Dehydration & Hypothyroidism

Hypothyroidism occurs when your thyroid produces too little thyroid hormone and is often characterized by weight gain or loss, sluggishness, excess fatigue, slowed metabolism, mental fatigue, depression and low mood.

Identifying hypothyroidism can be tricky as people see weight gain or lethargy as the problem, people don’t think about what could be the actual reason behind it. They start consuming fewer calories, with the hope that this will help them shed those extra pounds.

Now the question arises, how is dehydration linked to hypothyroidism and what can be done to back pedal the damage done. We need to understand, why water (right one) plays a key role in hydrating our bodies and how it supports two of our most important body systems (pH Balancing System and the Detoxification System).

Proper hydration will energize you both mentally and physically. It helps support your digestive function, reduces cravings for sugar and carb-rich foods, boosts immunity, helps clear toxins from the body, supports the liver and kidney to function efficiently, helps create new healthy red blood cells – in fact, to some extent, it won't be wrong to say that every function in the body is impacted by your hydration levels. One major thing about hydration is people often confuse hydration to drinking 3-4 liters of water per day, however that's not the case at all. Drinking too much water will not help, drinking water 4-6 times a day in moderation will bring far better results. Also, the quality of water that your drinking plays a key role in determining your healthy gut, water loaded with fluoride or chloramine is a strict NO, they can cause brain damage and some studies relate fluoride to lower IQ in children. When it comes to drinking the right kind of water, more and more research papers are showing positive results of drinking ionized alkaline water produced by water ionizers. Ionized water with a pH between 8.5 - 9.5 has shown multiple health benefits and is slowly gaining lot of momentum and has a ever increasing list of followers.

When it comes to your thyroid, dehydration can be a huge issue affecting you in multiple ways:

• Dehydration alters blood cell and plasma concentrations which directly affects the circulation of T3 and T4. Together, these hormones regulate your body's temperature, metabolism, and heart rate. 
• Dehydration can cause an increase in cortisol production stressing the adrenals and further initiate production of TSH, which again has a negative impact on thyroid.
• Dehydration causes histamine levels to rise – many of the symptoms hypothyroidism creates includes high blood pressure, sleep issues, anxiety, stress, headaches and so on.

The most important thing here to note is that all this can be taken under your control, you don't have to worry at all if you have above mentioned symptoms, it's never to late, when it comes to maintaining a healthier gut, You should be aiming to consume between 3-4 litres of clean, ionized alkaline (no fluoride or chloramine) water each day, include as many vegetable juices and smoothies, herbal teas, green teas and other stuff which hydrates you efficiently and this will prove to be a great game changer in your fight against hypothyroidism.

Cheers.