A GLUTEN FREE DIET CAN HELP HASHIMOTO'S

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Want a chocolate chip cookie? Yes.

That was always my answer to this question until about 10 months ago.

I wanted to eat all the yummy carbs. Don’t we all? Pasta, cookies, and donuts (especially donuts!) were a few of my favorites. However, I didn’t realize that eating foods containing gluten protein from wheat was putting a strain on my already struggling digestive system.

WHAT IS GLUTEN?

Gluten provides the elastic quality in pizza dough or the fluffy appearance of baked bread. Extra gluten is even added to most breads in grocery stores today to make it shelf stable. The modernized wheat protein has been grown and modified resulting in the gluten protein being quite large and hearty for digestion.

GLUTEN CAUSES INFLAMMATION

Inflammation is your immune system’s natural response to injury. You can see this inflammation when you get a paper cut or a splinter. The area around the injury becomes red and irritated due to your immune reaction. This is similar to how gluten irritates the intestinal lining- even if you don’t have an allergy or sensitivity to gluten.

Inflammation in your intestinal lining causes the junctions between the cells in the intestinal wall to loosen. This leads to poor regulation of what passes into your bloodstream so that too much from the digestive tract (undigested food particles, bacteria, toxins, etc.) is allowed to pass through. This is often described as a “leaky gut” – I will discuss this more in my next post, Part 6: The Leaky Gut Connection to Hashimoto’s.

Adding to the increased intestinal permeability from inflammation, gluten also advances this process by stimulating the release of a protein called zonulin from your intestinal wall. Zonulin specifically contributes to widening the junctions between cells in your intestinal lining. When you add together the inflammation and the effects from zonulin, gluten has a powerful effect on intestinal permeability.

A GLUTEN FREE DIET CAN HELP HASHIMOTO’S

There is a strong correlation between autoimmune disease and gluten. Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis on the surface may seem to be a problem with your thyroid, but in reality it is a problem with your immune system. Your thyroid is an innocent bystander that stops working correctly after being attacked by a raging and unbalanced immune system. Several factors can be at play to make this happen, but the one thing to seems to be a common denominator in aggravating the immune system is gluten.

Your digestive tract and your immune system are closely intertwined. In fact, 70-80% of your immune system resides in your digestive tract because it must respond to the pathogens present in everything you ingest. This is why having an effective immune system in place can prevent illness.

Following a gluten free diet can help Hashimoto’s by effectively lowering the inflammation in your gut, which in turn, can lower the inflammation throughout your entire body. This includes the inflammation of your thyroid (thyroid antibodies) from Hashimoto’s. This is what motivated me to begin following a gluten free diet.

A GLUTEN FREE DIET CAN DECREASE HASHIMOTO’S ANTIBODIES

After understanding that a gluten free diet can help Hashimoto’s thyroid antibodies drop significantly (by close to half!) and increase energy levels dramatically, I was inspired. I made the jump to go gluten free within a week- much to the horror of my husband since I am the cook in the family.

I had been considering going gluten free for a month or two, but I couldn’t seem to take the leap until I understood that it could help lower my thyroid antibodies. Some people get this result from going dairy free as well. Knowing that these thyroid antibodies were causing destruction to my thyroid, it made sense to try do anything I could to lower the attack.

After following a gluten free diet for a month, it was exciting to see the steep drop in my thyroid antibodies. My TPO antibodies had dropped from 188 IU/mL to 110 IU/mL and my TgAB antibodies were gone completely (I talk more about these labs in Part 2: What Do You Mean My Thyroid is Broken?). I was feeling like a new person and my energy returned. Now that was encouraging!!!

In my next post I will talk more about how a “leaky gut” connects to Hashimoto’s and food allergies in Part 6: The Leaky Gut Connection to Hashimoto’s .

You are welcome follow my thyroid journey below.