Have You Had Your Iodine Level Tested?

I recently had my own iodine level tested along with my usual blood lipid profile. I found out that I am in the "Normal" range but just barely. Normal range is considered to be 40-92 and mine was (42) which I am viewing a LOW normal.

IN doing some research on the subject it seems opinions vary widely even amongst professionals. The standard dose seems to be 150mcg per day which if you purchase a bottle of KELP tablets from your local health food store, most of them list 100% RDA at 150 mcg and to take only (1) per day and not to go over that. Tonight I purchased a bottle of 100 caps of Nature's Way KELP capsules certified to contain 660 MG of KELP broken down as follows:

IRON         390mcg
IODINE     400mcg
SODIUM     20mg
KELP         660mg   (Whole Thallus)

400mcg divided by normal dosage found in say KELP tabs or capsule is at about 275% of the 150mcg dose.

The link I am going to post here goes into a lot of detail on IODINE supplementation and indicates that the 150mcg is far less than has been prescribed in the past with NO ill effects. Am I suggesting you go out and overdose on iodine if it is found out you are deficient? NO I AM NOT, however I think it is worth reading what is written on both sides of the isle concerning the proper doeseage.

Iodine deficiency has been identified with insulin resistance in diabetes and a HOST of other ailments. I think this is an arena where one could spend a lot of time studying the topic and arriving at different conclusions. Knowing that the RDA of a lot of nutrients is much lower than what the OPTIMUM dose for good health is, my early on guess is that IODINE supplementation falls into that class. TO BE FAIR, there are some serious complications from over dosing on iodine, so be careful and do your homework after first having your iodine levels checked by a blood or urine test.

As an example the RDA for vitamin C was I believe set a limit to prevent scurvy, which is MUCH less than the optimum vitamin C dose for good health. Check out this link to verify:

http://www.vitamincfoundation.org/vitcrda.shtml

Now take a look at this link to learn more about IODINE supplementation (PAST and Present recommendations) I recommend you open the link and read this entire article. I will probably end up doing a few more posts on the subject of IODINE supplementation. There is also a LINK between low testosterone and low levels of iodine, along with a host of other health problems related to low iodine levels.

Dan

http://iodine.imva.info/index.php/iodine-dosages/

(EXCERPTS)




There are several reference points we can use to plot out iodine dosages for a variety of disorders that beg for the use of iodine for successful treatment. In this chapter I will present different views and practices from present as well as from the long past when iodine was vastly more popular as a medicine than it is today. For whatever irrational reason, doctors and patients fear iodine thus en mass do not use to its fullest potential.
Humans tolerate large doses of iodine but the ultra high doses that were used many decades ago are not required to get the most out of iodine therapy. Just a little goes a long way, as the governmental iodized salt programs showed but this dosage level was only affective for Goiter and its avoidance. It actually takes very little iodine to prevent this disease but no one ever said that was the only purpose and need for iodine in the body. Today people are more deficient then ever before because our need for iodine has increased in direct proportion to our toxic burdens especially of other competing halogens.

Dr. Michael B. Schachter says, “The treatment dose when a person is iodine insufficient is generally between 12.5 mg and 50 mg daily. Preliminary research indicates that if a person is iodine insufficient, it takes about 3 months to become iodine sufficient while ingesting a dosage of 50 mg of iodine and a year to become iodine sufficient while ingesting a dosage of 12.5 mg of iodine daily. However, the patient needs to be monitored closely with awareness of possible side effects and detoxification reactions.” This is quite a bit of iodine and if his statements can be substantiated then most people are using dosages which are much too low.
In fact if we put our attention on the full iodine story, which collides with the fluoride, mercury and bromide story we conclude that we can only err on the side of too low of a dose. Patients should push their dosages higher and higher until they get the desired result but I recommend doing this slowly unless there is little time as is the case in emergency situations or very late stage cancer. When using the Nascent Iodine one can dose pulse every two hours orally taking each individual dose up to as many as 20 drops and even at this level we are no where near points of iodine toxicity and tolerance. I have given my own three year old up to fifteen drops in a dose when she was confronted with fever and infection.

When treating life threatening diseases we do not have months to fool around with low dosages. We need to zoom up iodine levels quickly. And we need to get it concentrated to certain tissues or organs. Just to give you an idea of how high iodine dosages have been taken to we have to revisit the 1930s when iodine was still a universal medicine, present in the US Pharmacopeia and was used at much higher dosages than anyone even dreams of using today.
The usual dose for treatment was 300 mgs (46 drops of full strength Lugol’s) to 1 gm (1000 mg, 154 drops). It is very important to realize that today’s Lugol’s is not universally the same as it was because of new federal legal requirements about concentration levels. The best company offers Lugol’s at varying concentration levels. (2.2, 3 and 7 percent) Nascent is a 2 percent solution.

Preoperative before thyroidectomy: Lugol solution 5-10 gtt
three times daily, or 2-6 gtt twice or three times daily
given 10-21 days prior to surgery has been used.
MedlinePlus

Dr. Schachter wrote,” Dr. Abraham started this Iodine Project around 1998 when he became aware of the many benefits of treating patients with iodine using doses far beyond the 2 mg a day, which most physicians consider to be potentially toxic. He noted that starting in the 1820s, the French physician Jean Lugol used these higher doses to treat a wide variety of conditions. Dr. Lugol combined elemental iodine (5 %) and potassium iodide (10%) with 85 % water. Since iodine kills infectious agents, Dr. Lugol successfully treated many infectious conditions with this solution, which became known as Lugol’s solution, and which is still available today. Prior to World War II, many American and European physicians used Lugol’s solution to treat thyroid conditions, using doses higher than 2 mg daily without apparent significant adverse effects.”