Recently, a lady e-mailed me, asking about certain over-the-counter supplements, that are advertised to help optimize a person’s thyroid function. She was struggling, as many of us did, with the idea of having to take a lifelong thyroid hormone replacement treatment and so was looking at the possibility of other options for treating her hypothyroidism. In this article, I am including my response to her on this subject, following the heading “response”.

While I believe there are natural supplements that will definitely improve a person’s thyroid function, I do not believe these supplements can replace thyroid hormone replacement medications, needed by patients with advanced disease of the thyroid gland, that has already caused hypothyroidism. It is my opinion, and one I know also agrees with that of most medical professionals, that trying to replace thyroid hormone medication, containing actual thyroid hormone, with a supplement containing no thyroid hormone, or an inconsistent amount, could actually be dangerous. Lack of thyroid hormone in the body, must be replaced and we cannot depend upon a supplement instead, that is supposed to increase our own thyroid function, when the thyroid has lost ground that cannot be regained, once it is permanently damaged due to disease.

Following now, is my response to the patient, who asked about certain thyroid supplements and her request for information about the differences between synthetic and natural thyroid hormone replacement medications. Respectfully, I used the term “brand” in place of the actual names of the over-the-counter supplements she asked about.

Response: The two supplements you are looking into, are not thyroid hormones, they are supplements that help a person's own thyroid to work at optimal level. The problem is, a person with a diseased thyroid from Hashimoto's, cannot jump start their thyroid past a certain point because once it is under-functioning, due to damage from antibodies, it cannot regain full function, no matter what is done, short of divine intervention. That's not to say that the supplements would not still help to a certain degree because it is a supplement being put into your body from the outside and will have some effect (Some patients may take these in addition to thyroid medication).

The "brand #1 you asked about", is designed to stimulate your own thyroid but contains no thyroid hormones at all. It is advertised to "assist" in thyroid treatment, which means it is not a treatment itself but a supplement to treatment. The “brand #2 you asked about” is a bovine (beef) thyroid glandular, with the "thyroxin" taken out of it (extracted). This means they have to extract the thyroid hormone out of it, in order to sell it over-the-counter because it is extremely difficult to get a supplement approved for non-prescription sales if it contains actual thyroid hormone. One company that does sell a thyroid hormone over-the-counter, is one called Westthroid/Naturethroid and is similar to Armour Thyroid.

As far as the supplements go, you have to be careful to read their ingredients because Endocrinologists often warn patients that these "thyroid supplements" that contain no hormone, will not treat hypothyroidism and some contain ingredients that may work against thyroid medications.

With the fact of autoimmune thyroid disease not being able to be reversed, except in very rare cases, this would mean that even if those supplements worked to help strengthen the thyroid gland, how long would this improvement last? If the thyroid starts going down hill again once these supplements were stopped, this would mean they would have to be lifelong treatment as well. If antibodies continued to attack the thyroid while on these non-hormone supplements, the gland would still eventually become so damaged over time, that there is no way they could continue to restore its function.