Iodine & Hashimoto's - it shouldn't take 3 years to feel better...
My health journey through undiagnosed autoimmune hypothyroidism that went hyperthyroid later on - gluten was involved as a bad guy, a leaky gut, & iodine.
As a follow up to my recent Hashimoto's post (Substack) - I joined Izabella Wentz’ email list when getting the free ebook from her website. Her first email was quite detailed about her approach and the steps she recommends for restoring function to the body in order to help Hashimoto's autoimmune thyroid disease. She also shared that she expects recovery to be gradual and to take around three years. <shocked face emoji> …This post is about my own story, and how rapidly my own health improved after I added high dose Iodoral supplements after attending a webinar by Dr. Brownstein.
In the post I share more about Dr. Brownstein’s protocol and discuss other nutrients that are working together - deficiency of any of the group can affect function of the others. Food cravings and prenatal health enter the narrative and some math regarding iodine content in ice cream and bread that is made with flour made with iodized anti-caking agent instead of the standard potassium bromide. It is very interesting that the US website for health info for health practitioners is suggesting that everyone is getting lots of iodine in their bread - they don’t mention that most bread isn’t made with iodized anti-caking agent and hasn’t been since the 1950s.
Nutrient math question answered in this post - How much ice cream might a pregnant person need to eat if they are craving ice cream for the iodine content? *not a dietary recommendation - eat rhubarb or seaweed are my dietary tips in the post.
Thing to ponder - glitzy websites with a media friendly person and pretty graphics may not provide the best health advice even if the person has a clinical degree and personal experience with the condition.
Izabella Wentz, PharmD has a blog post with her reasoning for caution regarding use of iodine and why a low iodine diet might even be the best approach to Hashimoto’s disease. It seems to be based on the Wolff-Chaikoff conclusion that iodine sufficiency in lab animals was actually inhibition of thyroid function. They thought rapid uptake of iodine is normal thyroid function rather than a symptom of iodine deficiency.
“Because it is a necessary nutrient for thyroid health, some people have assumed that supplementing with high doses of iodine can help the body make more thyroid hormone, thereby improving hypothyroidism and Hashimoto’s; and it is often recommended by many conventional health books and doctors. However, what they do not understand is that iodine is what pharmacists call a “Goldilocks” nutrient, meaning that, while low levels are necessary for thyroid health, higher levels can have a negative effect.” - The Effect of Iodine on Hashimoto’s (thyroidpharmacist)
*Bold added by Izabella Wentz, PharmD
See this post for background info about iodine research and the error made with the Wolff-Chaikoff theory. (Substack)
Almost everything in our diet has a safe range for intake, even water. Almost everything in our diet has a ‘Goldilocks’ amount that will be best for our own needs. The body simply excretes excess iodine in the urine and iodine does not have as narrow a range of safety as minerals such as manganese. The dose makes the medicine or poison is also true of many things. Most things do not provide endlessly better benefits as we consume more and more.
Addition
She doesn’t mention the Wolff-Chaikoff effect actually, the issue with risk to the thyroid tissue from larger amounts of iodine seems to be that of a lack of selenium for its antioxidant value, and/or a lack of glutathione - the antioxidant we make for ourselves with the help of Nrf2 signaling and the amino acids methionine, glycine and glutamine. That means, in addition to lack of selenium as a risk factor, a low protein diet and a diet low in plant polyphenols and omega 3 fatty acids would be increasing risk for inflammation within the thyroid gland. Her main point seems to be that more of her clients have had negative experiences with high dose iodine than positive experiences. An initial boost in energy level is common though. Her response to the Japanese diet iodine average is to point out that Dr. Hashimoto is Japanese and Hashimoto’s disease is common in Japan. So maybe they are low in selenium intake, and/or plant polyphenols.
[International population research regarding iodized salt and a correlation with autoimmune disease] “….research has supported the theory that excess iodine can lead to thyroid dysfunction.
This has to do with the way that iodine is processed in the body. Iodine from foods and supplements is processed by the thyroid gland so that the body can properly use it. During this process, hydrogen peroxide, a free radical, is released.
