How Blood Sugar Affects Your Thyroid

Wondering how your How Blood Sugar Affects Your Thyroid?

Until I started honing in on keeping my blood sugar levels more stable, I dealt with the commons signs of imbalance:

The hangries (getting grumpy before meals)

Feeling light headed and even disoriented when I got too hungry

Cravings for excessive carbs and sweets

Mood swings

(All not fun things, hun!)

In this post, I share with you some of the science behind why and How Blood Sugar Affects Your Thyroid, how I remedied my own imbalance, and my experiences with using Paleo versus a ketogenic approach to balancing my blood sugar.

General Science Behind How Blood Sugar Affects Your Thyroid

Recent studies have revealed that there is an increase in the prevalence of thyroid disorders among people with diabetes. (source)

Coincidently there is an increasing number of people with metabolic syndrome among those with a thyroid disorder. There appears to be a significant correlation between metabolic syndrome and thyroid dysfunction, and scientific data continues to support that such a conclusion is true.

Basically, this means that keeping your blood sugar levels within the normal range is one of the prerequisites of healthy thyroid glands, and vice versa.

Understanding Metabolic Syndrome and Hyperglycemia

Metabolic Syndrome refers to a group of metabolic risk factors that often occur together.

These include:

Abdominal obesity

High blood pressure

High cholesterol and triglycerides

Insulin resistance

Inflammation

Tendency to form blood clots

(yikes!)

Hyperglycemia or high blood sugar is one of the main causes of metabolic syndrome.

High blood sugar is caused by having excessive carbohydrates in the body. Some observers claim that hyperglycemia can be simply called “excess carbohydrate disease”.

That is a little simplistic, however, as not all carbohydrates have the same effect on body function. The differences between ingestion of simple sugars and more complex carbohydrates and their subsequent health effects are becoming more widely understood every day.

How Hyperglycemia Leads to Insulin Resistance

When a person consumes excess carbohydrates their pancreas will secrete insulin in order to move excess glucose from their blood into their cells.

This is where glucose will then be used or stored for energy production.

Continuous consumption of excess simple carbohydrates will cause a person’s cells to eventually become unable to respond to insulin. In other words, chronic consumption of too many carbs will only make the cells lose the ability to hear the insulin knocking.

As a response the pancreas will then produce even more insulin as its way of knocking harder, with the hope that the cells will notice and finally respond to it and this is when insulin resistance starts to occur.

A further consequence is that repeated instances of insulin surges can lead to damage of the thyroid gland especially among people who have autoimmune thyroid disease. Once the thyroid gland is damaged thyroid hormone production will also diminish.

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The Blood Sugar – Thyroid – Cortisol Connection

If high blood sugar levels can cause damage to the thyroid glands, chronic low blood sugar can also lead to the same problem.

Prolonged or severe hypoglycemia can lead to coma, seizures and death. The human body is programmed to detect low blood sugar levels and see it as a threat to life.

If your blood sugar levels become very low, your body will respond by allowing your adrenal glands to secrete a hormone known as cortisol. Cortisol will then send signals to the liver to start producing more glucose so that an individual’s blood sugar levels will return to normal.

Unfortunately, if the person has chronically low levels of blood sugar, cortisol production will also increase. This repetitive cortisol release can also lead to a suppressed pituitary function. This adverse effect on the pituitary gland will also have a negative impact on the thyroid gland.

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Paleo to Manage Blood Sugar versus Keto

While I see health coaches here and there on occasion touting keto or low carb diets as the secret to reversing thyroid disease, I just want you to be adamant in your own health journey about choosing informed skepticism over quick fixes!

Here and here are some good sources to learn more on Paleo and keto and How Blood Sugar Affects Your Thyroid.

In other words, do empower yourself and research before you embark on a ketogenic biohacking adventure – because going too low carb may not be without its consequences for your thyroid.

I tried my best to fit in with the IF (intermittent-fasting) bandwagon, the Bulletptoof bandwagon, the keto for women with hormone / thyroid imbalance bandwagon – and they all failed me.

Why? Because when I have a lack of sufficient carbs in my diet, not only does my blood sugar out of whack, also:

My thyroid cannot convert T4 to T3. (This is how I test my thyroid at home!)

My sex hormones were out of balance, which also shut down my libido.

My adrenals and low cortisol were under too much stress already (shown via saliva testing at home), and the lack of carbs made it stress out even more (hello anxiety overdrive and insomnia again!).

My gut wasn’t getting enough of the diverse starches it needed to produce a multitude of beneficial bacterial strains to keep my microbiome in balance.

So I added Paleo slow-burning carbs back in AT NIGHT, like:

Acorn squash

Butternut squash

Sweet potatoes / yams

Rutabaga

Turnips

Spaghetti squash

Plantain

Sweet potato starch noodles aka Korean japchae (in moderation due to low fiber)

Cassava pasta (in moderation due to low fiber)

Cassava flour (in moderation due to low fiber)

Tapioca and arrowroot starches (in moderation due to low fiber)

Potatoes (an Autoimmune Protocol / AIP nightshade reintroduction)

Nuts and seeds (both AIP reintroductions)

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Carb Balance for Thyroid Health

I’ve also found that eating my carbs in the evening with a small amount of fat (like lard, coconut oil, or avocado) and pastured / wild protein keeps my body from burning through the carbs too quickly – making for happy blood sugar and a happy thyroid.

I also include about 1/2 serving a day of a higher-carb fruit that tastes delicious, like banana, mango, apples, and pears…plus one serving of lower carb fruits like berries, oranges, and melon.

Including a fat is important with fruits, too – like coconut oil or coconut manna (AIP) – or unsweetened almond butter or sunflower butter (both AIP reintroductions) with fruit for the same reason above.

Plus fruit tastes super yummy slathered in fat and sprinkled with a pinch of Himalayan salt!

And now my thyroid and blood sugar are singing along together like Snow White and the forest animals! I just have to be careful about not over indulging in Paleo treats (my kryptonite) and also to make sure that I consume about 70% of my diet in green, low carb veggies to keep a balance along with proteins, fats, and slow-burn carbs.