People often snack on nuts during the Lunar New Year holiday, but a physician at Taipei City Hospital says that people with thyroid disease should avoid eating them in large amounts.
A 42-year-old woman had been controlling hyperthyroidism — excessive thyroid hormone production — with medication and believed nuts to be a healthy food, full of vitamins and minerals, so she snacked on nuts every day, and often made an “energy soup” of vegetables, fruit juices and nuts for breakfast.
After noticing a lump in her neck and having frequent heart palpitations, difficulty swallowing and sporadic difficulty breathing, she sought medical help.
A doctor advised her to have her thyroid gland removed — known as a thyroidectomy.
Afraid of having surgery, she sought treatment at the Traditional Chinese Medicine Department of Taipei City Hospital’s Renai branch, where attending physician Chou Tzung-han (周宗翰) recommended that she stop eating nuts and high-fat foods for a while.
After the woman took Chinese herbal medicine and avoided eating nuts for about six months, her symptoms went away and the lump in her neck became negligible.
People with thyroid disease often experience worsened symptoms after the holiday, Chou said, adding that for many, the symptoms are from eating too many nuts, which are typically generously coated with seasonings.
Eating too many nuts and high-fat foods leads to an excessive intake of calories, with the metabolic process of gluconeogenesis generating an elevated blood glucose level, which affects the thyroid nodule, he said.
Chemicals added to nuts and processed foods, such as cured meat, canned meat, pickled fruit and vegetables, and foods high in iodine can also affect thyroid secretion, Chou said.
Controling one’s diet is necessary to balance thyroid function, Chou added.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
Taiwanese singer Jay Chou (周杰倫) plans to take to the courts of the Australian Open for the first time as a competitor in the high-stakes 1 Point Slam. The Australian Open yesterday afternoon announced the news on its official Instagram account, welcoming Chou — who celebrates his 47th birthday on Sunday — to the star-studded lineup of the tournament’s signature warm-up event. “From being the King of Mandarin Pop filling stadiums with his music to being Kato from The Green Hornet and now shifting focus to being a dedicated tennis player — welcome @jaychou to the 1 Point Slam and #AusOpen,” the
RSS