LCHF, pregnancy, childbirth, breast-feeding and hypothyroidism

Elisabeth:

Today I recieved this message from one of my readers:


"Anonymous said...
Hello! I am due to give birth in two weeks and I have put on quite a bit of weight... so I was thinking of starting the LCHF diet as soon as my baby is born.
Now, I have a thyroid problem (hypothyroidsm) and I am not sure this will work for me? Have you had any experience wuth people that have succeeded (or not) with the LCHF diet despite of their hormonal problems?

Thanks!

PPG

30/03/2010 11:36 "


My answer is that you don´t have to wait starting LCHF diet until you have given birth to your baby. You can even start LCHF diet immidiately because it is beneficial both for you and for your yet unborn baby. I don´t know if LCHF affects the taste of the breast milk negatively. You will probably notice if the baby would occur to refuse the breast. If so would be the circumstances, you can wait with LCHF until you have quit breast-feeding. If you find no problems with the breast-feeding when you are on LCHF you just can go on with it.


According to your hypothyroidism, LCHF is the best diet for you. I have hypotyroidism myself and have weight problems due to it but actually the LCHF diethas helped me to control the weight gain and now I am beginning to loose weight by LCHF.

I have another personal aspect on hypothyrodism. Normally people with this metabolic problem put on weight before they recieve adequate treatment for it. But a very few of them don´t put on weight before their treatment and instead put on weight when treatment has begun and one of these people I am. My weight was normal before my hypothyoidism was treated and instead I began to put on weight after having started the treatment. I also know people who have faced this same problem also.


The answer to it is probably that the most common treatment of hypothyrodism is supplement of syntetic T4 hormone (levothyroxine). It is not clearly explained why some patients put on weight by syntetic thyroid hormone T4.


My personal theory is due to the fact that the thyroid produces 4 hormones which are hormone T1, T2, T3 (liothyronine) and T4 (levothyroxine). I am certain about a possibility that supplying only one of 4 thyroid hormones is a too poor treatment for the body and therefore changes the bodily balance in a negative way.


To those patients who experience weight gain after having started treatment with syntetic T4 hormone are often helped by changing over to natural thyroid supplement made of thyroid from pigs.

The advantages with these natural thyroid supplements are that they are natural and the body "recognoises" them as if they were produced by the own body. They also supply with all the thyroid hormones T1, T2, T3 and T4 instead of T4 hormone only. Of course this treatment method obtains bodily balance instead of destroying it.


After a little more than 2½ year of treatment with syntetic t4 I gave it up and changed over to this natural hormone supplement called Armour Thyroid instead which was a big change for me.

As long as I was medicated on barely syntetic T4 hormone I went on gaining weight undependent on which kind of diet I was on. I even put on weight by LCHF. Then I changed over to natural thyroid hormones and the first thing which happened was that I stopped gaining weight. Thus with the combination of LCHF and natural thyroid hormones from pigs I began to get control over my weightgain and now after about 9 months on the natural hormones I am finally beginning to loose weight.


My advice to you, who wrote this message to me, is that you can control your weight with LCHF, maybe even successfully. Actually this kind of hormonal and metabolic disorder makes makes it hard for the body to tolerate carbohydrates without weight gain and other negative health consequences. Therefore, in such a case LCHF is the very best diet. In fact high level of carbohydrates in diet slows down the thyroid function which is not beneficial to hypothyrodism patients. On the contrary high level of lipids in the diet supports the thyroid function.


If you despite of LCHF would not succeed in losing weight, don´t blame the diet or yourself! In that case you should instead reflect over which treatment you have. Are you medicated on syntentetic thyroid hormons? If so, this can be the reason for not losing weight. So if weight loss problems would occur and if you are medicated with the syntetic hormones, try to persuade your doctor to prescribe natural hormone substitute instead. These supplements are laid with prescription from your doctor and in some countries (in all EU countries for instance) you must even have, beside your doctor´s prescrition, a license or allowance to bring the medicine into your country.


These natural thyroid substitutes from pigs are sold under some different brand names, for instant NaturThroid, Armour Thyroid, Erfa Thyroid and a brand from Thailand named Thiroyd.


These are the guidelines I can give you and I wish you good luck with your childbirth and your weight control!



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