Microbiome of the gut: How does it affect physical health?

Women are especially vulnerable to thyroid issues, and the potential for having thyroid issues intensifies as they get older. Although we are experiencing a decline in cancer cases, thyroid cancer cases seem to be increasing over this past decade. If you’re wondering why the thyroid seems to be vulnerable to health issues, just look at how other chronic conditions keep lingering. The cause of these conditions often stems from a lot of factors at work, and in the case of the thyroid, it’s your microbiome that’s the primary issue.

When we are born, our microbiome is conditioned by both the good and bad bacteria we’re exposed to. Studies have revealed that our microbiome is so important to our overall health that 9 out of every 10 cells in our body is influenced by bacteria, and some newer studies suggest that ration is 2:1 (and in some cases 1:1).  Bacteria on your body and in your gut contributes to most of the body’s DNA. There’s no wonder why our gut highly impacts our overall health!

So, it’s no surprise about the great impact the gut microbiome has on proper thyroid function, blood sugar regulation, reducing chronic inflammation, promoting proper immune function and facilitating thyroid hormone.

The thyroid gland is a good predictor of our health and will tell us when something’s wrong with other parts of our body. Think of your thyroid as the indicator lights on your car that tell you when a certain part of your car is not properly functioning. So, when there’s an imbalance in your microbiome, it will manifest as a poorly functioning thyroid gland, which will also produce a poor metabolism, poor energy levels, poor mood and poor cognitive function.

The following list includes the more commonly known factors that affect the balance of gut bacteria:

• Birth control pills
• Excessive antibiotic use
• Excessive high-intensity exercise
• Excessive stress
• Excessive use of medicines that reduce stomach acid
• Gluten-rich diet
• High sugar diet
• Obesity
• Sedentary lifestyle (little or no exercise)
• The Western diet (which is full of processed carbs)

Modern medicine does nothing to improve your microbiome, and neither do they solve the riddle of why your microbiome and thyroid function are unbalanced to begin with. They only deal with the symptoms of an unhealthy microbiome and malfunctioning thyroid, but that doesn’t solve the overall problems.

Therefore, you must change your diet to improve your gut bacteria, which also improves the functioning of your thyroid. Now, let’s look at the consequences of an unbalanced microbiome.

The Relationship Between Gut Bacteria and Blood Sugar

Current research on the nature of the gut’s microbiome reveals the impact your microbiome has on your glycaemic index (GI), which is the measure of how fast your bloodstream absorbs the sugars you get from food.

Your body benefits when blood sugar rises consistently and slowly. However, when you eat foods that give you a high GI, your body tends to convert the extra energy into body fat, which increases your chances of having poor cognitive and cardiovascular health. As one Twitter quote stated, your body benefits when you eat low-GI foods.

One recent study researched 800 people (a mixture of healthy and overweight participants) to determine the correlation between GI-index and overall health. The subjects ate the same foods but had different blood sugar responses. In theory, there should have been no differences in the food’s GI-index for all the participants, but the results of the research proved there was.

Because the overweight participants in the study had high blood sugar spikes even while eating low-GI snacks, the research revealed that the impact of gut bacteria on blood sugar response will vary.

In other words, your gut bacteria highly affect your blood-sugar response to food regardless if the food is healthy or not. Therefore, people tend to crash when they have too much sugar, and then they become dependent on caffeine and sugary snacks to revive their energy levels. Now that we know that insulin and blood sugar dysfunction are the primary cause of thyroid dysfunction, we can work on restoring our gut microbiome so that we can bring balance back to our blood sugar.

The Relationship Between Gut Bacteria and Chronic Inflammation

An imbalance in your microbiome, a condition known as dysbiosis, often manifests as bowel issues like digestive disturbances, gas, bloating, diarrhoea or constipation. This imbalance in your gut bacteria also impairs thyroid function which causes the immune system to produce an inflammatory response. Since your microbiome resides in over 75% of your immune system,  there’s no surprise that inflammation occurs when there’s a microbiome dysfunction. One Twitter post concluded that inflammation is a sign of an imbalance in your microbiome, which also causes thyroid dysfunction.

There are several ways inflammation impairs thyroid function. For starters, it impairs your brain’s signal to the thyroid to produce the thyroid hormone, which in turn, leads to poor T4 production and a lack of energy (since the thyroid hormone allows body cells to receive energy). Well, that might explain why many of us lack any “get-up-and-go” most of the time.

Also, inflammation impairs hormone conversion in your body tissue, which impairs the ability of cells in the body to convert the T4 hormone into T3 hormone.

