Overcoming Problems with Lugol’s Iodine
In this document I will be addressing several well-known problems that can arise on starting the higher dose Lugol’s Iodine protocol. Notably, as I will prove, these problems are not caused by the iodine itself but arise from bad dietary and lifestyle choices.
In helping people with their candida problems in various countries, I have noticed that people in the West, particularly from modern societies who consume processed food every day, have a much greater sensitivity to supplementing Lugol’s Iodine (LI). These people seem the most likely to achieve peculiar reactions and sensitivities to LI, which gives rise to symptoms like anxiety, arrhythmia, rashes, hives, insomnia etc. Conversely, whenever I have helped people with candida issues who live in the less developed regions such as in the Philippines, Indonesia or Pakistan, these candida sufferers, as a general rule, do not tend to suffer from any of these peculiar reactions from supplementing larger doses of Lugol’s Iodine.
What is the reason for this strange anomaly?
The answer to this question is simply food quality, and by quality I mean food that is grown, raised and eaten in its most natural and healthy state. In this respect and in my own humble opinion, Western processed food has a very low quality score indeed. Western food is grown with a plethora of fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, drugs and many other unnatural agri-chemicals. Then the food is heavily processed after harvesting or slaughter, using evermore chemicals including chemical preservatives and additives. By contrast, in underdeveloped countries such as Indonesia or the Philippines, it has been my experience that food is normally sold and purchased fresh in the wet markets, with little use of chemical fertilizers or heavy and unnatural chemical processing. As a result, the Western diet inevitably causes the unnatural build-up of heavy metals and halides such as chlorine, fluorine and bromine and many other poisons in the human body over decades; whereas there is much less build-up of these dangerous chemicals in people from underdeveloped countries whose food is more naturally grown and naturally prepared.
Iodine is by far the best antibiotic,
antiviral and antiseptic of all time.
Consequently, when a person from the West starts to supplement higher dose Lugol’s Iodine for the first time, then most likely he or she will already have a large store of heavy metals and other toxic chemicals in the body. But a person from the Philippines or Indonesia for instance, because they eat more natural foods and much less of chemically prepared foods, will have a much smaller amount of foreign chemicals and poisons already stored in their bodies. As a consequence of this fact, people from these underdeveloped regions seem to have little or no problems supplementing higher doses of Lugol’s Iodine.
Iodine is a very efficient detoxer of aluminium, cadmium, lead, mercury and arsenic as well as being an efficient detoxer of fluorine and bromine among many other poisons. So when a person on a lifetime processed food diet, with large amounts of poisons already stored in his or her body, first begins the higher dose iodine protocol, then the stored poisons will suddenly be released in large quantities by the effects of the iodine and dumped into the blood—with all those peculiar symptoms of anxiety, skin rashes, insomnia, arrhythmia, depression etc. occurring due to untold stress on the liver.
Furthermore, it has also been my own observation that people from the more underdeveloped regions of Africa, the Middle East and Asia are easily able to begin higher dose Lugol’s Iodine supplementation without any major issues or problems because their own food supplies are fresher and more naturally prepared without so many fertilizers with unnatural chemical content.
Another problem, which is also linked to this food quality issue, is the apparent lack of beneficial nutrients in our Western processed food. When you begin to supplement higher doses of Lugol’s Iodine and you already have a major deficiency in certain essential or critical anti-oxidants in your diet, then it is also possible that iodine supplementation at higher dosages could result in an autoimmune reaction against the thyroid gland with eventual formation of thyroid nodules. I must also quickly add here, before everyone throw their hands up and screams “Poison!” in unison, that for well over a hundred years, right up until the World War II period, Lugol’s Iodine was used heavily by the medical profession at dosages of up to 2000 mgs per day (that’s equivalent to 320 drops of 5% Lugol’s Iodine) for a multitude of acute and chronic conditions without causing any major problems or harm. I have even read one piece of historic medical research where doctors used Lugol’s Iodine at a dose of 20 grams a day to help successfully cure syphilis.
Simply put, Western diets were far healthier up until the World War II period. But shortly after this period, ever-increasing agri-chemical use, chemical food processing and additives, preservatives and GMO really came into their own in the West. As a result, we now have many hidden poisons in our diets as well as a critical lack of nutrients and anti-oxidants in our food supply.
Medical textbooks contain several vital pieces of misinformation about the essential element Iodine, which may have caused more human misery and death than both world wars combined.
As Dr Guy Abraham from the Iodine Project has so adequately proved from his own historical, medical and demographic research on iodine, the Japanese as a population eat particularly large amounts of seaweed/kelp. Their daily intake of iodine/iodide from this seaweed diet has been calculated from research to be 13.8 mgs per day, which is around 80 to 100 times more than the current RDA of 150 micrograms for iodine/iodide. The FDA, however, still today maintains that taking more than 1 to 2 mgs of iodine/iodide per day acts to poison the thyroid despite all the common sense evidence, convincing historic proof and sensible arguments to the contrary. The FDA’s current judgment and recommendations upon supplementing iodine is wholly based on one particularly weak piece of research by Wolff-Chaikoff in 1948. Dr Guy Abraham successfully rebutted the findings of the Wolff/Chaikoff Report in his own research paper: The Wolff-Chaikoff Effect: Crying Wolf?
