1.) 
Thyroid Function
2.) Hypothyroidism: Iodine Deficiency & Thyroid Toxicity
3.) How Do You Get Hypothyroidism?
4.) Basal Temperatures, Immune Dysfunction, Chronic Candida & Other Fungal Infections
5.) Testing & Symptoms of Thyroid Compromise
6.) Understanding TSH Testing
7.) Autoimmune Thyroid, Hashimoto’s & Grave’s Disease
8.) Types of Autoimmune Diseases
9.) Radiation & Fukushima
- The World Contaminated Forever
10.) Iodine Deficiency
11.) Iodine Supplementation
12.) Potassium Iodide (KI)
13.) Sea Vegetables & Algae as an Alternative to Potassium Iodide
Thyroid FunctionThyroid glands manufacture the hormone thyroxine by bonding two molecules of the amino acid tyrosine with four molecules of the mineral iodine. The result is a molecule called T4 - because of the 4 iodines - and is commonly referred to as the storage form of thyroid hormone. The active form of the hormone that plugs into receptor sites of the cell membrane and “turns things on” is called triiodothyronine or T3. This form has had one iodine removed by an enzyme process to free up a bonding site for the receptor.
When there is too little T3 at the cell level, a message is sent to the hypothalamus area of the brain to release more Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH), thyroid stimulating hormone, which, in turn, goes to the thyroid glands and stimulates the glands to produce more T4. The pathways involve more chemical transferals than areas shown here, simplified for easier understanding. But this is the basic premise, in a "normal" thyroid.
A common way we become hypothyroid is deficiency of iodine itself. We all know of the "Goiter Belt", but do we remember that simple law of halogen substitution that we learned in high school science? Any of the lighter and more chemically active of the halogens in that family of elements, namely, fluorine, chlorine and bromine, can and will, if given half a chance, replace iodine in any and all chemical reactions. This can cause havoc in trying to make a specific hormone molecule, designed to fit into a specifically designed receptor site, like a key into a lock. 
This spells trouble for the thyroid, especially, since our environment is already so contaminated with chlorine, fluorine and bromine compounds.
We now understand that the cousins to iodine; bromine, chlorine and fluorine, are able to interfere in the thyroid gland’s production of hormones to the point that these chemical halide toxins can be substituted in the very thyroid molecule itself for iodine, the essential mineral in the thyroid molecule, making for a fake hormone molecule that our diagnostics cannot very well detect in conventional blood testing, but the living body can detect and be compromised and poisoned by. And these toxic halide cousins of iodine are everywhere in our environment today. Bromides are in plastics, fabrics, carpeting, food residues, cosmetics and even drug prescriptions. Chlorines are added to our drinking water, laundry cleaners and more, and fluorides are added to toothpaste. Our exposure today is far and away many times what is safe for the body. And with the increased competition for receptor sites, greatly increased requirements and supplements for iodine are now seen and used by cutting edge medicine for everything from cancer to various metabolic syndromes.
Odds are that every time you smelled chlorine, drank fluoridated water, enjoyed a new car smell, air-freshener, or artificially/chemically derived cologne or perfume, used harsh cleaning products, worked or lived in an environment with a lot of plastics or foam products, or even an office with a lot cheap particle board... you very likely impacted your thyroid in a negative way. Over time, the accumulated impact on the thyroid becomes very hard for the body to repair.
Thyroid takes the biggest ‘hit’ from environmental toxins, of any tissue or organ in the body. With ‘Environmentally Induced Hypothyroidism', many road blocks can make these normally efficient biochemical highways nearly impassable dirt roads. Many of these roadblocks are unknown to the physicians trying to correlate your, sometimes strange, case history with your laboratory reports. Your physician may feel like "Alice in Wonderland", where nothing makes sense, or at least not from the perspective of his or her traditional medical training. That's because ‘Environmentally Induced Illness' simply didn't exist in this near full blown capacity we experience today, when most of their textbooks were written.
Thirty years ago, when industry was burying barrels of ‘bad stuff’, burning ‘bad stuff’ polluting the air, and dumping ‘bad stuff’ in our lakes and rivers, nobody recognized that it was indeed ‘bad stuff’! (Except, of course, some crazy and rebellious college kids back in the 60's who organized the first Earth Day, and who turned out not to be so crazy after all). Now these ‘bad stuff’ toxins come to haunt us as chemical roadblocks in the biochemical highway/pathways of life.
In order to understand what is happening to us with Environmentally Induced Illness, and most commonly hypothyroidism, we all have to be like Alice, and learn how these relatively recent additions to our planet, just since WW2, have made our biochemical world a more precarious place.
