Crazy for the coconut

I do like coconut. I love the smell, the taste – not a huge fan of the water but the rest I enjoy. My shampoo smells of it too, delicious. And so to share another big change in our diet and that was the introduction of coconut oil. 

There have been loads of articles published in health magazines and on wellness websites recently telling of the amazing health benefits of coconut oil and I have to agree with them all, I think it is truly wonderful stuff. And wouldn’t you know, it just so happens to be incredibly helpful for thyroid sufferers like me. Yes, I am happy to say that the word is being spread about coconut oil!

And let me tell you, I cook with it, I put spoonfuls of it in my coffee and I even rub it onto my skin instead of moisturiser. I ingest this stuff any way I can. ‘But, why?’ I hear you ask! Well, I can explain.

For general health it is said to boost your immune system and play a preventative role in diseases such as cancer and diabetes. It also lays a claim to aid recovery from a serious illness: Alzheimers. Oh - and did I mention it will benefit your heart health too? It truly is a wonderstuff (is that is even a real word?).

 An interesting fact for some hypothyroiders is that coconut oil aids in weight loss.

But of course the crucial point for me is that coconut oil helps to support the healthy functioning of the thyroid gland. Quite literally, this makes me (and you) tick.

You see, it would seem that other oils we use, like nut, seed and vegetable oils, inhibit the way the thyroid gland and hormones work and how our body responds to those hormones. By removing these oils from your diet and replacing them with saturated fats like butter and coconut oil, not only will you have a more productive thyroid function but your body will respond better to it. Its a win-win situation!

For some interesting and in-depth reading on this please read this article: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2003/11/08/thyroid-health-part-two.aspx

So what do you think about that then? Are you asking yourself why you dont already have some in your kitchen? I hope so.

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Love your liver - Part two

So here I go, no messing about. I am about to make you recoil in horror, send a shiver down your spine. And to cash in a little on the title – that’s right – I am going to talk about how to love your liver, and this time I mean the foodstuff.

How outrageous of me, I know. Disgusting, bloody slime is how it should be named. Or should it? (It's at this point I really hope you continue reading – if you’re about to skip off and find another blog to read because this ain’t your ‘thang’ please hang on for a minute longer because ….well, you just never know what might happen.)

You see, I was recently encouraged to love my liver by eating the stuff because the truth is that liver is highly nutritious. The more I discover about the health benefits of this amazing meat the happier I am that we have introduced it into our diet. 

Basically, when eaten, the nutrients available in liver will boost your own liver function. For example:

Liver is full of B vitamins – B vitamins boost your liver function.

Liver contains vitamin A – vitamin A is an anti-oxidant and helps protect your liver.

Liver contains selenium – selenium is essential for you liver to convert T4 into T3 - (especially important for thyroidians!)

I think you can see where I am going with this….liver is absolutely jam packed full to the brim with vitamins and minerals that will do wonders for your health. And it is also very cheap! Which really helps when feeding a family.

So how did we start? Well I bought some chicken liver from our local poulterer, about 100g initially and added it into a bolognese sauce. I put it in the pan just after the mince and when it was sealed I put in the tomatoes and cooked as normal. Once it was cooked I blitzed the lumps away with my hand blender and served with grated carrot for the adults and gluten free pasta for baby. It was pretty tasty! Go on, I dare you to try it.

Quite importantly, as I was being encouraged to eat liver I was given the prized advice ‘to set one night a week for liver night or you may never get round to cooking it’ so now we have liver every Wednesday night. And a little gem of advice I took from another dear friend was, to aid the healing of a body part, you should eat that same part of an animal.  Good advice for us all there I think.

So that, friends, is a little insight to how I love my liver, and I do it every Wednesday night. You can let me know when you're ready and I will post a liver recipe for you. Bon appetit!

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Love your liver - Part one

Everyone has heard of it. You cannot survive without it. You only have one and it is a highly complex piece of machinery. Some people look after it and a few even eat it. I am, of course, talking about LIVER.

This has been the toughest subject to cover yet! I need to share some of the information I have picked up over the past few months with regards to the liver and how important it is. For the first time in my life I have been putting in a conscious effort to look after mine now and I really hope these posts will inspire you to look after yours a little more too! I warn you now though, the subject matter is huge and more complex than I can even start to imagine so I have decided to break it into several articles covering different aspects of liver starting with……

WHY? The eternal question….

To really understand the importance of this amazing organ you need to understand what it does for you, especially with regards to your thyroid. Most of us know it will process the alcohol we consume and are generally aware that we should take better care of it but why?
Well, there are over 500 known functions carried out by the liver (not all known to me personally but science has assured me that this is the case). Indeed, the liver is probably best known for its detoxifying role. But did you know that the liver also has an amazing capability to regenerate itself – like the cockroach that grows back a lost limb, the liver can renew damaged tissue to ensure optimum working capability at all times. ‘Thoroughly amazing’ I hear you whisper. Yet even more importantly, a little known fact is that the liver plays a crucial role in your thyroid function. Let’s get technical….

