Can This New Supplement Help Patients with Hashimotos?

TLDR:

• Hashimoto's disease can often be missed in physical therapy practice, often being dismissed or seen as general aches and fatigue.
• New research looks at a dietary supplement as having the potential to impact the thyroid gland and Hashimoto's. Check it out in our new research video above and share it!

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Transcript:

Hey y'all, Dr. Wells here from Nutritional Physical Therapy. I got a research update for you today. This one is from Zhang et al.

It was published in August of 2025 and it's titled Clinical Effectiveness of Selenium Supplementation in Patients with Hashimoto's Thyroiditis. It's a systematic review and meta-analysis. So it's an article with significant impact, right? So what do we know about Hashimoto's disease? Well, it's an autoimmune disorder that attacks the thyroid gland.

And as a consequence, patients often have obviously issues with their thyroid hormones. So they may present with things like fatigue. They may have body pain.

They may have symptoms of lack of endurance. So these patients can come into our physical therapy practice. And in fact, I've seen several cases of this and have a couple of friends and family members that actually suffered from Hashimoto's disease.

There is some correlation and distinct earlier data presenting the lack of vitamin D consumption. So deficiency in vitamin D is possibly correlative with Hashimoto's disease, but there's nothing definitive at this time. So regardless, we see that a lot with vitamin D, right? Like where vitamin D is linked with, you know, tendinopathies, like low vitamin D is linked with heart disease, low vitamin D is linked with seemingly everything.

And sometimes that might be just an overarching correlation that maybe that person's diet isn't top-notch or their lifestyle isn't great. We don't know exactly, but regardless, with this specific publication, they're looking at helping to correct some of the issues after the diagnosis, which is very interesting to me. So with their systematic review and meta-analysis, they narrowed down 21 studies.

Of those studies, there's about 1610 in their sample size. So it's a pretty good size for enough power for this type of study. What they found is with selenium supplementation, after three months, a significant reduction in thyroid peroxidase antibody, also known as TPOAB, for those in the talk, both at three months and at six months.

The secondary finding they found was the thyroid glaucoma antibody, also known as TGAB, was reduced at three months, but interestingly, not at six months. So it's more of a short-term trend with that specific antibody. Thyroid-simulating hormone was down at six months.

That's a good sign, but obviously the external component of the body is trying not to, you know, the hypothalamus is not trying to pump up and release more thyroid. So in the end, what's interesting is how selenium can be beneficial. And these authors found that the specific type of supplement that was used, the selenium methionine, was better than the sodium selenium or the selenium yeast.

So obviously it's eye-opening. It's something for PTs to keep an eye on. I wouldn't say we're going to be racing out recommending selenium supplementations, but it might be a good conversation piece for you to have with that patient's primary care or for that patient to go back to their primary care with and say, hey, do you think selenium supplementation is something that I can trial for three months and see how I feel? So anyhow, as always, don't go out changing and recommending patients on new supplements.

You need to really check the practice act and also talk with that patient's physician and, or the patient at the same time. So that way we're not messing up levothyroxine and other medications and also increment hormones over the longterm can make a big impact on patients. So it can be for the good and also could be for the worst.

So if you like this content, check it out more of our stuff at nutritionalphysicaltherapy.com. We've got some great board approved courses coming up and some holiday sales on their way. So check out our site, sign up today and have a good one.