Nutrition for Gut & Thyroid Health

Alison Marras

My pleasure. Thanks for having me. I always love to be with my fellow hashes. Yeah, I like many of us, I think it’s kind of the wounded healer story where I just started seeing my own health decline even after sort of a lifetime of symptoms that I just normalized, which I often hear a lot from the community. For me, it was just like a lifetime of painful periods where digestive issues, all of these things that were just kind of like brushed under the rug, like, well, that’s your cross to bear sort of thing. Like this is just the way it is for you or your genes or whatever. And I just kind of accepted it. I went on the birth control pill for about a decade because that was the only thing that could help me with the debilitating pain. Two days out of every month, I would have to stay home from school and, you know, do all these things. But then I remember it just all kind of hit the fan when I was around 27, 26, 27, I got off the pill and everything went crazy. 

I started losing all my hair. Weight was all over the place, my mood, my energy. I was sort of getting depressed, which was not my personality. Like I just had never experienced that before. Lots of different things also that I think I started piecing together as I started researching thyroid health too, because a lot of people were kind of like, maybe it’s your thyroid that I was always cold, I could never sweat. I like just all these weird, random things. I’m like, Oh, like it started like, piling up. But again, I just kind of kept getting tossed from different specialists to different specialists. No one was testing me appropriately. I didn’t know what to ask for. And finally I was just like, That’s it, no one’s coming to save me, so I’m going to have to do it. So I went back to school. I started cooking a lot at home. That’s how I started my blog and how now I’m a cookbook author and things because I love to share food and I really had to take it into my own hands and I just wanted to teach everybody else how to do it. So that’s kind of the story. That’s how I came to it, that’s what I’ve been doing. And I just love supporting women that are dealing with Hashimoto’s, with gut issues, other chronic illness and how we can really manage it and reverse things through diet and lifestyle.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

And love it. And I love how you said you had to heal yourself, you had to go out there and get it done yourself. And I think that’s a big problem in our culture as we normalize symptoms and we even like joke about them like, oh yeah, you feel horrible before your period. Me or like, yeah, I’m bloated all the time. It’s no big deal. No, that’s your body trying to tell you something is wrong. So our bodies are hurt. Yeah. So if you have symptoms, you need to figure out why you have symptoms and kind of dig in a little more. So I think that’s amazing what you’re doing and especially when you’ve been through Hashimoto’s and PCOS, you know what to expect and you know the hurdles and what women are going through. So I think for you teaching it’s so much more relatable.

Alison Marras

Absolutely. Yeah, I definitely walk the walk that’s great.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

So with all the diets out there, what is the dietary template that you think is best for a healthy thyroid and for better gut health? Because we know those are connected for sure.

Alison Marras

Yeah. I mean, I always love to use Paleo as a core template and you know, in my practice I’m all about bio individuality, right? Not everyone might need to be off of every single grain or every single legume or whatever, but it’s such a great place to kind of just restore the body back to nature. That’s really the way I view paleo got meat, veggies, fish, right? Like just basic kind of stuff that’s nutrient dense. That’s the other really big focus is are we getting nutrients? Because a lot of times I’ll see people that are, yeah, I’ve gone gluten free, but they’re eating gluten free breads and baked goods all day long or bars. And, you know, their blood sugar is out of whack, little things like that. So I think it’s really critical that we’re also focusing on Whole Foods and we’re not being like junk food, paleo diet or anything like that. So I really love that as a core template and then bio individualizing from there. 

