The thyroid is the powerful control center of the body when it comes to metabolism and how easily we gain or lose weight. Your thyroid gland is in the front of your neck, right below the area known as the “Adams apple”. The function of the Thyroid is to take iodine mineral found in the diet and convert it to hyroxine (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3). They make these two thyroid hormones as a result of combining iodine and the amino acid tyrosine. Under normal conditions the thyroid gland produces about 3/4 T4 and 1/4 T3. The potency of T3 is roughly 4 times as powerful as T4.

Thyroid levels are modulated by a feedback loop using Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH) released by the pituitary gland in the brain. In other words if your thyroid hormone levels get to high, your brain will release TSH in order to bring it down. If your levels are too low, your Thyroid will make T3 and T4 until TSH is released in adequate amounts in order to slow it down.

Thyroid & Fat loss:

During long periods of dieting your T3 levels will dramatically decline. You do not want a slow metabolism because fat loss will come to a screeching halt. It is the reason why fat loss gets much harder the longer you are on a diet.

This is one reason why the “cheat meal” is so popular during dieting. By having a high calorie cheat meal you shock the body into wanting to raise it’s thyroid hormones and hence the bodies overall metabolism. As a result you should kick past a fat loss plateau and start losing fat again for a while. Of course there is only so many times you can do this and eventually your body will plateau no matter how many cheat meal cycles you do every few days.

Thyroid Supplements:

One way to get past an extreme long term fat loss plateau is to supplement with products that could help manipulate your thyroid levels.

Gugglesterones: Guggul is an extract found in resin of a tree found in India. It plays a role in increasing the conversion from T4 to T3 in the liver. It is thought that it may actually directly stimulate the thyroid due to its action of converting it from T4 to T3. T4 is the pre-cursor to the main potent thyroid form T3.

Ephedra Ephedra is a central nervous stimulant that also stimulates your beta-2 receptors on your fat cells. This stimulation directly causes an increase in cAMP. cAMP has been shown to increase thyroid function, insulin levels, and fat burning in cells. Another common fat burning supplement Synephrine also works similiar to ephedrine, due to similiarities in structure. Caffeine is stacked with ephedra or synhephrine, to make it a more potent fat burner. This is because caffeine blocks the breakdown of cAMP. Caffeine also increases fatty acid levels in the blood, allowing more fat in the blood to be burned for energy instead of glucose.

Cytomel: Synthetically manufactured liothyronine sodium resembling the natural thyroid hormone tricodide-thyronine (L-T3). Since it mimics the bodies T3 it will have the same effects as if more T-3 was released in the body. Release that Cytomel supplementation is very dangerous and has a host of short and long term side effects.

If you choose to do it, cycles should be very brief and only done occasionally, as to not upset the thyroid negative feedback loop. Some pro-bodybuilders have had to take thyroid supplementation the rest of their life as a result of long term Thyroid drug abuse.

Cytomel is sometimes used in conjunction with steroid use, as increased metabolism also plays a role in better utilization of Proteins. As a result of better protein synthesis, cytomel should in theory lead to better muscle gains while on a steroid cycle.