The thyroid is responsible for helping control your body’s metabolism. Because of this, the increase of thyroid problems in America has a major correlation to the increase in weight issues. Natural thyroid boosters can help improve the thyroids function, which in turn helps increase metabolism making weight loss and weight maintenance easier. Below are seven useful natural ways to boost thyroid function.

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Thyroid Booster #1: Minimize Iodine Blockers in Your Diet
Not only should you each iodine rich food, but you should also limit how much goitrogens (i.e. iodine blockers) you eat. Some examples of goitrogens include peanuts and soy. Raw cruciferous vegetables are also goitrogens. Some of these types of vegetables are broccoli, turnips, kale, and cauliflower. If is important to cook these types of vegetables before eating them in large quantities to minimize goitrogen consumption.

Soy products are one of the worst goitrogen foods. This is partially because cooking does not destroy the goitrogen in soy products. Additionally, it is hard to avoid since soy is in about 70% of the foods you find in the grocery store in the form of soy oil, vegetable oil, texturized vegetable protein, soy flour, soy protein isolate, and more. For a while soy has been promoted as good for you, so it can be hard to believe that it interferes with thyroid function and thus can cause weight gain. However, there are research studies that have found it that this is true. Thus it is recommended to avoid soy products as much as you can and try to limit your soy consumption to minimal amounts of fermented soy like natural soy sauce, tempeh, and miso.

Thyroid Booster #2: Minimize Consumption of Refined Foods and Vegetable Oils
Refined foods such as grains and sugars are in general bad for you in several ways. This includes them putting excess stress on the thyroid, which can lead to the thyroid functioning poorly. Vegetable oils have been shown to fatten animals while also causing thyroid and other medical problems such as cancer. Thus to best keep a healthy thyroid you should try to minimize how much vegetable oils you consume. This includes canola, corn, and soy oils. To avoid them you will have to probably give up eating out and eating packaged foods almost entirely, as restaurants and packaged foods tend to use some sort of vegetable oil.

Thyroid Booster #3: Include Natural Iodine Sources in Your Diet
There is a variety of ways to include natural sources of iodine in your diet. This includes unrefined sea salts, kelp, bladderwreck, other seaweeds, eggs, butter, and most seafood. When made properly fish sauce can also be a good source of iodine. Fish sauce is often used in Thai dishes. You can also get extra iodine in your diet by taking kelp or bladderwrack extracs or other herbal formulas that include seaweeds along with other herbs that are good for the thyroid gland.

Thyroid Booster #4: Add Minerals and Vitamins that Promote Thyroid Function to Your Diet
Some minerals proven to promote good thyroid function include zinc, chromium, selenium, and manganese. Some natural ways to get more thyroid supporting minerals into your diet include taking a whole food based greens supplement and/or a coral calcium supplement that has trace minerals such as zinc and selenium.

Vitamin A is one of the best vitamins for promoting healthy thyroid function. Vitamins B, C, and E are also important for healthy thyroid function. Those with hypothyroid often cannot convert beta-carotene into vitamin A efficiently. Thus it is important to consume actual vitamin A. However, synthetic Vitamin A should be avoided, as it can be toxic at high levels.

A lot of the vitamins your see on store shelves are made with isolated nutrients from synthetic sources. This is often done because it is cheaper to make vitamins from synthetic sources instead of living food sources. The problem is that synthetic vitamin supplements do not provide your body with the co-factors it needs to fully use the supplement. Thus the synthetic supplements do provide your body with the nutrients it needs in the short run, but in the long run it often leads to other problems. Although more expensive and hard to find, you should look for 100 percent whole foot supplements and super foods to be your healthiest.

Thyroid Booster #5: Get More Exercise, Especially Rebounding
All kinds of exercise are good for your thyroid. Rebounding can be in particular helpful, but all exercise stimulates thyroid gland secretion, which helps your cells be more sensitive to thyroid hormones. When you do not have the energy to exercise, you should consider adding coconut oil or some good super foods to your diet to boost your energy so that you can exercise.

Thyroid Booster #6: Add Virgin Coconut Oil to Your Diet
Coconut oil possesses metabolism-stimulating properties. Thus it is capable of improving thyroid function. Those that have thyroid issues should consider include coconut oil to their diet. Farmers tried to use coconut oil to fatten up animals and instead found that it made the animals more active and leaner.

Thyroid Booster #7: Stop Using Fluoride in Your Water and Toothpaste
In “The Coconut Diet,” Cherie Calboun mentions that there is increasing evidence that shows that fluoride might impede normal thyroid function. If you tap water includes fluoride, you should consider using a water filter that takes the fluoride out. You can find out if it is by checking with your water provider. About 50 percent of America’s tap water is fluoridated these days. You should also avoid fluoride toothpastes, as you end up ingesting some of it.

These suggestions do not replace consulting with a health care practitioner, however many have found that doing the above things has improved their thyroid function making it easier for them to lose weight.