Over the last 50 years, iodine levels have fallen over 50%. We've tested over 8,000 people for iodine levels; just right below 98% are iodine deficient. The vast majority are severely iodine deficient. And in our toxic world with our exposure to fluoride and bromide at the levels that we have right now, you can't get enough in from food.

In medical school, the only thing I learned about iodine was that iodine deficiency was a thing of the past and iodized salt corrected that. And no one's iodine deficient anymore. Even though when I was in medical school, the studies were coming out from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey that the vast majority of Americans were deficient in iodine.

And I would try iodine in the first 10 years of my holistic practice, little amounts, medium amounts, and large amounts. And it wasn't helping patients like thyroid hormone was helping. Dr. Abraham taught me why the form of iodine I was using wasn't working in my patients. And when I started using the right form of iodine, I started to have the great results that I'm still getting today.

I said 50 years iodine levels have been falling across the United States. It started around 1970. So, what happened in 1970?

Dr. Brownstein, great to have you back on the show. For our second conversation. I think a good framework for us, at least to start, is to look at the myths surrounding iodine and bust them. Are you with me?

I'm with you.

Okay. First one is that too much iodine causes Hashimoto's. Take that and run. There are some loud practitioners on the internet making that claim and they've been making that claim for years. It's interesting they're making that claim over these years that iodine levels have been falling across the United States according to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. And over the last 50 years, iodine levels have fallen over 50%. Um, during that same time, autoimmune thyroid diseases have skyrocketed epidemically. So really, we could end our discussion here because that's that's an inverse correlation. That's a negative correlation and that rules out iodine as the cause of the autoimmune thyroid epidemic that we're having. So um in my in if you look back in the literature, it's pretty clear that iodine deficiency sets up the thyroid for autoimmune thyroid disease. But as far as iodine causing the epidemic of autoimmune thyroid disease, that's proven false. Um, anyone who still says it is spreading misinformation and you know it's just not true.

Okay, slight pivot. Somebody that has Hashimoto's should avoid iodine.

So, you know, I write about this in my iodine book and in in my first 10 years of of when I went to medical school in residency, I went to be a family doctor. I didn't go to be an alternative medicine doctor or a holistic doctor, you know, however you want to refer to me as. Um, I bought into everything I was taught, hook, line, and sinker. I was straight as an arrow and I never deviated from what I was taught. Um, and so, so when I started practicing conventional medicine, I lasted about six months before I realized this is just isn't for me. I'm not making my patients better. I'm not making myself better. And I'm I'm not helping my patients. um um just prescribing drugs to treat the side effects or treat the symptoms of illnesses and more drugs to treat the problems of the first drugs.

So then I think we talked about it in my last interview with you and I get into it more if you wanted me to, but I I my dad was my first patient and he had bad heart disease and um he was on 12 medications to control cholesterol and hypertension and diabetes. And simply by getting him on a couple of bioidentical hormones, particularly thyroid hormone and testosterone, his 30-year history of heart disease, you know, got significantly better. His 20-year history of continuous angina went away within seven days. His cholesterol in the 300s fell below 200 without changing any of his bad habits. And I decided, hey, I'm going to do holistic medicine, whatever that was, cuz I didn't really know at that time. But what I knew was my dad got better from two bioidentical hormones. And I started thyroid hormone and testosterone. So, I really started focusing on every single patient from that moment on, including up until 35 years later. Now, everyone gets a hormonal evaluation. Everyone gets a thyroid hormone evaluation and so I started diagnosing a lot of hypothyroidism and autoimmune thyroid disease at the time and the a lot of it was hypothyroid and I was putting people on thyroid hormone. Now I didn't know about iodine at that time and I was primarily using solely thyroid hormone to correct hypothyroidism um and trying nutrients to see if they would work for it and I would try various nutrients. I would check was drawing a lot of blood tests, checking a lot of nutrient levels and I was trying magnesium, selenium, um, vitamin C, you know, whatever they were deficient in or whatever they were lacking and nothing worked like thyroid hormone to get hypothyroid patients feeling better. And I was also trying iodine at that time.