But oftentimes we do need to stay there for a while is what I see, because we do need to do some healing and kind of like hitting that factory reset button a little bit with the diet and lifestyle conditions that have contributed to the disease in our body. And so we really want to change that terrain. So I love Paleo for that. And for anyone who’s unfamiliar, I mean, it’s basically gluten free, dairy free, grain free legume freeze. That’s beans. And those are kind of the big things. And of course, like refined sugar free and all that good stuff. So, you know, if anyone’s ever done a Whole30, it’s very similar to that. And from there, when we’re really symptomatic or if we’re really trying to get into remission and lower some antibodies, something else that can be helpful short term as a tool because all diets are tools. At the end of the day, it’s AP, which stands for Autoimmune Protocol, and that’s kind of a layer on top of paleo where you would essentially go paleo first, get comfortable there, and then probably transition to play with some AP stuff. And I have a lot of information on it, like on my website and all that good stuff because it’s a little nuanced, but it’s just some more eliminations, things like nightshades eggs, nuts, seeds. And so we want to kind of remove anything that we think could be bothering or causing more inflammation, especially when it comes to the immune system and antibodies. And that’s a really powerful tool I used along the way. It’s not something I do all the time, but it’s something that I used along the way and have used with many clients to help reduce, especially like the TPO antibodies that we can start to see really be affected. So those are kind of my favorite go tos.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Yeah, paleo is a great way to start and sometimes I kind of look at the person in front of me and I’m like, Well, this might stress them out more than paleo or just going gluten free. Sometimes there are patients that are like gluten free. So I’ll just be like, okay, you’re just going to go gluten free for eight weeks and then we’ll build on that. But then I have some, some people that are like, I want to do everything. They go grain free. They are all in and it doesn’t stress them out. So I like how you said bio individual and looking at the person in front of you for what’s going on in their life and taking that into consideration. And then also you said AP short term. So can you explain why you said that? Because I do agree with you on that.

Alison Marras

Yes. Well, a couple of things there, and I love that you do that because that is, you know, we’re not robots when we’re working with clients and patients and when we’re even considering trying something for ourselves, we do need to apply it to ourselves and say, is this right for me right now? Do I feel excited or curious and open to this experience right now, or does it feel like another checklist item on the very long list of what do I do to fix my body? So I’m always very like very careful about kind of tiptoeing around that kind of stuff and just saying like, look, we can do this, like you said, like in phases, or we can do this a little bit, you know, like let’s just jump into the deep end kind of thing and go for it. But one thing I will say, and I know, you know, this is like nowadays it’s so much easier to do these diets. Even gluten free was so hard even just a decade ago, paleo was so difficult, you would have had to cook every single thing where now there’s a lot of sauces and dressings and memos and things like that, that it makes things easier on us. 

And then there’s like fun, you know, snack kind of things and it’s like, Oh, cool, I can have the things that I miss again. So that is one thing I will say is we’ve made a lot of progress with that. But part of your question about the AP and it being short term, I’m really adamant about this because I think in the community we can get to a point where we start to overcorrect with diet. And like you said, if that’s now causing you more stress, food, fear, you’re getting into fight or flight every time you eat well, you’re not going to digest the food. So congrats that it’s so healthy, but you’re not going to digest it because you’re so freaked out by it. And I see this often. And so this is where a lot of mindset work comes in. This is where a lot of examining the relationship to food and then also feeling like you have the support of a practitioner that can say, Hey, it’s time to reintroduce or Hey, we don’t keep eliminating without healing the gut, because a lot of times we can be sensitive to certain nightshades or eggs or nuts or whatever, simply because we’re dealing with dysbiosis, leaky gut. And so whatever we’re eating a lot of we’re going to get sensitive to, right? So these are the things where it’s like, Hey, let’s not overuse this tool. Let’s reduce some inflammation, get rid of some of the waste by going short term. And the recommendation is 30 to 90 days at least, at least 30 up to 90. So that’s about three months max that you want to be doing the elimination phase. And then the key is not just what you take out, but what you are eating. 

And that’s why I emphasize the nutrient density upfront because, you know, if we’re not eating the organ meats, the broth, fermented food as tolerated and all the great, you know, vitamins to get all the I mean, the green vitamins, the green veggies and fruits to get the vitamins and minerals and and enzymes, all the great animal protein that we really need to heal. If we are not doing that, then we’re not healing while we eliminate and this is the rigamarole people get into words like, no, no, no, I feel better without this stuff. I don’t want to reintroduce, I don’t want to rock the boat red flag. We need to be able to reintroduce some of these foods or we’re going to have now more nutrient deficiencies will often see like calcium is a big deficiency with even just paleo when we’re just not getting enough because they’re all dairy and we’re not healing. We’re not able to like get up to speed with things. B Vitamins, if we’re not having the organ meats that a lot of people don’t want to eat, they just don’t eat liver. 

