managing thyroid disease

I was asked to write a post about my own experience with thyroid disease, since I often mention it here as something that influences my own lifestyle choices. But before I explain my own experiences and thoughts on it, I want to state two things for the record.

This is only my experience and shouldn’t be construed as advice or a judgment on someone else’s experience or the way he/she chooses to handle his/her own disease. I’m not your doctor and I’m not a licensed expert of any kind (unless you count book expert since I have a master’s degree in literature).

I do not believe that all diseases can be cured or even necessarily affected by lifestyle changes. I am not anti-medication and will always encourage people to seek actual medical advice from a legitimate, licensed professional. (And I’m NOT talking about Dr. Oz here, okay?)

About five years ago, at a routine physical with my then-PCP, I mentioned that I’d had great difficulty losing weight even though I was watching what I was eating and exercising, and that I also was experiencing severe hot flashes/night sweats and having major difficulty sleeping. I was fatigued all the time as well (falling asleep on the couch at 6 p.m. kind of fatigued). He told me that “some women just have a hard time losing weight no matter what they do” and that there wasn’t an explanation for these symptoms, but that he’d order routine blood work anyway.

Lo and behold, I had hypothyroidism. He put me on generic thyroid hormone replacement (levothyroxine) and called it a day. So I started taking it and saw no relief, which led me to my first endocrinologist.

I am now seeing my fourth endocrinologist (who is fantastic and someone I plan on seeing until either one of us isn’t in the area anymore). That will give you an indication of how difficult it’s been for me to find real relief and support.

Throughout the few years that I was seeing other endocrinologists, I was misdiagnosed as being pre-diabetic (and took Metformin unnecessarily for almost a year, which was a total nightmare) and was also given different dosages of three different meds – generic levothyroxine, Synthroid brand levothyroxine, and Armour (synthetic porcine (pig) thyroid that includes T3). I was also made to feel like my symptoms made no sense, and therefore shouldn’t exist. I was also forced into the clinical “normal” range for my TSH (level of thyroid stimulating hormone produced by the pituitary gland) regardless of whether or not that was my body’s normal and told to just deal with the symptoms.

During that time when I was receiving no support whatsoever from the medical professionals I was seeing, I started to do my own research on behavioral/lifestyle modifications that might give me some relief. I realized that I had to take my health into my own hands and wanted to feel like I was doing everything that was within my own control to get relief. It was around that same time that I started to learn more about our industrial food system and its impact on health. Things started to make sense, and I decided to make changes in my diet.

I started small by eliminating soda and then moved to artificial sweeteners all together. I began to phase out unhealthy processed foods and then eventually moved to any hyper-processed foods, even if they were supposedly “healthy.”

Why? Because having a disease that creates chaos in my body’s levels of its own hormones and chemicals means I don’t need to add to that chaos by ingesting chemicals, many of them with unknown properties. To me, that’s common sense.

Did my symptoms disappear? No. But they were lessened, and I also noticed a dramatic shift in my energy levels, no longer being dependent on caffeine and stimulants in food for energy. When I felt good, I felt really good.

Later, I took a nutrition and fitness combination class called Project Jumpstart and I began to exercise. Exercise was something I had never incorporated into my life in any meaningful way, partially because I was so utterly exhausted. (This is a big way that hypothyroidism contributes to weight gain – it doesn’t necessarily make you gain weight, but it makes your metabolism so slow that you don’t have any energy to work out.) I started with a little bit at a time, and almost two years later, I’m about to run my first half marathon and I’m in the best shape of my life. Exercise has great energy benefits as well, and I notice my body feeling sluggish when I get out of my routine.

I also take the brand name thyroid replacement hormone, Synthroid. I take the brand because it's recommended for people who need to have the exact same fillers with each dosage. When you take a generic pill, the fillers and dyes are different for each company that makes it and you don't know what your pharmacy will be carrying from month to month. So for consistency's sake, I take the brand. I have seen much better results with the Synthroid than Armour or the generic levothyroxine.