Now, I didn't know a lot about iodine first 10 years of my clinical practice. And iodine for me was a difficult item to study. It's got all these different isomers and you know there there's iodide, there's iodine, there's iodate and um you didn't learn about it in medical school. No one ever talked about it in medical school. The only thing I learned about iodine was that iodine deficiency um was a thing of the past and iodized salt corrected that and no one's iodide deficient anymore. That's what I learned in medical school. Um, even though when I was in medical school, the studies were coming out from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey that the vast majority of Americans were deficient in iodine. But anyways, that's what I learned. So, I wasn't using iodine. And I would try iodine in the first 10 years of my holistic practice, little amounts, medium amounts, and large amounts. And it wasn't helping patients like thyroid hormone was helping.

And during during that first 10 years of my practice, two studies came out by by a researcher from the east coast, Esken. And the first study looked at women who were on thyroid hormone for women who took thyroid hormone versus women who didn't take thyroid hormone. And the women who took thyroid hormone had a I don't have the numbers exactly in my head, 25 30% increased risk of breast cancer if you took thyroid hormone versus women who didn't take thyroid hormone. The second study done by the same group found the longer you took thyroid hormone, the more breast cancer there was in the thyroid hormone group. So the women who took thyroid hormone for at least 10 years had a 50% increased risk of breast cancer versus women who never took thyroid hormone.

Now I was clearly taught in medical school that hypothyroidism is associated with different cancers including breast cancer. Um I there was a lot of research pointing that direction that you know hypothyroid state can lead to to you know abnormal growth of tissue in the glandular tissue um including the breast. And so here was a researcher publishing a couple of articles saying hey if you put women on thyroid hormone their breast cancer risk goes up and if they're on it for at least 10 years it goes up significantly 50% higher. Now, in the US, we have one in seven women with breast cancer. A lifetime risk of breast cancer. I mean, one in seven. Think about all the women in your life. That's a lot of women, you know, that, you know, have this risk out there. And, um, I certainly don't want to do anything to increase that risk. Um, but um, I looked at those studies in the first 10 years and I I'm pretty good at I'm pretty good at reading research, pretty good with statistics, thought they were decent studies and I I didn't know what to do with them and I filed them away and I they bugged me and I kept coming back to them and I kept reading them and they continued to bug me.

And then around year 10 of this holistic practice, a doctor writes a letter to my to one of the journals that I get saying he develops an iodine test, iodine loading test. His name was Dr. Guy Abraham. He became my mentor in iodine. He became a a dear friend of mine and a colleague. And I saw the article and I thought, "Wow, iodine has failed me over and over." I there wasn't a great test at that time that I could use to look at iodine levels in the human body. I called him up. Um, Dr. Dr. Abraham was a tough guy to talk to till he gets to know you. I took a lot of abuse in the first few phone calls. He thought I was he was very leery of other doctors stealing his information or even misusing his information. And so I I kept on and um because I wanted to know about this test. And then he started sending me articles that he had written. and I went through his articles and all of a sudden I started reading about iodine and breast disease and I I didn't really know about it up until then and the the relationship between iodine and breast disease was been written about for that time that was 1990s uh you know 50 years and there's a lot of research with iodine and fibrocystic breast disease as the treatment of choice for it we now know fibrocystic breast disease is a precursor to breast cancer that's affecting one in seven women across the United States. And there's a lot of articles in iodine and breast cancer in animals test tube and human human studies. Um, so Dr. Abraham taught me why the form of iodine I was using wasn't working in my patients. And when I started using the right form of iodine, I started to have the great results that I'm still getting today.

And as soon as I saw the relationship with iodine in the breast, I immediately went back to the Esken articles. And it's like the old V8 commercials for those of us old enough to remember them. And I hit myself in the head. I'm like, it's the iodine stupid. That's the relationship between why women who took thyroid hormone had an increased risk of breast cancer versus women who didn't take thyroid hormone. Why women who took thyroid hormone for at least 10 years had a 50% increased risk of breast cancer versus women who didn't. Because when you give someone when you give someone thyroid hormone with hypothyroid, if they're iodine deficient, you're going to increase the metabolic needs of the body, which increase iodine needs of the body. If they're iodine deficient, giving that thyroid hormone is going to make the iodine deficiency worse. And the consequences of that are glandular problems. Problems include thyroid. The glands include thyroid, ovaries, uterus, breast, prostate, and pancreas. What are we seeing today? Third time I'll mention it. One in seven women with a lifetime risk of breast cancer in United States. Fastest growing cancer in the United States is thyroid cancer. We all know people with pancreatic cancer. It's gone. It's is pancreatic cancer used to be relatively uncommon when I was young and in my training years. Now you're seeing pancreatic cancer in young people. Um, uh, ovaries, uterus, prostate. Men have a one in three risk of prostate cancer if they live to above the age of 70. Um, I say all these problems can be due to iodine deficiency.

