Hashimotos Disease Diet: Diet Changes and Other strategies for healing Hashimoto’s. Listen in as I interview and chat with Raida Gorges about how we both have improved and healed our Hashimoto’s Disease and Hashimoto’s symptoms. Learn how following a Hashimoto’s Disease diet and more can help you thrive with Hashimoto’s and not just survive.
Ralda Gorges is a Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner, passionate about helping others discover their inner power to achieve optimal health. Her journey into functional medicine began after struggling with fatigue, weight gain, insulin resistance, high cholesterol, GI issues, and insomnia. After being diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis 12 years ago, she sought a holistic path to healing, eventually freeing myself from medication and symptoms.
Now, as a practitioner, she specializes in thyroid health, insulin resistance, weight management, fatigue, insomnia, and GI disorders. She believes in the transformative power of functional medicine and is dedicated to guiding clients through their health journey with compassion, education, and support every step of the way.
Learn more about Ralda, connect with her and schedule a free consultation with her at her website. https://www.wellnessralda.com
AnnaLaura Brown: Hello, this is Anna L. Brown, host of the Autoimmune Rehab podcast, where we talk about how to actually thrive and heal your autoimmune condition rather than just covering it up with pills or changing your diet and hoping you’ll feel better one day. We feature solo episodes on helpful topics and interviews with guests who have actually walked in your shoes with autoimmune disorders who have years of experience in helping people to thrive and not just survive with autoimmune challenges. I started this podcast because I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s in 2018 and wanted to inspire hope and transform help for people with autoimmune challenges. So, keep listening and let’s get you the help and hope you really need. This is the autoimmune rehab podcast. everybody. And today, I’d like to welcome Ralda Gorges to the podcast and Ralda is also another Hashimoto’s Thor. I like to call him that.
AnnaLaura Brown: or we can call ourselves sometimes the hashtag that’s really popular on Instagram is Hashimoto’s warrior. So Rald and I are going to talk a little bit about her journey with Hashimoto’s, what she’s done, what she does to help other people, and then we’re going to chat a little bit between ourselves since, both of us have had the same kind of thing. So Ralda, welcome to Autoimmune Rehab. And why don’t you start off by telling us a little bit just who are you?
Ralda Georges: for the last eight years with autoimmune diseases and also cardiovascular and GI issues because my journey with autoimmune disease involve many aspect of the autoimmune which is the gut distress and the insulin resistant metabolic syndrome all that together so that’s my experience with autoimmune which is I put it into remission right now and really I am thriving I have no symptoms and really I could give hope for the people who are really struggling with autoimmune disease especially Hashimoto right now. So
AnnaLaura Brown: kind of all why don’t you start off the beginning tell us a little bit…
AnnaLaura Brown: how do you specifically define Hashimoto’s thyroiditis
Ralda Georges: Yeah. …
Ralda Georges: Hashimotoyroiditis is an autoimmune disease that attack the thyroid gland, make us feel like tired, sluggish, depressed, weight gain, lack of sleep at night. All these symptoms I struggled with it for so many years until I figured out what was a multiple reason for my situation which is probably we’re going to talk about it a little bit more. so yeah that’s what it attack the immune system. I used to have crashes all over my body. weight gain non-stop.
Ralda Georges: I couldn’t sleep well.
Ralda Georges: All that with Hashimoto, so yeah, I’m curious about you.
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah,…
AnnaLaura Brown: that’s a lot of stuff.
Ralda Georges: What’s was your symptom?
AnnaLaura Brown: So, for me, it was mostly I would occasionally get rashes, but not a whole lot. For me, it was a lot of fatigue, some weight gain, some I would say fatigue was probably the biggest symptom for me, more than likely. Yeah. But…
Ralda Georges: Yeah. Okay. Interesting. No,…
AnnaLaura Brown: then again, like I said, I didn’t have some of the other cardiovascular and some of those other things. did you know about some of the other issues that were going on before you found out about or…
Ralda Georges: no. You see at that time when I was diagnosed with Hashimoto I was into my journey into studying functional medicine and…
AnnaLaura Brown: how did that work for you?