Essential to this entire thing is my new endocrinologist, who supports me keeping my TSH at a level where I have less symptoms. She also supports my own lifestyle changes with food and exercise, and helps me with other solutions for some of my symptoms, which she believed were triggered originally by my thyroid when the TSH was really high, but then continued even when the TSH came down (trouble sleeping and gastrointestinal difficulties).

In particular, she recommended a sleep therapy workbook that has really re-trained my brain to know how to sleep and rest properly, and I continue to use it to control my insomnia. It's essential to find a doctor that listens to you and your needs, trusts that what you tell them about your symtpoms and your body is true, and wants to commit to helping you feel well, even if it means they spend 30 more minutes with you. 

My plan of attack for thyroid disease now consists of the following:

- Seeing my endocrinologist regularly and getting regular bloodwork to keep a close eye on my TSH
- Eliminating processed foods and hormones in meats as much as possible
- Reducing exposure to chemicals in household products that have been clinically shown to be endocrine disruptors
- Guarding my sleep and following the behavioral modifications to keep the insomnia under control

I hope that gives some insight as to how I manage my own disease. Leave any questions in the comments - it's always good to share experiences!

Real Life CSA: meat, month 3

We're on our third month of our meat CSA with Clarion River Organics and our freezer is officially full! Thankfully some of the items we got this month won't last long.

Let's start with our chickens - two roasters and one stewing chicken. (That's water on the island, not chicken goo. No worries.)

The beef share has some interesting additions this month. Four pounds of ground beef, beef liver, beef cubes for stew, flank steak and round steak. When I pulled it out of the box I was a little taken aback by the dark color of the liver. I can't recall ever having beef liver before, so this should be a new experience for me!

The pork share didn't disappoint either. Two packages of sweet Italian sausage, plus a gorgeous BONELESS HAM and some PORK SPARE RIBS. Capitals for emphasis, obviously. I mean, those are our favorite uses for pork, next to bacon of course. 

 
Also, we are traveling this weekend and will not be able to pick up our produce CSA for week 11, so we opted to donate it to the food pantry. That's a great part of the CSA set-up - they never let things go to waste!

garden update: early august

There's a lot happening in our backyard right now (and a lot that's NOT happening, but we'll get to that in a moment). First, we have some new wildflowers from the crazy seed mix I tried this year that had come free in the mail with some donation request. I wish I could identify these. I'd like to sound more intelligent when I describe them, since "tiny! blue!" isn't cutting it.

Purple basil is doing really well in its container. I put some of this in an arrabbiata sauce the other night and it was delicious! It's also pretty to look at, with its different shades of purple.

We've got lots of peppers coming in. Hopefully they will hang in there until it's time for salsa canning!

Another great success is the amount of dragon beans we're getting. Enough to have lubieh for dinner this week and more on the way!

Perhaps the most exciting thing that took off this year was the one single sweet corn plant. Check out those ears!

And here's where it turns meh. Our squash/melon area got huge and overgrown, but hasn't produced much, and it seems like some of it is succumbing to powdery mildew and some vine rot. But we've got one melon going, at least.

Finally, we have this insane forest of tomatoes.

It seems like every plant we have is just LOADED with tomatoes, but not a single one has ripened yet. So if they do decide to just have at it and turn red, we're going to be up to our eyeballs in all sorts of varieties. I've read that a lot of people are having trouble in our area getting their tomatoes to ripen. Perhaps it's the weather we've had this season. But either way, I'm hoping they start turning red soon. Otherwise we'll have to pick them all green and start layering them in boxes with newspaper like Mark's 78-year-old aunt has suggested we do.

Also going on in our backyard? This monstrosity.

The large tree you can see in the background next to the garage had some low hanging branches that were damaging our fence and blocking the pathway to the alley, so one day when I came home from a run, I walked into the backyard and saw this. Mark had cut them down, but as yet we haven't had time to cut it all down. So it sits. Scenic, right?

