Our thyroid gland is a small butterfly-shaped organ in our neck. It regulates many body functions, including metabolism. At Infinite Wellness, we understand that the thyroid is critical to our overall health. Our mission is to help our patients uncover their underlying root causes to achieve optimal health and balance of their thyroid symptoms. This blog will explore the connection between thyroid health and your metabolism so that you can better understand how to support your body’s energy and vitality.
Let’s Talk About What the Thyroid is and Why it Matters
While the thyroid gland is small, it produces two key hormones called thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3). These hormones regulate metabolic processes throughout the body. These hormones are critical in controlling how your body converts food into energy, maintains temperature, and supports vital functions like breathing, heart rate, and muscle activity.
An optimally functioning thyroid keeps your metabolism balanced, ensuring you are energized and can maintain a healthy weight. However, like many
What is the Thyroid, and Why Does It Matter?
The thyroid produces key hormones—thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3)—that regulate metabolic processes throughout the body. These hormones control how your body converts food into energy, maintains temperature, and supports vital functions like breathing, heart rate, and muscle activity.
When the thyroid functions optimally, it balances your metabolism, ensuring you feel energized and maintain a healthy weight. However, imbalances can disrupt this harmony, leading to various health issues.
Thyroid and Metabolism Connection
Think about the thyroid as the primary regulator for everything related to our metabolism. The job of our thyroid can be broken down into three main categories: basal metabolic rate, nutrient absorption, and weight management.
Your basal metabolic rate, or BMR, determines how many calories your body needs to function at rest. When thinking about calories, please refrain from thinking about them as they relate to the calories you eat. Rather, think about calories as energy for your body; at a base level, your body requires a certain amount of energy daily to perform its functions.
Creating new hormones and giving the body signals requires the ability to absorb nutrients. These nutrients help our bodies produce the necessary energy to perform daily functions. Our thyroid hormones ensure that our body efficiently converts carbohydrates, fats, and proteins into energy. Should there be an imbalance in the efficiency of this process, we tend towards energy depletion or excessive fatigue. If there were other reasons to consume a diet with a wide variety of nutrients, it would be solely for this purpose. The truth is that some foods can give us energy through the nutrients they hold. Some foods take away our energy because they impact us and create inflammation, a process simply brought on when the body doesn’t recognize something and treats it like an invader. It’s our built-in protection to have a strong energy output and do what we love.
Weight management is a critical biomarker that is becoming increasingly important for many people as they look to optimize their health and well-being. With the increased challenges presented to us as a society, it’s easy to identify the quickest and most efficient ways to achieve our goals. However, what people are truly missing is the idea that if we optimize our hormones, in this case, our thyroid hormones, we can maximize and increase our ability to achieve weight management. Thyroid disorders often manifest as unexplained weight changes. Weight gain is common in individuals who have hypothyroidism or an underactive thyroid, while hyperthyroidism is related to an overactive thyroid and may cause weight loss.
Your thyroid contains a critical piece to the puzzle as we uncover a deeper understanding of our metabolism and how to support it in the long run. A functional medicine perspective acknowledges and understands the deficiencies and imbalances and works to support the root cause so that you can become your most metabolically healthy self.
Common Thyroid Imbalances and Symptoms
As you might have begun to understand, our bodies appreciate balance and stability. Therefore, the highs and lows we feel signal that the body is out of balance and needs support to get it back into the most optimal range. As you can imagine, the thyroid functions similarly, so let’s break it down.
Hypothyroidism is defined as an underactive thyroid. The symptoms that are most common with hypothyroidism are fatigue, weight gain, cold intolerance, dry skin, and depression. Many causes are often associated with hypothyroidism. However, it often results from iodine deficiency or autoimmune diseases like Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. We encourage you to explore our other blogs to help you identify your root cause because each root cause is slightly different based on your health presentation. The metabolic impact of hypothyroidism is slow as it slows down calorie burning, which can lead to low energy and weight gain.