You may have heard about some of these culprits of modern technology in DDT (an organochlorine) pesticide that lives essentially ‘forever’, along with its even more toxic breakdown products of DDD and DDE; and PBB, (a bromine fire retardant that was accidentally mixed into cattle feed throughout Michigan); and gases used in chemical warfare, (also bromine compounds). Exposure to any of these or any other halogenated compounds can really muck up our thyroid highways, and even give false normal lab tests, as other halogen clouds, (the electron outer orbital configuration that is common to all halogens, and responsible for their chemical natures) mistaken for iodine, are read by lab indicators.
Here let me insert a really appropriate saying; "all that glitters is not gold". Imagine the implications of this little piece of insight in consideration of everyday exposure to lower weight halogens, from bleaching of clothes, chlorinating water for drinking, languishing in heavily chlorinated or brominated hot tubs and swimming pools, fluoride laden toothpaste every day and, not to be forgotten, the dioxins associated with chlorine bleached paper products that we down by the bucketful every day from bleached white tea bags and paper coffee filters. The list goes on and on, and should send shivers down your spine.
There is more than one type of dioxin. In fact, there is a family of about 200 of them, which is expanding all the time as we discover more of them. They are not commercial products, but contaminants. They are created during high temperature combustion by incinerators, during the chlorine bleaching of pulp for paper, and the manufacture of certain pesticides [there's that chlorine again]. Dioxins are chemical look-alike cousins to thyroxine, the main thyroid hormone, and can plug into cell receptor sites made for thyroid and cause chemistry to go awry.
We knew back in the 70's that Vietnam War veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange (a defoliant later found to be contaminated with dioxin) exhibited problems with their endocrine systems by the symptoms they had. Recent research has shown that dioxin and thyroxine are chemical cousins, and that dioxin can plug itself into receptor sites meant for thyroid hormone and block the real thing. Or, worse yet, turn things off and/or perhaps some other less-than predictable function. To date, we are still learning about the family of dioxins, and they appear to be all bad apples.
Dioxins are known to be able to plug in to thyroid receptor sites on cells as a key into a lock. Unfortunately, they act like skeleton keys. They can turn on some receptors, but cannot turn on others. Some they can't get out of, and stay there to prevent the real, functional molecule from plugging in - in effect, deactivating the whole receptor site. Worse yet, it may be able to be bumped out and replaced by the real thing but leave the receptor site damaged, like a jiggled lock that has its tumblers screwed up inside from a bad key, so that even the real key now will not work.
Or - if you get lucky, the receptor site can be bumped free by real thyroid and become activated again. Compromised receptor sites that may be off or partially turned on (or even something else that we may not have yet observed) are responsible for the screwy results we get from blood testing not correlating with symptoms. These tests really don't make sense out of T3, T4, TSH, basal temps and other measurements. These dioxins interfere with not only direct biochemistry pathways but also feedback and other regulatory pathways, really buggering things up. And Viet Nam veterans are not the only ones exposed to dioxins today. We all are. Forest fires and the smoke they produce are heavily laden with them as are cigarettes, smoke from coal fired power plants, and water downstream and downwind from paper mills.
Xenoestrogens (and now discovered xenoandrogens) also work in the estrogen and androgen receptor sites like dioxins do thyroid sites. These are examples of what we collectively call xenohormones, organic toxins that mimic real hormones and can enter and skew hormone receptor sites and alter hormone activity in the body. There are determined to be over 80,000 of these faker toxin chemicals in our environment today and the list is ever growing. So you can see why the endocrine system is in deep trouble and why hormone imbalances are the norm today. It's the whole BIG picture that needs to be understood; it's complicated and becoming more so every day.
And these xenoestrogens also compromise thyroid biochemistry as well. We see the high estrogens of pregnancy often induce a temporary hypothyroidism in moms to be. Add in xenoestrogens and now radioactive iodine from Fukishima, and we are seeing ever higher statistics of hypothyroidism. This was the epidemic norm back in the 1950‘s and 1960‘s when pregnant women were routinely prescribed thyroid during the Cold War, with exposures of radiation from regularly set nuclear test bombs.
This whole thyroid problem has been so insidious, creeping in over the past 50 or so years, that labs have simply changed our "normals" to those of population statistics, now, rather than guidelines for optimal biochemistry! That's right.
Again, we need a new thinking process - a new operating system for our mental computers, so to speak. In a word - medicine is a MESS. That's why it's getting such a bad reputation, opening doors like never before to alternative methods that deal with more of the multi-directional and synergistic predisposing factors that respond to our tools, and not to orthodox medicine's "magic bullets". People are desperate and turning away to other methods because the old ones simply don't work any more.
Starting at the top, the first ingredient in the formula for thyroxine (T4) is the amino acid tyrosine. This amino acid is also a neurotransmitter, which means that it is also involved in carrying chemical messages in the brain. Tyrosine manufacture in the body can be interfered with and nearly shut down by exposure to certain herbicides, which are commonly used in agriculture, and often abused in lawn care. In fact, homeowners are, by far, the most rampant users and abusers of herbicides in this country by not following directions in the dilution of these lawn care products. Roundup® is a know potent xenoestrogen too.