Even the chickens are all, "get this crap off our lawn."

At least when it comes to landscaping, there's one bright spot. In the spring, our front yard was looking good. We had lots of blooming flowers and it looked nice from the road. Then in June, it looked like this.

And I meant to get to it. I really did. And then we got to August and it was so bad it had extended onto the sidewalk and we looked like we had abandoned our home and let the weeds rule the premises. Our cat Maggie couldn't even see out the bay window to the street. Those prickly weeds even had giant fluffy heads - and they were taller me. No joke. I was starting to think our neighbors were just really patient souls for not reporting us to the borough. 

Then on Sunday, I came home from grocery shopping to find Mark had worked a miracle and let himself get stabbed by jaggers for hours to give us this.

We will probably have to battle those horrid jagger weeds (that's my scientific name for them) again, but I vow this time to keep up with it before we become the condemned house on our block. Sheesh. And also it's my turn to deal with it next because he already served his time in the front landscaping trenches. (Thanks, Mark. Again.)

cleveland's west side market

We spent Saturday in Cleveland visiting family and friends, and made it to the West Side Market, the city's oldest publicly owned market. It started back in 1840 and in 1912 was housed in its yellow market building, where it still exists and thrives today.

We got some produce from the long line of produce vendors that line the arcade. In particular, I was excited to get a melon from Rooted Cleveland, a "seasonally and sustainably-oriented produce stand...providing local and organically minded specialty produce." The market is great in its variety of produce and its affordability, but much of it comes from far away. I am really happy to see a vendor specializing in truly local and seasonal produce there, and I hope they thrive. We'll definitely be back to visit their stand next time. (They even sold rhubarb pie kits with all the ingredients you'd need to make a pie!)

We ended up with some salad greens, as well as the aforementioned melon and some other fruit.

My photos aren't the greatest - it was a cloudy day and I was using my cell phone inside the market. And also holding bags of fruit. Lots of meat places with many cuts and specialty items. I hope that over time the market gets more vendors using locally raised meats and grass-fed items.

We didn't think ahead enough to bring a cooler, or else I definitely would have come home with some cheese. (made in the Cleve!)

Earlier in the day we had eaten lunch at Noodlecat, a ramen restaurant and one of our favorite restaurants in Cleveland. (Home of the most amazing brussels sprouts dish that you could ever dream of. Thanks to Noodlecat for making them for us at lunch even though they are on the dinner menu!) We discovered that they also have a stall at the West Side Market!

We also came home with some papardelle from Ohio City Pasta. It's hard not to put your hands all over the case and press your nose up to it, the pasta looks so good. They also have tons of homemade ravioli that were tempting too.

Mark and I also gave into our favorites - Campbell's Sweets Factory White Cheddar Dichotomy Popcorn for me, and a cupcake from Grandma Campbell's for him.

After the Market, Mark met some friends and I met his sister for dinner, and because both of the places we had originally intended to go had crazy long waits, we both ended up at the same place without knowing it until we arrived: Market Garden Brewery and Distillery. This is a shot of the back of the restaurant - where you can see the stills.

Saw this community chalk wall on one side of the restaurant. Before I die, I want to... (I'm going to go with live on a space farm for mine. A girl can dream.)

Food was good, but the beer sampler was the best. I got to choose 6 of their own beers to taste. I was really happy to be able to fill 6 without having a stout or an IPA in the list. I loved them all, but the All-American Lager was my favorite (far right). Had I had some forethought, I would have taken a growler or a growlerette home. I just love craft beers, especially having them at the same place where they are brewed. 

We also drove by several urban farms yesterday that have popped up in Cleveland within the last year or two, which is really great. I'd like to check out the Ohio City Farm Stand next time we're there - it was purple!

