Morning all.
Main question, how does soya affect the thyroid and possibly cause hypo?
I've had serious hypo symptoms for the past 8 years (eyebrows almost gone, hair loss, itching, very bad depression, permanent lethargy, dreadful sleep, weight gain that won't sod off, basically every symptom) and used to eat ALOT of soya products due to being very dairy intolerant. I quit the soya stuff around 6 years ago due to other reasons. After several attempts I've fianlly got a doctor to test for hypo (others just said tough sh*t, it's stress related alopecia, avoid stress) and the tests have come back on the slow side of normal but that's with taking piles of vitamins, eating well, etc, but the dr is happy with that. I'm thinking that since I've quit the soya stuff and been supplementing it's started to get back to 'normal' but not nearly as 'normal' as what it was.
So, basically, what does soya do to the thyroid? Does it block TSH? Does it stop the thyroid reacting to TSH?
Hi superbad.
May I suggest an extremely good article for reading, by Mary Shomon. It is on the About,com website, subsection-Thyroid Disease, article name-Soy and the Thyroid. It is a well balanced, well researched article, citing many sources of research about the ongoing arguments for and against soy, (or at least the OVERuse of soy) in our modern diets, and is WELL worth the read.
If you have difficulty finding this article, let me know through here and I will post the link. (I haven't put the link on now, as these have to be passed by admin before showing up on here and can slow up the posting by many days.)
As a generality, soy is considered to be one of many goitrogenic foods, a food that can attack the thyroid function in autoimmune compromised people especially. Most thyroid disease in 'the west' is caused by Hashimotos Thyroiditis, an autoimmune condition, where the thyroid is attacked by the immune system, which 'reads' it as an alien. While the thyroid is still working a bit, but being compromised by the attack, the patient can by hypo or hyperthyroid, and also swing from one to the other and all points in between, and this is particularly when it is recommended that we try to cut down any goitrogenic foods in our diet.
It would also be worth you reading up on the list of foods that are goitrogenic, but I would recommend that you don't go overboard cutting them all out, as you would also lose out on all their other benefits. It is recognised that if you cook properly many of the list, eg Brocolli, then the goitrogens are pretty much killed off and you will not miss out on the other beneficial elements.
Hope this is helpful to you.
Soya beans are full of hormones and as such not a good idea for patients with thyroid problems.
Thankyou pippa22119, from that article it looks like soya can interfere with production of T3 & T4.
Anyone else able to chime in with info on this?