When you’re managing autoimmune Hashimoto’s low thyroid, you’ll see recommendations for supplements to tame inflammation, support adrenal health, and repair the gut. It’s important to know about supplement quality.
The U.S. enjoys liberal production of and access to nutritional supplements. We can buy virtually any supplement from multiple sources either at the local grocery store or online. Other countries are more stringent and don’t as wide a range of variety.
However, the downside is you must be wary of shoddy, fraudulent and even unsafe supplements as well as misleading claims. Also, the worst supplements are usually from your local drug or grocery store.
Because so many people have Hashimoto’s low thyroid and it has become so popular a topic, be wary of people who claim they can “cure” your Hashimoto’s. Hashimoto’s low thyroid is an autoimmune disease. It can be driven into remission or its progression halted, but it cannot be cured.
While it’s important to be careful around supplement quality, it’s also important to protect our access to quality supplements. The FDA’s approach to the industry is often seen as unnecessarily aggressive due, it is widely thought, to the power of the pharmaceutical industry.
As chronic diseases such as Hashimoto’s low thyroid continue to mushroom in incidences, people increasingly turn to functional medicine and nutritional supplements to manage their health. This has turned the supplement industry into one worth many billions of dollars.
What supplements to avoid when you have Hashimoto’s low thyroid
The supplement industry has created standards of quality that manufacturers can comply with to assure customers only the best ingredients are used.
Avoid cheap, mass-marketed supplements that contain synthetic or inflammatory fillers (such as wheat and corn), poor quality ingredients, inactive ingredients, and artificial colors. Also, there is no way of knowing how shipping and storing has affected the ingredients.
What to look for in supplements for Hashimoto’s low thyroid
Avoid fillers that use wheat, corn, starches, and magnesium stearate. Research the origin of the ingredients — herbal ingredients can come from heavily polluted areas in China and other countries and be loaded with toxins. Good companies test their ingredients for toxins.
Research the brand. Are they formulated with a health-care professional and scientific advisory board? Are there peer-reviewed studies to back up the ingredients? Does the company test purity?
What is their marketing like? Do they use snake-oil selling tactics pushing you to buy? Or do they cater to licensed practitioners and provide practitioner educational seminars to teach doctors about the products and how to use them in a Hashimoto’s low thyroid plan?
Also, the best supplement companies have independent labs test their products for quality and purity.
These are the kinds of supplements RedRiver Health & Wellness uses.
NSF International, and independent organization, certifies supplements on three levels of quality:
Certified Good manufacturing practices (CGMPs): Guidelines that assure a product conforms with what’s listed its label.
American National Standard for dietary supplement products: Testing that ensures products contain what is on the label and not undeclared contaminants.
NSF Certified for Sport: Screens for athletic banned substances.
How to learn if you have Hashimoto’s low thyroid
Many patients are not diagnosed with hypothyroidism or Hashimoto’s until after several years and going through several doctors. It is a demoralizing journey richly illustrated in my book The Truth About Low Thyroid: Stories of Hope and Healing for Those Suffering With Hashimoto’s Low Thyroid Disease, through real-life stories from patients in my practice. Managing Hashimoto’s goes far beyond using thyroid medication as you must work to stop the immune system from attacking the thyroid. For more information on identifying and managing Hashimoto’s low thyroid, contact my office.
About Dr. Josh Redd, Chiropractic Physician — Utah, Arizona, New Mexico functional medicine
Dr. Joshua J. Redd, DC, MS, DABFM, DAAIM, author of The Truth About Low Thyroid: Stories of Hope and Healing for Those Suffering With Hashimoto’s Low Thyroid Disease, is a chiropractic physician and the founder of RedRiver Health and Wellness Center with practices in Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. He sees patients from around the world who suffer from challenging thyroid disorders, Hashimoto’s disease, and other autoimmune conditions. In addition to his chiropractic degree, Dr. Redd has a BS in Health and Wellness, a BS in Anatomy, and a MS in Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine. He speaks across the nation, teaching physicians about functional blood chemistry, low thyroid, Hashimoto’s, and autoimmunity. You can join his Facebook page here.