Ralda Georges: that was one of the reason that start me on that journey really to dig deeper into my journey and see why I develop Hashimoto and why I have that and what’s the symptoms why I have that what’s going on with my body. So when I did the blood work and I went to integrative cardiologist he told me that I have insulin resistance and I start to have a plaque on my arteries. So I was completely scared of all that stuff. Yeah, absolutely. So I think my insulin resistance was creating extra inflammation in my body and creating the trigger for the autoimmune disease also to get worse than when the time started.
Ralda Georges: So that’s one aspect when it’s come to cardiovascular metabolic syndrome the insulin resistance which is I start to watch my diet going on low carb and that helped me really a lot in my journey because by reducing my carbohydrate it reduce the inflammation in my body so with Hashimoto for me everything is interconnected I would say the other aspect for me was the stressful lifestyle at that time I moved from Canada to the US I get married I have a new lifestyle so physical stress was one aspect and psychological stress that’s another aspect to adapt to a new life and start my own journey here and my own business and everything all together was stressful to my body.
00:05:00
Ralda Georges: So the insulin resistant, the stress plus I had gut issues as well. So my gut issues started when I really was young. I took a lot of antibiotic when I was a child. But as we get older we don’t think about that. That could be part of our problem. But at that time taking a lot of antibiotic had really created leaky gut for me which created a gut dispiosis.
Ralda Georges: Do you associate yourself with something like that? Yes.
AnnaLaura Brown: …
AnnaLaura Brown: I know that leaky gut is an issue for pretty much everybody with autoimmune for So, that’s a good thing for people to keep in mind. If you’ve got any kind of autoimmune, you’ve got leaky gut to some degree. For me, I’ve definitely had, more than I would say normal things like allergies, food sensitivities, history with that kind of thing. I was lucky because I actually almost never had antibiotics as a kid. So, it wasn’t antibiotics that triggered it in me. mine’s a whole different story, but I think a lot of mine was actually mercury from a mercury filling in my mouth that started leaking was part of what started that trigger. And then I had probably one primary traumatic event. I was basically fired from a job that I thought was going to be my whole career and then it came all crashing down on me and was about four years before my diagnosis.
AnnaLaura Brown: But my doctor told me I’d probably had it at least that long. So, the stress and trauma definitely plays a role for people.
Ralda Georges: Yes. Yeah.
Ralda Georges: Absolutely. So usually when we have a leaky gut that’s mean some particle of the food leak to the bloodstream and create an immune reaction. and that aggravates plus much more the autoimmune disease in the body and definitely I had that from all the stress and the antibiotic that I had taken all my life. so I start to have a gut issues like bloating and gas and all kind of things going on in my stomach and pain when I eat gluten.
Ralda Georges: So I did testing a lot of functional testing which is one of them was testing myself for gluten sensitivity and I end up having really gluten sensitivity and all my numbers came back red that’s alert for me that I have to avoid gluten completely so I become glutenfree and dairyfree for a while but with the time I could eat dairy now it’s not like before But I’m still free. because gluten is really mimic the thyroid ormone. So really as having hashimura,…
AnnaLaura Brown: Yep. …
Ralda Georges: we should be completely free. And I’m sure you experience similar things.
AnnaLaura Brown: yeah. Yep. I was actually already free for four years before my Hashimoto’s diagnosis, though. So, for me, it was kind of like, okay, there’s got to be other things going on there. And I’m still free to this day because, yeah, I have pretty severe reactions. So, yeah.
Ralda Georges: Yeah, And almost like throughout the years, I’ve been eight years gluten-free, but throughout the years, I tested myself second time. I want to make sure can I go back to my gluten but again the results came back I’m very gluten sensitive the minute I eat gluten I have not immediate reaction but in two days I will see rashes on my skin and I will start to have a gut issues so I feel Exactly.
AnnaLaura Brown: issues with the allergies, the sensitivities, it doesn’t happen immediately. It’s not like you eat the gluten or the cheese and all of a sudden you’re sick within an hour. So, that’s another tricky thing.
Ralda Georges: Yes. Yes,…
AnnaLaura Brown: But something for people to keep in mind, too, is that if you’ve got potential issues with gluten and dairy, those are the biggest ones. You may not get the symptom till later. And so, you have to keep that in mind.