Nitisinone or NTBC, a common agricultural herbicide, is being given intravenously in Europe for treatment of a genetic disease called hereditary tyrosinemia, which can cause liver failure and liver cancer from overproduction of tyrosine. This treatment is being used in 12 countries around the world. The implications for those of us not afflicted by this genetic disease - depression of tyrosine production in "normal" individuals that may affect supply of raw materials for the thyroid gland, are scary. This may affect the ability of the normal person to make tyrosine in their own body. Tyrosine conventionally is thought of as one of the ‘non-essential’ amino acids in nutrition, meaning that it does not have to come from the diet because the body can produce it. However, with continued exposure to this herbicide, tyrosine should more appropriately be listed with the ‘essential’ amino acids, needing to come from food supply, as production becomes more inhibited. With exposure to herbicide residues so very high today, in food, water and air, it is ever more important to eat a high meat protein diet. Tyrosine is only one example of a ‘non essential’ amino acid that today becomes ‘essential’ in the diet due to compromise in in the body’s own manufacturing ability. This is the reason also that protein diets work for weight loss and carb diets don’t. Over 90% of the dry weight of the total living body is protein. Protein composes hormones, tissues, blood, and even part of bone, and fuels basal metabolism the best.
At the hospital lab in which I worked back in the 1970’s, we had many patients referred to us from veteran's hospitals for various and sundry "Jungle Rots", many infections of which could not be successfully cultured. It's also interesting that the horses I have worked with over the past 40 years, suffering from varied chronic fungal infections are subject to the same low basal temps as the veterans we studied. In my thorough research of body temperatures for one of my patents, I found that Nature has evolved in every species, an ideal basal temperature specific to them for a very important reason - that of protection from disease, from that species’ most common pathogen.
Each species, because of its unique metabolism, sources of foodstuffs and niche in its ecological environment, has its own inborn weaknesses, or shall we say, susceptibilities to different viral, bacterial and fungal invaders. This ideal and common temperature gives each species an adaptive advantage over its most commonly associated pathogen. It goes like this: birds, for example, may be thought to be Nature's enigma. Their basal temperature of 106ºF, maintains even outside during winter cold up in Michigan.
On first thought, this would seem like Nature goofed, expecting them to maintain such a ridiculously high temperature in such an extreme environment, with little access to food in the dead of winter. A sure script for extinction, you would think. Certainly not efficient as Nature is seen to be everywhere else - or is it? A bird's worst pathogen threat is Salmonella which ‘bumps off’ at around 104ºF. And what is the most common infection that commercial chickens get? Salmonella. So we can see that the ideal temp is just a degree to a degree and a half or so higher than the highest optimal temperature for threatening pathogens. As added protection, the body further has the ability to pump up even more heat with a fever mechanism designed to essentially "fry" these infectious critters’ enzymes out.
Our human ideal basal temperature of 98.6ºF also has a purpose. It is just a tad higher than the favorite from our old friends from the strep and the yeast families, namely, Candida species. Considering that most modern health practitioners rarely see 98.6ºF in routine physicals for healthy patients, many of these patients who feel feverish and come in for what they describe as acute illness, often don't register such expectedly high fevers on the thermometer. The yeast and strep can be grown in the lab much better at slightly lower temperatures. And even today, lab incubators are still set at 37ºC/98.6ºF. Do you now begin to see the clinical picture? False negatives in cultures, with population statistical temps having been depressed by a degree or two for decades.
These lowered basal temps are predisposing us to chronic problems associated with overgrowth of yeast and strep in our bodies, which thrive at less than our ideal temps - which is, of course, the very reason that our ideal temp is just what it is. Add to this the situation with many physicians, who are forbidden from treating a person without an actual fever by their medical malpractice insurance, especially in “gatekeeper’ facilities of HMO’s.
Monitoring basal temperature is more important than I can ever stress in words alone. It is the very best indicator of just how things are going in your body, since energy pathways work on oxidation and the burning on food sources chemically, heat is produced as a byproduct of that burning, just as if you were burning a fire outside. This heat in the body is important not only as an indicator of the amount of fuel being burned, but also the rate at which it is burned. Heat is also necessary to speed reactions of the body up biochemically, to add "fuel to the fire" so to speak. Remember from high school chemistry that you always added heat to speed chemical reactions? You also added heat to speed melting and dissolving of a substance in a solution. Like the old saying, "love makes the world go`round", well, "heat makes the chemical world go around".
