Nature, all life on the planet, wants to live and thrive. Why would your body be any different?
Your body is programmed for maintaining life and is always employing compensating mechanisms if something moves out of balance. When disease symptoms appear, it’s a sign that the body has not been able to employ the right amount of compensation because some kind of nutrition or environmental conditions are missing.
Iron deficiency anaemia is often a precursor symptom of hypothyroidism, or as a result of it, because digestion is failing to extract sufficient iron from the diet. (Cellini, Santaguida et al. 2017). Even if you were getting enough iron, you need sufficient B12, vitamin C and magnesium to help utilise that iron, and these nutrients are also likely to be deficient due to digestion problems.
If you don’t get the right nutrients to produce enough stomach acid this condition is called hypochlorhydria. The lower stomach acid makes it harder to digest and extract B group vitamins and minerals from protein foods, including B12, iron, folate, magnesium, zinc and selenium. And guess what the stomach needs to do its job? Magnesium chloride, sodium, zinc, selenium, iodine, B group vitamins and vitamin K. It’s a Catch-22 situation.
Interestingly, the thyroid uses these same nutrients to produce thyroid hormone T4 and convert to active form T3, and we need sufficient magnesium to absorb and use thyroid hormone. It’s the magnesium that drives the enzyme activity and hormone production in the body. Hormones and enzymes are proteins that are magnesium-dependent. As magnesium levels drop, metabolism drops, which means our electrical system becomes weaker and has to ration resources (like on computer ‘safe mode’).
The other issue caused by hypochlorhydria is that there is not enough stomach acid to kill bad bacteria such as Heliobacter pylori, which, if colonies overgrow, can cause dyspepsia symptoms, as well as ROS free radicals that can eat holes in your gut lining, causing leaky gut symptoms. Chronic constipation is also a common side effect with complications in the gut microbiome.
If foods are not fully digested by the stomach and get into the small intestine it can cause SIBO – Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth, which produces a lot of painful gas.
Hypochlorhydria can result in a perfect storm of underperforming thyroid and lower metabolism, combined with diet not providing enough vitamins and minerals for hydrochloric acid in the stomach to extract all the nutrients. It can turn into a revolving door of hypothyroidism and hypochlorhydria causing mal-digestion and mal-absorption of nutrients, which causes more thyroid depression, which leads to more digestive disorders, and so on down the cascade. Add to that excessive stress, and it speeds up the whole degrading process.
The thyroid actually develops from the primitive gut and both organs share the same endothermal origin. An Italian study confirmed, “Thyroid follicular and the stomach’s parietal cells are both polarized and characterized by the presence of apical microvilli housing enzymatic activities. Furthermore, gastric mucosal and thyroid follicular cells both show the ability to concentrate and transport iodine across the cell membrane.” (Cellini, Santaguida et al. 2017).
The thyroid, stomach and gut lining functions also involve similar enzymes and efficient peroxidase activity. They are part of the vagus nerve of the endocannabinoid system, which is the brain-gut connection. If this system goes out of kilter, it can affect your moods and cause depression and anxiety. especially synthetic ones like The Pill, which can deplete magnesium and cause nervous system disorders, muscle twitches and cramping, as well as emotional fragility.