Furthermore, within his own more recent research, Dr Guy Abraham has already completely explained the biochemical reasons for thyroid nodule formation whenever higher dose iodine is supplemented. Within the thyroid cell itself, thyroglobulin is normally converted to T3 (triiodothyronine) and T4 (thyroxine) via moderation by the thyroid peroxidase catalytic enzyme. This conversion process quite naturally produces hydrogen peroxide as a normal byproduct of reaction. But if glutathione peroxidase – a critical enzyme and anti-oxidant for the thyroid – is not present in the thyroid cell in appropriate amounts, then a dangerous build-up of hydrogen peroxide will occur within the thyroid cell itself. Excess hydrogen peroxide build-up further acts to change the nature of the thyroid peroxidase protein so that the immune system is unable to recognize it anymore as friendly host protein. As a consequence, the antibodies will attack and remove this “foreign” thyroid peroxidase enzyme so essential for T3 and T4 production in the body. The excess hydrogen peroxide builds up to unhealthy levels, which also tends to disrupt and destroy thyroid cells, with resulting thyroid nodule formation.
Iodine is needed in microgram amounts for the thyroid,
mg amounts for breast and other tissues,
and can be used therapeutically in gram amounts.
In order to avoid this thyroid nodule problem caused by a lack of glutathione peroxidase whenever higher dose Lugol’s Iodine is supplemented, the following companion nutrients should always be supplemented at proper orthomolecular dosages: vitamin C, magnesium, selenium, B50 complex and higher dose niacin. These iodine companion nutrients, which are all usually depleted or missing in our processed food diets anyway, assure correct body amounts of glutathione peroxidase and other essential minerals while providing anti-oxidants that are critical to the production of thyroid hormones without problems. These iodine companion nutrients are all incorporated within The Main Anti-Candida Protocol in this book.
So again I’ll say it as a gentle reminder. These thyroid problems are not actually caused by the Lugol’s Iodine itself. These problems must, instead, be due to our poor quality Western food diets that are so laden with dangerous toxic chemicals and so heavily lacking in important nutrients and critically supportive anti-oxidants.
For myself, I have been taking 8 drops or 50 mgs 5% Lugol’s Iodine for the last eight years on a daily basis and I have never had any problems with the higher dosage. I take all the iodine companion nutrients mentioned above as well. The most noticeable immediate effect of supplementing with higher doses of Lugol’s Iodine is a clear mind and greater energy levels. The most noticeable long-term effect has been cleared mucus in the chest and in the nose (iodine has mucolytic action) and I have not caught a cold or flu or any infectious disease for the last eight years since starting to supplement daily iodine in this manner.
Iodine is utilized by every hormone receptor in the body. The absence of iodine causes a hormonal dysfunction that can be seen with practically every hormone inside the body.
References
Optimox Research: The Iodine Utilization Project
74. Abraham GE, The Wolff-Chaikoff Effect: Crying Wolf? The Original Internist, 12 (3): 112-118, 2005.
http://www.optimox.com/pics/Iodine/pdfs/IOD04.pdf
Abraham GE et al, Orthoiodosupplementation: Iodine Sufficiency Of The Whole Human Body. The Original Internist, 9: pp 5-20, 2002.
http://www.optimox.com/pics/Iodine/IOD-02/IOD_02.htm
Abraham GE, et al, Optimum Levels of Iodine for Greatest Mental and Physical Health. The Original Internist, 2002.
http://www.optimox.com/pics/Iodine/pdfs/IOD01.pdf
Abraham, GE, The History of Iodine in Medicine Part I: From Discovery to Essentiality. The Original Internist, 13: pp 29-36, Spring 2006.
http://www.hakalalabs.com/Research/Abraham_OI_Spring06.pdf
Abraham GE, The History of Iodine in Medicine Part II: The Search for and the Discovery of Thyroid Hormones. The Original Internist, 13: pp 67-70, June 2006.
http://www.hakalalabs.com/Research/Abraham_OI_Jun06_1.pdf
Abraham GE, The History of Iodine in Medicine Part III: Thyroid Fixation and Medical Iodophobia. The Original Internist, 13: pp 71-78, June 2006.
http://www.hakalalabs.com/Research/Abraham_OI_Jun06_2.pdf
Abraham GE, et al, Effect of daily ingestion of a tablet containing 5 mg iodine and 7.5 mg iodide as the potassium salt, for a period of 3 months, on the results of thyroid function tests and thyroid volume by ultrasonometry in ten euthyroid Caucasian women. The Original Internist, 9: pp 6-20 March 2008.
http://www.hakalalabs.com/Research/Abraham_OI_Mar08.pdf
Abraham GE, Facts about Iodine and Autoimmune Thyroiditis. The Original Internist; 15 (2), pp 75-76, June 2008.
http://www.hakalalabs.com/Research/Abraham_OI_Jun08.pdf
The Iodine Protocol
82. The Iodine Protocol with Companion Nutrients. Breast Cancer Choices online.
http://www.breastcancerchoices.org/iprotocol.html
83. Abraham GE, et al, The Safe and Effective Implementation of Ortho-iodo-supplementation. In Medical Practice, Fibromyalgia Recovery online. PowerPoint presentation.
http://fibromyalgiarecovery.com/uploads/IODINE_-_Solution_to_health_problems.pdf