So back to your original question, if they have Hashimoto's disease, since Hashimoto's disease in what I write about in my book and and with studying the literature, Hashimoto's disease and Graves disease is due to iodine deficiency in the vast majority of people. The treatment for it is iodine as part of a holistic treatment regimen. Now, the only caveat to that is if somebody has an autonomously functioning thyroid nodule, that's a small nodule that's lost control. The thyroid has lost control. The body's lost control of it. It's on its own. It's sitting in the thyroid gland somewhere, which is in lower part of the neck here. And if you give iodine to those people, that nodule can soak it up, make a lot of thyroid hormone, and make people hyperthyroid. They don't like that. Now, in 30 years of doing this, give or take, um, I've got a handful of people who have this problem. I mean, it's it's it's not this many hands. It's less than this. And my partners occasionally will run across it. It's it's not many, but it's out there. That's the real risk of doing it. Otherwise, I've treated many patients with Hashimoto's disease with iodine. My two daughters being an N of two. Um, they were diagnosed by their mother because their father was too busy and you know, not paying attention. And she's like, "Hey, you think they got a thyroid problem?" And um, so they both had Hashimoto's disease. I've got when I lecture to doctors, I show the I show the sequence of testing with with them as I put them on iodine and watch their autoimmune thyroid titers TPO and thyroglobulin antibodies go down. Um, so if the hypothesis is that Hashimoto's is caused by iodine, whether you're going to say iodine excess or just iodine, period, well, my N of two can disprove that hypothesis because a hypothesis has to withstand all criticisms. If there's one failure shown in this hypothesis, the hypothesis has to be reworked. But that hypothesis doesn't have to be reworked. It's just not true. Um, so that's a long answer to maybe a quick question. Maybe it's too long.

Somebody that has Hashimoto's and they're going to start supplementing with iodine, is that protocol different than somebody tuning in today that's healthy that's going to start including iodine?

Well, look, everyone is a unique biochemical individual and should be treated as such. So, I think everyone needs individual treatment. So, yeah, I mean, they're different people. Um, can a Hashimoto's patient take iodine? Yes, if as long as they don't have an autonomously functioning nodule and a good clinician can work with you and differentiate that and you know help you through that. Um, so in my practice, we've tested over 8,000 people for iodine levels. Over 97 is 98 just right below 98% are are iodine deficient. The vast majority are severely iodine deficient. And um the only people that aren't iodine deficient are the ones that have read my book, seen my lectures or something like that or taking iodine on their own. Everyone else seems to be iodine deficient. When I talk to my colleagues around the country and they do the testing, they're seeing the same thing that I'm seeing.

The reason I zoned in there with Hashimoto's and the protocol, I was just wondering if they had to take it slower. And then also on top of that, a lot of times if they've been diagnosed and they've seen a conventional doctor, they're going to be on thyroid meds. How does the medication change as they begin a protocol like we're talking about?

The answer to part of your question is that do I take it slower with people with Hashimoto's versus people without Hashimoto's? The answer is no. As long as they don't have an autonomously functioning nodule, I treat them the same. Um, and I find the vast majority of them their autoimmune titers go down. Many of them they become not Hashimoto's disease after a period of time with taking iodine. The answer to your second part of your question, for someone who's already on thyroid hormone, how do you do iodine? Well, recall the first 10 years of my practice, I was treating people with thyroid hormone without iodine. During that time period, my average dose of thyroid hormone was about two grains, 120 milligrams. Once I started adding iodine in and now I'm 25 years later, my average dose of thyroid hormone now in people is about 30 milligrams, 30 to 60 milligrams. So I'm down by, you know, twofold to fourfold thyroid hormone for what I need what I needed before versus using iodine now. Um, so I when I put people on thyroid hormone who I'm sorry, when I put people on iodine who are already on thyroid hormone, I I tell them the rule of thirds comes into play. Onethird of these patients on thyroid hormone are going to find they didn't need thyroid hormone, they just needed iodine. One-third are going to find they need half the dose of thyroid hormone and one-third are going to find they need the same dose of thyroid hormone. And when I take iodine all generally the entire group generally feels better and more energy and and better brain function and and more stability and and and you know just more you know jaw viv um so um it's interesting that I am now using much less thyroid hormone than I was you know 20 years ago 25 years ago in my practice and that is really solely because of iodine.

