Iodine plays a major role in maintaining your general state of health, as well as a role in preventing various types of cancer, such as breast cancer and prostate cancer. Iodine supplements can also reduce your risk of uptake of radioactive iodine that may be present in the environment.
My belief is that most of the population today has insufficient iodine in their body and in their diet. Iodine insufficiency has become a problem.
In determining for yourself whether iodine supplements are necessary, it is important to understand that iodine has a number of very important functions in your body. It is taken up by the thyroid gland and used to make hormones. The thyroid gland produces two important hormones – Thyroxine (also known as T4) and Triiodothyronine (also known as T3). Thyroxine is around 80% of the thyroid’s hormone output, and Triiodothyronine is the remaining 20%.
Thyroxine has major influence over your physical development and your metabolic processes. Triiodothyronine is more potent than T4 and has an effect on overall growth and development, rate, body temperature, and metabolism.
Apart from the thyroid most of your tissues and glands also need iodine to support proper functioning. This includes salivary glands, gonads – prostate and ovaries, mammary glands, the lining of the stomach, and the thymus. Iodine also has antioxidant properties and can help in controlling free radicals thereby supporting your immune system. In this regard it also plays a key role in controlling auto-immune problems.
In terms of cancer support, iodine plays an important role of destroying cells that may have become cancerous. Apart from all that iodine has the ability to rid the body of many toxins such as fluoride, chloride, bromide, and heavy metals such as mercury and lead.
So you can now begin to understand why iodine is so critical for your health, and why iodine supplementation may need to be considered.
Iodine supplements are rapidly getting considerable attention amongst health professionals. The concept of supplementation with iodine supplements is gaining favor amongst many people.
The consumption of iodine in the U.S.A per person is around 100 times less than that consumed by Japanese people. Over the past 40-50 years most of the western countries have changed their policies towards iodine and no longer is iodine present in bread or salt. This makes a stronger case for considering the use of iodine supplements today.
Iodine is an essential trace element required by our bodies to produce hormones from the thyroid gland. Many people (including doctors) do not realize that the female ovaries also have the ability to make thyroid hormone. Iodine is not manufactured by the body and needs to be part of our daily diet so that adequate levels are maintained. If we are unable to consume sufficient iodine through normal diet then perhaps we should seriously consider iodine supplements.
The optimum amount of iodine required by the whole body to maintain health has not really ever been studied and is unknown. The current recommended daily allowance for iodine is simply based on the amount of iodine/iodide needed to prevent diseases known to be caused by an iodine deficiency, such as diseases of the thyroid gland and some growth and development diseases. It should not be assumed that the amount of iodine to stop a deficiency-disease is the same as that required to maintain a healthy state of the whole body.
It is known that iodine plays an important role throughout the entire body and cellular system. In fact there is increasing evidence from scientific studies that insufficient iodine is a major contributing factor in breast disease and cancer. Some health professionals consider that iodine supplements may play an important role in health maintenance and cancer prevention.
It is perhaps unlikely there will be any studies undertaken to determine the optimum healthy level of iodine, and whether iodine supplements are necessary. The main reason being there is no profit for the drug companies or those with vested economic interests to ‘discover’ the importance of iodine (a naturally occurring element of nature) in disease prevention. However there are some doctors doing there own scientific and clinical research who are coming up with very interesting results that can benefit those of us who are interested in disease prevention and maintaining our own health. Most notably these include Drs Abraham, Bernstein, and Flechas.
Based purely on demographic analyses, the mainland Japanese people consume as part of their normal diet an average of 13.8 mg of iodine daily, and they would seem to be among the healthiest people in the world. In consideration of this and all of the research I have read about iodine, I personally supplement my diet with Iodoral iodine supplements on a daily basis.
Of all the iodine supplements available, Iodoral was the product of choice for me for the following main reasons:
- dosage enables both therapeutic level of usage and ongoing maintenance usage as required. Most other iodine supplements contain only a very small dosage of iodine.
- contains both iodine and iodide (as potassium iodide) in what I feel are the optimum proportions beneficial for the body. Most other iodine supplements do not contain both these essential forms.
- Iodoral iodine supplements are in tablet form rather than liquid form
- the iodine supplement formula and product is designed by a medical practitioner renowned for his knowledge of iodine, his research and his clinical findings on the subject of iodine in sufficient levels to maintain health
It is always advisable to discuss your health and health maintenance plan with your own health professional. This also applies to your decision to use iodine supplements. Having the knowledge and information available to you will enable you to decide for yourself after consultation with your health professional whether you feel that the use of iodine supplements may be beneficial for you.
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