Many years ago, a now famous thyroid researcher, Dr. Broda Barnes, M.D. PhD. , conducted batteries of exotic basal metabolism studies, and spent quantities of money trying to determine the most accurate method of diagnosing low basal metabolism and subsequent hidden hypothyroidism. After 50 years of thyroid research, longer than anyone has ever studied the subject, his conclusion was that basal temperature tests were the most accurate (and by far the most economical!) of all. This is so simple! It even takes into account interfering roadblocks mentioned above, which Dr. Barnes did not have knowledge of back then. This further attests to this man's true genius, and it is fitting that progressive practitioners who continued to follow him named the test after him.
This test is performed by taking an axial (underarm) temperature first thing in the morning when you wake up, but before you get out of bed. These temperatures are recorded each day and correlated to menstrual cycles for women. In my nearly 40 years of research, I have seen very few "normal" axial temps, (mostly around 95.6ºF anymore) and even less so where I lived, in the infamous " Michigan I-75 corridor" so noted for its terrible health statistics, toxic dumps and industrial pollution problems. In fact, body temperatures are going down more all the time. It used to be that a temperature in the 96's range was rare, now 95's and even 94's are becoming more common. I see low temps in animals as well, correlating them with known "normals" for their species'. In every case, the condition can be also associated with symptoms of the collection of ailments that I have identified as Environmentally Induced Illness. The bottom line is: The bigger the fire, the hotter the temps, and the more energy produced. Dr. Barnes determined that for every degree low below 97.6ºF that a person’s temp was, that represented an approximate 13% reduction in the overall speed of biochemical reactions in the body. Like running your 8 cylinder car on only 6 or 7 cylinders, and you know what that means! Axial temps normally run a degree to a degree and a half lower than the oral temps of normally 98.6ºF.
I have carried the Barnes Basal Temperature Test to a higher degree still. Correlating these axial temps with oral temps, and with certain food preferences that will fuel energy pathways in most people, and with food intolerances uncovered by keeping a diet and temperature log.
Testing & Symptoms of Thyroid Compromise
Identifying these potential roadblocks in normal biochemical pathways involves using not only laboratory tests, but also symptomatology, for which we may not have developed a lab test. This is very important, as we do not have a test for every compound, antibody or intermediary metabolite in the body. In fact, the more we learn and discover, the more we find out just how much we don't know. It's a humbling encounter, or at least it should be. This makes listening to the patient all the more important, as it was in the early days of medicine, when fancy lab tests weren't yet available.
Relying exclusively on lab tests, without understanding and recognizing their limitations, especially in mapping of the superficially appearing abnormal biochemistry of Environmentally Induced Illness', can lead to "the treating and diagnosing of the little piece of paper, instead of the patient." I say "superficially appearing abnormal biochemistry" because that is exactly what it is.
When the forces driving Environmentally Induced Illness' are understood, then everything makes perfect sense again like Alice when she finally figured out how everything worked in Wonderland. I can't tell you how many times I have heard people tell me that their doctors have told them that their blood tests, including their standard thyroid profiles, are all normal and that "there is nothing wrong with them." They then ask the doctor why they feel so bad, receiving the standard reply that it must be all in their heads and write a prescription for Prozac®. Well, to this day, I have never heard of a Prozac® deficiency!
Giving a human or mammal T3 (biologically active form), T4 (storage form) thyroid or desiccated thyroid will suppress TSH (Thyroid Stimulating Hormone). TSH is a measure of unsatisfied peripheral cells. If the thyroid gland has been so damaged by autoimmune lymphocytes, it may not be able to produce a proper molecule, due to deformation by super halogens chlorine, fluorine,bromine, or radioactive iodine that is completely non-functional at the cell level, and undecipherable from correct molecules in the blood, giving us another fake "normal" to fool our testing.
This is not obvious because traditional medical testing looks from the wrong direction, see? TSH is, in traditional oriental medicine metaphor-"the baby crying". Since TSH is only a measure of a feedback mechanism, a low TSH is a measure of success. If TSH is low, the cells are satisfied and are not crying out for more thyroid. TSH is an indicator (and that's all), of our success with supplementation.
And, don't forget, there may be batches of thyroid that are bad, too - containing "fake" molecules w/ fluorine, chlorine, or bromine or radioactive iodine halogens, since the animals’ thyroids, which the natural forms are made from, are subject to this exposure, and our testing cannot detect these in quality controls. We cannot help this either. Only our body knows for sure and it doesn't lie! To many damaged molecules may precipitate an autoimmune response as well and make TSH go up, even with "supposedly adequate" thyroid supplementation.
In many autoimmune cases, all of the iodine in the world won't fix a damaged gland. Once you have clones in the thymus for one auto-antibody, others pop up easily to other organ or tissue targets. It's a difficult balance to control - and different with every case.