And when you do use it you mentioned the dosages is what type do you use?

So before the first 10 years of my practice, you know, I I wrote a book called Overcoming Thyroid Disorders and I I write about this in my book. The first 10 years of my practice um I was pretty adamant that that natural desiccated thyroid hormone um from a porcine derived source was the better source of thyroid hormone for people that needed thyroid hormone. It more closely mimics human thyroid hormones and people responded to that better than synthetic thyroid hormones like T4 derivatives only. Now that I'm using iodine, I'm not so stuck on that. What I find is that if people have enough iodine levels, if they get their iodine levels situated before they go on thyroid hormone, it generally doesn't matter what form of thyroid hormone they use, they'll respond to all of it pretty much equally. Having said all that, I do think the natural desiccated thyroid hormone is a little bit of a better choice for for most people.

And when it comes to T4, T3, the number there at the end is actually the amount of iodine in that molecule. So my question is when somebody's supplementing while actually taking a medication, does that already have the iodine part of that molecule or do we need iodine from the body to finish building that?

Perfect question. So thyroxine is T4. The four as you just said refers to four atoms of iodine attached to the thyroxine molecule and T3 is three iodines attached to the the triiodothyronine um molecule T3. So let me let me rephrase your question. Maybe your question could have stated do people need to take iodine if they're taking thyroid hormone because there's iodine attached to the thyroid hormone. That iodine in the thyroid hormone is used for the thyroid gland and for thyroid purposes. There's not enough iodine and thyroid medication to supply adequate amounts for the breast, the ovaries, uterus, pancreas, prostate, skin, hair, you know, nails, you know, every tissue, every cell in the body, every tissue in the body needs iodine. The highest concentration of iodine is in the um fat cells. Next highest concentration is in the muscles. Um, the thyroid gland at saturation contains 50 milligrams of iodine. T, when you when you're taking thyroid medication, it's micrograms. It's it's tiny amounts of iodine. It it's it's not enough for the whole body effect of iodine.

Well, the reason I was so curious is tying back to what you're talking about before, the connection between taking thyroid hormone and cancer.

The easy way to think about that is when you take thyroid hormone, you increase the metabolic needs of the body. the the metabolic machinery in every cell speeds up when you take thyroid hormone. So the consequence of this metabolic machinery speeding up is you produce heat. People are warmer. Their hands and feet and face and nose and stuff are warmer. Um you know in contrast with hypothyroid where there's not enough thyroid hormone, the metabolic machinery is running at a very slow rate. They're cold and that's a cardinal sign of hypothyroidism. and they have cold hands, cold feet, cold nose, um cold butt, you know, because they're not producing enough heat to to warm their body. So, when when you go in thyroid hormone, you increase the metabolic needs of the body. Those metabolic needs have to be met with iodine, part of it. And iodine helps the adrenals make adrenal hormone, helps the ovaries make ovarian hormones, helps the testicles make testicular hormones. Um, if if you increase those metabolic needs and you're iodine deficient, then problems are going to develop and that's where Dr. Esken studies found this increased risk of breast cancer in you know women supplement with thyroid hormone versus women who didn't take thyroid hormone. I mean I I remember looking at those studies for years thinking man these are bugging me think I'm doing something good by correcting diagnosing and treating hypothyroidism but yet am I going to cause one in seven women or more to have you know breast cancer problems and then you know I was lucky to come to a conclusion that I thought was valid and that makes sense to me and um certainly I've told you after I can see after 25 years it's made sense to my patients.

So when we talked about somebody with Hashimoto's versus a healthy patient starting to take iodine, you were clear that the protocol is the same. Talk about dosage wise and then specifically somebody with Hashimoto's, how quickly will things start changing in the body.

