The thyroid is a butterfly-shaped gland that can surprisingly turn your life around for better or worse, depending on its current condition. To help it veer towards the benefit-laden side, lifestyle change is one of the approaches, especially in patients with hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism. In this article, we’re going to talk about how your lifestyle affects your thyroid gland.
Exercise can bring not only protective benefits but also therapeutic ones.
Those with hypothyroidism feel that they need to exercise harder to keep the weight off. However, having the energy to do it might be difficult. For one thing, exercising may be too difficult for them to begin with because their resting metabolism is too slow.
A slow metabolism translates to lower energy produced. Therefore, the body of a person with hypothyroidism may have more difficulty churning out readily-usable “energy packs” than the body of an otherwise healthy person. The inefficiency of the thyroid gland to produce much-needed energy is one of the reasons for fatigue as well. This is also the main reason that people with this condition are encouraged first to exercise with lower intensities so they can tolerate the activities.
Exercising too hard can be a problem because it can cause adrenal cortisol problems which can reduce thyroid hormone output. In addition, if you exercise too hard, it can contribute to developing autoimmune diseases.
Don’t overdo aerobic exercise. This applies to most types of exercises. You should feel like you can repeat the exercise 5 to 10 minutes after you catch your breath. Also, you shouldn’t feel like you’ve been hit by a bus.
HIIT (High Interval Intensity Training) can be great because it’s designed to burn as many calories as possible within a short period of time.
HIIT brings similar benefits as those from prolonged, low-intensity exercises. There are two HIIT methods. The first is where you do short bouts of all-out exercise followed by rest periods. The second is the same, where you do short bursts of all-out exercise but follow with periods of low-intensity activities.
Make sure that when you go all out, you almost can’t talk. When you achieve this, it means that you achieved the exercise intensity hard enough for your body to handle but not too lax that you won’t get any benefits at all. On a scale of one to ten, ten being the hardest, you want to be at a nine.
You should make sure you’re in the anaerobic zone. The anaerobic zone is a short burst of exercise mode that lasts from a few seconds to a couple of minutes. After this period, the aerobic zone of training starts kicking in.
When you’re resting or in lower intensity workout mode, you should be in the aerobic zone. The aerobic zone is the level of intensity where your body utilizes its aerobic metabolic system to transform energy from glycogen and fat. If you haven’t exercised for a while, take it easy at first. Accelerate the next exercise sessions bit by bit until you’ve reached your ideal level of strength and endurance.
A study by Tabata and colleagues investigated the effects of HIIT and moderate-intensity endurance exercises on people’s capacity to do more physical activities in the future. This was a 6-week study that required the respondents to do the assigned exercises for at least 5 days a week. Some activities required them to row fast for 20 seconds and then row slowly for 10 seconds. They had to do this for a total of 8 intervals or 4 minutes.
At the conclusion of the study, subjects had a 28% increase in anaerobic capacity and a 40% improvement in maximum capacity consumption. Their breathing capacity also increased significantly after the study period. Not bad.
Do your homework to figure out what type of exercise you want to do and make sure you warm up before commencing exercise. There are various factors that can help you decide what type of exercise suits you best, such as considering your interests. What are the physical activities that you’re fond of doing? Do you enjoy walking, swimming, playing basketball, or something else? If you haven’t got an idea yet, try doing these activities and see what works for you in the long run.
Resistance training (strengthening exercises) can bring you lots of benefits if you incorporate it into your regimen carefully.
To get a good and complete workout, your heart should get enough exercise as well. To do this, you may do resistance training along with HIIT interval training if your body is already strong enough to withstand the pressure. Remember, you should not feel completely fatigued. If you do, begin by doing lighter exercises first, such as walking, yoga or Tai Chi.
Sleep has many benefits that most people usually take for granted.
Sleep helps the body regenerate. It also maintains healthy hormone balance, consistent growth and development, a healthy immune system, healthy brain functions, and optimum reactions to insulin (insulin is the hormone that controls blood sugar). There are many more benefits. Not getting enough rest can lead to heart problems, kidney diseases, diabetes, stroke, and high blood pressure, among other problems.
Your emotional state is also very important to your health as this can pretty much affect every aspect of your body.
Stress, anger and sadness can really affect your thyroid function. Having gratitude and focusing on what you have versus what you don’t have are always ways to keep your hormones in check. There are other techniques that can help dissolve emotional issues and possibly trauma. They include counseling and EDM, which means eye movement desensitization and reprocessing EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) and NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming).
Nutrition is critical when dealing with thyroid issues.
This is one cornerstone of your lifestyle that can make or break your overall thyroid health. For starters, eating foods rich in omega 3s, vegetables, heart-loving fats, fruits, and high-fiber edibles can help you aim for better thyroid health. Eating whole foods are highly recommended, along with drinking at least two liters of water a day.
When incorporating thyroid nutrition, don’t make unrealistic expectations when consulting your diet plans with an expert. It may take some time for your hormones to stabilize. Until then, you may not immediately start to see weight loss. This is one of the reasons that functional medicine focuses more on the overall state of thyroid health than merely relying on the figures of the weight scale.
These are just some of the factors that can affect how your thyroid gland performs. If you want to learn more about your thyroid health, just visit my website today – http://drCelaya.com