If we could figure a way to rid the body of other unwanted halogens, we'd have a shot at a true "fix up job". Unfortunately, our body's "special forces end up destroying the city buildings to get to these snipers." This is because these super halogens are biochemically locked in our tissues by virtue of their look alike halogen electron clouds - which are the true chemical binding activity in all chemical reactions. The body knows they are fakes, but can't rid it of them on it’s own, so it ends up destroying the whole area. This is autoimmune response. See why it's a difficult problem? But iodine supplementation in high doses by cutting edge docs is showing great promise at doing that very thing. Iodine is showing itself as a wonderful chelator, a ‘bumper out’ of many heavy metals as well as other fake receptor site inhabitors.
The word "autoimmune" means that the body does not recognize its own tissues as being its own, and proceeds to attack them as it would any other foreign threat, such as a toxin, virus, bacteria, etc. To understand how such an important self-preserving function as the immune system could go "haywire", we must understand just how our immune system works. Again, let me describe this in the simplest way for ease of comprehension. Then, with this knowledge, and the new knowledge of driving forces behind Environmentally Induced Illness, it will be clear that the immune system has not gone "haywire" after all, but is just doing its job as it is supposed to do. It's just that some of the "roadblocks" to normal biochemical metabolism, produced by 20th century technology, to which our body has not had time to adapt, are proving to be formidable foes indeed.
The center of most immune functions is the thymus gland. Not to be confused with the thyroid glands situated on either side of the larynx in the neck, which we have just spent a great deal of time discussing. The thymus gland sits behind the breastbone. It is responsible for "training" so to speak, of certain white blood cells previously made in the bone marrow. This is akin to the armed forces selecting their best recruits for specialized training for the special forces like the Rangers or the Green Berets. They give them specialized training for special missions. Some specialize in explosives, some are rescue personnel, and some assassins. The thymus gland does this kind of training too for specialization jobs for these white blood cells; let's imagine two scenarios that could put the protectees of both the thymus and these "special forces" into double jeopardy.
The first scenario is simple outnumbering. This is easy to understand. Too many of the bad guys can wear down even the most sophisticated of troops. On the biochemical model, this could come about by a shift in the environment or ecosystem, which allowed a much greater exposure to one or more pathogens or toxins. Diseases such as these are referred to as "dose related". Our common cold is such a disease. Cold viral particles are everywhere, but some "catch" a cold and others don't. Or at least not at the same time. Some are exposed to greater amounts of viral particles when someone who is actively infected sneezes on us. Thus, a simple case of the immune system being outnumbered.
But what about the differences in the strengths of the individual's "armies"? Doesn't that account for anything, you ask? It certainly does! And now we add another consideration, that of susceptibility of the host. Yes, all pathogens have different strengths of invasive ability, but the door of the host must invariably open for them to gain entrance in the first place. Even in the most severe epidemics throughout history, there were always some who survived, and some who did not get sick at all. If this were not the case, all species would have been wiped out the first time some bad bug came along.
Now we come to the second scenario. This involves an indestructible enemy. Or I should say, temporarily indestructible, so far as our present evolution and sophistication of our immune force armies are concerned. Simply being outclassed, so to speak.
An example of this scenario would be the past situation in Bosnia. The opposition forces sent in to rid the city of the menace of snipers occupying some of the buildings, had a virtually impossible task. In the process, they had to virtually destroy the buildings themselves to get them. When our immune system identifies some foreign protein or element or other chemical compound that it knows does not belong there, it is stimulated to attack. The foreign element may be a separate entity in itself, a relatively easy target to search and destroy. But what if the enemy is only half foreign, or part foreign? What then? How do we get the snipers out who are actually living in the building with the permission of the owners, integrated in the society, and even being supported and cared for by the unsuspecting owners? The trained assassins have no choice but to sacrifice the innocent but ignorant and unsuspecting owners, for the sake of the many others that need to be protected. ( I did not say that this was fair, I only report to you what actually happens.)
The best of assassins are trained not to feel, but to do their job "come hell or high water". Armies of the immune system do just that, and very well, I might add. So tissues and organs harboring foreign invaders, from all corners of the chemical and biological worlds, are attacked repeatedly and are eventually destroyed by the body's own forces in an effort to rid it of "snipers" who do nothing but muck up the biochemical pathways. Eventually, the immune "army" tires in their efforts to eliminate an indestructible foe, and fall prey to more attackers and invaders, succumbing to every bug that comes along, or, worse yet, running out of good training personnel for the special forces. When this happens, as would happen if the budgets were cut, awesome assassins would be created, but there would be no one to teach them which uniforms to shoot at. A high percentage of allies would be senselessly lost. So too with the body, on a nutritional budget cut, common with today's Standard American Diet (aptly referred to as "SAD".)
If our thymus is not able to monitor the training very well of its premier assassins, to eliminate and weed out the improperly trained ones, these renegades then set up their own training facilities, cloning themselves and passing down the errors of their ways. They orient their attacks to different specific tissues and organs of the body, but all originate in the thymus gland, the seat of immune function. This describes "autoimmune disease".