Hyperthyroidism, on the other hand, is defined as an overactive thyroid. The symptoms that are most common with hyperthyroidism are weight loss, rapid heartbeat, heat sensitivity, and anxiety. Just like individuals who are described to be hypothyroidism, individuals who are classified as hyperthyroid also have a variety of potential root causes. However, it often results in conditions like Graves’ disease or thyroid nodules. Working with a practitioner to identify the best course of action is best. The metabolic impact for hyperthyroid individuals is increased calorie burning, which can lead to muscle breakdown and nutrient depletion.
Remember, the body presents us with symptoms to help us understand that there are imbalances. It is possible to experience mild thyroid imbalances and notice subtle symptoms that can still disrupt your metabolism and overall well-being if left unchecked. This is why having a yearly and comprehensive bloodwork panel, at the very least, is one of the best things that you can do for your health.
How to Support Thyroid Health and Boost Metabolism
Supporting your metabolic health is critical for optimal health and well-being because your thyroid plays an important role; here are some tips to support your thyroid function.
- Prioritize Nutrition
- Iodine: Found in seafood and seaweed, it is essential for thyroid hormone production
- Selenium: Found in Brazil nuts, eggs, and sunflower seeds, it helps to to support hormone synthesis
- Zinc: Found in lean meats, shellfish, and legumes, it helps to regulate thyroid hormones.
How to Support Thyroid Health and Boost Metabolism
Maintaining a healthy thyroid is essential for metabolic balance. Here are some tips to support your thyroid function:
1. Prioritize Nutrition:
- Iodine: Found in seafood, seaweed, and iodized salt, iodine is essential for thyroid hormone production.
- Selenium: Brazil nuts, eggs, and sunflower seeds support hormone synthesis.
- Zinc: Lean meats, shellfish, and legumes help regulate thyroid hormones.
2. Manage Stress:
Stress disrupts thyroid function by affecting the hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid (HPT) axis. Think of this as emotional and physical stress in or on the body. Practices like yoga, meditation, and deep breathing help restore balance as you work on many other changes in the body.
3. Exercise Regularly:
Exercise has many positive benefits in improving our metabolism. It is often the first thing that many people incorporate. Moderate exercise improves metabolism and supports overall endocrine health. Aiming for a mix of strength training and cardiovascular activity is important to help balance cortisol and sex hormone levels. Note that without establishing balance in the body and prioritizing this support area more than others, you can trend towards a metabolic deficit and have the opposite intended effect. This is why too much of a good thing is not always good.
4. Stay Hydrated:
This is one of the most undervalued aspects of health and wellness because it often seems too simple, and many think it might not be worth the difference. The truth is adequate hydration supports thyroid function, especially with potassium and sodium, helps the body metabolize nutrients effectively, and creates energy storage sources for us.
5. Regular Thyroid Bloodwork
To ensure that you are on a plan that is working for you in your current season of life, it is important to regularly monitor your thyroid levels to help detect imbalances early on. This means a full thyroid panel, simply looking at just TSH, is not enough. We recommend looking at TSH, Free T3, Free T4, and your antibodies and working with a practitioner who can guide you to optimal health.
Infinite Wellness, Your Partner in Thyroid and Metabolic Health
At Infinite Wellness, we take a holistic approach to thyroid health and address the root cause of imbalances and deficiencies preventing optimal thyroid and metabolic health. Our practitioners provide personalized care plans that help you get your health back on track so that you can spend more time doing what you love. Our practitioners will provide nutrition coaching, stress management techniques, lifestyle support, and supplemental modalities to help you achieve optimal metabolic and thyroid markers within your care plan.
Our mission at Infinite Wellness is to guide you toward a balanced and thriving life. Whether you’re experiencing symptoms of thyroid dysfunction or simply want to optimize your metabolism, they are interconnected, and our team is here to help.
Start your journey with us and book your free consultation, or follow us on Instagram @myinfinite_wellness for wellness tips, resources, and additional support.
Understanding the connection between your thyroid health and metabolic health leads you closer to a life of achieving vibrant energy and well-being. Choose Infinite Wellness as your health partner to help guide you every step of the way.