What you’re getting yourself into
Why a carnivore diet, or virtually any diet for that matter, can still be short on iodine, and the benefits of adding the supplement version.
The food that helped our ancestors thrive over millions of years, will also enable you to thrive.
It’s easy to get swept up in the aura of ancestral wisdom and trust that beef alone will be the answer to all your metabolic problems.
There’s every chance that it will be. Carnivore can really be that simple.
But we should accept that the world we walk in doesn’t resemble the world that lurked behind the dawn of agriculture and civilisation. The soils are depleted, the water is stripped of minerals, the environment is polluted, and there are a litany of stressors available at every waking moment.
In other words, there are a few confounders in the ancestral diet paradigm.
Despite red meat being the unparalleled superfood for nutrient diversity and density, there is one critical micronutrient that may be in short supply, thanks to radical shifts in the environment. Iodine is known to many as the mineral required to prevent goiters, but its functions extend far beyond preventing you from getting some company for your adam’s apple.
The World Health Organisation also says that iodine deficiency is the world’s greatest single cause of preventable mental retardation. But we’re still selling it short.
This is the mineral that is required for the production of thyroid hormones, which in turn dictate much of your cellular health and metabolic rate. Iodine is found in every cell of your body. There are life-altering consequences to being short on iodine, even in the absence of a gross deficiency.
Iodine has been used to treat: ADD, atherosclerosis, fibrocystic breast disease, breast cancer, excess mucus production, fatigue, hemorrhoids, headaches, hypertension, liver diseases, ovarian disease, prostate disorders, as well as thyroid disorders.
The benefits of iodine can further include blocking the absorption of the toxins bromide, chloride, and fluoride, as well as acting as an antiviral, antifungal, and antibacterial agent.
Despite the fact that we’ve already lived through an iodine scare in the 1920’s, that led to the introduction of iodised salt, we haven’t really dealt with the problem. Over the past 40 years, iodine content in the US population has declined by 50%.There’s a fair chance that you’re not getting enough iodine to support optimal thyroid health, with or without iodised salt.
The Origins Of Iodine
We’ve known about the relationship between iodine and goiters for quite a while. In 3600 B.C, the Chinese were noting that eating seaweed decreased goiter size. Seaweed, as it happens, ranks amongst the highest sources of iodine.
Iodine itself wasn’t identified till many moons later, in the early 19th century, when a French chemist extracting sodium salts for making gunpowder, noticed a strange purple vapour arising from seaweed ash treated with sulphuric acid.
This trace mineral was then verified as the tonic for goiters, eventually leading to the US government’s decision to add iodine to salt in order to bake it into the food supply. But even nationalised efforts have only done so much, as reflected by the WHO’s estimate that over 1.9 billion people have inadequate iodine intake.
17% of American adults are iodine deficient. A study involving more than 700 teenage girls in the UK found more than two-thirds had a deficiency. So the iodised salt initiative might have been partially successful in stopping goiters, but given how metabolic rate has dropped in recent decades, and given the whole obesity epidemic, it probably has fallen short on rescuing our thyroid health.
Why We’re Not Getting Enough Iodine
Part of the issue here is that our daily iodine requirements have been set ridiculously low. The recommended intake for an adult is 150mcg.
Iodised salt has 45mcg per 1g. So having 3 grams of salt basically gets you all the iodine you need. Assuming that you’re just looking to get the bare minimum needed to prevent goiters, rather than the amount needed to support optimal thyroid, endocrine, and immune system function.
If you prefer to aim for the latter, then your iodine intake should be several magnitudes higher, from 6mg to 25mg. You can’t store iodine, meaning that excess levels just end up being excreted.
The thyroid can contain 50mg of iodine, hence why some even take doses up to that figure. This has been verified by measuring urinary iodine excretion and increasing the dose until 90% was excreted, thereby inferring that body stores have been saturated
Levels that will be pretty challenging to achieve without supplementation.
A medium egg has 25mcg of iodine. So to get 6mg, you’ll need to saddle up with 240 eggs.
100g of mackerel has 140mcg. You’d need 4.2kg of mackerel to get to 6mg.
Seaweed, on the other hand, can contain from 2.1mg to 9mg per 100g, making it a far better source of iodine. The Japanese have one of the highest life expectancies in the world, and eat as much as 12mg of iodine a day thanks to their veneration of kelp soup.
