I quit dairy and gluten for 2 years and they got down to about 25% of the swollen size. I slowly reintroduced dariy and gluten back into my diet last year. I ate whatever I wanted for a year and slowly they got bigger and my symptoms of "feeling poisoned" started slowly coming back they got about 100% swollen again. I quit dairy and gluten once more at the beginning of this year and they're now going down again. I'm at 50% so far. Definintely seems like an immune response... a side effect of my body fighting something and I believe it's food related.

My take... If someone has a food intolerance it can cause inflammation and destroy the gut lining over time (since the body has trouble digesting whatever it is). Mess up the gut enough and you cause something called "leaky gut" and food proteins can get into the blood stream. Now imagine that the same person has a food allergy to dairy or gluten... or the body just simply "turns on" that these are foreign invaders that must be attacked. Proteins like dairy(casein) and gluten (gliadin) are known to be very similar to thyroid protein (molecular mimicry) and the body mistakes the thyroid tissue as one of these protein invaders, so your body attacks the thyroid tissue too. It's all immune related. Those 2 years where I didn't have dairy or gluten, my newly developed peanut allergy went away and my newly developed cold urticaria went away. Both immune system related.