iThyroid.com

HEREDITY AND THYROID DISEASE

Many people and doctors feel that there must be a genetic factor in thyroid disease. I don't believe there is a gene that causes Graves' disease or hypothyroidism. If there were such a gene, why would it suddenly turn on when a person is 13, or 20, or 50 years old? They didn't have the disease before and their genes presumably didn't change overnight. 

I've read abstracts of thousands and thousands of medical studies on thyroid disease and I've never seen any study which offered evidence or even strongly suggested that thyroid disease is a genetic disease. 

Many people such as myself have noticed that a large number of people in their families have thyroid disease. My mother had two sister and all three had hypothyroidism. One of those sisters had three daughters of which one had Graves' disease and  one has hypothyroidism. It's certainly a cluster that seems beyond chance as many other people have observed in their families.

My feeling is that there is a genetic factor, but it's not a genetic defect.  I'd rather call it a genetic adaptation. Following is an email where I've begun to elucidate the theory:

In a message dated 12/17/00 5:41:39 PM Pacific Standard Time, ceberhar@one.net writes:

<< I am intrigued that dietary changes could be an effective treatment for this disease, and I certainly intend to try that route. However, I'm curious as to the role of heredity in the cause / cure, as the four women in my family who have had Graves' have lived far from one another, on two different continents, and have had very dissimilar diets. In fact, our genes are about the only thing we have had in common.  Minnie>>

Hi Minnie,
There is definitely a genetic factor, but I don't believe that it is a genetic defect. I think that these diseases may be the result of a genetic adaptation. 

For instance, people may live in an environment where copper is plentiful in the food and a switch gets thrown in the genes that they pass along to their offspring so that the children do not accumulate so much copper. Then those children move to a new location where copper is not present in the food so they develop copper deficiencies because their genes are causing their bodies to excrete more copper than normal. This would have been a great adaptation if they had lived in the same place and eaten the same foods, but they didn't.

I don't know whether this theory has merit, but it makes sense with thyroid diseases and some other diseases that I'm studying. There is experimental evidence from animal studies which indicates that such a genetic adaptation takes place.

The bottom line is that it is possible for people to use nutritional supplements to correct these diseases. Whether the deficiencies developed because of a genetic adaptation or because of mineral deficiencies in the diet is difficult to determine and perhaps irrelevant. The important thing is to determine the deficiencies by hair analysis and correct them.

Perhaps if you got the members of your family to all get hair analyses you might see similarities. It would be an interesting study. John