402. The Real Reason We Fear Supplemental Iodine for Thyroid Health

0:00If you have changed your diet, tried supplements, worked with practitioners, and still do not understand why you are not getting better, I wrote Inflammation Fix for you. If we really think about it, most treatments focus on managing inflammation. This book explains why it starts, why it can persist, and what it may take to address the root causes preventing healing. Inflammation Fix covers nutrition, gut health, environmental exposures, immune dysfunction, metabolic health, and the nervous system so you can stop chasing isolated symptoms and better understand the full picture for wellness. Go to InflammationFix.co to get a sneak peek inside the book and join the list for early access and pre-order information. I can't wait for you to get a copy of Inflammation Fix and I hope it serves you as a resource for years to come. Again, that's InflammationFix.co. So which is it? Is it that we need iodine or that we don't?

1:03Or what if the conversation has been all a red herring? 880,000 curries of radioactive iodine 131 that was released into the air. The radioactive iodine landed on grass, forage, the animals ate it, but the biggest exposure. So why is it that most of us have not heard of this incident? There's an ongoing debate about supplementing iodine. For many practitioners, they will say that supplementing any excess of the daily recommended value of iodine is dangerous. Dangerous for causing hyperthyroid or excessive thyroid function. And so some practitioners recommend only supplementing with kelp or iodis salt, but not using luGol's iodine or other iodine supports that have a lot more than the daily recommended value. So which is it? Is it that we need iodine or that we don't?

2:04Or what if the conversation has been all a red herring and that there are other issues that we have not even considered that may cause hyperthyroid or all of the other thyroid issues. And it's not even about excess iodine through supplementation. In this conversation, I'm going to talk about an excerpt that I share in my upcoming book, Inflammation Fix, about what's really happened with some iodine and we have somehow forgotten a big chunk of our history. I now eat a lot of meat and so do they. If you want to thrive, you need to eat meat. Meat is required. Hey guys, my name is Judy Chow and I'm board certified in holistic nutrition and I have a private functional medicine practice where we focus on root cause healing and that often starts with the carnabic ears all meat elimination diet. So in my upcoming book, Inflammation Fix, I have a entire chapter on hormone function and thyroid function.

3:07And then I get into the nuances of iodine and that section is pretty big because I started doing research about iodine. Why we fear iodine and where a lot of that information comes from now some individuals will refer to the wolf chica effect were basically in 1948. There were doctors that tested radioactive iodine on rodents and showed that it suppressed thyroid function and so that whole study is often cited to share that using iodine is very, very dangerous long term for your thyroid health. But they also never retested the rats to see does the thyroid get back to normal after a period of time and later on some subsequent studies shared that in humans and in these rodents studies that the effect on the thyroid is actually a protective effect. And so when you are taking radioactive iodine, which we don't take radioactive iodine, but nonetheless, if you take radioactive iodine, your body is trying to again protect itself from this toxic source.

4:13And so that's why it suppresses the thyroid and over time, in fact, it actually normalizes. So that is sort of the reason why there are individuals that fear using iodine and then there are practitioners that recommend taking more, including myself. And then if you're wondering, well, why are we even taking iodine, it is not just for our thyroid, there are many, many organs and cells that use iodine. And so that's a big reason our breast tissue are ovaries, they all use iodine. In fact, our thyroid only uses a fraction of the iodine that we provide it. And that's why the US even added iodine to salt. But most of the iodine salt does not have enough iodine for wellness. It has enough to maybe have much less coiter effects where we're having these big nodules in our throat area, but it's not enough for wellness. And then if you think about how iodine is also on the halide cable of elements, so there's also fluoride and bromide and chloride, these all compete for absorption.

