Thyroid, Goiter and Iodine

Posted on

If you live in the Midwest, you live in the Goiter Belt

We live in the Mid Western part of the United States, and the land here was never under the seas. As a result of that, it was never saturated with iodine from the sea kelp. Our agricultural products are grown and marketed without our ever obtaining the essential ingredient of iodine from our food intake because it was never in the soil that grew the food.

“Why do we need iodine in our food intake” you ask? Iodine is the ingredient that activates the thyroid and makes it work. Your thyroid can malfunction by being hyper active or hypoactive. Under, or over active. Either of these is bad. There are many visible cues that tell us that a thyroid is malfunctioning. Doctors tend to notice it more in men than in women, in part because when they see the symptoms and then take blood tests to measure, the blood tests are normed entirely for men and not for women. So a woman’s score will be the same as if she is a man. This leads to many problems because women tend to store iodine in their breast tissue. The breast are intense receptor sites for iodine and it tends to go to them and not to the rest of the body. Therefore the thyroid does not get enough, for many women, even if they are taking supplements or eating iodine enriched foods.

There are also issues with the “chemistry set” manipulations of whole health thinking. We add fluoride and chlorine to our water for health reasons. These are important considerations, but these ingredients will counteract the iodine supplements that people obtain to make their thyroids work properly. It is complex and needs to be discussed with your physician. Listen to our podcast to get some information you may need and then see if you need to talk to your own doctor about your thyroid.

Related Post: