3 Ways Coffee Can Heal Your Thyroid and Save Your Life
In the not so distant past, coffee has been put through the ringer. It’s been called every bad name in the book. Many so-called “health experts” have even gone as far as to label coffee as a highly addictive drug that is equivalent to a number of illegal narcotics.
But now, the “coffee” tables have turned because more and more research is being published supporting the vast protective benefits that coffee has to offer. The truth is that coffee is a nutrient, not a drug like many would have you believe.
To be completely honest, I was never a fan of coffee. I couldn’t stand the taste of it. But when I started to learn the science behind coffee and how it can be used to correct hypothyroidism and restore healthy metabolism, my taste buds quickly changed.
Now, thanks to more recent research, it’s becoming easier to understand the connections between coffee and how it can help heal your thyroid and protect you from a number of thyroid related health problems.
Coffee, Longevity, and Thyroid Function
The health of your thyroid is one of the most important factors when it comes to overall health and longevity.
In simplistic terms, your thyroid controls your cells’ ability to produce energy. When you become hypothyroid, your metabolism slows and your ability to produce energy decreases. When your cells cannot produce enough energy to stay happy, healthy, and sustain life… You develop disease and eventually die.
It’s as simple as that.
This is why anti-aging scientists are discovering that the key to extending life and living longer is to improve thyroid function so that your body can continue to produce the energy it needs to sustain life.
So, what does this have to do with coffee?
The results of the largest coffee study to date were recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine involving more than 400,000 U.S. men and women ages 50 to 71, over a 14 year span of time.
Association of Coffee Drinking with Total and Cause-Specific Mortality
Conclusions: In this large prospective study, coffee consumption was inversely associated with total and cause-specific mortality.
Not only does this study show that those who drank coffee lived longer, it also shows that the more coffee they drank, the longer they lived.
- Men’s Results: two to three cups of coffee per day decreased risk of death by 10% in men. And each addition cup provided an additional 6% decreased risk.
- Women’s Results: two to three cups of coffee per day decreased risk of death by 13% in women. And each additional cup provided an additional 5% decreased risk.
Based on our understanding of human physiology and longevity, coffee reduces your risk of death by helping your cells produce energy, increasing your metabolism, and therefore improving thyroid function.
However, because of the nature of this study, they were not able to identify the exact mechanisms through which coffee reduces the risk of death and extends life.
Below, we’re going to explore just a few of these exact mechanisms through which coffee can provide amazing benefits for overcoming hypothyroidism, and many of its associated health problems.
1. Coffee Protects You From Thyroid Disease
When it comes to coffee and the health of your thyroid, it doesn’t get any more obvious than this. Coffee has been shown to have a direct effect on the health of your thyroid gland.
Research has shown that coffee drinkers have a significantly lower incidence of both benign and malignant thyroid disease, including thyroid cancer.
Does coffee consumption protect against thyroid disease?
“Statistical analysis revealed a strikingly negative (p less than 0.05) association between benign and malignant thyroid disease and consumption of coffee. After adjustment for possible confounding variables, the association remained statistically significant.”
It is well known that various thyroid diseases including Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis and thyroid cancer are common causes of hypothyroidism today. Using coffee properly to help prevent these diseases is a big step in the right direction.
2.Coffee Protects You From Cancer and Estrogen
Coffee doesn’t only protect you from thyroid cancer. It also protects against a number of other cancers, including breast cancer, which is especially a concern for menopausal women.
Coffee consumption modifies risk of estrogen-receptor negative breast cancer.
“CONCLUSIONS: A high daily intake of coffee was found to be associated with a statistically significant decrease in ER-negative breast cancer among postmenopausal women.”
Many people don’t know this, but there is a link between hypothyroidism and breast cancer. This is because of the role that estrogen plays in suppressing the thyroid gland, disrupting healthy metabolism, and promoting cancer metabolism and growth.
Coffee has been shown to help support your body’s ability to produce progesterone, the hormone that plays the important role of offsetting the negative effects of estrogen and is essential in signaling your thyroid gland to release healthy amounts of thyroid hormone when needed.
So, it should be no surprise that coffee not only helps to protect you from breast cancer but that it also helps to promote healthy function of the thyroid gland.
3. Coffee Protects You From Liver Dysfunction
Coffee has also been shown to be highly protective of your liver. Below is just one of many studies that show the positive effects that coffee can have on the health of your liver.
Effects of coffee consumption against the development of liver dysfunction
“These results suggest that coffee may be protectively against the liver dysfunction in middle-aged Japanese men.”
The health of your liver is very well understood when it comes to proper thyroid function. Your liver plays a major role in regulating your thyroid and converting your inactive T4 thyroid hormone to the active T3 thyroid hormone that your cells need to thrive. Liver dysfunction is a major cause of hypothyroidism today that deserves a lot more attention than it currently gets.
Because coffee can help improve liver function, it can also play an important role in improving your liver’s ability to properly regulate thyroid hormone and improve your overall thyroid function.
When it comes to your thyroid, the health benefits of coffee go much further than what I’ve described above. This is really just scratching the surface of the health benefits associated with coffee.
In a world where stress and disease are lurking around every corner, it’s important to take advantage of every thyroid protective nutrient that you have at your disposal, and coffee is one of the most important ones.