5:19So we have been using more halides in our daily lives. So before we used to add brominated vegetable oil to our drinks and food, I think they removed it from some, but they still use some. And then since the 1970s, they use a ton of flame retardant bromide. And so this allows sofas to burn a little less or it allows clothes to not catch on fire initially. And these all use bromide, which then competes again for iodine. And if so, we are not supplementing iodine and you have low thyroid function, that is a place to start. I interviewed Lin Farrow who shares how her breast cancer was because or associated with the lack of iodine in her diet. So that's a lot of the summary I've shared of iodine. And I will put a lot of the videos and interviews I've done about iodine in the show notes. But when I was writing my book, there was a big area that we have never considered or that I've heard about in terms of iodine.

6:24And why maybe there is really this push to blame iodine. And it even goes beyond the wolf chikof effect. I wonder why they were even studying that. So now I'm going to take you down a history story of the use of radioactive iodine in the US. And not just a small amount, not just a rodent study from the wolf chikof effect, but iodine that probably affected anyone that was born during that time. So in 1962, the US was testing nuclear compounds and there was a project called Project Sedan. And so the US government was conducting nuclear tests in Nevada. And this was in July of 1962. Well, what happened was all of the testing was supposed to be underground, but it failed to stay contained. And so there was this big cloud of radioactive compounds that were released, including a large amount of iodine.

7:25And if you like numbers, it was 880,000 curries of radioactive iodine, 131 that was released into the air. And it was the biggest fallout in all of US history that released that much radioactive iodine. And then the fallout, the radioactive iodine landed on grass, forage, the animals ate it, but the biggest exposure was in milk. So the cows were eating it, then it was in their bodies, and then the children and people were starting to consume the milk that had radioactive iodine. And the fallout was so big that the fallout was not just in Nevada, it actually spread to the Midwest. Utah, Idaho, Midwest areas such as Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Illinois, these areas were heavily impacted by the fallout. And the thing is, there was no obvious symptom that came about, but there was a concern that there would be extra radiation to the thyroid.

8:32Later, as they investigated what happened and the outcome of the fallout, they found that there were higher rates of autoimmune disease, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, leukemia incidences, and overall all cause cancer rates from this fallout. So if you were born around 1962 or a little bit before that, and then you were drinking milk when you were a child, and you were outside playing in the soil and dust, the estimates are that, especially if you lived in the Midwest as I mentioned near Nevada, Utah, you were exposed to a large amount of radioactive iodine. Even if you lived outside of those areas, the estimates are that everyone in the US was affected in some amount by this radioactive iodine. And there was a study done in 1997 by the CDC, you can get free access to it. I will put one in the show notes. And the study shares that thousands of US thyroid cancer cases were related to this fallout.

9:36And if you go into the details, here's an example of the chapters from the study. So it's the deposition of iodine 131 on the ground, then transfer of iodine from the deposition to fresh cow's milk, chapter five is cow's milk production and the consumption, then how they found the methods and input data for calculating thyroid doses to people resulting from the ingestion of cow's milk. And then it talks about in chapter eight, estimated thyroid doses resulting from atmospheric bomb tests conducted at the Nevada test site, and then the estimated doses to specific individuals. And I'll put the studies and the chapters in the show notes. Why aren't the practitioners that share we should be scared of the wolf chica effect, not talk about that these radioactive iodine releases occurred. And of course, I assume that they don't know, but I think the whole you are supplementing iodine and that's what's causing the thyroid cancers or the possible thyroid cancers or the excessive burden on the thyroid is actually a red herring compared to what we have been exposed to living in this world, especially if you were a child in the 1960s.

10:50And then even before that, so if this was one incident, we can say, okay, maybe it wasn't that, but there have been other incidences of iodine 131. So radioactive iodine being released into the atmosphere in the book. I talk about other ones other than projects to Dan. There was a wind scale fire in 1957 in England that released radioactive iodine. And again, it affected the food supply and then thyroid disease incidences. And then the interesting fact is that individuals will tell us what we know that Japanese people consume a lot of iodine. We don't see a reduction in thyroid effects there. Well, they do have less thyroid disease incidences in Japan, but one interesting fact I also found is in 2011, there was a Fukushima event where basically after an earthquake and tsunami, the reactors, they had failures and explosions, which then released a lot of radioactive iodine in the waters as well as the soil again.

