Do you think the RDA level of iodine is a sufficient daily dose? Think again. RDA levels were designed to prevent an outward manifestation of disease, they represent minimum levels and fall far short of the optimal levels actually needed to help you thrive.
Iodine levels are highly dependent on your diet and health status, so each individual is different. How do you know if you are deficient or not? Here is an easy test you should perform on yourself and all your family members as iodine deficiency is rampant in this country.
Take a tincture of iodine that you can easily find in pharmacies and place a few drops on the inside of your arm (or on any other convenient part of your skin). Make sure your skin is clean and free of lotions, creams, and other things that will prevent absorption. You now have a small orange iodine stain. Now what? Wait. Note the time you apply it and see how long it takes for it to fully absorb (no more orange on your skin). If you wash it or swim, you will obviously have to repeat the process.
If it took less than 12 hours for the patch to be absorbed, you are seriously deficient.
If it took 12-18 hours, maybe the situation could be corrected with additional seafood in your diet.
If it took more than 18 hours, it’s fine.
How to correct a deficiency? You can continue to paint iodine tincture on your skin or you can take oral supplements. Iodine taken orally must be protein bound. It is the mineral form that the human body knows what to do with. Otherwise, the iodine will seek out any protein to bind with, causing irritation and not being very helpful to the thyroid.
Different people need a different dose, so an individual approach to determining this dose is always best. Nevertheless, cultures that regularly eat algae, consume about 12 mg of iodine per day, while RDA only recommends 150 mcg for an average adult.
We tend to think of iodine only in relation to the thyroid gland, but iodine is also needed and beneficial for other tissues. In seaweed-consuming populations, breast cancer is almost non-existent because iodine induces programmed cell death (that’s a good thing). It also acts as an antioxidant in the same way as vitamin C. It eliminates toxic chemicals and boosts cellular immunity (the smart arm of the immune system). It also protects the digestive system from harmful bacteria. Breast tissue, salivary glands and stomach lining are some of the tissues with particular affinity for iodine.
In today’s society, washed out by bromides and fluorides which displace iodine due to molecular weight, it is especially important to ensure proper saturation with this essential mineral.
This article may be reproduced in its entirety.
