Why You Never Hear About it
The reason many people have never really heard about supplementing it much is because it is grossly misunderstood and amazingly underestimated. It also comes with two strong (false) beliefs, which include: we get enough of it from salt and the second being it can worsen thyroid. I would like to state that it is because of these myths as we can call them, there is a low amount of regimens or stacks out there that utilize this ingredient.
Treatments with Iodine
Firstly it is used to treat goiter, which is a swelling of the thyroid. Secondly a bit unrelated is that without iodine, especially in the West, the fluoride in our water can cause calcification of our pineal gland, which is responsible for regulating our sleep cycle through the production of Serotonin which gets turned into Melatonin.
To prevent calcification, iodine supplementation works great, additionally, it is thought that in Europe 30% of the people have this issue, and in North America it is as high as 80% and miraculously it could be as low as 15% in Asian countries.
Start using a vitamin tracker to make sure you are not going over the daily limit.
Daily RDA For Iodine
Secondly the amount added to salt at 100ppm as potassium iodide amounts to 77ug iodide/gm of salt, where the rda is 150ug/day. RDA is in place to prevent goiter. However generally based on the amount of salt consumed by people daily, we could be at 4x the amount that is required.
But, most of this iodine is not bioavailable, a common problem with many supplements we buy as well. It also turns out that because of media, less than 50% of the US households actually even use salt.
The third issue is that there is almost a inverse correlation to Graves disease, thyroid cancer and hashimoto’s as the US consumption of Iodine decreases.
Here’s the really interesting part in the 1970s the US dough in breads switched from using iodine to bromine, which is a known carcinogenic to the breast and promotes the formation of goiter in the thyroid. However iodine has anti cancer properties, and has many other anti cancer effects in different tissues in the body.
Cognition with Iodine Supplementation
Worst of all iodine and bromine compete with each other, meaning the receptors that are suppose to bind to iodine now bind to bromine. Bromine’s toxicity extends to delirium, brain retardation, hallucinations and schizophrenia among other things. For this we recommend a separate supplement called Nootrocube, known to bring back a ‘devitalized’ brain back into action.
The Final Word
What to do going forward, first we want you to get tested for iodine, and it will be a urine analysis. Secondly use supplements that contain iodide and iodine. A brand we have suggested in the past is Lugol which has 6.25mg per drop. An average dosage for pill form would include 50mg/day and of course if you are deficient, move it up accordingly. Though the ATA recommends anything above 1,100 mcg per day is hitting the upper limit so you should lower it or try potassium iodine at 400 micrograms a day.
Further Reading:
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Iodine-Consumer/