In cases when the body has adequate levels of selenium and it is used properly, the selenium neutralizes the hydrogen peroxide. However, in cases of iodine excess, excess hydrogen peroxide can cause oxidative damage to the thyroid gland. When not enough selenium or glutathione is present to neutralize the hydrogen peroxide, oxidative damage, which leads to inflammation and autoimmunity, can occur.”
Let’s look at Japanese health data:
“In Japanese adults who chose to be screened by a general health checkup system, the prevalence of abnormal thyroid function was nearly 10%. In a high percentage of these patients, abnormal thyroid function could not be detected by their history or physical examination. Just a physical examination without thyroid function tests, particularly serum TSH levels, was not adequate even when performed by a thyroid specialist.” (Kasagi, et al., 2009)
Google Search Engine got something right :-) even though it likely shouldn’t have given this answer - the US has iodized salt widely available.
Google question prompt: Why do so many Americans have thyroid issues?
The answer it provided: Iodine deficiency: Your thyroid needs iodine to make thyroid hormone, so a lack of the mineral in your diet can lead to hypothyroidism. It's the most common cause of hypothyroidism in countries that don't have iodized salt widely available. Mar 25, 2024
**This was an addition but I have to pause for now.
12% of US or 1 in 300 women were rates I saw for the US for hypothyroidism. A survey based study in Colorado found under 10% for hypo and hyperthyroidism. TSH was used as the diagnostic marker. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/415184
The following quote suggests that dietary iodine is not the only factor. If dietary iodine was low in US Framingham Study and in Italy, then why did 13.6% of the US women have elevated TSH while only 1.5% of the Italian women had elevated TSH? (>5 mlU/L was used in both studies). Might the difference between Nrf2 promoting olive oil, oregano, rosemary, Bay laurel leaves, citrus peel, and sulfur phytonutrient rich onion and garlic?
Izabella Wentz and I are in agreement about the need to test for thyroid autoimmune antibodies more often. The following excerpt has the clinical guidelines for defining abnormal thyroid conditions.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/415184
Computer & caregiver issues, now on phone. I need to pull all of this into a reorganized document. My entire series on iodine needs an overview.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8794674/
Ginger in large servings was an early change in my route to health. When I started high dose iodine I had already been eating ginger daily for pain relief, 1/2 teaspoon of powder per day was the arthritis research dose that I aimed for. But I also loved it in stir fries as a vegetable and candied chunks too. Excess can lead to reduced blood blotting and easy bruising which I reached. I stopped vitamin E use and cut down on the candied ginger.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8794674/ *same link
This study found benefit with 500 mg ginger powder twice a day for one month. Iodine isn't the problem if the real problem is lack of glutathione production. Ginger is a potent Nrf2 promoter.
**Aside - hello readers, would any of you be interested in a podcast format or video for some of my posts?
Izabella Wentz's backstory was that as a young woman and as a young pharmacist student or new graduate, she had not been interested particularly in the thyroid gland. It was just part of schooling. It's part of the body that was part of education, but so were many body parts. But then as a young person, new graduate or student still, she was getting more and more unhealthy and her brain function was going wrong. She was getting more and more brain fog and forgetfulness and eventually got a diagnosis of autoimmune thyroid or Hashimoto’s disease. She was initially frustrated by the same thing that led to years of delay in my own health journey - doctors checked thyroid hormones and TSH but did not check for autoimmune thyroid antibodies while she was first trying to understand her change in thinking.
This background detail is included in her ebook: “Supplements to Subdue Thyroid Symptoms”, by Izabella Wentz, PharmD, (pdf in my Sync file)
Izabella Wentz, PharmD, an article on her site is: Why Thyroid Antibodies Matter. (thyroidpharmacist/blog)
Thyroid autoimmune antibodies matter because they represent more opportunities for them to combine with thyroid tissue and cause destruction of the thyroid gland - so it is astonishing to learn that the medical industry considers the level of autoimmune antibodies irrelevant - which they do according to her article. She makes the point that they are relevant because they can correlate with severity of mental symptoms.
