Biotin is an essential nutrient that you should be aware of. It can be especially important to those with thyroid disease regarding hair and overall health.
This blog will help you understand:
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Did you know that biotin was the most recently discovered B vitamin?
Consuming lots of raw eggs became a fairly common practice among athletes 40s and 50s. Remember the scene in the movie Rocky, where Sylvester Stallone famously drinks a bunch of raw eggs like a smoothie?
What happens is that egg yolks, a very rich source of biotin, have a heat-fragile enzyme called avidin that destroys biotin.
When eggs are cooked the enzyme is destroyed. But if you consume enough of them raw, you can end up with a biotin deficiency.
Bottom Line: Raw eggs can equal hair loss, salmonella, and other problems.
It is also possible for us to fall behind in biotin. You can eat all the right foods and still be lacking.
So, it takes a mix of awareness and action to ensure you are hitting your required intake for the day.
Here’s a helpful chart that illustrates the daily requirements of biotin1…
All it takes is just a few micrograms of biotin, but for adults, it takes somewhere around 30 mcg or more.
This target considers the fact that many people have different and varying needs for biotin and that some may not absorb it as well as others. Some also need less biotin, but extra amounts from dietary sources are harmless.
Key Insight: 30 micrograms of biotin is going to meet the needs of most adults. For children and nursing women, though, these needs may range a bit higher to meet their unique needs.
So, where can we get the most biotin in our diets? In compiling this list, I was personally surprised to see that even when you eat a variety of healthy foods, you could find yourself low in biotin.
While in many foods, the highest food sources might be 17-20 micrograms. In this sense, your highest practical food source would be oats.
Rolled oats, steel-cut oats, and whole oats all are rich sources of biotin. This could be part of why oats are legendary for producing healthy hair and skin. They’re also high in many other nutrients and soluble fiber.
I’m personally a huge fan of oats, so the more you can work them into your diet, the better! In the Hormone Healing Cookbook, I show how you can use oats in many savory dishes.
Wheat germ is one of the next highest sources of biotin. If you haven’t had it, it is a dense source of many nutrients like biotin, zinc, and copper. Wheat germ has a toasted nutty flavor and works great as an addition to hot cereals or smoothies.
Here are several food options that are approved for all reset diets:
Bottom Line: Regarding biotin, consistency in your diet is critical. This is especially true if you are excluding things from your diet or making changes week-to-week or daily.
Alcohol requires large amounts of biotin for your liver to process. Each serving you consume can cause a loss of several day’s worth of biotin. This is true from all sources of alcohol, including wine and beer.
The alcohol-biotin connection is part of why many notice a connection between alcohol use and thinner hair.
Your doctor can order a serum biotin test. When tested, about 20% of adults and nearly a third of all pregnant women are low in biotin.
One study showed that among those with hair loss, roughly 30-40% were low in biotin.
If you test your biotin, it is necessary to avoid supplements with biotin for 73 hours beforehand to get accurate results. Dietary biotin is not a problem.
Here are the ranges for serum biotin:
Bottom Line: If you are experiencing any of the symptoms I illustrated beforehand, or you have a diet that you know is low in biotin, test your biotin levels.
There has been a lot of discussion surrounding biotin and thyroid disease.
More specifically, high doses of biotin may ultimately slow down the thyroid.
It turns out that this is an artifact of how biotin reacts in a laboratory setting.
In the past, we thought that doses above 10,000 or 5,000 micrograms could cause hypothyroidism for some people. Then, we realized that it doesn’t cause thyroid disease so much as it skews TSH levels in the body. Lower doses may also cause these problems.
Now we know that biotin supplements can also cause incorrect readings for many other lab results, including:
Key Insight: Stop taking ALL supplements for 3 days before ANY blood test unless your doctor tells you otherwise.
If biotin is so important, it could seem tempting to take even more so that you’re totally sure you won’t be deficient.
But biotin is subject to the same paradox as many other nutrients. Taking too much can cause the same problems of being deficient.
Recent studies have shown that:
For all nutrients, there is emerging data that food-like doses are better than megadoses. The best amount of biotin for supplementation is 20-30 mcg. I added 30 mcg of biotin to the Thyroid Daily Multi in the Daily Reset Bundle.
So, what should we do about biotin? Now that we know it’s not a cause of hypothyroidism and that avoiding a deficiency is essential, here’s what you can do moving forward.
The first is to start consuming a variety of biotin-rich foods. Daily, try at least a serving or two of the most biotin-rich foods, such as oats.
Key Insight: It is reasonable to include up to 30 micrograms of biotin for daily supplementation, so please make sure that you are supplementing with a multi you can trust.
If hair loss is an issue for you, consider screening for a biotin deficiency and other causes. Based on what we mentioned earlier, this is that around 28% of women with hair loss may be low in biotin2.
Again, try and avoid raw egg whites whenever possible. While it might be tempting to try your best Rocky impression, it’s really not advisable.
Lastly, make sure to avoid all supplements with biotin for three days before taking blood tests. This is essential to get proper results.
Now that we know more about biotin, how is your thyroid feeling?
If you’re concerned about its functioning and what you can do to safeguard its health for the long term, I would highly recommend the Thyroid Quiz (Click Here: Take The Quiz) Today.
It can help separate the facts from fiction while outlining clear actions to help your thyroid and ensure you are feeling your best today, tomorrow, and the future.
1 – https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Biotin-HealthProfessional/
2 – https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4989391/
3 – https://www.aacc.org/publications/cln/articles/2018/janfeb/meeting-the-biotin-challenge
P.S. Whenever you are ready, here is how I can help you now:
1. Schedule a Thyroid Second Opinion with me, Dr. C, Click Here for Details
2. Need a Personalized Supplement? Check out My Thyroid Specific Formulations
3. Download and use my Favorite Recipes Cookbook Here
4. Check out my podcast Medical Myths, Legends, and Fairytales Here
Dr. C’s gift for figuring out what really works has helped hundreds of thousands of people reverse thyroid disease, lose weight, diabetes, and regain energy. Learn more about the surprising story that started his quest.
Dr. Alan Christianson
Alan Christianson is a Naturopathic Medical Doctor (NMD) who is a board-certified Naturopathic Endocrinologist with a focus on thyroid disorders. He is the author of The Metabolism Reset Diet and the New York Times bestselling book The Adrenal Reset Diet.
He founded Integrative Health, a physician group dedicated to helping people with thyroid disease and weight-loss resistance regain their health.
He has been named a Top Doctor in Phoenix magazine and has appeared on national TV shows and in numerous print media.
Dr. Christianson resides in the woods by a lake in Northern Minnesota with his wife Kirin.
