Transcription
So we're going to talk about iodine, okay? You probably already know the importance of iodine with your thyroid, right? And also, if a pregnant woman is deficient in iodine, that child could end up with a lower IQ, not to mention even structural problems.
I've done other videos on the importance of iodine as an antimicrobial. Iodine can be used as a patch over viruses that can cause skin tags. It's also good for fungus, like a toenail fungus. And if there's some type of problem with radiation in your environment, you need to take iodine immediately to protect your thyroid against the damage.
But there's some other really important purposes of iodine that you should know about. And the reason I'm talking about it is chances are there's a lot of you out there listening that are deficient. Since over 2 billion people on this planet are deficient in iodine, unless you're consuming shellfish, seaweed, or sea kelp, or consuming vegetables on the coastal line, chances are you're not getting much iodine because our soils are so depleted in iodine. Farmers usually don't put iodine back in the soil. They might put potassium, phosphorus, and nitrogen, but not iodine. So the level of iodine in your body really depends on the level of iodine in the food and the soil that it's grown on or raised on.
Now, before I dive into some of these other issues, hypothyroid, okay? If you are deficient in iodine, you could end up with a hypothyroid condition. And you should just know the general symptoms: swelling in the lower part of your neck, difficulty losing weight. Okay, you've tried everything, it's just not working, it could be your thyroid. Next thing could be dry hair, dry skin, thinned hair, and even constipation. So those generally are the common symptoms with the thyroid. There's a lot more, but I wanted to cover those.
The first thing I want to talk about is the relationship between iodine and estrogen. Iodine buffers or helps regulate estrogen. Iodine helps prevent someone from developing estrogen dominance, okay? That's a situation where you have too much estrogen, and you might have heavy periods. You might get cysts in your breast, like as in fibrocystic breast. You might have cysts on the ovaries. You might have extra waking in the lower part of your body. The problem with too much estrogen is that it can increase your risk for cancer: breast, ovary, uterus. And in men, you can even develop more of a risk for prostate cancer. So low iodine could relate to high levels of estrogen. High levels of estrogen can directly block the thyroid, creating a hypothyroid condition. And the same thing goes with low iodine, it can actually cause a lack of production of thyroid hormones, giving you a hypothyroid case. So you can see how iodine can help the thyroid generate hormones, and it can help buffer the estrogen, which is potentially a problem for your thyroid.
Iodine is also important in the liver. It helps you to detoxify certain things. It's involved in this phase one, phase two detoxification, okay? Iodine is needed for phase two, especially in the detoxification of plastics, herbicides, fungicides, heavy metals, things like that that act like estrogen, and they're called endocrine disruptors. So iodine is needed to really dismantle all that and remove that from the body. If you don't have enough iodine, it kind of backs up in the liver, it backs up into the body.
If you have a hypothyroid condition, a slow thyroid, your ability to metabolize cholesterol is not going to be good. So what does this mean? It means that the cholesterol in your body is going to be elevated, okay? Number one, and really unusable for certain things. You see, we need cholesterol to make certain things, especially like vitamin D, your cell membranes, and bile. The bile that is stored in your gallbladder is produced by the liver, is made out of cholesterol, and it regulates cholesterol. So if you don't have enough cholesterol, whether because your thyroid is lowered or you're taking a Statin drug, you could end up with a bile deficiency. And anytime you have a bile deficiency with an elevated cholesterol, you get a super concentrated or a saturated situation where you can develop gallstones and bile sludge, okay? And if you have bile sludge or gallstones, you're going to get pain or discomfort underneath the right rib cage. You can get pain, especially after eating, in your stomach area. That pain can refer up to the right shoulder and the shoulder blade and the back part. So without enough bile, you know, like I'm not even saying you might get stones, you just might have sludge that produces the same symptoms, and it's really hard to detect. So this lack of bile can create a lot of discomfort. But also, one of its functions is to help you get rid of cholesterol, okay? So now we have another reason for it to back up in the system, and also to get rid of estrogen and other things like that are in excess, like toxins. So we have some enzymes in the liver that are dependent on iodine that can back up toxins, but also without enough bile, you can just have this backup of toxins through that pathway as well.
Bile also helps to kill bacteria in your small intestine. It prevents what's called SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, okay? Because it acts like a detergent to clear that out. And so without bile or enough bile, you can end up having this bacteria that overgrows, and then you get all this bloating, especially if you consume fiber, vegetables, salad, things like that.
Now, another thing that iodine can help someone with is if they're producing too much cortisol, like because they're really stressed, right? And they just have high levels of cortisol, iodine can help lower that. Another thing that iodine is good for is to help buffer the excessive estrogen effect from consuming soy products. That's probably the reason, um, some of the Asian population can get away with consuming a lot of soy because they also consume a lot of or seek help that has iodine in it, okay?
So if you wanted to get iodine, sea kelp is a good way, or seaweed, same thing. Shellfish, any fish that lives in the ocean, okay, will have a good amount of iodine. But the problem is, like I said before, our soils are so depleted. So unless you're consuming fish or seaweed or sea kelp, um, you're going to have a hard time getting iodine. Now, sea salt has some iodine in it, not too much, but it has some.
Probably someone's wondering right now, what about Hashimoto's? Should you be taking a lot of iodine if you have Hashimoto's? The jury's out on exactly if you should, but I will say you need some. You need a sufficient amount of iodine for Hashimoto's and other types of hypothyroid conditions, but you don't want to take a lot of iodine if you have Hashimoto's. Just take a normal amount from sea kelp. The mineral that you need in moderate amounts would be selenium, okay? Selenium, you can get that in sea kelp and Brazil nuts, as well as in shellfish or seafood. But selenium is really important in the conversion of the thyroid hormones from T4 to T3. T3 is the active form, so it helps make this conversion. Zinc also helps. Vitamin D can help reduce the inflammation in Hashimoto's. But anytime someone has Hashimoto's, they also recommend in addition to that, take what's called myo-inositol, okay? Take that as well. But I would not be afraid of taking some iodine, just don't take large amounts.
But I really wanted you to get this very important relationship between iodine and the gallbladder, iodine and cholesterol, iodine in the thyroid, and how that can relate to having all sorts of additional problems. I created a very unique video on iodine years ago, and if you haven't seen that, I think you would enjoy it. I'll put it up right here.