Feb
As a graves disease sufferer, I would say no. You can help your body by reducing the amount of iodine in your foods, but there isn't anything natural that I know of to stop the disease.
The 3 main problems with prolonging treatment are:
1. Your heart rate will get faster and faster and may go into an irregular rhythm, causing you to have a stroke,
2. your bones may develop osteoporosis, and
3. your body is producing antibodies to your thyroid, which will eventually destroy it and cause you to have an under active thyroid.
If you want natural, an underactive or surgically removed thyroid is better. You take hormones that your body produces naturally, but you may have to take these for the rest of your life. This is what my doctor recommended if I want to get pregnant, as the medication may be harmful to the baby but the hormones will not.
Answer:
Graves Disease burns itself out 99% of the time. Early on the patient has too much thryoid hormone, at the end they don't have enough.
There is some evidence, albeit limited, for adding foods high in Iodine later in the course of the disease. Adding Vitamins A, E, B3, B5, D3, may also help. A German study indicates that bugleweed (Lycopus virginicus) and lemon balm (Melissa officianalis), are both safe and effective treatments for hyperthyroidism. Sage healers as far back as Hippocrates emphasize the value of pure water, air and food for health and hormonal balance.
Now, while all this may help, I think you are playing with fire by avoiding medical therapy.
Untreated, you can develop side effects that are life long, such as heart damage, and eyes that are permanently popped wide open in surprise. It sounds like you would resist surgical options [see below], so ask your doctor about using a beta blocker to keep your blood pressure and heart rate under control, also, ask about the drug propylthiourasil [PTU] for management in the hyper [high thyroid hormone], or early phase.
No matter what, you will eventually be hypo [low thyroid hormone]. At this point you will absolutely need to take throid medicine and have regualr blood tests to help manage it. Again, the long term side effects of the uncontrolled disease are no fun.
**addendum - in some ways avoiding the surgery if you can has some advantages, but only if the disease is managed in the meantime so as to avoid side effects. For instance, sometimes [ie not all the time] the process of removing/destroying the bad thyroid also ruins/destroys the parathyroids as well. This means a lifelong struggle to balance out blood Calcium levels.
Answer:
I guess my suggestion would be "NO". Graves disease can affect every organ in your body. It is nothing to play a guessing game with. I had it and had the radioactive iodine treatment and it was a breeze. I now just take a synthroid tablet everyday and that's it, besides yearly blood tests. Listen to your doctor for your own good.
Answer:
see an acupuncturist - very good for balancing and rejigging anything hormonal . along with a prescription of chinese herbs. find a good practitioner. make sure they are a registered member of the acupuncture council for where you live.