When we have more thyroid autoimmune antibodies, when our autoimmune memory B cells are more active - sensing lots of ‘antigen’ and making lots of antibodies, then mental illness symptoms of anxiety or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder may be present. Misdiagnosis is not uncommon. (thyroidpharmacist/blog)
That can be really scary - odd mental changes. You know or you feel that something's wrong, but it has gone on long enough that it may have just become your new normal. And who do you admit you are having problems to? You don’t want to be labeled mentally ill . . . that is so stigmatized that people don’t ask for help. Or the help that is being provided is so ineffective and even dangerous that people learned not to ask for help more than once.
When mental symptoms have gone on for a while it can be easy to believe that this is just how I am now when a symptom goes on for years. And unfortunately, the current healthcare system tends to just normalize a wide range of mental illness as kind of normal. "Go talk to your therapist and probably you need some psych drugs too."
In Izabella's first email, she makes it clear that her protocol for Hashimoto's helps people - as it helped her - BUT that it did take her three years to feel, kind of better, to really get a handle on on this Hashimoto's thing, - so don’t be discouraged if it takes you that long too....with the help of this protocol.
She had to focus on learning about autoimmune thyroid health because she had lost her own health. That is also revealing about pharmacy school education - the thyroid gland doesn't seem important until it's your own problem. *Disclosure, I briefly looked into pharmacy school, but decided against it. It is quite competitive to enter and challenging in content and wasn’t my style even as a young adult.
Gene transcription is regulated by teamwork between the thyroid hormone and several nutrients.
The thyroid hormone, and activated vitamin A and D, and zinc, all help control which proteins will be made in our body. And magnesium has a role with vitamin A and D’s function. Regulation of gene transcription is a VERY IMPORTANT job. We want helpful proteins being made, not inflammatory cytokines when there is no pathogen to fight - just our own body tissue.
Example of active vitamin A’s transcription being reduced by zinc deficiency: “Specifically, zinc deficiency reduced the binding of RXR to DNA response elements by 50% (Table 1).” (Morris and Levenson, 2013)
The thyroid gland is very important. It regulates our energy with thyroid hormone. But thyroid hormones are also involved in gene transcription. So which proteins are produced is regulated in part by adequate thyroid hormone and that is a team job involving adequate vitamin A and D, activated into their active hormone forms they can control gene transcription. Zinc deficiency or magnesium deficiency can also disrupt normal protein production. The three hormones, Thyroid, active A and D, all work together to control protein expression and they need magnesium to function. The zinc has regulatory control over gene expression and protein production too.
So if switch focus for a moment and look at the question of why things go wrong in cancer - why is the protein expression of cancer cells so out of whack? It's probably multiple factors affecting methylation cycles, including disruption in the balance between vitamin A, vitamin D and Thyroid hormone and/or lack of magnesium, iodine and zinc. They all work together and they all need magnesium to work together and may need zinc's cooperation for protein expression. So lack of magnesium, zinc, vitamin A, D, or iodine, could all be underlying the dysfunction of what's going on in cancer cells.
Thyroid hormone needs iodine to function correctly, but might be made with fluoride, bromide or chloride instead.
Thyroid hormone might be present in the body even if iodine is deficient, as it may be formed with fluoride, bromide or chloride instead of the iodine, but then the chemical will not function. Symptoms of hypothyroidism would be present even though T3 and T4 levels seemed to be in the normal range. TSH, Thyroid Stimulating Hormone levels might also be in normal range because the body is producing Thyroid hormone - it just isn't functional due to the lack of iodine. So the interplay of iodine, Thyroid hormone, vitamin A and D, magnesium and zine could all be involved in the question of what's going wrong in autoimmune thyroid disease.
I did recheck the free ebook from Isabella Went, PharmD, regarding iodine guidance - I hadn't missed it, iodine is not one of her suggested supplements for subduing the symptoms of Hashimoto's. Having learned from her email, that she expects it to take three years for people with Hashimoto's to start feeling better, after A LOT of dietary changes, that is a big clue - that her approach is flawed.
My health journey with undiagnosed autoimmune hypothyroidism.
