Endocrinol Invest

People with Hashimoto’s often find themselves despairing that they are both exhausted and can’t sleep. This is because the disease increasingly causes the body to produce fewer energy-giving thyroid hormones (making you feel tired), followed by an excess of adrenaline to make up for it (making you wired).

Worse, Hashimoto’s can actually flip between hypo- and hyper- states, so that someone’s system can be running too fast for a while (rapid heartbeat, palpitations, sweating, diarrhoea, anxiety, hand tremors, etc.), and then suddenly too slowly (tired, cold, croaky voice, depression, weight gain, constipation, slow heart rate).

Using Food to Rebalance the Body's Metabolism

Certain foods have been found to slow down or speed up the thyroid, and people with hyper- or hypothyroid conditions are told to avoid them in order to avoid making their condition worse. This is not because the foods or herbs are intrinsically bad for the thyroid (except goitrogens, see below), but because they act to increase or decrease its activity. What’s bad for someone with hyperthyroidism may be good for someone with hypothyroidism, because these are two sides of the same coin. You are, effectively, speeding up or slowing down the thyroid whenever you ingest certain foods or drinks.