They don’t want to deal with any of those stuff. But these are the foods that are going to be healing. So we’re really using the diet appropriately. We’re not just focusing on elimination phase, we’re focusing on what we are eating during elimination phase. Let’s take a more positive approach, not just looking at I can’t have that. Let’s look at what we can and want to have and then let’s make a really nice structured plan for okay, time to test reintroductions. Here’s how I do it. I’m going to go, you know, methodically. There’s a whole and again, I have lots of resources on my site, but there’s a whole like sort of step by step process on how you would reintroduce in which foods come back, at which times. And again, like working with a doctor like you, any practitioner that’s going to be able to support that healing to the look at, hey, why are you getting these food sensitivities? Why are you getting all this inflammation? Why are the antibodies so high besides the fact that we get triggers that are triggering all day? What else is happening at a root cause level? Overgrowth parasite. What? Up, up, up, up. But whatever is going on that needs to be determined and addressed to or you’re only going to get so far. So that’s kind of my standpoint on it.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Absolutely. I love those points. You definitely if you have if you get a food sensitivity test and you’re sensitive to hundreds of things, well, your gut is super leaky and we got to fix that first. So sometimes I won’t even order food sensitivities on patients until we heal their gut. And then I might order them. Yeah, right. Because oh, my gosh, people really get upset. And I’m sure you see this with your clients. They’re like, I can’t eat anything. And they get so upset about it. And I’m like, well, you, we shouldn’t of you shouldn’t have gotten that. So I think it’s hard because every time you log on to Instagram, you’re going to get an ad for those food sensitivity tests. And they’re not always that’s always good.

Alison Marras

So I never recommend the and I’m sure you don’t either the direct because there is no support during and there’s no way to heal. That’s my biggest thing is like eliminate while we heal. That’s what I always repeat a billion times because we still get it stuck in our head like, Oh, if I just eliminate this now you’re just removing the triggers and the things that are just, you know, making it a lot more noisy. You’re not necessarily doing anything about the root cause issue. So that’s very smart. I came to the same kind of, you know, decision in my practice where I’m like, This is one of the last things we ever do because it’s people just get stuck there. Yeah.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Right. And they don’t know. They don’t know that. So I think it’s good to explain that. And if someone’s trying to sell a product, they’re not going to tell them maybe wait for us. But yeah. So what issues do you commonly see in the Hashimoto clients that nutrition can support their disease and possibly reverse it?

Alison Marras

Yeah, that’s a great question. So a big thing. And actually I want to just say to all Hashimoto’s patients are different. It doesn’t mean that we’re all the same. So a lot of times, and especially on social media, especially on Tik-Tok, for some reason I’ll get like fights in the comments when I post something of like, here’s what I ate in a day or whatever. You’re eating eggs. We’re not allowed to eat eggs. You’re eating white potatoes. I thought that wasn’t allowed. I’m like, Who? Wait, where? Where does it say? Like, you’re not allowed that no one with Hashimoto’s can eat these things? And so again we get so stuck in this like rigid. Yes, no, right? Like kind of good, bad thinking that we just get really, really stuck, really like poor relationship with food and our healing and it’s going to stall. So that right away is kind of a thing that I see with everybody where we have some version of that. And like you said, it’s our culture, it’s the magic pill kind of culture. It’s like, Oh, just do this and you’re golden, but we have to apply bio individuality. So I just want to say that upfront. No one Hashimoto’s patient is the same. 

