Hypothyroidism can be caused by a lack of nutrients necessary to make the hormone or it can be caused by illness. Routine thyroid tests performed on patients in a hospital will show that most patients have low thyroid hormone levels. Fasting will also cause thyroid hormone levels to drop. The decrease in thyroid hormones in both of these cases seems to be a built-in safety mechanism of the body to preserve energy for healing and prevent catabolism of the muscles. It appears that for the thyroid to produce a normal amount of hormone, the body must be well.
Any disease can cause low thyroid output as a preservative function.
Consequently, correcting hypothyroidism can often mean correcting all the health problems in the body. While this may sound like a daunting task, I believe that if the body is supplied with all the needed nutrients, health will return and the thyroid will function adequately. Sometimes the same nutrient deficiencies that are causing hypothyroidism are also causing the other disease conditions. In these cases, by supplementing with the nutrients we know to be involved in thyroid hormone production may also correct the other health problems. Because of the damage to the thyroid by radiation, it may not be possible for the thyroid to recover.