Ralda Georges: I mean, you could probably get away. I could like myself eat like a goat,…
Ralda Georges: like a goat product or sheep product from dairy and that is less invasive on the stomach than regular dairy usually. So, I’m okay with that. But when it’ if I eat a lot of dairy, then it’s a problem. But, fermented dairy is okay. Yeah. So,
00:10:00
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah, absolutely.
AnnaLaura Brown: And what I find is interesting for me too is even…
AnnaLaura Brown: though is that I can actually still tolerate some of the quasonants and bread and things in Europe, but I can’t tolerate them in the North America. hands. Same.
Ralda Georges: Yes, exactly.
Ralda Georges: It’s funny you said that because when I travel to Europe, I eat some kurasan and I have no reaction there.
AnnaLaura Brown: And the thing is what I’ve started to realize too, and this leads to a whole another can of worms, but something else people need to be aware of is that a lot of what we’re eating or consuming or putting on our skin, all these things, it’s the toxins and the chemicals. And I think for a lot of us, it’s not the actual gluten itself we’re necessarily intolerant to.
AnnaLaura Brown: It’s the chemicals that are sprayed on the gluten and the way that the gluten is processed here in North America. Whereas in Europe, they use more of the organic flour. It’s not processed in the same way. And so we don’t have the same kind of reaction.
Ralda Georges: Exactly. Yeah.
AnnaLaura Brown: So something else to think about. Yeah. Yeah,…
Ralda Georges: Completely different. So I can’t wait to go on vacation to enjoy my day my gluten there.
AnnaLaura Brown: for sure.
Ralda Georges: Yeah. Yes.
AnnaLaura Brown: So we’ve talked about some of these questions. How would you answer the question specifically if somebody were to ask you, could stress be silently sabotaging your thyroid functions?
Ralda Georges: And the other thing I have to admit I was like a exercise addict. So I didn’t know for a long time that my extreme exercise I will go for a run for 45 minutes and didn’t think nothing of it and I will take two classes at the gym and didn’t think that physical exercise so hard that harming my thyroid or activating my autoimmune disease and that was one of the other thing that I had really to back up or cut down or take different kind of exercise or movement
Ralda Georges: movement like yoga and less invasive exercise for thyroid to calm the immune system though then instead of activating the immune system with my extreme exercise so that was for me for other people some of my client I see a lot of people a trauma in their life could be extra stress in their life until they heal themsel from that stress from that trauma the healing won’t happen happened so
Ralda Georges: really we have to forgive ourself about whatever it is in our life was going on through in the past and move on. The fact of forgiving ourself or forgiving someone in our life have a big impact on autoimmune disease. So I even seen it with other autoimmune disease as well. So forgiveness is a key for autoimmune disease to start really the healing process and
AnnaLaura Brown: core of what’s really going on here with your autoimmune is that your immune system is basically attacking your thyroid. And in some cases, it can be your other tissues and things like that. And with other autoimmune disorders, it’s your other tissues. That’s not a normal thing for your body to basically be attacking itself. And part of the reason from an emotional standpoint that it starts happening and then it spills over into the physical is because of either like you said, you haven’t especially forgiven yourself.
AnnaLaura Brown: Granted, if there’s other people in your life that you’re holding a grudge towards, you really should forgive those people, too. But if you haven’t forgiven yourself or you don’t have good proper self-esteem and view yourself in a good light, then that can either aggravate or to some degree even create autoimmune issues. Yeah.
Ralda Georges: Yes. Yes.
Ralda Georges: Absolutely. And even if you forgive other people for yourself at the same time because you don’t want to carry that anger or grides against another person and it’s affecting you in the end so yeah I find out it’s a big point there that’s psychologically people maybe is not aware of it or they don’t want to go there and approach it because it’s so hard to take it in charge and take charge of it and resolve it yeah that’s what it is and that create inflammation when we are in a chronic stress always is very inflammatory to the body and activate and worse the autoimmune disease as well when we have
00:15:00
AnnaLaura Brown: It took me a little bit to figure this out after, but then once I finally got tuned into I was like, “Oh, yeah.” Is that a lot of us are also deficient in some vitamins and minerals. So things like vitamin D and selenium are the most common ones. So how does somebody really figure out what they’re deficient in, how much to take, all that kind of stuff? We’ll be
Ralda Georges: I mean technically at that time there is a micronutrient testing that people could get test for it from functional medicine testing that they could reach out to me and…
Ralda Georges: if we do those testing so we test all these nutrient vitamin D selenium zinc and iodine usually those vitamin and minerals mostly people are deficient with autoimmune disease so it’s really really important to Especially vitamin D at certain level is not the level that usually doctor if you’re at 30 milligram in your blood work you’re okay. No, you have to get it’s at a higher point between 50 and 70 to really be protective for autoimmune disease. so yeah the nutrient deficiency it’s huge. and almost every person with Hashimoto have a nutrient deficiency. so eating two Brazilian nuts per day, something like that, it’s very helpful.
