that minimizing Omega-6 is a better option. This is not to say that you should remove nuts and seeds entirely from your diet (though, for the most part I have). But maintaining a balanced ratio of omega 3 to omega 6 is more important than having a ton of both and hoping your fish oil supplements make your omega 3 levels champion over your pistachio benders (mmm…pistachios).
Just because we are told one vitamin, mineral or food is good for us does not mean that it is
- It’s easy to get caught up in one perspective when there is so much info out there that supports it!
- Doubt everything, especially if you are overly gung-ho about it. Doubt what you read and especially doubt what your doctor tells you. Have patience and research contradictory theories before you go popping every pill someone tells you to take.
- I cannot suggest we all chow down on calf liver, because some genetic mutations make metabolising organ meats really hard.
- I cannot suggest that we all eat low-carb-high-fat-diets, because this would hurt a lot of people. Those who weight train need more carbs than people who are sedentary. Spirochetes rob us of our sugars, but I cannot suggest that we eliminate sugars in order to stop feeding them nor that we should increase our sugar intake so we have enough sugars for ourselves, too. However, I lean more toward the latter.
- I cannot suggest that we all eat meat. Those who are frail and pale tend to do better with meat than vegetarian diets, but some people thrive on vegetarian diets. Hell, I’ve seen vegan bodybuilders, though I have NO clue how they’ve pulled that off!
- Balance is key. Your Th-1 and Th-2 cells should be in balance. You should not be too hot or too cold. Your urine should not be too clear or too yellow. Your pulse should not be too high or too low. We should neither exercise too much nor allow deconditioning…
- And – something that took me a long time to learn – too much of a good thing ain’t a good thing. I’m talking about F.O.O.D. I have tried juice fasting, eating meat 3 times a day, eating heaps of saturated fat all day, going vegan, doing paleo, trying other diets like the SCD, Wahls and GAPS diets, golly just about every fad diet there is. As a result, I lost a healthy relationship with food and started viewing it as either medicine or poison. The fact is, it’s ALL poison when you eat too much of any one thing.
- I don’t know what your balance will be compared to mine, but I do know it would be nice if you found it!
What you eat really can affect your hormones
- Just like medications, what you take in as food has the ability to produce unwanted side effects.
- Some foods contain phytoestrogens, which affect estrogen production (whether for better or worse is still controversial, though I suspect phytoestrogens make estrogen dominance worse).
- Some foods are high in poly-unsaturated fats (PUFAs), which some doctors suggest suppress thyroid function. Personally, I avoid overdoing PUFA’s and Omega 6’s like the plague, while others swear by their grains, nuts and seeds. Soaking, sprouting and cooking PUFA’s gets rid of some of the phytic acid that comes in the PUFA-package. Phytic acid is claimed by some to be an “anti-nutrient” and others to be an “anti-oxidant.” I gather it is a bit of both.
- Some foods are goitrogenic, meaning they suppress thyroid function. The brassica family is especially goitrogenic. This means broccoli, cabbage, spinach and kale may not be as good as you previously thought. Cooking them in water and disposing of the water removes some goitrogens.
- IF you have a leaky gut, gluten will enter your blood stream. It should not be there, so your body will generate an immune response to target and destroy (metabolise) it. FINE. But this can be more problematic than meets the eye. Gluten shares a similar looking molecular structure to our thyroid hormones, so anything that attacks gluten may mistake our thyroid hormones for the gluten and attack them as well. At any rate, I can say gluten is bad for some people, but I can’t say that it’s bad for us all.
Some foods make b