and eat breakfast, you know, an hour or so after you wake up. There, easy peasy. That's nailed the 12 hour fast. The next thing that I want you to do is go from, you know, three meals and snacks just to three meals. That is super duper important. Get rid of like eating and snacking all day long, that's important. And then you can see how you feel if you want to shorten that window to 14 hours or 16 hours. But you may find just chicken out the snacks because you're eating by the plate of protein, fat and fiber, right that we talked about, that satiety and blood sugar trifecta. And getting that 12 to 14 hour fast will do what you need because it is really important. We do not want to get your thyroid to start to think you're into starvation mode and then impact your thyroid hormones and put you at a risk for gaining more weight. So be careful here, tread cautiously and pay attention. Again, connect the dots between how you're feeling and what and when you're eating. Now when you do eat breakfast, breast, right, I want to make sure that you do it by the plate, right? So that's protein, fat and fiber. And for, for me that's always a nutrient dense loaded smoothie because I know that I can put in my all in one protein powder. I add some healthy fats with things like freshly ground flax, almond or coconut or flax milk, maybe a little avocado, a little bit of slightly green banana or some berries. So it's really easy to make sure I get the protein, fat and fiber without adding a bunch of sugar in right? And right out of the gate. That means that my blood sugar is balanced and I've got great satiety and that's super important for helping you with Hashimoto's. And I also don't have any of the high five foods in there. Now here's what else is important. According to researchers, eating a higher calorie breakfast and then going a little lighter on calories for dinner might also help you better manage your Hashimoto's. Alright, these hacks that I just gave you, they're gonna give your thyroid the love it deserves and hopefully help you feel better fast. So to recap, you're gonna limit the inflammatory foods like dirty processed carbs and sugar and gluten, dairy, eggs, corn, soy, peanuts, you're going to limit the fish high in mercury and the foods high in iodine. You're going to increase your protein, fat and fiber and other nutrient dense foods that support your gut. And then to take it further if there are any other things impacting your thyroid function. Make sure you're removing toxins from your daily routine, adding nutrients if you're deficient, balancing your adrenals, and addressing any gut related issues like Candida or Sibo. Thank you so much for joining me. And if you don't know me, I'm JJ Virgin. I'm a four times New York Times bestselling author, most notably of the Virgin Diet and a Fitness hall of Famer and I have lots more to share with you to help you get your thyroid back on track. Which of course is going to help you get healthy and lose weight if that's your goal. So check out the rest of my what to Eat, when to Eat and why series for more. And thank you so much for being with me. I'll see you next time for more. For more info on this and other health topics I cover, or to rate.

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