Figure 2
• Pancreas - Type 1 Diabetes (often called "childhood diabetes")
• Thyroid - Hashimoto's thyroiditis, Grave’s Disease
• Connective Tissue and other systems - Systemic Lupus Erythematosis (SLE)
• Skeletal muscles - Fibromyalgia
• Myelin sheath of nerves - Multiple Sclerosis (MS)
• Joints - Rheumatoid Arthritis
So how do we medically describe this sad play of events? Traditionally, we have named the diseases after the targeted tissues or organs. This was useful because of the different sets of syndromes and symptoms that were elicited by the partial incapacitation and inflammation of the targeted tissues or organs. Some of the more common targets for autoimmune responses and their corresponding names for the "diseases" are shown in Figure 2 to the right.
You notice I have put the word "disease" in quotations. This is because these manifestations are not truly separate "diseases" per say. They are all a result of a weakened and or faulty thymus gland, and are really only different manifestations of one disease. Traditional medicine still calls them different diseases, however, and it was thought to be so until very recently, when knowledge of the importance of the thymus gland was discovered. In traditional medicine, diseases are described and identified by the combination of symptoms and manifestations called "syndromes".
New Age medicine, like New Age everything else, seeks to integrate into the whole, showing how everything is connected to everything else, and that virtually nothing ever really stands alone. This style of thinking is the foundation of the holistic approach to medicine, which is so popular, and I might add, so effective, especially in treating conditions like Environmentally Induced Illness. This is the direction in which medicine is evolving , and it is a most welcome thing. We have learned, finally, that the biological package that we call a "living entity" is not just a collection of its parts, like the parts of a car, that function independently from one another.
All tissues work together to bring about the healthy existence of the organism. Some even sacrifice themselves for others to provide nutritional support in times of crisis or life threatening situations. You certainly don't see this in a car! There have been times, when I thought about this, cruising down the expressway far from the next exit on an empty gas tank. I wished, then, that the oil and water would automatically kick in to the temporarily empty gas tank, but no such luck. The oil never says tot he empty gas tank, “I’ll loan you some.”
Even though the radioactive plume that came from Japan was reported to be carrying non-toxically low levels of radiation to the U.S. coast line, one should not discount the risks involved with exposure. Radiation and the molecules like xenon gas, strontium, plutonium, cesium and uranium that accompanied the plume are NOT harmless on any level, and Fukushima hasn't completely stopped spewing them. All radiation exposure is cumulative, meaning the body has no way of expelling radioactive molecules. Though radioactive molecules become less radioactive over time, most do so very slowly and will not decay within a lifetime. Thus, the low amounts of radiation we take in daily from computer and cell phone use, medical x-rays, breathing in radioactive radon gas (which is extremely common), and now the environmental contaminates from Fukushima accumulate in our bodies and continue to do damage long after the primary exposure.
Fukushima - Radioactive Iodine 131 global spread
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),
Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics, NASA and ESA
Stretch of time: March 12th - 28th, 2011
After the Fukushima nuclear disaster, conventional news reported that by the time the toxic cloud reached the U.S. its toxicity would be barely measurable. Incorrect reporting, and poor science, due to the perceived need to dampen hysteria allowed a failure to estimate the length of time the reactors would be pumping this stuff out, and the actual dosage that different populations would be exposed to accordingly. Level-headed concern and hysteria are completely different things.
A few simple measures can provide significant protection from common radiation exposure and situational radiation contamination like we are experiencing now. NASA indicates that orbiting astronauts (who are exposed to excessive amounts of cosmic radiation from space), can mitigate the damaging effects by supplementing with a multivitamin. There are similarities between the radiation astronauts experience in orbit and what we're getting on the ground. Multivitamins high in Vitamin C, and supplemental iodine (both found in Adaptive Advantages®) are a few the only known measures to help you evade the harmful stuff we're now exposed to in our air, food, and water supply.
Ann Kennedy, head of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute’s Radiation Effects Team and radiation oncology professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, reports that vitamin deficiencies can have a large impact of how detrimental radiation exposure is to the body. The American Medical Association advises all adults to take multivitamins daily to prevent cancer, osteoporosis, and heart disease, among other chronic diseases, and Kennedy points out that multivitamins may also help "prevent, restrict, and reverse damage" caused by radiation exposure. Other studies, including those listed below, substantiate NASA's claim. A healthy, well-supplemented body is best equipped to deal with radiation.
Radiation Effects on Membranes: Vitamin E Deficiency and Lipid Peroxidation Reports that mice deficient in Vitamin E were more sensitive to radiation exposure.
Vitamin D as Radiation Protection Suggests that vitamin D could offer significant protection against low levels of radiation. Dr. Daniels Hayes in the International Journal of Low Radiation suggests that vitamin D "could be used as a safe protective agent before or after a low-level nuclear incident."
