“Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. You can’t eat seafood.”
“Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. You can’t eat wheat.”
“Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. You can’t drink milk.”
“With Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, you can’t eat cruciferous vegetables.”
There is a lot of advice online about what people with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis can’t eat, and the above are probably the four that come out on top. Of these, not eating wheat or milk is good advice, after all, the gluten contained in wheat and the casein contained in milk are most likely not friendly to anyone suffering from an autoimmune disease.
Of the hundreds of autoimmune diseases, and since Hashimoto and the thyroid are closely related, rumors are starting to circulate about Hashimoto patients not being able to eat cruciferous vegetables.
If true, this means that foods such as cabbage, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and radishes are off the table for Hashimoto patients.
Fortunately, that’s not true.
What’s the “reason” for not letting the cruciferous family eat?
In the past, especially in the 1950s, iodine deficiency was widespread and could easily lead to an enlarged thyroid gland. Even more unfortunately, cruciferous vegetables, which contain a substance called “thioglucoside”, may block the absorption of iodine by the thyroid gland. You can imagine the consequences of limiting the absorption of iodine, which is already deficient.
Moreover, when we chew cruciferous vegetables, the enzyme “black mustard” hydrolyzes thioglucoside into a number of compounds, among which isothiocyanate and thiocyanate, which in the absence of iodine can also cause the thyroid gland to enlarge.
Based on these mechanisms, in the 1950s, people with thyroid disease were often advised to eat little or no cruciferous vegetables. This advice was reasonable in the larger context of the time.
However, many years ago, many countries around the world began adding iodine to salt, and today there are very few people who are deficient in iodine. Also in the experience of some functional physicians overseas, the vast majority of Hashimoto thyroid patients are not iodine deficient per se, but rather there is a portion of the population that has an excess of iodine.
If you are not deficient in iodine, do not stay away from cruciferous vegetables in the Hashimoto population.
Cruciferous vegetables can be “detoxified”.
Unless you yourself have a sensitivity to cruciferous vegetables (to sulfur-containing compounds), you should eat vegetables like broccoli, cabbage, and cabbage normally, which are very healthy foods for the Hashimoto population and contain nutrients that can help detoxify the liver, such as radiothione. So not only should you not avoid them, but you should also eat more cruciferous vegetables in moderation. What is the right amount? It is ok to eat 200-400g per day.
What if I’m not sure if I have an iodine deficiency? Then don’t eat it raw, heat and cook it, the reason being that black mustard enzyme is very unstable and can be inactivated with a little heat, greatly reducing the problem of goiter caused by iodine deficient cruciferous consumption.
Original food point with something to say
Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, which is essentially an autoimmune disease, is rooted in dysbiosis of the intestinal flora and the development of increased intestinal permeability, which results in the immune system mistakenly attacking its own tissues. For the vast majority of people with autoimmune disease, the foods that exacerbate the damage to the gut are not cruciferous vegetables, but may be wheat, barley, rye, dairy products, soy, corn, sugar, vegetable oils, and heavily processed foods.
Avoiding those foods in the highly sensitive category and choosing foods with high nutrient density is what may effectively intervene in Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and intervene in autoimmune diseases.
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