Let’s chat about selenium and your thyroid today since it is absolutely essential to thyroid function and getting enough of this essential mineral could make you feel A LOT better!
Selenium is needed to convert your inactive thyroid hormone (T4) to your active thyroid hormone (T3)! So when you get deficient this conversion isn’t happening like it should and you get more symptoms! T3 is the hormone that makes you feel good and have energy. Being low in that means you feel terrible.
Selenium can also lower stubborn thyroid antibodies!
In fact, thyroid antibodies in people with Hashimoto’s have been shown to be reduced by 40 percent in three to six months with selenium!
Interesting fact: The thyroid actually contains the highest amount of selenium in the body!
Thanks to bad diets and leaky gut, we can wind up deficient in seleniums so taking a high quality selenium supplement can help a ton BUT let me caution you…
Selenium is one I see a lot of people suggesting you take if you have thyroid issues but if you’re like me and have MTHFR which is a detoxing issue that is common in thyroid patients, you could have too much selenium! Why is that a big deal? Because too much can actually cause you more symptoms. NO ONE WANTS THAT EITHER!
This is why you want to ALWAYS TEST AND NOT GUESS!
And by test, I mean blood test. You can simply ask your doctor for this test or you can order it yourself online. You can learn more about how to do that HERE.
It is hard to get enough selenium from food so supplementing selenium is a great way to make sure you’re getting what you need while you’re eating foods with selenium too of course.
What should your levels be when you test?
Always get access to your test results. NEVER, I REPEAT NEVER, just go off of what a doctor tells you.
It should be in range so if you’re low it will flag it for you. Selenium should NEVER be above the range.
If much more than slightly over, you may have a methylation problem like MTHFR like I do. (I’ll be doing future blog posts on that!)
It is hard to get enough selenium from food so supplementing selenium IF YOU ARE DEFICIENT is a great way to make sure you’re getting what you need while you’re eating foods with selenium too.
I know you may have heard that Brazil nuts are great for selenium but that’s not a controlled way to make sure you get enough of it in your system to make a difference. Supplementing allows you to control just how much you’re getting. Brazil nuts will vary depending on different factors in how much selenium they contain. Not an accurate way at all and that could take longer to help you any way.
When supplementing it is important to keep testing your blood every 90 days to be sure your levels come up but don’t go over too!
If even slightly over, you are on too much so this should be watched closely.
Be sure to test 90 days after you start supplementing so that you see what your levels are and then you can cut back on how much you’re taking once you get optimal to maintain. Important to keep testing when you supplement and so many people dont know this!
Take as directed on the bottle!
Helping you go from feeling fat, frustrated and fatigued to feeling fabulous again,
Melodye
