Dietary Oil Consumption and Thyroid Function

My wife and I have been on a ketogenic diet for about eight weeks, for weight loss and to help us gain control over our diet again (perhaps I should just speak for myself on that last one). In the past we always did the homeopathic version of the hCG diet, the one from DesBio we put patients on while in practice. It always worked well for us and we knew it inside and out, but we decided to try something different.

It was a little tough for a couple of weeks, mainly because we didn’t supplement with enough electrolyte replacements, but we’re humming along now. We’re at the point where we’re starting to add more carbs from starchier but healthy sources, like sweet potatoes. (We’ve been eating plenty of vegetables but no fruit). I’m down 17 pounds, my wife about 10 (but she looks like she’s lost more).

Anyway, this isn’t a keto diet post, it’s a thyroid post. While researching for my upcoming SET-DB™ Thyroid Protocol, I ran across some interesting information regarding dietary fat and the thyroid gland.

“It turns out the linoleic acid suppresses thyroid signaling.”

Here are some highlights of the post I linked above (Mark’s Daily Apple—great site):

1. Rats on a corn oil diet convert less T4 to active T3 than rats on a lard diet.
   - You’ll recall that about 90% of the hormone made and released by the thyroid gland is T4. The body has to convert T4 into the active T3. Corn oil inhibits this conversion.
2. Rats on a safflower oil diet have a more greatly reduced metabolic response to T3 than rats on a beef fat diet.
   - Beef fat also reduced the metabolic response, just not as much as safflower oil.
   - The rats were fed a high-glucose and otherwise fat-free diet. Nasty, even for rats.
   - Last sentence in the abstract: “These data support the hypothesis that polyunsaturated fats uniquely suppress the gene expression of lipogenic enzymes by functioning as competitive inhibitors of T3 action, possibly at the nuclear receptor level.”
3. Rats on a high-PUFA (polyunsaturated fatty acids) diet have brown fat that’s less responsive to thyroid hormone. Remember, brown fat is the type that generates heat to keep us warm.
   - Click this link if you need a primer in what brown fat is (I had to).
4. Rats on a long-term diet high in soybean oil have terrible body temperature regulation, which thyroid function in large part controls.
5. The more rapeseed meal (from which PUFA-rich canola oil is derived) you feed turkeys, the worse their thyroid signaling gets and the less meat/eggs they produce.
   - The researchers didn’t state whether this negative effect would apply to humans.
6. Back in the 70s, researchers proposed using vegetable oil as a treatment for hyperthyroidism.
7. This reduced thyroid signaling isn’t a function of all polyunsaturated fats, however. Omega-3 PUFAs, found in seafood, increase thyroid signaling in the liver. Keep eating fish, folks.

What’s all this mean? For one, people concerned about their thyroid health should eat as little PUFAs as possible (except Omega-3). In fact, since PUFAs are easily oxidized, and rancid fat is bad for you, PUFAs should also be avoided by anyone concerned with their health in general.

When I developed my highly effective fibromyalgia treatment program, I didn’t feel the need to include dietary recommendations, for a number of reasons.

One, getting people to change their diet is difficult. Most have to be backed into a corner, facing serious health problems, before they’ll give up their favorite fast food meals and daily quarts of sugary soft drinks.

Two, the program is very effective without a change of diet. This suggests that diet doesn’t cause or greatly contribute to fibromyalgia, but I realize that may not be completely true. While the average patient sees a 67% decrease in their overall symptom profile, the fact is most had some symptom(s) at the end of the program, albeit far less than they had when they began. Diet modification could well have resolved some of those residual symptoms.

Three, sometimes you have to pick your battles. Those who raised or are raising children understand this. Do you want to spend your energy getting patients to come in for their treatments (which actually isn’t difficult at all because we got the money issue out of the way at the start) and take the few supplements you give them, which proved to be effective, or spend your time begging and pleading with them to stop eating at Burger King every day?

This won’t be the case with my upcoming thyroid protocol. As you just read (and there’s more to come, diet-wise), there’s enough evidence that diet does affect thyroid and thyroid hormone function.

The most important part of the program will, of course, be eliminating a person’s sensitivities to things like iodine, thyroid tissue (80–90% of hypothyroid sufferers have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis), T3, T4, TSH, adrenal hormones, certain amino acids, etc. If this isn’t done, it’s likely supplementation with hormones or nutritionals will not work as well as they could, or at all.