Hi Reader, We all know those days. Sometimes it's a whole week. Everything just gets worse. More tired. More achy. Puffy. Low. Foggy. That heavy, can't-be-bothered feeling where even small jobs feel like too much. We call it a thyroid flare. I've been thinking about this a lot lately. And I think when we say "flare", what's really going on underneath is inflammation going up. Something tips it over. Inflammation rises. And we feel rubbish. The tricky part is that it's rarely just one thing....
about 15 hours ago • 1 min read
Hi Reader, Nine years ago this week, I woke up in a hospital bed with my thyroid gone. That's not actually what I want to write about today. I want to write about a photo. A sunny day on holiday, my husband and daughter behind me, everyone smiling. An ordinary photo, the kind you take a hundred of and never really look at properly. Except later, putting together a photo book of that trip, I looked at it properly. My neck. In that light, at that angle, it was lumpy. Swollen. Obviously wrong....
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader, My mum used to make her own bread. She didn't like what was in the shop-bought stuff. Too many weird things she couldn't pronounce. So most weeks there'd be a loaf rising on the side, flour dust on the counter, her hands working the dough the way her own mother probably taught her. She thought she was doing the right thing. For most of her life, something was wrong. Not one big obvious thing. A drip feed of smaller ones. Tired in a way sleep didn't touch. Weight that wouldn't shift...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
Hi Reader, There was a stretch of my life where I knew the calorie count of almost everything before it touched my plate. I could tell you the numbers without thinking. I was still hungry most of the time, and I was still nowhere near where I wanted to be. I think a lot of us have lived some version of that. Counting, restricting, feeling like the failure must be ours when the number on the scale doesn't move the way it's supposed to. I read a piece in the paper this week making the case that...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Hi Reader, You might have seen it. Sauerkraut has been massively in the news lately, especially in America, with several public figures very publicly eating it as part of their diet. Whatever you make of that, it made me want to talk about why it actually matters, especially if you're managing hypothyroidism or Hashimoto's. So I made a video about it. What it actually does for your gut, what to look for when you're buying it, and the one thing most people get wrong that means their jar is...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Hi Reader, I went back through my old blood results recently. Right at the bottom of the ferritin range, one point above rock bottom. And next to it, one word. Normal. I remember being exhausted around that time. The kind of tired that a good night's sleep didn't touch. I put it down to my thyroid, because that's what I'd been told to expect. Nobody mentioned iron. Nobody looked twice at that number, because technically, it was in range. Here's what I didn't know then. Your thyroid can't...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader, After my thyroid was removed, I was handed a prescription and sent home. No advice. No conversation about food. No one telling me what came next. Just a box of tablets and a leaflet. I'd been vegetarian since I was 16. My husband had been vegetarian since before we even met. So when my body started struggling, I did what I'd always been told was right. I doubled down. More plants. Less meat. I thought I was doing everything correctly. Instead, I got worse. I remember a kind of...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader, After my thyroid was removed, everyone had advice for me. Cut this out. Add that in. Do this every morning. Never eat that again. I remember feeling like getting better was suddenly a full time job I hadn't applied for. Like I was meant to overhaul my whole life overnight, on top of everything else my body was already dealing with. I didn't do that. I couldn't. So I picked one small thing instead. A carrot salad. Grated carrot, a splash of vinegar, a pinch of salt. Two minutes with...
2 months ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader, I want to share something with you today that's just been published – and I think it's one of the most important things I've come across in a long time. It's a cost breakdown of Liothyronine (T3) across every UK brand and formulation, compiled by a member of the Thyroid UK forum. And once you see it, I think a lot of things start to make sense. I'm going to walk you through what it shows, and then tell you what I think it means – because I think it explains something so many of us...
2 months ago • 5 min read
Hi Reader, I remember sitting outside the doctor's surgery in the car. Diagnosis in my hand. Engine off. Just staring at the windscreen. No plan. No list of what to eat. No real explanation of what was actually happening inside my body. Just me, on my own, left to work it out. So I did what most people would do. I ate "healthy." I'd been vegetarian for over 30 years by that point. Long before any of this started. It was just who I was. I thought I had the healthy eating thing sorted. I kept...
2 months ago • 3 min read