Addressing the factors address above that either negatively and positively impact thyroid function is a great start to ensuring your body has the energy it needs to function optimally.

This graphic created by the Institute for Functional Medicine , is a great visual that summarizes this post:. Institute for Functional Medicine IFM. Factors that Affect Thyroid Function.

Clinical challenges in thyroid disease: time for a new approach? Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health practitioners with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition and before undertaking any diet, supplement, fitness, or other health program.

Factors that STOP this step -Stress -Infection, trauma, radiation, medication. Share this: Facebook Pinterest Print Email LinkedIn.

Sign up for our newsletter: Enter your email address to subscribe:. The additional tests will give you a sense of how much hormone you have available for your body to use, how well you are making it and converting it from T4 to T3.

Antibodies show if you have any autoimmunity, which is very common, and something you want to absolutely know. Your doctor may not want to do this level of testing or may feel it is unnecessary.

This is a sign that you need to have a conversation with your doctor about what you want and need, since it is your body, and you have the right to know the details of how it is functioning. If your doctor still refuses, it may be time to find a new, more open-minded doctor.

I suggest a functional medicine doctor. This is a person committed to finding the root causes of disease, rather than treating the symptoms only. Lab levels vs. Easy, right? Not so much. Normal thyroid lab levels are very broad.

These levels were actually established using unhealthy patients! Despite industry attempts to refine these lab values, they have persisted without change.

Optimal levels are a far narrower range than the established lab values. Pro tip: always ask your doctor for a copy of your labs, and make accounts at the labs where you draw blood and you will always have access to results online. Functional medicine optimal thyroid lab levels:. Thyroid function self-test: Take your basal body temperature in the morning before moving or getting out of bed.

Reach over and just put the thermometer in your mouth and wait. Take your temperature for a week. If it averages below Maintaining causes If you keep dropping a hammer on your toe, there is no remedy I will be able to give you that will stop the pain.

You must stop dropping the hammer on your toe! In homeopathy, we have a phrase to describe something that is causing or perpetuating a health problem: a maintaining cause. You need to remove maintaining causes that are harming your thyroid and its function, and you need to add in health-promoting foods and nutrients that will optimize thyroid function.

There are a few key maintaining causes with thyroid dysfunction: stress, food sensitivities and triggers, lack of nutrients needed by the thyroid, gut dysfunction, toxins and stealth infections.

It is important to remove maintaining causes to achieve optimal thyroid health. Stress Stress, in particular, is a maintaining cause. There is not a single stress-free person in my practice. Historically speaking, stressors were intense and short-lived for our ancestors.

A threat to our safety called for immediate action. Normal organ functions, including thyroid production, is depressed during intense stress, in order to emphasize the fight or flight functions. Threats to safety of our ancestors were followed by an immediate reset of the parasympathetic system.

This is the main difference between then and now. We are in a long-term stress situation. We never get that reset to parasympathetic. We face stressors at home, at work, in our interpersonal relationships.

We also have silent stressors, like social media, the news and just facing our email inboxes daily. Stress is particularly toxic for the thyroid glandand affects your thyroid gland in many ways. When you are under stress, your body steals the building blocks of thyroid hormone to make cortisol instead, leaving you with less hormone to work with.

Stress also triggers your body to create reverse T3, instead of T3, which is an inactive form of thyroid hormone, leaving you with less energy.

Stress impacts the tissues of your cells, making them resistant to thyroid hormone, making it harder to get T3 into the cells, where it is needed to make energy.

This is just scratching the surface of the very direct ways stress impacts your thyroid gland. Reducing stress will make your thyroid healthier, and will ultimately give you more energy, weight loss, and better clarity of mind.

Meditation is my go-to solution for stress reduction and overall better outlook on life. Food sensitivities and triggers When you consume foods to which you are sensitive, your gut gets inflamed. Gluten in particular causes this problem, in both gluten-sensitive and non-gluten sensitive people.

It does this by stimulating zonulin, which compromises the tight seal between the cells in your gut. Normally, your intestinal lining is very strict about what can pass through it and into your body. These molecules are be flagged by your immune system as foreign, increasing inflammation and immune activity.

Additionally, some molecules, such as gluten and casein, look similar to thyroid tissue. Common food triggers for thyroid dysfunction are gluten, dairy, and soy.

Other common sensitivities are corn and egg. This is the gold standard for identifying food triggers and sensitivities. For me, it was almonds. I love almonds, they are the epitome of healthy and good.

But not for me, they turned out to be the source of all my problems. Nutrients Many nutrients are needed in the complex process of thyroid hormone production. Iron, tyrosine, selenium, omega-3 fatty acids, iodine, zinc, Vitamin D, B vitamins and Vitamin A are all essential to make and convert thyroid hormones.

Making sure that you are consuming these in the right amounts will help your thyroid perform optimally. On the other hand, there are foods and substances that hamper thyroid function.

The foods discussed above, such as gluten and dairy proteins can pose an ongoing thyroid problem due to molecular mimicry, for example. Get to know what is healthy for your thyroid, and what is harmful, and you can make optimal health choices going forward.

Heal your gut The inside of your gut is actually the outside world! Your digestive system is directly connected to the outside. That means pathogens can be inside your gut at any point, and they must be prevented from entering the protected area that is your body. Luckily, your body is beautifully designed to do just that.

Your intestinal lining is one cell thick, with tight joints between cells. This barrier guards from pathogens and undigested food particles passing into your bloodstream and from interacting with the many immune cells that lie just beyond this wall.