Real Life CSA: week 10, produce

Ever have one of those weeks where you spend 10 stressful hours at work every day with 2 hours in the car commuting and you're so frazzled that when you get home you are barely able to form complete sentences let alone try to formulate thoughts to write? That's been this week for me. I should be able to fit in a few Borg regeneration cycles this weekend and hopefully be back in full next week, but for now, here's a bright spot - the CSA!

The most exciting thing to discover was the rhubarb. The season is over, so either they had it stored for a great late summer surprise, or it's a miracle. Either way, I am thrilled.

The cukes will probably join those from our garden in more refrigerator pickles - maybe this time bread and butter. Lettuce and tomato in salads and sandwiches.

Eggplant will make it into moussaka or perhaps a ratatouille bake with couscous that my friend makes that's always a hit.

Potatoes will probably be a side (Mark made some great parmesan mashed ones this week) and the onions will be an ingredient in any given recipe.

Also exciting is that our garden is starting to produce, finally. Our kitchen island is getting filled with cukes and peppers. I just love the Boothby's Blonde cukes, and they are all the more sweet because of how Mark saved the plants from the cucumber beetles (by winning the war of attrition and physically removing them from the plants each morning).

 

Best from our garden this week, though, were these amazing dragon beans. They are beautiful in color (and hello, have DRAGON in the name) and we have enough to actually make a side and not just a few hanging out randomly. This is pretty exciting, since last year the dragon beans didn't really take off.

 

So tell me. What are you getting in your CSAs? In your own garden?

Real Life CSA: week 9, produce

Some new things this week, and some favorites!

I was surprised to find as I was unloading the bag that it smelled a bit like garlic. And then I found random cloves of garlic at the bottom. Mystery solved. 

Of course happy to see blueberries again, since I know the season is going to end soon. I am enjoying these plain - it almost seems a shame to make anything with them since they are so delicious on their own. The potatoes and onion will make their way into a side dish of some kind. 

I love carrots, and I particularly love when they look all wrinkly, like they have whiskers.  

Thinking maybe a muffin or a bread with the pie apples so as to avoid an extra dessert lying around the house. But who knows?
 

Kind of feeling inundated with cukes right now, but these might work for some bread and butter refrigerator pickles. If I can fit 5 more pint jars in my fridge right now!

Busy weekend ahead - pickle making, some baking, plus a 5K zombie obstacle race on Saturday and an 11-mile training run on Sunday. Thankfully we don't have another batch of canning to fit in yet!

make it yourself: kale chips

When you first encounter kale in a CSA box or in the grocery store, you think - oh yes! Kale! That leafy green everyone says is the ultimate health food! But what do I do with it? A simple saute in olive oil doesn't do it for me - too bitter. I like it in stews or braises where it's cooked low and slow. But what about in the summer when it's too hot to make a thick stew? How about kale chips?

Sure. Last year I attempted kale chips and had disastrous results. They had a burnt and bitter taste, like they were the scrapings off someone's dirty grill. But this weekend, faced with two bunches of kale that was starting to wilt and zero inspiration for use of it in a meal, I decided to try again.

Enter Martha Stewart and the advice of the Everyday Food blog. I decided to try the Sriracha version, since we're big fans of the rooster sauce in this house. 

First you cut the stems out of the kale, rinse and spin the water off.

The only toppings are coarse salt, olive oil and a bit of Sriracha.

Mix it all up (and put it in a bright pink bowl).
 

Bake low and slow, watching the "chips" closely to make sure they don't burn. The recipe above calls for 300 degrees, but because our ovens tends to be on the hot side, I bumped it down to 275.

I stirred every five minutes or so. Once the smaller pieces and the edges were crisp, those pieces were removed and the rest went back in the oven to crisp up.

They ended up being delicious! I want to try some of the other flavor combinations suggested in that recipe with the next kale we get, now that I have a better method for baking them.

Before you store them, don't be afraid to let them "breathe." Mine turned slightly soggy after a night in an air-tight container for some reason. I think they needed more time to fully dry out than I gave them. But I'd definitely consider this a make your own snack food success!