Some have PCOS, some have adrenal issues, some have constipation, some have chemo constantly. And these are the common things that I’ll see. Doesn’t mean you have all those things all at once, doesn’t mean you should address them all at once either. So I think one of the most common things I see across the board, blood sugar imbalances and what I always like to teach my clients is that blood sugar imbalances are a root cause of hormonal imbalances. Just throwing off your adrenals, which I was always taught, especially like doing my own thyroid research is like if your adrenals are shot, your thyroid is got a real tough time getting up to speed. Right. And I always call the adrenals the Marcia Brady of the Endocrine System, like they’re the favorite child for anyone who doesn’t know the Brady Bunch. I have to say that that’s the favorite child because your adrenals are going to keep you alive at the end of the day in a face of danger. And so it’s going to prioritize that over thyroid, over your ovaries. BOP, bop, bop, bop, bop. And so this is where we have to look at blood sugar and adrenal is very closely together. And so something that we can do with diet is make sure you’re not skipping meals, you are eating three full balanced meals with that are protein forward. I always like emphasize the animal protein as being really a huge piece. So getting adequate protein at each meal and then you build from there with your fiber and, you know, starches and good fats and all that good stuff, because a lot of times I’ll see when we’re concerned about things like constipation or weight with Hashimoto’s, I’ll turn to see people like, Oh, I’m going too fast, I’m gonna skip breakfast or I’m going to not eat so much backfires every time, every time. And so there’s a little bit of an unlearning. There’s a little bit of understanding, like, Hey, we’re not here to follow this, like mainstream advice, not just because Hashimoto’s, but because it’s not a great advice for anyone. 

So we just want to look at that. So that’s a big thing that I’ll do with people is just educate and support them in balancing their blood sugar with diet, supporting their stress for sure to support the adrenal piece as well, getting sugar out of the diet. You know, obviously if we’re eating too much sugar, if we are starting the day with lots of sugar in the coffee, we’re amped up on caffeine and sugar. We’re going to keep craving that. So I just tend to see that show a cascade of imbalances across the board. And I think one of the other things is constipation. Sebo You know, these kinds of things aren’t everyone’s different, right? You might have like a little bit of diarrhea, a little concern, whatever it is. But I do tend to see that a lot with thyroid, just because we know it affects motility and the thyroid gut connection and all that kind of stuff. 

So what I really like to say for that is like, hey, are we prioritizing the Whole Foods? You know, are we walking, are we standing, are we very sedentary, really looking at it holistically because there’s lots we can do a diet, but then we’ve got to move our body too. We’ve got to stay hydrated. And so many of us are dehydrated, lots of little things like that that we need to employ and look at. It’s just it’s the basics. It’s really just supporting the foundations with the diet and lifestyle there. I’m trying to think there’s anything else. I mean, lots of symptoms from those two things alone. We’ll see. Like just no energy, right? Fatigue, hair loss. So this is often related and it certainly was the case for me. My adrenals were a mess. 

My thyroid medication was not optimized yet and it takes a long time to regrow and kind of stop the hair loss cycle. But another thing that I kind of mentioned with the organ meats that was a big game changer for me too along the way is including I would eat liver once a week. I went from never having it in my life to eating it once a week and figuring out a way to make it taste good. And that was amazing. Life changing. Like my energy shot up my you know, my hair was getting better. So many things changed. It wasn’t a pill, it wasn’t a supplement and even have to do that. So, you know, if we can get it from food, if we can make these easier tweaks from the diet and lifestyle, that’s ideal. And then, you know, yeah, sure, if you can’t stomach the liver, get a good supplement or whatever. But that’s those are kind of some of the big lovers that I tend to see.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Yes. I think people kind of undress. To me, the power of food and food is medicine, as Parker D said. And, you know, if you’re super overwhelmed, you have a new thyroid or Hashimoto’s diagnosis, start with food, start with what you put in your body. And, you know, thank goodness there’s you out there that gives us good recipes right? For those that need help with recipes because it’s super overwhelming. So do you have a good recipe for a liver? I do. And I’m going to go look it up because.

Alison Marras

Go check it out.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

I have a hard is it kit approved and like has been approved at all.

Alison Marras

So actually it’s my husband’s recipe. He got me eating the liver. He was like when I was just losing all my years. Like, You’ve got to eat liver. I don’t know why. That’s like the one thing he knew about nutrition, but yeah, it’s like a lemony garlic liver and onion kind of situation. Very tasty. My. My tips for this to make it good use chicken liver because it’s more mild than like beef is pretty hardcore I don’t really beef liver or if you’re open to it rabbit liver. Very mild. Yes, it’s very it’s like one of my new favorites. So those are really good to kind of check out. And, you know, you can order online like grassroots co-op is one of my favorites for chicken liver. The rabbit liver. I think I get white oak pastures or the other ones escaping me, but I’ll send it to you. But, you know, kind of just sourcing some liver like that, playing with it and and just trying it. 

