Sugars and Sugar Substitutes

There is a lot of controversy over what to use, a sugar substitute or real sugar. I was asked this recently and so I want to give you my thoughts. First, let's talk about the big three substitutes, saccharin, aspartame and sucralose. The first of these to hit the market was saccharin back in 1957, so it has been around a long time. There is lots of research out there and most of it says the saccharin increases the risk of cancer.

Aspartame was introduced as being superior to saccharin, however, it too has been shown in research studies to increase the risk of cancer. About 17 years after aspartame came sucralose, which is not the safest substitute out there by any means.

Sucralose is manufactured by chlorinating sugar. Now my first problem here is that we don't need more chlorine in our bodies competing with our thyroid gland. I'll talk more about this tomorrow.

Soy - the Cons

The biggest con to soy is the it can interfere with the thyroid gland. This is especially true in people who are iodine deficient. The gland is not able to function in it's normal way and this gets worse when soy is added into the body.

While iodine deficiency is a rarity in the USA today, what is not is the incidence of thyroid disease. Soy can actually reduce the absorption of thyroid medications that many people are taking. So the best advice for soy specifically is not to eat or drink a soy product within 1-2 hours of taking your thyroid medication.

The likelihood that you will get too much isoflavones is not an issue unless you are taking supplements in addition to eating soy foods. If you are eating soy in your diet, decease the amount of isoflavones in the supplements that you take.

Soy Continued

Soy is sometimes called a "super food" because cultures with high soy content in their diets tend to be healthier. Reviewing the literature on this, there is little effect on bone health, cancer, and kidney disease. While cultures that have high intake of soy based foods have less reproductive cancers, they have much higher incidents of thyroid and digestive cancers.

The Swiss did a study on 1992 which estimated that 100 grams of soy is equivalent to the estrogenic equivalent of the birth control pill. So while this may protect the reproductive track, it may increase cancer formation in the thyroid and digestive tract. Another thought here, if you have an infant who is allergic to milk and you put them on soy based formula what is the estrogenic effect on them?? I don't know, but I would certainly want to look at alternatives.

Water and Chlorine

Yesterday I mentioned Fluoride and it's affect. Today I'm going to mention a little about Chlorine. There is controversy as to it's affect on the thyroid, but chemically, it is similar to Fluoride and so may also compete and block thyroid function.

More importantly for women is the fact that women who drink chlorinated water tend to have higher serum cholesterol levels. While men have also have a rise in serum cholesterol when drinking chlorinated water, it is less than in women.

Yet another reason for us to be drinking purified water!

Water Fluoridation and Thyroid

I mentioned recently that the best thing to drink is purified water. I realized that I really didn't tell you why purified water is so important. The problem with regular tap water is that it contains fluoride and chlorine. Fluoride competes with thyroid hormones and blocks the function of the thyroid gland.

The studies done regarding fluoridation of water were conducted in the 1940s and are very questionable as to the scientific information purported in these studies. Supposedly, fluoridation was to help decrease tooth decay in children, but that has not been shown to be effective from just drinking fluoridated water. What we have seen in the last 50 years in a dramatic increase in thyroid disease which can be directly linked to the fluoridation in water.

Another word of caution about fluorides, they are also found in toothpastes and mouth washes, so use these with caution that you may be affecting you thyroid gland.