"Protection Against Radiation-induced Oxidative Stress" indicates that antioxidants including coQ10 and selenomethionine protect breast cells exposed to x-ray and other radiation against oxidative stress when used before and during radiation treatment.
Iodine deficiency can be an open door through which radioactive materials can enter the body. This is bad news for over 95% of the current U.S. population who are iodine deficient. Studies by Dr. David Brownstein and and Dr. Guy Abraham, leaders in iodine research, show compromised thyroid and basal metabolism statistics have been worsening in epidemic proportions in just the last 10 years. See Current Use in Therapy.
With our iodine receptors starving for iodine from the day we're born, other similar molecules temporarily fake their way into the gap. Bromides and fluorides are known to confuse the iodine-deficient body in a similar way as radioiodine-131 does. Doing damage every moment they are there, these charlatan molecules block up the iodine receptors until the more preferable iodine actually gets ingested. Once iodine is ingested, the toxic elements (charlatan molecules) get bumped out of these receptor sites and replaced with iodine. At this time, the toxic elements are then mobilized into the blood stream. Most all clients would be well off to begin a detox protocol(s) to help usher these out of the body through sweat, urine, and/or feces. I would especially recommend chasing iodine with sea salt 30 minutes after dosing, as well as the liver-gallbladder cleanse. My research has found that the majority of the symptoms associated with higher iodine doses are actually a result of excessive mobilized toxins failing to leave the blood stream at the speed that they are being mobilized into it. Ushering toxic elements out is just as important as mobilizing them out the receptor sites. If you can usher them out fast enough, you can avoid unwanted symptoms resulting from therapeutic iodine supplementation.
For most people and mammals, iodine in specialized vitamin/mineral supplements like those in Vita Royal's program will raise low temperatures significantly - in about two days to two weeks. Whatever temperature it can't raise might be made up in actual thyroid supplementation if necessary. My approach is to try to get the body to do as much as it can on its own, by supplying what it needs in the way of raw materials, and incorporating detox protocols to eliminate the toxic interferences. Avoidance of further exposure is a must, though.
Then use the ‘big guns’ last, the actual hormone supplementation, and just make up for what the body can't do - not to totally replace and shut down the body's own ability, like conventional medicine does with drug intervention.
If you interfere with the body's natural controls and feedback mechanisms, generally you will make the body weak and lazy by doing things for it. This procedure also produces dependence - something that holistic medicine deplores. So - supplemental thyroid is just that. This is most often the case.
Thyroid supplementation is also helpful for low thyroid female humans and animals who do not produce enough progesterone to balance their estrogen, resulting in many hormone symptoms and imbalances. Environmental chemicals cause low Luteinizing Hormone (LH) and high prolactin suppressing LH, accelerating aging. This plus the action of additional xenoestrogens add up to retained follicles that are functional - and producing even more estrogen. These are ovarian cysts. The condition is called ‘estrogen dominance’. Iodine supplementation helps a lot. Iodine has been shown to decrease estrone and estradiol and increase the safe estrogen, estriol. Thyroid supplementation may also be needed. Many thyroid supplementation cases are also autoimmune cases.
As the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has stated, potassium iodide can help prevent the thyroid gland (where a lot of our body's iodine is concentrated) as well as other tissues, from absorbing radio active iodine-131. It appears that the same principles apply to iodine receptor sites within the thyroid as to other forms of toxic elements that fit loosely fit into receptors all over the body, but far more so when essential element levels are deficient. If you have not been taking any supplemental iodine, and especially if you have symptoms of environmental distress, metabolic syndrome or thyroid issues, I recommend you start iodine supplementation now. Otherwise, your body is likely to attempt to metabolize toxic forms of elements. If your bodily needs are fulfilled, then the radioactive iodine and accompanying toxic elements will more easily pass through your body.
Some people report weight gain, throat swelling with increased sleep apnea, snoring, and sinus drainage when first starting iodine supplementation. This is common when there are heavy amounts of toxic body burden, like we have today, sequestered in thyroid and other tissues. Iodine has been known for over 100 years to cause starches and saccharides (which are sugar molecules) chained together, to swell 25 - 40x their size in the initial course of their destruction by iodine. Since toxic bloat is a mucopolysaccharide, it will be similarly affected as well. This explains why people often see initial swelling in the throat/thyroid and body weight gain when they start with iodine, and it is this initial observation that caused the iodophobia we now have in the conventional thinking about using iodine in higher more therapeutic doses than are being used in common supplements today. While these symptoms can be uncomfortable for the few who experience them, symptoms will dissipate as the mucin in toxic bloat is destroyed and weight loss typically occurs thereafter.