And so what I would say is my toddler eats it just because we introduced it to her pretty early. So, I mean, it depends, right? You if a kid is already like very picky and not really into it, but, you know, make it fun, let them try it and see how it goes. There’s also lots of hidden liver recipes, so you could, like, even make my recipe, let’s say, and then shove it into meatballs, you know, like shove it into a brown feed and then make it make the meatballs if you want to. And then the other recipe I have it in my cookbook is a paté that tends to go over pretty well. Right? And then you can kind of dip siete, they tortilla chips in it or carrots or something like that. And it’s really tasty and you can make a lot. You can freeze them in little batches too. You always have. So, you know, there’s options.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Yeah, I think it’s fun. So I got some of the force of nature, I believe it’s called. Right, the, the, the meat that it’s just ground organ meat. And I put that in with taco meat and I didn’t tell anyone. So I did not tell any of the four children. I did not follow my husband. I it’s just sometimes I’ll sneak it in and I’ll say something. I’ll tell my husband and then he’s like, Oh, I can taste it.

Alison Marras

Yeah, they’re really into it. Yeah.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

No one no one knew. I thought it tasted a little game here for tacos, but whenever no one knew. So I want to try. I’m going to try some chicken or rabbit liver. I’m going to look up your recipe and try that and just be like, it’s just meat in. Just, just see, I mean, it’s not about tricking. I think that’s another thing with food and hiding food. Like we kind of I kind of want to tell my kids that they’re eating nutritious food. It’s just hard because the average family on the block, especially in Ohio, are not eating organ meats at all. And they think we’re weird. So it’s a balance. And that goes back to just food and, you know, just the all the stigma around it. And so when we talk about eating and it’s not just what to eat, you talk about often how to eat things and can you talk more about why that’s important for our gut health?

Alison Marras

Yeah, absolutely. So you you teed it up perfectly when you were mentioning like if someone’s really stressed out by having to give up, you know, grains and whatever and go paleo, it really is not going to help. So the idea here is that digestion is a north to south process and it begins in the brain, not the mouth, not the stomach. And so the idea here is we need to think about our nervous system. We need to think of what state our nervous system is in. And so what I love to teach about is practicing mindful eating once I get a sneeze was coming, okay, went away. So mindful eating or sometimes people refer to it as like food, hygiene or whatever you kind of want to call it. But the idea is you’re just it’s the act of being mindful at your meals. So you’re bringing a presence and awareness, but you’re not scrolling your phone, you’re not working on the laptop and just shoving food into your mouth like a salad quick. 

That’s like not even getting digested. You know, you really want to use all your senses, pay attention to the meal, take the 10 minutes for yourself. It doesn’t take that long to even eat slowly. So I like to just ask people, slow down to your food or apples, shoot applesauce, consistency, and just have a moment with yourself. Like put away the distractions. Like we cannot be hypnotized by our phone every second. You know, little things like this that I see, people are really just altering their gut terrain with bye by doing this stuff that it’s like, Hey, you could do all the protocols in the world. You’re not chewing your food. 

What are we going to do about that? There’s no enzyme powerful enough that’s going to just fix all of that. So we do have to put in a little more work with how we eat, because I often see that that’s a big issue. And to your point, if you are feeling stressed out by the diet, we’ve got to look at ways to make that fun. So come check out recipes on people’s blogs like mine. Get some fun new foods like experiment with seasonal veggies, things you’ve never tried. I remember before I really cooked at home and went paleo. I had never tried like a winter squash. I never ever tried it. So many things. We just leaned on the same stuff as always, like most people do. And it’s fun and it can be really fun if you just lean into it and say, Hey, like I gave it to you, my body. I get to try new flavorful recipes and like I said, now there’s just no shortage of that stuff. It’s we’re in a great time where just Google your favorite things like Paleo in front of it and see if there’s a version out there for you. I know I have a lot of stuff that I’ve created where I’m like, Oh, I really miss this. Like Greek pasta lasagna dish. I’m going to remake it, boom. And it’s so awesome to see people’s comments like, Oh my God, my family ate it. They loved it. They said it tasted just like the real thing without the gluten and dairy and all these things. And that just makes me so happy. And they got extra veggies in it. They got really good meat. 