My own story was really about autoimmune thyroid problems, but it was not diagnosed for many years and it was never officially called Hashimoto's. I wasn't diagnosed with autoimmune thyroid antibodies until after I went hyperthyroid from staying on high dose iodine without selenium for quite a few years.
As an adult, I spent many years with symptoms of hypothyroidism and I kept going back to my family doctor, "What's wrong with me?" He put me on psych drugs, initially Prozac. Prozac really is horrible - it caused extreme apathy for me. "Everything's boring". I could see where people would want to suicide on Prozac just because everything is boring. And your sex drive is gone. So everything's boring and you can't get it up. But that's a digression.
So, it's easy to get misdiagnosed when you're having thyroid symptoms that affect your mental health, or really, any other problem that's affecting your mental health. They slap a crazy label on you instead of learning the real underlying problem, and they prescribe psych drugs - and may call you non-compliant if you refuse the drugs.
Psychiatric drugs typically deplete mitochondrial nutrients and long-term use tends to lead to the person becoming a lot worse. Worse mental health problems and diagnoses tend to follow use of psychiatric drugs.
"Oh, you had some anxiety? Well, here's some psych drugs. ... Oh, now you have bipolar disorder. Sorry. But that's not our fault. Here have harsher psych drugs and if you end up with Alzheimer's, …again, that's not our fault. You're just crazy and we tried to help you, sorry you were too crazy to be helped."
Or worse: "Oh, the psych drugs left you feeling suicidal and/or homicidal ... or you are dead now ... that is still not our fault. Mass murder is just a thing that happens these days and we should have better gun control laws."
We should have better psychiatric care and health care and ….. other massive changes.
My story of recovery from autoimmune thyroid issues was much different than taking three years from diagnosis to feeling better. I was symptomatic of low thyroid function, for a decade or longer, and then I attended a webinar that Dr. Brownstein gave in my local area and it was astonishing, mind blowing. After adding Iodoral supplements I felt better quite quickly - I was already following a gluten free diet at that time though too. Multiple changes may have worked together for my quick response to his high dose Iodine protocol.
Dr. Brownstein’s research really helped explain my symptoms, and I learned at the webinar of a really, really, really visible obvious symptom of hypothyroidism which I did have. If you lose the outer third of your eyebrows, and the hair is thin and sparse on the remainder too maybe, then that is a classic symptom of iodine deficiency or hypothyroidism.
I was told by my family doctor that I must be a hypochondriac, or have psychosomatic symptoms. For many years my thyroid hormone level and TSH were normal, but the autoimmune antibodies had never been checked. "You're normal, just crazy. You must be a hypochondriac." Well, psychosomatic symptoms were a factor, and therapy did help somewhat. We can hold old trauma in our body in tense muscles or have emotional responses that include muscle tension. I would have difficulty speaking about emotional topics because my throat would cramp up somehow, making it hard to speak. But therapy didn’t grow back eyebrow hair like taking iodine supplements did.
So anyway, around 2006 or 2005 I attended the seminar by Dr. Brownstein. I was thrilled and ordered the high dose iodine supplement, but I forgot the Selenium part and eventually ended up hyperthyroid but that was years later and it happened after I had added a little gluten back into my diet. I think that set off the autoimmune antibodies again, because I had eliminated gluten because it seemed to cause my fibromyalgia pain symptoms. So maybe the hyperthyroidism wasn't only due to the high dose iodine I was taking. It was the gluten causing the autoimmune molecular mimicry attack of the thyroid gland - and that likely led to an excess of damaged thyroid cell contents entering the blood stream adding even more thyroid hormone to a system that didn't have enough selenium to break down the excess.
Social gatherings and holidays can make it easy to have little tastes of things that you had been avoiding in your routine diet. It isn't worth the "treat" if it resets off autoimmune antibodies that cause your white blood cells to attack your healthy tissue.
When I started the high dose iodine after attending the seminar by Dr. Brownstein, to give a visual of me then - I was heavy, puffy, and in pain. I had stopped weighing myself at 250 pounds. I did go up another pant size or two after that so I probably was closer to 275 or 280. Maybe even 300, but that would have been another pant sizes. That was the heaviest point of my life.