T time

If you currently take hypothyroid medication, as I do, you are likely taking a set amount of Levothyroxine – AKA T4 (I believe the name comes from the chemical make-up of the hormone, it is not simply a little nickname I have for my tablet). This is meant to replace the hormone that your thyroid would normally generate.

Still with me? Good.

Now, just so you know – T4 is not the only hormone secreted by your thyroid but it accounts for the bulk of hormone released (I understand it makes up approximately ¾ of hormone in the blood. There are other hormones like T1, T2, T3 and calcitonin.). But what’s important is that the T4 hormone will travel round your body in your blood stream and then when it enters your liver it is converted into T3.

This is a big deal, because T3 is what gives you your mojo, it’s the active hormone, the energiser. A lack of T3 can leave you feeling fatigued, drained, possibly depressed…..if you have been there – you know the symptoms.

What I have found is that my T4 pills are not enough. My body was simply not managing to convert the T4 into that glorious and energising T3 and that left my energy levels incredibly low. So what to do?
Well, I believe the better your liver function is, the better your conversion will be and thankfully I was introduced to ways of healing this vital organ. And that, friends, will be covered in the next post. I hope you will join me.

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Guilty secrets

It's waaaay past my bedtime. I actually did go to bed but was so restless I had to get myself out of there to maintain my sanity. I made myself a hot chocolate to see if that would help. I thought a wee snack would go down well with my hot chocolate, and I'm feeling ever so guilty about it. Cheese...... on crackers...... 2 of them, and they were tasty. I also had a piece of tablet, pure sugar rush straight to my head - that kinda stuff. Oh yes, it was nice. So, there. I've laid it bare for all to see. My midnight snack and my guilty conscience are now public property.

You see, the problem I have is that I am still in holiday mode and have only made a half hearted attempt at adjusting back to reality. My husband does not go back to work until Monday so that is my back to 'normality' date too.

I often wonder how others manage this slide back into 'the norm'. A week or 2 of indulgence may be enough to get folk off to a flying start in the new year, strictly maintaining new diet or exercise regimes. Or are there those like me, who seem to avoid the inevitable return to reality. I always assume everyone else to be the former and internally chastise myself for not being there too.

 Either way, next week will come around and I will share how we are coping (or not coping as it may well be) but more importantly I hope I can concentrate for long enough to get back on with the story of therapy for my thyroid ....watch this space.

Beat the wheat

I started this post about menu ideas thinking it would be nice and easy to write on a Sunday morning, after all I do it every week, week in week out, but it turns out it is as hard as coming up with the weekly menu plan itself! I want to share this however as a starting point to help you move away from wheat - to give you ideas on where to start your own menu plans.

The post idea came from some feedback on my facebook page so I would love it if you could please go and 'like' my page called My Thyroid Therapy - I really want it to be an online community where everyone can share experiences and ideas.

Breakfasts

Breakfasts may be the hardest to work around if you are rushing to get out the door for work in the morning but forward planning will always pay off. In this house eggs are a staple. Boiled, fried, scrambled...I have never managed to poach an egg but in the new year I might get round to it. For some reason it scares me a little, dropping an egg into water....
Fruit is another big hit for breakfast round here and can be prepared the night before - a little fruit salad cut up ready to go and then in the morning when I take it out of the fridge I cover it with some creme fraiche and then drizzle a little honey to finish off. Melon, berries, pomegranate, apple, pear, grapes....all very tasty.
Porridge will occasionally get served up if I remember to soak my oats the night before in milk. For a real tasty treat I have been known to stir in a spoonful of homemade jam and swirl in a splash of cream.

Lunches

Soups and Salads, soups and salads, soups and salads.  Sometimes I have a baked potato, sometimes I have leftovers but for the most part its a tasty homemade soup or a delicious fresh salad. Of course the trick is forward planning, and making a large pan of soup will do more than one lunch so is helpful. Salads are great and can be really filling with some meat and cheese added to it. Again these can be made and stored in the fridge overnight.

Dinners

Slow cooker stews are fantastic, easy to prepare and meat is so tender when cooked on a low heat for hours. We usually have combination mash with a stew such as sweet potato and turnip or celeriac and parsnip. You can also do a great curry in your slow cooker and serve with rice or if your being really good and grain free, some grated carrot!
Omelettes and quiches are tasty meals too, but of course it needs to be a crust free quiche. We usually have these with salad and some roasted veg like cubed butternut squash or roasted carrot.
We do try and eat liver once a week too so I am always looking for a tasty liver recipe. I started off by cooking liver in my bolognaise and then blitzing it up. We ate this with grated carrot rather than pasta but you could try a gluten free range of pasta.