They got all the good nutrients. So it’s exciting that you can eat these things. It tastes very similar or texture similar, but you won’t have a reaction. You’ll feel good about it. So that’s kind of the idea of like, can we bring more joy to this? Can we eat more mindfully and really take the time to press that? I kind of call the nervous system thing in the beginning of the eating is like you’re either eating with the switch on or off. If we’re in fight or flight, we’re checking emails. Our bosses, I’m eating in traffic while I go pick up the kids while I run from appointment. Appointment. Congrats. You’re not digesting half of that. At least, you know, like it’s just not happening for you. The switch was off. You were in fight or flight. That’s when your body is totally prioritizing digestion and detox and all the good stuff. And it’s prioritizing adrenals, pumping, adrenaline and saving your life from running from a predator. That’s not it’s either one or the other, you know, or some kind of gray area in between. 

But that’s what we have to think about. So slow down, take deep breaths, stop putting stress in front of your face when you’re eating. Enjoy the meal to your food. If nothing else, please to your food. And sometimes people tell me that’s the hardest thing for them. It’s like putting away the distractions and chewing their food. And so another sort of quick tip on that pre digest the food like cut it up real small make ground meat with you know cut up vegetables, cook your veggies because that will be easier on your digestive system. If you’re eating things that are raw, it might not feel so good, so make it easier to chew and that it’s maybe already a cut up small for yourself. So you’re not swallowing huge globs of food. So that’s that’s how I like to tweak things, especially if anyone out there suffers with like SIBO low fodmap kind of situations. I’ve been able to just say, hey, just steam your broccoli, stop roasting it, boom, I can eat it again. Hey, just cut this up smaller and don’t eat it every day. Oh, boom, I can eat it again. You know, sometimes it really is the poisons in the dose. How are we preparing it? You know, we can make these smart little tweaks to support you, getting more foods and tolerating a lot more.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Those are great tips, especially so you’re not as restrictive when you eat. Now, the phone thing, how many times? You know, I see teens, they’re always on their phones when they’re eating. Sometimes I’m guilty of it. So my suggestion, family dinner, just everyone sit. We do highs and lows. And that way we’re focusing on our talk and our food. So this would probably make you mad. Alison So my son, this cafeteria at school, they put in TV’s and I was like and they’re excited about it and I’m like I said to my son, Cyrus, I’m like, Well, these are elementary school kids. I’m like, Yeah, you shouldn’t be watching TV while you’re eating. You should be focusing on eating. And then he was like, Well, they only do it on Fridays as like a treat. And I just we have such a disconnect with eating, you know, with fast food eating in our car. Go, go, go. You know, parents taking their kids to sports so sometimes will eat dinner at 4 p.m., sit down and eat dinner. If my kids have a baseball game all night or something like that. I mean, do the best you can, but try to teach your kids decent habits for when they become adults, because it’s very hard when they see adults not or even schools having, you know, TVs in the cafeteria. So I think it’s it’s really hard for the parents out there also. I mean, people scarf down food, right? They don’t even chew it like you were saying.

Alison Marras

They’re inhaling it. And it’s something especially that I’ll see in the practices, just like a lot of upper GI issues, heartburn, low stop. That’s another big thing with thyroid, right? Low stomach acid. And that’s honestly so much of the issue with our digestion is we’re getting parasites coming in. We can’t even disinfect the food in our stomach. We can’t digest. We can’t break it down. And so we’ve got to do as much work as we can right here. Like these are all tools that no one’s using. And it’s just like if we’re working from a north to south process, I always like to think of the I love I’m just naming every old show that I can. I mean, I love Lucy, you know, chocolate on the factory, Eve on the conveyor belt scene where it gets backed up early on and then the whole thing is being thrown off. And so that’s why it’s like if you’re struggling with constipation, you’re struggling with dysbiosis, leaky gut food sensitivities. 