Ralda Georges: eating food rich in zinc pumpkin seed shellfish and food rich in iodine seaweed and stuff like that is very very helpful for the nutrients getting it naturally as well. So yeah so that’s my deficiency I had very low vitamin D when I discover my autoimmune disease and inc as well zinc was my major deficiency and until now I take two pills of zinc per day it’s like and somehow there is genetic component to it as well sometimes we inherit certain things from our parent beside environmental side biologically sometimes we need certain nutrients more than other people.
Ralda Georges: So really getting tested it’s a key to know…
Ralda Georges: where we are when it’s come to our nutrients levels yes exactly Yes.
AnnaLaura Brown: For sure.
AnnaLaura Brown: And I think one of the other challenges too, which you hit on it too, is that a lot of people, you think about things like Brazil nuts and seaweed would be good examples. Those aren’t components of a lot of people’s diet, and yet they have really high counts of selenium and zinc. Yet, they’re not things that a lot of us eat. And in most cases, we’re probably not getting what we need from the diet because we just simply don’t eat a lot of the foods that contain enough of that in it. So,
Ralda Georges: It’s almost when we eat with Hashimoto, I feel like with autoimmune disease, you have to eat very mindfully and make sure you conclude all the nutrients that your body needs. eating a lot of protein, a whole food diet, it’s a autoimmune diet like the ape diet very very nutrientdense diet. I know a lot of people think I can’t eat cruciferous vegetables because with thyroid disease you can’t eat vegetables not health
Ralda Georges: Hey, exactly.
AnnaLaura Brown: on healing the thyroid is that it’s not that you can’t have the corneriferous, like the broccoli and the cauliflower, that kind of thing. It’s just you really and spinach and things is you really should be eating it cooked and be really careful that it’s not, if you had it with every single meal, then that might become an issue. but it’s more about the things like you said that mimic the thyroid. There’s also what’s people can research what’s called goer centric foods which actually can include some things like even strawberries and almonds. So, that doesn’t mean that you can’t have them. You just want to eat them in a little bit less of a quantity and focus more on the things. And so, I mean, don’t not eat, your broccoli, your spinach, your greens…
Ralda Georges: Exactly.
AnnaLaura Brown: because those things are very good for you and actually really good on your digestive system, too. So,…
Ralda Georges: Yeah. Absolutely.
AnnaLaura Brown:
Ralda Georges: Again,…
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah.
Ralda Georges: eating a whole diet rich in fiber and nutrients. Fiber is so important as well, omega-3 as well and probiotic and prebiotic food. So, a lot of these vegetables let’s say asparagus, it’s a prebiotic. So if we don’t eat asparagus, so we’re missing a lot of natural prebiotic for the gut in addition of taking probiotic and prebiotic supplement, it’s important to eat food that are rich in probiotic like kimchi, sauerkraut, stuff like that. So those are create new bacteria in the gut and enrich the gut microbiome and make it rich in multiple probiotic that strengths the gut.
Ralda Georges: When the gut is stren the immune system is stronger because 70% of the immune system it’s in the guts. So it’s important to make the gut very strong by eating a whole in nutrient rich in fiber onion, garlic there are prebiotic food as well. So they are so important as well. We could eat them cooked or raw and kick or both depend the person what they like. But I think eating a variety of whole food diet is so much so important and so many people limit themselves to very specific food to eat every day the same food over and over and over and that’s not healthy in general. So I think varying your diet it’s so important by getting different nutrients in the body as well that way and
AnnaLaura Brown: was that you’ve got a certain food. you really need to if you go on kind of like a rotation basis with foods, you’ll have less food sensitivities to things and you’ll have just better gut health. It’s kind of like the whole concept of, eating a rainbow. You literally want to be eating different things and different colors and that’s great…
AnnaLaura Brown: if you have favorite foods, but you’ve still got to expand your diet pal, Yeah.