11:52And so there's this consistent exposure to some incident that happens with radioactive iodine 131 that then affects the children that were around during that time. So we talked about in Japan, it was around 2011. There was one in Ukraine around 1986. And then there was a one in England in 1957. And I just pulled the big ones. There were other smaller incidences. And then obviously there was a Nevada one, but there were many nuclear tests around the 50s and 60s that were testing where some amount of radioactive iodine was released in the atmosphere. It's just the projects to Dan was the biggest and released the most. And you can say, well, that was just one incident, but if you understand these radioactive compounds, so that incident projects to Dan happened in 1962. So 64 years later, that area is restricted. And it's restricted because there's long live radioactive compounds that are still present outside of the iodine. There's also strontium and cesium and these can live for centuries.

13:01And then there was also compounds such as AmeriCM and plutonium that can last for thousands of years. And so since it could be in the soil and the dust, they don't want anyone to disrupt that area because it can come back in the air. And it could just release more radioactive compounds. So maybe our first exposure to projects to Dan has passed in the bulk of the children around 1962, especially around Nevada, Utah and then Midwest, but really the study shared that it was in all of the US because remember milk travels and it sold everywhere. We may be still having effects of the fallout. And so when we are focused more on iodine from lugals and that's causing thyroid issues, or we just considered the Wolf Chikoff studies sharing that the radioactive iodine in rodents is the concern that is not the same as lugals iodine or potassium iodide.

14:02We have to understand these nuances. And I really believe in understanding history where thyroid cancers are becoming more prevalent, thyroid diseases becoming more prevalent and understanding the history of what even happened on our soils will really help us understand, is it really a little bit of thyroid supplementation that you're taking that is actually causing all of these thyroid issues? It probably isn't. And so for all the practitioners that are scaring people from taking iodine or supplemental iodine or lugals or the potassium iodide, I think you should reconsider because we are missing the big elephant in the room that were these individuals that were exposed to projects to Dan or the wind scale fire or the Chernobyl accident or the Fukushima accident. Or the Fukushima event and then all these other incidences where radioactive iodine was released into our atmosphere and then made it into our food supply.

15:09If anything, the Wolf Chikoff effect shares how radioactive iodine is so bad and these are where we're getting exposed. But are we blaming the supplemental iodine that may be able to support us? And I thought this was so fascinating that I had to share with you guys. If you are afraid of supplementing iodine, you can always start slow. Make sure to get the right iodine. That's why keep bringing up lugals. It's just the forms that are better or ideal to take for iodine. You can do half of a half of a drop. You could go very low, very slow. And then there's some effects with that and I talk about that in the other video. So I will link again to them in the show notes. But we should not be scared of supplementing iodine assuming it's the right one. We do not supplement radioactive iodine. And then for the individuals that are taking radioactive iodine to suppress thyroid function, there may be better options. The studies are clear even from the CDC in 1997 and there are tons of research that has come out from the fallout in 1962.

16:12But we shouldn't be blaming thyroid disease or thyroid imbalances on supplemental iodine when we may really need it when there's this big concern about radioactive iodine and how much we've been exposed to it. A lot of our clients are born around the 50s and 60s and 70s. And could they have been the individuals that were affected by project Sudan and how much are we affected today by some of that fallout. Alright guys, make sure to eat a lot of meat, take care of your bodies because it is the only place you have to live. I will talk to you later. Bye guys. Thanks for listening to the Nutrition with Judy podcast. If this episode helped you, please support us by leaving a rating and review wherever you listen. It will help more people find the show and listen to actionable conversations around nutrition, chronic illness, root cause healing and real empowering wellness.

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