At that stage I was in daily pain. I was really puffy with fluid. My swollen feet hurt walking up and down the stairs, so I would hold onto both hand rails, putting as much weight as I could on my hands, to take the pressure off my poor swollen feet and legs. My fibromyalgia-like muscle knots were limiting my range of motion in my left shoulder. And I think my left leg was also bad. The whole left side of my body has always been a little worse. I have a bit of a scoliosis which can be from birth from when the fetal baby position was kind of a little bit too twisted. Your normal is kind of set up as a little bit out of alignment, too twisted a bit towards the left is what I think my fetal position was in utero. Posture and yoga can help. I digress.
And I was tired. It was hard to do grocery errands. I would do one thing, maybe two things, and then have to go home and rest. I also had fibrocystic breast pain, which is really fairly painful and puffy, edematous breasts for at least like one week out every month. During PMS week I was not only cranky, I also had really really painful breasts, painful to touch, painful to wear a bra, even painful for clothes to be pressing on them.
So that was where I was at prior to starting high dose iodine - I was heavy, puffy, it was for me to walk up and down the stairs, there was pain with my breasts, with my shoulder, with my hips and legs. I was in quite a lot of pain - I would tend to tell the doctor "7" out of 10 as my level of daily pain.
Some time around then I also learned of magnesium and Epsom salt soaks and that helped with the pain. I don't remember exactly when I added that though. The first thing that I definitely remember as a big improvement for me was the high dose iodine.
And it worked fast, it didn't take three years, more like within a week or less I was feeling more energy, and I wasn't in as much pain. Within that first loading dose month (50 mg, 4 Iodoral tablets), my fibrocystic breast pain was less and my over active appetite was reduced. My mindless craving in the evening, nibbling on a little of this, that and the other thing, was just gone. I would eat dinner and just be satisfied. What I eventually realized is that the all evening craving and nibbling was probably me seeking iodine.
Food cravings and a need for a nutrient
On a sweaty day, you may crave salty snacks because you need a little extra salt.
When we're missing an important nutrient, we'll kind of graze and nibble on on a whole bunch of different things, kind of trying to seek a food that provides the nutrient that our bodies need and are craving.
But without really knowing what your body needs, it can be hard to associate a specific food to the food craving. We might be eating all sorts of wrong things while trying to satisfy an unspoken craving for iodine. All that nibbling might never quench the craving because those foods didn't have iodine. But it certainly would leave me feeling bloated and disgusted with myself.
With the standard diet being low in iodine, then we could be eating all sorts of things all day long and never get iodine rich food. Which sadly is true. Our food supply is messed up. Seaweed is still a good source and so is rhubarb. Rhubarb is high in oxalates though and someone with gut dysbiosis - an unhealthy microbiome may be oxalate sensitive. Sea foods are becoming more contaminated from plastics or other hazards in the ocean, but that's a digression.
Food urges can mean we need something and should not be treated as just a joke about pregnant women. That pregnant woman who seems demanding may be trying to verbalize the unspoken needs of her body. Her body probably doesn't need pickles and ice cream but it might need acidity, iodine and calcium.
Ice cream, chocolate, ⅔ cup, provides 28 Micrograms (mcg) iodine per serving, 19% of the recommended Daily Value (DV). (ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Iodine-HealthProfessional)
If bread were still made with potassium iodide as the anticaking agent, we would get per two slices 273-296 mcg, and that is prominently displayed on the US Factsheet for health professionals as the best source, top lines of the Table. However, most flour has potassium bromide and that suggests to me that eating two bread slice equivalents of commercial baked goods is putting and equivalent 273-296 mcg of bromide into the body . . . where it would be competing with any other iodine from foods that have far less than that. Before potassium iodide was swapped for potassium bromide in flour in the 1950s, it likely was helping the population to be healthier and less likely to have hypothyroidism than we are now.
