Six Ways to Get Your Energy Back

So, there you are, dragging your patooty through one grey day after another, wondering where your brain went, why your body aches and if you’ll ever feel good again.

Even if your doctor checked for thyroid problems, and the flaky blood tests actually found the problem, you probably ended up on the ineffective medicine Synthroid or its generic equivalent. It helps almost nobody.

But you don’t have to be hypothyroid to lack energy and joy. Perhaps your thyroid’s in a world of hurt because of what you’ve been doing to it, but it’ll work if you let it.

Either way, here are six tips to stop beating up on your thyroid and get a power boost. • Don’t eat bread, cookies, cakes, etc–at least, not any you buy. And not because of calories. Commercial bakeries started using bromine, a fire retardant, as a dough conditioner in the 1980s, and bromine is death on the thyroid, which just happens to control our metabolism and energy.

Here’s how it goes. Our thyroid hormone needs iodine to work Bromine is chemically very similar to iodine, and when it gets into our bodies, it pushes iodine out of the way and hijacks our thyroid hormone. Well, bogus thyroid can’t cut the mustard, so you’re toast. You’re pumping out hormone with no power. Zilch, zero, nada.

But here’s the kicker: Blood tests can’t tell real thyroid from bogus thyroid. You may be dragging bottom, but the test says you’re good to go. Even if you’re verging on comatose. The blood test has spoken. • And everything I said about bromine goes for fluoride–in spades. Don’t drink fluoridated water. Don’t use fluoridated toothpaste. Don’t bathe in fluoridated water. Don’t take fluoride-based antibiotics. No fluoride; no way, no how.

Fluoride’s murder. And, no, it doesn’t help anybody’s teeth; fluoride has mottled and weakened the teeth of nearly half the kids in the U.S. There’s nothing good to say about fluoride. • Eat plenty of protein, including red meat at least every other day. Our thyroid glands, as part of the endocrine system, thrive on protein. They live for protein. They can’t make it without protein. And red meat has micronutrients we need and can’t get anywhere else.

But (and why is there always a ‘but’?) don’t eat just any protein. Beef from factory farms contains hormones, antibiotics and, because of the cow’s unnatural diet of grains, a whole lot of disease-causing Omega 6.

Gotta get grass fed, grass finished beef–and milk, butter and cheese–with no hormones and no antibiotics, just a bunch of omega 3 to bless your socks off. • You don’t want to cut off the fat, either. Our bodies make their hormones from saturated fat. Our brains need fat to function. And we need to eat saturated fat to absorb nutrition from our food. No fat means no nutrition. • And for pity’s sake, I’m begging you, don’t eat soy. Or drink soy. Or put soy lotions on your body. Just don’t have anything to do with soy.

Besides depressing thyroid function–i.e. energy levels–soy comes chock-a-block full of bogus estrogen, which messes with the entire endocrine system–especially estrogen, testosterone and progesterone. Do you really want to do a number on your reproductive system? And tell me, sir, is it really your heart’s desire to have breasts? Well, then, soy will get that job done. Of course, there’s the little additional matter of prostate cancer to consider.

Want more? Soy sucks the minerals out of your body and causes kidney stones, too. How much fun is that?

Here’s the hard part: Eliminating soy means avoiding processed foods–fast food, meals at most chain restaurants and meals that come out of a box. • Take quality vitamins and minerals to give your body the ammunition it needs to fight the good fight. Food alone can’t do everything that needs doing, so you have to supplement. But you have to supplement intelligently. Picking up any old thing in the grocery store doesn’t work.

It took me years to figure out the vitamin/mineral gig, which is probably why I jump up and down about nutrition these days.

So there you have it. Six ways to boost your health. A tip of the proverbial iceberg to be sure, but a strong beginning for your health revolution.