What are we doing north over the process to ensure that by the time the food gets down to the small intestine for the nutrients to be absorbed, it’s like ready to go. A lot of times it’s not. It’s huge. It hasn’t been disinfected, hasn’t been broken down.  We didn’t have enough stomach acid. We didn’t have the enzymes, we didn’t have the bile. There’s just so much going on that by the time it gets there when we’re seeing all these issues, so much has gone wrong in the process and that’s where these simple it’s it’s simple, but it’s not easy to your point, because we have a disconnect with our modern go, go, go, go, go life kids in schools being told to do things totally different than what you’re saying at home. I was talking about this yesterday to some clients where we were saying like remember like teachers would throw Tootsie Rolls at you if you got something right leg. If they were quizzing you and you were studying for something like I remember that. And I’m like, Yeah, this is like sugar reward, sugar reward. 

You know, it’s such a disconnect because I think one of the biggest things a lot of us learn when we start taking the healing into our own hands is what a disconnect. What a mismatch our biology is from this modern day world. And so if it ever feels like when you’re watching things like this or trying to figure out what to do, reading books and trying to heal yourself, that it feels like why isn’t everything like so hard? Or Why is this such a grind? And it’s like, that’s why we have gotten so far away from what our body really needs. And this is where that disconnect comes in. So this is where we have the tips and the hacks and, you know, the little things that can help. But ultimately, if you’re always thinking of that, like, how can I get my body a little bit more back to nature and how do I set that up in my life to do so? So like you said, like start where you can. If your kids have a late baseball game, do an earlier dinner like you can move some things around, you can figure it out little by little, and it will start to make sense. And when people feel better, they will keep up with it. But yeah, that that’s just kind of a big thing. I see office job, desk job sitting all day, you know, all not being outside enough and I don’t know. Fresh air, blue light in our faces till midnight. Where do you start? You know, it’s like. So you just got to go a little by little. You’ve got to start somewhere.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Right? That’s such good advice. So let’s talk about some myths that we hear sometimes when it comes to nutrition advice for a healthy thyroid. And yeah, I’m excited to hear what you have to say about this because there’s always a lot of crazy things going around social media, right?

Alison Marras

Yes. Yeah. And again, I think it is because we still have to apply our own bio individuality and it’s like, yeah, that could be true for some people in some applications, but is it true for you right now? Is that something to worry about? So something that I’ll see a lot, kind of like I mentioned when I was something on social people like your bags. What are you talking about? You know, maybe that’s a temporary elimination someone should make. Maybe, you know, if you are sensitive, eating eggs every day is not going to be wonderful because you might not feel very good. So it’s like poison is in the dose habit a few times a week if you want that kind of stuff. So I always like to look at these things very levelheaded and apply them to the person. But one of the biggest myths I can think of too is like the great genic foods. So the broccoli’s and the bok choy is and all this kind of stuff where people will be freaked out to eat it. 

And I remember digging into it a little bit deeper when I initially learned about that. I’m like, Oh, some of these studies, it’s like the person ate like five servings of bok choy in a day or something like that. And it’s like, I’m not going to do that. Who’s going to do that? So again, it’s like, where is isn’t the dose bio individuality in my eating that much of it back up about how am I preparing it, you know, raw versus cooked, how are we cooking? Are we steaming? Are we roasting? You know, if when we’re steaming and boiling stuff, things come out in the water and then we can eat the actual food and absorb it a little bit better. 

