Maca Root and the Thyroid

nobimbo · 07-11-2004, 10:23 PM

This is an excerpt from a very interesting article (interview) at thyroid-info.com:

Maca and the Thyroid

Mary Shomon: Can you talk a bit about the effect of maca on thyroid function?

Dr. Viana Muller: Of course, since the maca root has so recently been rediscovered, there has been almost no research in terms of medical studies. And quite honestly I never considered that it might have beneficial effects on the thyroid gland, even though I knew based on some rat studies done by Dr. Chacon, that the alkaloids of maca were believed to stimulate the hypothalamus and pituitary gland to better balance the entire endocrine system.

But when I began to study the impact of taking maca on several women who were having moderate to severe menopausal symptoms they began--without my asking them--to report that they had been able to reduce their thyroid medication or in a few cases even to stop it entirely after using maca for two or three months. And they all reported feeling so much better, much more energetic. In all these cases, the thyroid was underactive. On the other hand, my thyroid is overactive--I have Grave's Disease. I wish I could report that it cleared up my problem, but it has made no difference for me. I do not have any information one way or the other of its effect on Hashimoto's syndrome.

Some of the women who had hypothyroidism were taking Armour thyroid, others were taking Synthroid. What they noticed after a month or two was that they were beginning to feel some of the symptoms of an overactive thyroid, and so they cut back their thyroid medication and the symptoms went away. Some got stabilized at 50% of their former dosage of thyroid medication and some were able to stop all thyroid medication. They did this however, little by little, with frequent testing of thyroid function in order not to shock the thyroid and make their condition worse. I can't say that this was the effect with all women on thyroid medication, because in most cases I don't even know that the women have this problem, nor do most of them call me and report these changes. So its not possible for me to give you an accurate percentage of women who had significant thyroid function improvement as a result of taking maca. The results for some, however, were so exciting and dramatic that they called me and told me. This is how I found out that taking maca could positively affect thyroid function.

http://www.thyroid-info.com/articles...ller-herbs.htm

And check out this thread from a low-carb/thyroid forum:

http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthrea...3&page=1&pp=15

Linda