Hypothetical Question About Eating The Thyroid Gland

[answersfound]

Let's say you're a sick caveman and you discover that when you eat the thyroid gland of an animal you feel warmer and happier. And when you start to feel poorly, you go find some more thyroid gland and you eat it again. And you keep eating thyroid gland day after day as your health improves.

So fast forward to today, when we eat thyroid gland or take desiccated thyroid the philosophy is: "don't take too much too quickly because it's going to build up in your system over a couple weeks and and your going to send your system into overdrive". Isn't this counterintuitive? Rather than follow a schedule with strict dosing, wouldn't it make more sense to consume something to craving because it has something we need and we need it now?

 

[tara]

post 110168 Let's say you're a sick caveman and you discover that when you eat the thyroid gland of an animal you feel warmer and happier.

Unless it was a big animal, and you guzzled the whole thyroid yourself, and died. Then you wouldn't go get more the next day. Traditions of sharing food in a tribe might have helped keep this kind of moderate? If you're a sick caveman, you might not be so quick at the hunting.
I rather doubt most cave humans had access to daily thyroid.

 

[answersfound]

post 110170

post 110168 Let's say you're a sick caveman and you discover that when you eat the thyroid gland of an animal you feel warmer and happier.

Unless it was a big animal, and you guzzled the whole thyroid yourself, and died. Then you wouldn't go get more the next day. Traditions of sharing food in a tribe might have helped keep this kind of moderate? If you're a sick caveman, you might not be so quick at the hunting.
I rather doubt most cave humans had access to daily thyroid.

You missed my point Tara. I'm asking about eating to craving. That implies that no one is eating thyroid until they die. Regardless of being able to hunt and sharing with tribes. Those scenarios are not relevant to my hypothetical question.

 

[Derek]

Ray has mentioned before about Scandinavians eating fish head soup 1x per week. If you didn't already know T4 has a half life of roughly 7 days. So rather than taking thyroid everyday, which could cause you to overload on T4 (increasing your levels of RT3), it may be better to have NDT occasionally. However, people who need/or chose to take pure T3 this doesn't apply to of course.

 

[answersfound]

post 110172 Ray has mentioned before about Scandinavians eating fish head soup 1x per week. If you didn't already know T4 has a half life of roughly 7 days. So rather than taking thyroid everyday, which could cause you to overload on T4 (increasing your levels of RT3), it may be better to have NDT occasionally. However, people who need/or chose to take pure T3 this doesn't apply to of course.

Interesting...thanks!

 

[tara]

post 110171 You missed my point Tara. I'm asking about eating to craving. That implies that no one is eating thyroid until they die. Regardless of being able to hunt and sharing with tribes. Those scenarios are not relevant to my hypothetical question.

My guess is that fairly early on in human prehistory, people would have been teaching their kids to avoid poisonous stuff, not just relying on instincts/cravings to always keep them safe.
My points are that overeating thyroid has killed people, and that, useful as cravings and instincts may be, they are not always reliable and safe to follow. I do think cravings are worth paying attention too, and can often be a really good guide to what we need. But sometimes science/knowledge gives reason for caution.

 

[johnwester130]

not necessary

you can buy it in capsules

Natural Sources - Raw Thyroid

 

[tara]

post 110187
Natural Sources - Raw Thyroid

'Synergistic Complex
(Thyroid Tissue, Adrenal Tissue, Pituitary Tissue, Thymus Tissue, Spleen Tissue, Malto-
dextrin (from Tapioca), American Ginseng.)'
'Other Ingredients
Capsule (gelatin), magnesium stearate (vegetable source), kelp and flogard.
This natural product is made without sugar, starch, preservatives, artificial colors or flavorings, or genetically modified organisms. It contains no yeast, no soy, no milk derivatives, no wheat and is gluten free.'

Is it clear that the adrenal and pituitary tissue is at least relatively harmless?No idea what flogard is.

I guess if you are trying to use cravings as a guide, opening the capsule and adding a little water might let you taste and smell it usefully.

 

[Daimyo]

If you check any sort of "butchering regulation" in most countries, you will find, that animal thyroid cannot enter human food chain, as there were cases of people being poison by it. I read somewhere that a manufacturer made a batch of sausage that had high content of thyroid glands and a lot of people died because of the heart attack.

1 grain of thyroid contain 60 mg of thyroid extract, some people say it's about 120 mg of dried thyroid, that's about 0.5 gram of fresh thyroid... So if you eat 1 gram of fresh thyroid, that's a lot, if you eat 5 gram, you enter a dangerous ground... It probably would be a bit difficult to dose fresh thyroid as you would have to recognize it well - what is thyroid gland and what is the fat/other tissue surrounding it.

NDT has been in use for about 120 years. It seems that it wasn't used in paleolithic times anyway...

 

[DaveFoster]

This is a naturalistic fallacy. Just because something was not available during the paleolithic or mesolithic periods of evolution, this doesn't mean that it lacks usefulness and benefit. Evolution is not perfect, and in fact rarely is.

Flossing is a great example.

Not to mention that we likely had a greater degree of selectivity of genetic health; without such, we can subsist on a sub-optimal level, partly through the parasitical institutions in society that redistribute resources to those who do not produce, along with the ability of technology to enhance human productivity enough to provide an energy surplus.