So there you have it - some wheat free ideas to get you started. All I really do from here for my weekly plan is mix and match these recipes. The occasional (noodle free) stirfry and fish pie gets thrown in too. I won't lie to you, effort is required in creating your weekly plan and also preparing your food but it really is worth it. And what a great change if your current menu was as wheat-tastic as ours was previously
Breakfast: Cereal/toast
Lunch: Sandwich
Dinner: Pasta/noodles.

I pin our plan up in the kitchen so everyone knows what to expect from one day to the next too - this seems to beat the 'whats for dinner?' and then the 'oh I don't really feel like that' conversations that used to go on here.

Well its time for my coffee now for sure. I hope this has been useful and I hope to see some comments and feedback on facebook!

Anyone for T?

I have mentioned T3 and T4 previously but now want to share a bit more on the subject. Before I start, please bear the following things in mind:

• This is my story and I can only relate my own experiences
• I am not a qualified medical professional
• You should always speak to your doctor/healthcare provider about your own health matters
• I am one of the most impatient people I have ever met

On this healing journey I have made a number changes to my diet and to my lifestyle and I made these changes in the hope that I would function better physically and mentally. This worked amazingly quickly, within 3 weeks of changing my diet I was waking up easier and felt nowhere near as sluggish as I had previously. 'A good start', I thought (because I am an impatient little imp, so I was pleased with these fairly quick results).

Then I received and started taking my T3

Within 2 days my energy levels had increased and I had what I refer to in my diary as 'productive energy'. I simply meant I could get things done around the house easier. A few more days and in my diary I wrote that my interactions with my baby had changed, "I have the energy to talk to him more. It may sound crazy but before I found it exhausting". This to me was another turning point, I could see how I conserved energy to do the important things in a day - some days it would be caring for my and playing with my baby boy, other days it would be getting out to the shops for food.

Over the weeks I read a lot about T3 and T4. Through all the searching I discovered that I was not the only one whose symptoms were not entirely taken care of with my daily T4 tablet. I was intrigued.

And this is where I will leave things......for today anyway. Happy searching friends :)

Food for thought....literally.

Third post and all is well. As I sit here and wait for my baby boy to fall asleep I am trying to think of something with some substance for you to digest, so for the sake of a pun lets start with food.

They say "You are what you eat". Everyone has heard this at some point or another but how much do we pay heed to the message? I used to think I was reasonably healthy, ate balanced meals and looked after my diet as much as I thought I needed to but now when I look back I was eating all the wrong foods and actually I had stopped listening to what my body's needs were. I couldn't hear what they were for the din of the combine harvester rattling through my digestive system.

One of the first things I did for myself was to stop eating grains. Early September I stopped eating breads, pasta, rice, couscous, oats, noodles......anything that you would think of normally to make a quick easy meal was out. The decision came easy because I was so desperate to feel better and up until this point I was that person who would hear of someone else losing weight on Atkins and mutter to myself "if only I could survive without bread/pasta". Well blimey Riley, when you drop the grains you not only survive you start to thrive! I noticed lots of little things happening in my body. For a quick example, I always seemed to have sinus congestion - a little tiny thing that I had accepted as just something I had, one of my (many) quirks.Now it's gone! I cant count how many years it had irritated me and yet I never thought it would be anything serious enough to make a doctors appointment for - but its gone.

I won't go into detail with everything that changed (and believe me you wouldn't want me to either) but these little improvements have convinced me to eat as grain free as I can now. And no, its not always easy, and yes, I have to plan ahead to feed my family, and Christmas time is a minefield for yummy wheaty snacks so yes I fall off the wagon every now and again but the bottom line is I feel better for being grain free. I feel so much better for it and I hope everyone can at least think about trying wheat free or gluten free for some, if not yet all meals.

This is a huge topic though and there are loads of amazing blogs and websites dedicated to wheat/gluten/grain free information, I would urge you to investigate for yourself. From what I have read though, I understand that wheat damages your insides. And your insides are important in helping your body absorb the goodness from your food. (Please note the use of the word 'insides' as being a technical term here). So the aim for grain free is to help your insides repair themselves (that is what insides are good at).

Something else that really is a great help to me is a menu plan. A weekly menu plan can take time to come up with but is worth the effort to ensure you are not caught short for a meal and have to grab a sandwich or make another pasta meal for dinner. I read somewhere recently "Failing to plan is planning to fail" and its true in my house - the one week since September I didn't manage to write a menu plan we had wheat 5 days out of the 7. And that is with me trying to put in extra effort!!

So that's my tuppence worth for today. Baby is sleeping peacefully now so I can get on with some other jobs now but I hope this has given you something to think about. Why not make it your New Years resolution to give up the grain? Help your gut to heal and you are on your way to better health.