So this is where it’s like yet again, even with grains and legumes, sometimes we just can’t, you know, do much with them because they’re quick, they’re convenience foods. So it’s not even that all lectins and all, you know, legumes are bad. They have a lot of great properties to them. It’s just that in our modern day life, we cut corners. We say, You don’t need to soak them, you don’t have to sprout them. Here, you hear? You could just zap it in the microwave for 10 seconds and your good. Well, our ancestors did things to the food, you know, fermented things like fermented sour dough and bread and things like that, soaked and sprouted beans and grains for a reason. And it’s a lot more nutrient dense and bioavailable. And then you get rid of some of the lectins and the things that, I mean even nuts have and like nuts are fine. So it’s interesting because when it’s a whole food, there can be pros and cons. And really sometimes we need to just think of the application. How are we preparing it? Is it properly prepared? Is it optimal for our digestion? How can I handle it right now? Do I need to do a little more healing? You know, do I need some support to be able to handle it? Can I maybe just not eat it every day? That’s what I like to look at versus this is yes, this is no for for every Hashimoto’s patient, like not going to work. So that’s kind of my ideas towards that. I guess one other thing is nightshades that I often see and here’s the thing I do see people struggle with it a lot with hashes and general digestive issues, but it doesn’t mean all nightshades, you know, nightshades are potato, white, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, the spices, you know, from them. And so sometimes again, it’s just like, hey, did we just have a potato marinara pepper dish that we had, like all of them and we are poisonous all like it’s just too much. Or can I handle some in small amounts? So same thing. What is that? What is the dose? How are we preparing it? What is the time of day you’re eating it, that kind of stuff. So it’s really powerful to know your triggers, but it’s also powerful to know what you can handle and how you might be able to prepare it differently.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Absolutely. Especially with the goiter genic food, the Brussels like no one’s eating £5 of Brussels sprouts a day so that I think has gotten a little bit out of control. And when you look at the actual studies, it’s like you said, the dose that makes the poison. So that’s really helpful because people can get over whelmed because sometimes people put information out there to kind of just draw them in. And it can be overwhelming if you’re a new patient or someone that’s had a Hashimoto’s for a decade. So thanks for clearing those up. Now to wrap up, if we were to take away three things to try right now, that would be really impactful with nutrition, what would those be?

Alison Marras

I would say, number one, get in the kitchen and start cooking. If you are someone who’s leaning heavily on takeout restaurants, a lot of packaged foods, the number one thing you can do is start cooking and practice it. It’s sometimes people like, Oh, but I don’t really like enjoy her. It’s like, Well, yeah, if you’re not doing it, why would you? And it’s not a priority to you. It’s not going to fit easily in your schedule, but it needs to be, like you said, food is medicine. And so it’s going to boil down to that where I’ll get a lot of people where it’s like, I know a lot. I’m absorbing a lot of information about diet, but then I’ll look at their food journal. I’m like, 

What you’re eating, I’ll take out you’re eating all packaged foods, all these little like protein bars, and where’s the actual plate of food? So it’s a lot of things like that where it’s like you might know and be collecting a lot of information, get your booty in the kitchen, start cooking, pick up some recipes, pick up some new sauces and veggies and protein you haven’t tried before and have fun. Get messy. It’s okay. Like it’s just food. So I would say that’s first and foremost and that was a huge catalyst for my whole transformation, getting in remission and feeling like I was in more control and finding a real passion for cooking that I never knew I would have. Number two, I think it’s going to be remembering that bio individuality piece. Like it’s not going to be that your every Hashimoto’s patients. So always just like trying with an open mind and then applying it to yourself and kind of breaking things off in a way that is easy to chew, so to speak. And so taking it little by little, not feeling like, Oh, this is the perfect blue blueprint to completely get me into remission. It’s like, let me. These things sound really interesting. These things are like issues for me that are correlated to my symptoms. I think I can probably start there and be open about it because it is a journey. And lastly, I would say it’s not just what you eat, it’s how you eat. I think and really thinking about that mindful eating piece, slowing down, all that good stuff and I think that will position you in a really good in a really good spot for just playing the long game with this stuff.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Absolutely. Alison, it has been a pleasure talking to you about everything. So many helpful tips and tricks, you know, to get you into that mindful eating and to get nutrition on board for Hashimoto’s patients. So tell our listeners where they can find you in your amazing liver recipes and all of that.

Alison Marras

Absolutely. So I am Food by Mars everywhere. So whether that’s on social media or foodbymars.com, that’s where my blog is. I’ve got like over 300 recipes on there that are all paleo and app friendly and lots of resources for you and feel free to reach out. I especially on Instagram a lot. So feel free to do yummy and you know, follow along because I love I like to share a lot of tips and things like that.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Yes, your Instagram is great and that’s how I’ve met you. So yeah. Same. So yeah. Well thank you so much and have a great day.

Alison Marras

Thanks for having me.