Bread, white, enriched, made with iodate dough conditioner, 2 slices** 296 mcg/sv, 197% of the US recommended Daily Value (DV)
Bread, whole-wheat, made with iodate dough conditioner, 2 slices**273 mcg/sv, 182% DV (ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Iodine-HealthProfessional)
A little math: 2/3 cup of chocolate ice cream provides 28 mcg of iodine, while two pieces of bread may be providing about 280 mcg of bromide, therefore, our pregnant woman clearly needs ten 2/3 cup servings of chocolate ice cream just to try to keep up pace with the bromide from the bread. ….And therefore someone needs to run to the store for several pints or quarts of the favorite brand.
*This was not dietary advice, it was a hypothetical, our food supply is messed up, scenario. ** 10 x 2/3 cup = 6 2/3 cups = 4 pints or two quarts - for our hypothetical shopper. ***That would be bad for macronutrient balance, excess calories, weight and blood sugar, and it would likely create an exorphin high. → It is not good to give baby or any of us excess opiates, whether endogenously produced from fat and sugar, or exogenously supplied from pharmaceuticals.
Returning to the story of my health journey with autoimmune thyroid symptoms…
What was the point? - that starting high dose iodine helped me right away - not three years down the road, right away, within a week. I wasn't grazing and nibbling all evening. I lost 100 pounds quite readily quite easily, kind of amazingly to me. I had struggled and would try to lose weight in various ways and they never worked until I started taking Iodoral. During this recovery phase, I suddenly had energy. Around Christmas time I remember feeling amazed that I had spent four hours Christmas shopping without even noticing the time, and I enjoyed it, enjoyed the holiday music and busy crowds. I shopped all afternoon without getting exhausted. It was amazing. I enjoyed Christmas crowds instead of being overwhelmed and needing out, ASAP. It was just amazing.
Again, this did not take me three years. I probably had been taking Iodoral for 3-4 months by the time of the holiday shopping memory. The seminar had been during summer weather. The feeling satisfied in the evening after eating dinner, and not grazing all evening was an earlier stage of change. That happended quickly, within just a week or two or a month of starting. High dose iodine seemed to be just what my body needed.
But I also needed selenium, I eventually learned with hyperthyroidism. But that was years later and likely had included reintroducing gluten. I even stayed on the loading dose for two months because I felt so much better. Dr. Brownstein only recommends one month of the loading stage - take two Iodoral tablets am and pm to equal 50 mg - with food, it can cause queasiness.
I stayed on the loading dose for about two months because things were going so amazingly well with my energy level and normalized appetite. I was losing weight with no effort. After two months on 4 tablets a day, I dropped to one Iodoral per a day. It has 12.5 milligrams of iodine and iodide and is a similar amount to the iodine in the average Japanese diet obtained largely from seaweed or other seafoods.
I was feeling great for the first time in years but during that time I had also already identified that gluten was part of what caused more fibromyalgia pain and also corn and potato starch and dairy. I had been restricting my diet because it helped reduce the (undiagnosed) fibromyalgia-like pain. But after starting the iodine and my health and weight improved, and I was feeling so much better, I slowly started eating a few of the foods that I had cut out.
It takes six months for an autoimmune flair up of antibodies to die down again.
Holiday social settings led to my eating gluten again, and autoimmune antibodies can reform due to Memory B-cells patrolling the body, ready to make antibodies against the antigen. (The reason vaccines are created is to make memory B cells against the pathogen.) I had probably been self-managing my autoimmune thyroid symptoms for years by cutting out gluten. Then after iodine led me to feeling so much better, I added gluten back in. Just small amounts at a party, but that would be enough to cause circulating memory B cells to bump into if the gut is still unhealthy and leaking undigested proteins into the blood. And then a bucket load of new antibodies will be created and they last six months based on Celiac research. It would take six months of extremely strict avoidance of the antigen - gluten in this example - for that flair up of antibodies to get broken down so they stop signaling white blood cells to attack thyroid tissue or its look-alike gluten.
If you are attempting a gluten free diet, as an elimination test diet, to see if it helps, a partial effort for a short time is going to be ineffective. Maybe a little symptom relief might be noticed by cutting out some obvious gluten sources. But for it to really test the theory you need extremely strict avoidance of the antigen for a solid six months. Then the backlog of autoimmune antibodies will have been broken down and you will finally be able to feel what it is like to not have your body attacking itself.