Ralda Georges: Exactly. Yeah.
Ralda Georges: Absolutely. Because the most food that are people sensitive to it is gluten, dairy, eggs. Those are the three food. So people because they eat them a lot. So I know they eat eggs every day, every day, every day. But eventually they will develop sensitivity to it from eating it too much. mix mix and match and…
Ralda Georges: eating different kind of food is excellent for autoimmune disease as well so
AnnaLaura Brown: Absolutely. And I really feel like that’s part of the reason too that I’m now able to handle gluten when I go to Europe in another reason is…
AnnaLaura Brown: because let’s face it, I don’t go to Europe a ton, but when I do, I’ve healed my gut enough, …
AnnaLaura Brown: by rotating it and by not eating it when I’m at home in the US that I can tolerate a little bit of it when I am in Europe. So, it’s kind of
Ralda Georges: Yes, absolutely.
Ralda Georges: And the gut healing also it’s important like finding out if somebody have a gut dispiosis I had candida overgrowth myself and I had a leaky gut. So I had to take certain supplement to heal my gut. So finding out by doing stool testing stuff like that I did stool testing as well in the past and I found out what I had. So if we don’t know how we treat it. So it’s so important to find out exactly what we have. So to get treated for it,…
Ralda Georges: to help ourself and move forward. I think it’s a key for autoimmune disease because’s It’s always multiple things that going on with the autoimmune.
AnnaLaura Brown: for sure.
AnnaLaura Brown: Absolutely. So, if somebody’s listening to this and they’re thinking, “Okay, I know I’ve got this,…
AnnaLaura Brown: but I’m a little overwhelmed.” What would be the very first thing that you would tell somebody to do?
Ralda Georges: I mean first I think it’s just like …
Ralda Georges: if you like to give me a call I’m very happy to talk to anybody for free to see what’s exactly the struggle and how we could start approaching because each person is different and each person is at a different stage in their life and whatever they are ready to move on we’ll work together and see where are you at in your health journey? and start the changes and start to improve the autoimmune disease and…
Ralda Georges: and approach it in multiple ways.
AnnaLaura Brown: That’s awesome.
AnnaLaura Brown: That’s great. I love that. So, we will definitely include information on how people can get in touch with you. Probably your website.
AnnaLaura Brown: Do you have something for people to get on an email list or some kind of a free something that you want to also link and then we can tell people what it is? Okay, awesome.
Ralda Georges: Yes, you could send me your email and…
Ralda Georges: I could send you information regarding the thyroid and email me at wellnessra@gmail.com and I will be happy to send you information about thyroid healing and we could talk further down. my god.
AnnaLaura Brown: And so Lynn, the last question I always like to ask every guest is, if you could look back in time to before you got your Hashimoto’s, what kind of things do you feel like now that you wish you had known then?
Ralda Georges: All the stuff I talked about everything.
AnnaLaura Brown: Maybe one more specific little thing that you’re thinking,…
Ralda Georges: I wish I knew.
AnnaLaura Brown: okay, if only I had kn that would have made things easier.
Ralda Georges: Yeah, I wish I knew how to approach the gut or eating more diverse food as when I was younger or getting more nutrientdense food even if I am Mediterranean I lived in a Mediterranean but at that time I didn’t study functional medicine I didn’t know what’s nutrientdense so I ate whatever
Ralda Georges: every human being whatever you inherit from your parents you repeat the same thing. So yeah. So I think we cover pretty much a little bit of every aspect of autoimmune disease and…
AnnaLaura Brown: That’s awesome.
AnnaLaura Brown: Yeah, I think that’s great. Okay, so anything else that we missed that we didn’t talk about that you want to share with people.
Ralda Georges: I think the big takeaway I would say the most important thing for autoimmune is me stress reduction could be done in many ways for different people. meditation or yoga or any kind of these practices really helpful for autoimmune disease and to calm the immune system whatever the stage is for the disease is. So, thank you so much for having me.
AnnaLaura Brown: include your contact information, website, anything else that people need to get in touch with you. So, yeah,…
Ralda Georges: Thank you so much. Thanks.
AnnaLaura Brown: you’re welcome. No problem.
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