It is a fact that most medical diseases require prescription medication to effect a cure – but it is also a fact that some conditions can be greatly alleviated by patients following a sensible regimen of good food, sufficient exercise, and enough sleep for their body’s needs.
Indeed, the oldest recipe books that have been found have recipes for delicious meals and cures for things like toothache, constipation, migraine, and many more common ailments: just because modern medicine has forgotten that good nourishment is the first line of defense does not make it any the less effective.
Let’s have a look at thyroid medication, when it should be used, and how natural treatments can aid the prognosis and course of thyroid illnesses.
Thyroid Medication: Must Have
For many thyroid conditions that result in hypothyroidism or insufficiency of thyroid hormone being made available for the body, artificial thyroid hormone is a must – without it, the patient will become severely ill, and it may even result in death.
Artificial hormones (such as Liothyronine UK T3 here) fill in this essential need, ensuring that the body can manage its various systems appropriately: maintaining digestion, keeping the metabolism ticking over properly, and maintaining the body’s temperature at an optimum level for healthy living.
Natural Therapies: Can’t Hurt and May Help!
Natural aids for thyroid health include eating a selenium-rich diet, going gluten-free, and minimizing your sugar intake. Vitamin B supplements are also believed to help, as are pro- and prebiotics.
Selenium has been linked to boosting the body’s metabolism of thyroid hormones. This means that in someone with very mild Hashimoto’s Disease – one feature of which is actually reducing the body’s use of dietary selenium – most symptoms can be alleviated with a supplement.
Gluten and sugar get something of a bad rap, and for most people, moderate consumption is absolutely fine. But both have been linked to causing inflammation in the body, and it is this inflammation that causes many signs of illness and aging, worsening symptoms and reactions to what might be mild conditions that the body could easily heal without the inflammatory effects of sugar and gluten.
Vitamin B – the whole Vitamin B complex – works in the body in a variety of ways, and taking a supplement is probably good, even for those who don’t have thyroid issues.
The medical community is learning all the time, and the benefits of probiotics are now thought to be almost secondary to those of prebiotics.
Probiotics boost the body’s gut bacteria by dumping a load of healthful bacteria into the digestive system, which is a good thing – except that there is no way for the body to maintain that level of good bacteria, save by repeating the consumption of the probiotic on a regular basis.
Prebiotics are foods that aid the gut in increasing its own levels of good bacteria – and help in maintaining that high level.
The effect of gut health through the body is also under study, and it has been linked with many other, seemingly unconnected, problems, such as mental health.
To sum up
While any medical condition should absolutely be taken to a medical professional first, and always ask about taking supplements or changing your diet before doing so, you should always be able to boost your general health with natural therapies that work alongside prescribed medications, easing side effects and boosting the benefits, so you feel better sooner.