It was eating gluten again the seemed to set off my hyperthyroidism and then I was jittery and losing weight even while eating a lot. But I was also having iodine excess symptoms at that point. One of the symptoms of iodine excess, I eventually learned about in veterinary science research. I was having a symptom that I read about in farm animals. It maybe be iodine overdose when your nose mucus turns so watery, that it's a little bit of like a teardrop or raindrop dripping from your nose occasionally. The drippiness isn't constant like a runny nose from allergies or a cold and it is watery, more like tears. More like an occasional water drop just dripped out of my nose... "What's going on? That's never happened to me before." That is a symptom of iodine excess seen in farm animals, that research study detail helped me to understand my own symptoms.
What I eventually learned in looking at the human research around iodine is that this topic is totally distorted and really hard to find reliable research. Most modern research is based on the accepted premise that the Wolff-Chaikoff finding is correct instead of a misunderstanding of the results.
The most helpful references I found on the topic of iodine and health were pre 1940 - 1947 might be a date I remember on a paper. A gentleman had gone to Africa to some village in the continent of Africa I don't know which nation or where. The entire village when he arrived, was just apathetic and listless. Even the animals weren't running around, the pets, the dogs or whatever. The kids weren't playing. People weren't working in a bustling way of normal life. Everything was kind of slow and quiet and barely functioning. He introduced iodized salt I think, in kind of a research experiment. And the entire village came alive. The kids were playing. The people were bustling and working and happy and cheerful.
I don't remember if even the dogs were happier or how the iodine was provided to an entire village. The change in the energy level of the of the place might affect the mood of pets too. I'm not sure where the link is to that research paper. That was very, very early in my blogging days. And at this point, I have 1000s of blog posts, which may or may not have that particular link.
So the health benefits of taking iodine can be very, very rapid. Moderate iodine deficiency can cause a drop of ~ 15 IQ points and that may be reversible when supplements are given. Decision making may improve and brain fog may clear. When your body needs something, it can be amazing when it gets it. Symptom relief is likely going to be pretty noticeable if it is the needed nutrient and is a quality supplement. The symptom relief may be within just one or two days potentially, or a week to a month depending on the healing needs of the body. Healing does take at least a week for the gut lining and that is the fastest area of our body for healing. Anything else in the body takes a little longer to repair or a lot longer for nerve damage.
At later stages of my health journey, when there was hyperthyroidism. I was also having low zinc and B6 from a genetic pyroluria tendency to go deficient. Low zinc had left me with no appetite. An "anorexic" appetite can occur from zinc deficiency or for other reasons rather than only being a condition seen in a teen girl who has controlling parents. I was eating very little at that point for whatever reason and it led to B1 deficiency which can also cause mental symptoms. When you're eating so little and you're also inflamed, you can quickly become low in thiamine, vitamin B1. Otherwise the nutrient is in lots of food and rarely are people deficient unless inflammation is excessive.
Thiamine deficiency can cause a fluttery weak heart rate and kind of disoriented and confused thinking. A dietitian magazine, Today's Dietitian came in the mail at this critical point in my health. It had an article on thiamine deficiency and how common that can be in anorexia and alcoholism. I did recognize that my appetite and food intake was low, but my mental symptoms at the time made life seem surreal. I was a little dissociative maybe and had some depersonalization symptoms.
Even in my odd state of mind, the B1 article sounded like what I was experiencing. I felt too weird to drive, so I asked a family member to drive me to buy me some B1 and oh my gosh, again, within like a day, within two days I felt amazingly better. That was just what my body needed. The fluttery weak heart, and disoriented, confused thinking, was odd. I asked to be driven to the store because I knew that I was not really functional to drive. I felt that bad.
So when the body needs something, it can be a real turnaround once it is provided. If you are having symptoms and you keep trying things, and keep trying things, and keep trying things and it's three years later or fifteen years later, and you're just getting minimal results... then you may not be trying the right things.