The Relationship Between Gut Bacteria and Thyroid Hormone Conversion

People often overlook the relationship between thyroid health and T4 hormone conversion. The T4 hormone (aka thyroxine) is a thyroid hormone that is produced by the thyroid gland. To benefit the body, this hormone must convert to the T3 hormone (aka triiodothyronine). If the body doesn’t successfully convert T4 into T3, the health of your thyroid is impaired, and you won’t experience the benefits that come with a healthy functioning thyroid (such as a faster metabolism, a positive mood, healthy skin and bowel function and a clear mind).  According to one Twitter quote, your body experiences a good metabolism and improved mental health when you have a healthy thyroid.

A microbiome imbalance and dysbiosis are chief reasons why the T4 hormone doesn’t properly undergo conversion. In most people, only 20% of the body’s T4 thyroid hormone converts to T3 in the gut, and the poor conversion rate often manifests as stomach discomfort, gas, bloating and constipation. In other words, people with poor thyroid function often have a poorly functioning digestive system.

Building a Healthy Microbiome

The Hadza hunter-gatherer tribe located in southern Africa has a diet akin to that of the ancient Paleo eaters. The gut bacteria of the Hadza people is considerably different from those who consume a Western diet because their gut microbiomes consist of a larger (and richer) diversity of gut bacteria than people in more industrialized cultures.

There was a recent study comparing the microbiomes of the rural north African diet to the high-sugar diet of Western cultures. In the north African culture, the Western diet is not embraced. The results of the study revealed that there was a highly significant difference between the microbiomes of the rural north African children and the industrialized Western children.

The study concluded that the rural African children’s microbiome was mostly good bacteria (from the bacteroidetes family) and had little bad bacteria (firmicutes), whereas the Western children’s microbiome was mostly firmicutes. A diet high in sugar and processed carbs will have a lot of firmicutes. A high amount of firmicutes processes excessively more sugar than other bacteria, which increases the chances of getting dysbiosis and thyroid dysfunction.

Your microbiome is highly affected by your diet. If you’re dealing with dysbiosis, it wouldn’t hurt to try the Paleo diet of the ancient hunters. Try these dietary changes to start your journey to a healthier microbiome:

1. Limit Fruit Intake: Breakfast smoothies are high in carbs when you add fruit or fruit juice to them. To reduce the carb intake of your smoothies, eliminate any juices (also the cold-pressed ones) and use only water as your liquid. Also, try replacing high carb fruits like apples and bananas with low-carb and high fibre fruits like strawberries, raspberries and blackberries.
2. Use Soil-based Probiotics Daily: Soil-based probiotics come from the ground. Our food that grows in the ground is suffering from the losses the soil has endured from farming methods. Therefore, a lot of these “earthy” foods are more harmful to our gut’s “good” bacteria than good because it causes the wrong kinds of changes in your microbiome.

To take advantage of what used to be good nutrients from the earth, take one capsule of soil-based probiotics daily—especially one that is rich in bifidobacterium longum and lactobacillus rhamnosus.

3. No Added Sugars or Processed Carbs: Processed sugars are bad news for your gut bacteria. As already discussed, limiting sugar in the diet greatly increases the presence of good bacteria in your gut and greatly reduces bad bacteria (or firmicutes) in your gut.
4. No Caffeine: Eliminating caffeine-especially coffee—is the fastest way to reversing your thyroid dysfunction.
5. Add A Supplement: Supplements like Thyrosol by Metagenics support the healthy synthesis of thyroid hormones to reduce risk of thyroid disease with ingredients specifically formulated to improve the function of the thyroid.
6. Gradually Add Fermented Foods: Although fermented foods help bring balance to gut bacteria, they tend to aggravate your gut if consumed in large quantities. Therefore, it’s best to start with small amounts of fermented foods in your diet. For example, use only a pinch of sauerkraut with one of your daily meals. Then once you start to feel better, you can add more fermented foods to your diet. If you can’t tolerate fermented foods at all, then you might have dysbiosis, which is caused by an overproduction of yeast. If this is the case, you may need to discuss this reaction with your doctor or natural medicine practitioner.
7. Eat More “Slow” Carbs: Decreasing your carb intake works wonders of restoring balance to your gut bacteria. But you must remember that not all carbs are harmful. If you increase your intake of “slow” carbs, you will increase your fibre intake and improve your gut microbiome. Food like sweet potatoes and cooked plantains are excellent sources of resistant starches, and they promote healthy gut bacteria.
8. No Alcohol: Alcohol contains has lots of added sugar and yeast, which usually aggravates a gut that is suffering from dysbiosis. Your best bet is to eliminate alcohol like you need to eliminate caffeine. Try it for 1-2 months and then see if this improves your condition.

Conclusion

Adopting these changes may appear to be a bit overwhelming, but you must remember these efforts take time. It’s going to take some weeks (or possibly some months) to balance your gut bacteria and to reverse improper thyroid function. So don’t give up! Your body will thank you for the rescue.