It all depends on where these products are grown. If they are grown indoors (as Vita Royal's sources are) then you can avoid the arsenic concentrations that are typical in the sea-grown products. Moreover, if you're supplementing your diet with products that are grown in the Pacific, you will be taking on the radiation contamination present there on top of the high levels of arsenic. Arsenic is known to oppose iodine in mineral interactions just as calcium opposes phosphorus. Arsenic is another iodine mimic, but it's toxic. †1, †2
†1 UC Davis Study Finds High Arsenic Levels In Herbal Kelp Supplements - A study of herbal kelp supplements led by UC Davis public health expert Marc Schenker concludes that its medicinal use may cause inadvertent arsenic poisoning and health dangers for consumers, especially when overused. Schenker and two researchers evaluated nine over-the-counter herbal kelp products and found higher than acceptable arsenic levels in eight of them.
†2 The new study, published in the April issue of Environmental Health Perspectives, was prompted by the case of a 54-year-old woman who was seen at the UC Davis Occupational Medicine Clinic following a two-year history of worsening alopecia (hair loss), fatigue and memory loss.
Current nutritional recommendations for iodine intake were set back in the early 1920s before science understood the importance of iodine to the body. We now know that the thyroid gland, skin, brain, lymphatics, and various other tissues and organs of the body rely on iodine to function normally. We also know that cultural and environmental changes made a reevaluation of the amount of iodine our bodies need to thrive imperative.
Up until the 1960s, people ate much more iodized salt in their diets. Bread dough was conditioned with iodine. Sunbathers slathered their skin daily with baby oil and iodine to prevent sunburn. Iodine was even used in disinfection and added to water. We've removed the vast majority of iodine from our consumer choices (our human environment) over the past decades.
Additionally, we haven’t had the huge exposures we do now to organic goitrogens, dioxides, hormone mimics, and the competing toxic halides: chlorine, bromine, and fluorine. All of these factors require more in-depth studies on iodine needs and an increase in iodine intake in the diet.
Dr. Brownstein and Dr. Abraham have thus far pioneered the use of iodine as elemental iodine and potassium iodide, and various mixtures thereof, in high doses for everything from breast cancer, thyroid cancer, and general health, even alongside Armour thyroid with very good success. They have negated many myths falsely associated with higher iodine supplementation and re-evaluated old studies on iodine that did not consider the presence or activity of goitrogenic substances that subjects were also exposed to. These, they found, were actually the cause of the goiters and adverse reactions thought to be iodine related. Their study was monumental.
My experience with iodine supplementation is also very compelling. I do not recommend using the elemental iodine in the Lugol’s formulation as I find it too irritating and harsh for internal use. Potassium iodide in liquid form is simpler, less apt to cause intestinal upset, and it's taste free. It does not stain or burn when applied to the skin. Elemental iodine may be best for addressing skin warts or other growths as it is harsher, but time will tell if the softer potassium iodide will give the same results.
I am always searching for new doctors to work with because of the complaints that will shortly come from patients, about one, two and three hour waits in the lobby, and three to five month waits to get in to see those doctors, once the word is out. It is my hope, that, with this site and my educational materials, more physicians will become interested in helping these people, so more will take a more active role in achieving their own state of health. This process will relieve the physicians of a great amount of responsibility which their patients should rightly assume.
There really is no little pill that will cure all, and allow us to abdicate responsibility for ourselves. Hopefully, as you read this page it will give you a sound background so that you can provide more pertinent information to your physicians to better help you. Then help the process to attain health yourself, by taking responsibility for adjustments in unhealthy lifestyles such as smoking, eating, exposures and exercise. In fact, I make this point right up front with my clientele, that I cannot work with them unless they are actively making these responsible adjustments. One can be led to the right road, but it is unfair to ask to be carried down it.
Our progressive physicians are finally realizing that they are not simply "medical mechanics", but really step-in "orchestra directors", trying to find out who is playing the wrong notes in the symphony!
Incidentally, information provided to you here is not commonly known to most physicians, not even to most of those who work so closely with this subject on a daily basis. So, in a way, you will be more knowledgeable in these subjects than the physicians you consult with. Please be patient with them. They do not have the time to pursue a 10 hour a day course of study for 40 years that it took me to comprise this research. They are too busy in their offices seeing increasing numbers of patients, and their increasing numbers of complaints. This schedule is certainly enough to frazzle anybody. They are practicing medicine with the body of knowledge that they learned in mostly medical school, and this information, for the most part, wasn't in their books.
Today, it is only found in international research books, so expensive ($150.00 to $300.00 per book on average) that medical libraries only purchase one, and for reference only, not to be checked out. My favorite haunt, the University of Michigan Medical Library in Ann Arbor, where I began my research some forty five years ago as a very sick student, still invites me, though.
Scanning shelves of well-filled stacks of recent acquisitions gives me further ideas on books to order for my own reference library, since it is not practical to copy an entire book that cannot be checked out. You would be surprised at the information known up to 100 years ago that has been forgotten or orphaned. I am now presenting to you some of this" lost" information as "new", simply because many patients and health care practitioners are just now hearing it for the first time.