You know, I kind of feel sorry for this young pharmacist woman. She seems like a young woman. If she wants to have babies or to breastfeed them she is going to need iodine. Selenium alone will not grow a healthy baby or feed it. The watery tear-like nose dripping with iodine excess, combined with a positive health improvement of a personal female nature, led me to be aware that iodine has a critical role to play in glandular secretion and fluid release. Lactation involves glandular secretion and ‘let-down reflex’ - fluid release.
No nutrient, all by itself will grow a healthy baby. My career focus has been prenatal and early childhood counseling for poor people. I had to learn how to help people on a really low budget. I had to learn how to help people grow a healthy baby on a minimum budget, grocery store foods. "What are the healthiest foods that my small budget can buy? You know, I can't buy the expensive gourmet or organic fancy stuff. What can my low budget money buy?" There's a lot of good food that you can buy on a low budget. It helps health and your budget to avoid the more expensive processed foods. And in this day and age, everything costs too much but you can save money by cooking from scratch.
See this post for prenatal and lactation information about iodine: (Substack), the photo is of rhubarb.
Ginger rhubarb sauce as a simple descriptive recipe is in this post, along with a blueberry rhubarb jam. (Substack)
Types of edible seaweed was the focus of a recent post, along with structured water beverages I make, including my suntea herbal blends. (Substack)
Concluding thoughts
Main points: When you need a nutrient, your symptoms can be helped right away by taking that proper supplement. It might not work that fast, there may be other needed nutrients too, or a need to avoid glyphosate or other negative food ingredients. But it can be a very rapid improvement when the nutrient that your body needs is taken in a supplement or with the addition of rich food sources. Not sure about taking iodine? Start eating more seaweed and see if that leads to some improvement for you. Trying a bunch of other strategies than use of the needed nutrient will lead to minimal results. Decreasing inflammation will cause an improvement in symptoms but might not get you all the way back to functional health. And our younger generations may never have had adequate iodine to begin with.
If you're not giving the body the basic core thing that it needs, like iodine or vitamin B1, or whatever, zinc or B6, then you are not going to have optimal health. And in our modern world with glyphosate and decades of bromide and fluoride instead of iodine, then we may never have had optimal health, and therefore, may not even know what it is like...
Glyphosate screws up magnesium levels, glyphosate screws up CYP enzymes which are involved in vitamin A and vitamin D. And it screws up detox of heavy metals and other drugs. And it may even disrupt the proper sorting of genes during cell division or growth of a new baby. Glyphosate needs to banned everywhere, not just by Russia and European nations. We need to avoid it for our personal health.
All of these nutrients or negative factors of modern life and modern foods can work together to make us healthier - or can be adding up to dysfunction, pain, and chronic illness. If a health professional is telling you that "If you do all of these things, you might start feeling better in three years." Then they might not know what they're talking about, sadly for their patients and possibly for their own health too. Thanks for listening.*
*I started with an audio of this and then edited it - I cut some ‘you knows’ and added a bit more clarity and subtitles.
I do appreciate you reading my story too. I hope it provides something of interest and value.
Disclaimer: This information is being provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of Fair Use and is not intended to provided individual health care guidance.
Reference List
(Kasagi, et al., 2009) Kasagi K, Takahashi N, Inoue G, Honda T, Kawachi Y, Izumi Y. Thyroid function in Japanese adults as assessed by a general health checkup system in relation with thyroid-related antibodies and other clinical parameters. Thyroid. 2009 Sep;19(9):937-44. doi: 10.1089/thy.2009.0205. PMID: 19678737. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19678737/
(Morris and Levenson, 2013) Morris DR, Levenson CW. Zinc regulation of transcriptional activity during retinoic acid-induced neuronal differentiation. J Nutr Biochem. 2013 Nov;24(11):1940-4. doi: 10.1016/j.jnutbio.2013.06.002. Epub 2013 Sep 9. PMID: 24029070; PMCID: PMC3832953. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3832953/
This is sooo informative! Thank you, thank you!
". It would take six months of extremely strict avoidance of the antigen - gluten in this example - for that flair up of antibodies to get broken down so they stop signaling white blood cells to attack thyroid tissue or its look-alike gluten. "
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