So the scarcity of iodine in animal-based foods, and the high concentrations in kelp, gives us three different ways to look at the problem.
1. Seaweed was a staple food source for humanity across the paleolithic.
2. Iodine recommendations of 6mg and over that the likes of Dr. Brownstein have suggested are completely bunk.
3. There’s something in the modern environment that’s severely blunting our absorption of iodine.
The first solution would necessitate that paleolithic hunter-gatherers exclusively straddled coastal areas, which they didn’t.
The second would invalidate the documented evidence going back to Ancient Chinese cure books and Egyptian Papyrus of the medicinal benefits of iodine treatment.
The third case is backed up by the evidence of iodine depletion in the soil, which in some areas has significantly reduced the presence of iodine in the food supply. Perhaps more importantly, the presence of other elements in the highly reactive halogen family in the environment has affected our ability to absorb iodine through the diet.
As you might know from biology class, elements at the top of a column displace the ones below it. And above iodine in the halogen column, we have fluoride, chloride, and bromide.
Fluoride is a known carcinogen, and present in our drinking water, as well as many of our drugs.
Chloride is a neurotoxin that is also found in drinking water, alongside being a pesticide and a major ingredient in the artificial sweetener Splenda.
Bromide is the largest culprit, having replaced iodine in the diet in the 1980’s after people got nervous over the possibility that iodine could damage thyroid. Bromide is toxic, and can cause severe irritation on the skin and the respiratory passage.
In other words, these three compounds are very reactive, toxic, and rife in the food and water supply. They also will all supersede iodine when it comes to absorption, severely limiting how much of the slim pickings you’re getting from your diet is actually used for making thyroid.
Are There Any Dangers With Iodine Supplementation?
You might have already heard of the cautionary notes that people have applied to iodine. The major one is the risk of making an existing thyroid disorder worse, including resulting in hypothyroidism.
There are a couple of reasons why some people might experience suppression in thyroid hormones or unpleasant symptoms while ingesting large doses of iodine. One is the Wolff-Chaikoff effect, which is a protective mechanism against thyroid overdose where blood supply to the thyroid is temporarily reduced, and consequently, the production of thyroid hormones.
But the operating word here is ‘temporary’, and normal order is soon restored. This is simply a reason to go up in dose slowly, rather than blasting 25mg from the outset.
The second is a detox reaction from iodine pushing bromide out of the tissues and into the bloodstream. Symptoms of such a reaction can include fatigue, headaches, metallic taste, dizziness, and rashes. In such a situation, it would be best to revert to a lower dose before slowly building up again.
In any case, it’s a reach to imagine that excess iodine is a culprit in low thyroid, when iodine levels have fallen by 50% in recent decades, coinciding with epidemic increases in all thyroid illnesses.
It’s the same logic of blaming red meat and saturated fat for heart disease and diabetes.
A Simple Way To Test For Iodine Deficiency
You can always opt for a blood test, but there is a much easier way to check for low iodine.
Apply iodine to the skin in a one square inch area.
The stain should still be visible after 24 hours.
The faster the stain disappears, the lower you are on iodine.
Lugol’s 2 or 5% iodine solution is the gold standard iodine supplement. You can use this website to check how many drops you need to reach your iodine targets.
You could just opt for seaweed, but then you have to deal with the potentially profound levels of heavy metals that will have leached into those foods. People experiencing symptoms from adding seaweed into their diets often blame the iodine content for the damage caused by the likes of arsenic and lead. The way I see it, Lugol’s solution is simply the lower risk option.
The benefits of iodine supplementation can be profound, or they could just turn out to be a subtle improvement on your overall energy levels, as they were for me. As ever, do your own diligent research before putting anything in your body. This article is merely meant to spark your curiosity.
Key Takeaways
- Iodine is essential for good thyroid health, thereby having an influence on every cell in your body.
- Iodine has dropped by 50% in recent decades, due to soil depletion and the interference of bromide, chloride, and fluoride in iodine absorption.
- A simple patch test can be taken to assess whether you’re in need of iodine.
- Iodine is extremely difficult to obtain from the diet, with seaweed being the best source, but also being saddled with toxic heavy metals.
- Therefore adding in an iodine solution can be a practical way to increase your energy levels on your diet.
- Just start low, work up the dose slowly, and be mindful of potential detox reactions from flushing bromide.
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