So with Hashimoto's disease, it's not just treat with iodine, you know, and see you later. It's checking vitamin levels, mineral levels, other hormone levels, uh toxification levels, and you know, cleaning up the diet, drinking water, exercise, you know, look all it's a part of a holistic treatment regimen. So, it's not just taking iodine. Um, so my average dose for starting someone in iodine for an adult is 25 milligrams. If they have cancer of the glandular tissue, thyroid, ovaries, uterus, breast, prostate, or pancreas, I'll I'll use more and I'll quickly use more. If they have glandular disease, I will use more and quickly use more. Um, and I've have I've have cancer patients taking hundreds of milligrams of iodine. Um, so and then I follow levels. I follow levels of their other hormones and their thyroid hormones. and I see people back and clinically evaluate them. I mean I have six partners. We all do this. We all do virtually the same thing in relation to that. Um the second part of your question was how quickly do the antibody levels come down? You know my kids when I show the sequence of events I my kids um were diagnosed by their wife. Um so we're we're having dinner one day. kids are about 11 and 12 years old and two girls they're playing soccer they're doing they're getting good grades everything's fine they're complaining being tired having headaches I kept saying telling oh they're teenagers you know this is what teenagers do and we're having dinner and she says to me do you think they have a thyroid problem because both Allison and I have thyroid problems I look up and I remember I had a fork or a spoon near my mouth and I'm like I stop and I like my other hand in my head I'm like you know it's like the kids the shoemaker's kids with no shoes. Um, so I draw their levels and they both have raging Hashimoto's disease and hypothyroidism. So um, not raging hypothyroid. They had small hyp, you know, tiny bits of hypothyroidism, but a lot of antibodies, you know, you know, uh, both Hay and Jess had antibodies of 700 and higher, you know, there and their thyroglobulin and TPO antibodies. Um, so I put them both in iodine and then I tracked their levels to come down. Haley was 12 years old. By 16 or 17 years old, her levels steadily came down to zero. Jesse's took a little bit longer, maybe 18, 19 years old. Um, neither of them have signs of Hashimoto's right now. Um, uh, you know, Hashimoto's disease makes pregnancy a little bit more difficult to get. Hey, we had a baby. Jesse's pregnant right now. Um, they feel better. Their headaches went away. Their fatigue went away. Um, I put them both on iodine. Now, they were kids. They were 11 and 12, you know, weighing over under 100 pounds. I put them on 12 and a half milligrams to start. I quickly raised them up even when they were that little to 25 and 50 milligrams as a as their levels kind of stalled after after a bit on 12 and a half. I bumped them 25 and then eventually they both went on 50 to 75 milligrams and um currently this N of two has no signs of Hashimoto's disease.

You quickly went over general practices that you'd recommend somebody take on with iodine and I actually had written down for my next question adjuncts as somebody takes iodine. So in a more specific sense I've heard things like selenium are an important thing to take when you're upping your iodine. What adjunct supplements do you recommend to people?

So, iodine should be used as part of a holistic treatment regimen and that includes a comprehensive evaluation of nutrition, toxification items, other hormone levels. Um, so selenium's important. You know, selenium some I don't use a lot of selenium because I don't I I live in an area of the world or the United States where selenium selenium is not deficient in the soil or water. Um, I don't find a lot of selenium deficiency in my patients. Now, I use it. Um, I find more um B vitamin deficiencies. I'm I live in Michigan than the um winningest college football team in the history of college football. And um the number should be the number one team in basketball right now. Um but you know, we're in northern climate and vitamin D deficiency is rampant. Um thiamine deficiency is rampant. Vitamin B1 riboflavin deficiency is fairly common uh what else? Vitamin A deficiency you know so these are magnesium all these things are checked including selenium and you know we do a comprehensive evaluation and I see people back every six months give or take and you know keep checking in these things and keep optimizing things. So yeah, selenium is important, but it's no more important than vitamin A is no more important than magnesium or or or thiamine or B12 or vitamin D, which I find deficient in, you know, vast numbers of patients, much more deficient than selenium.

So you and your team, you mentioned earlier, have worked with around 8,000 patients. 97 98% are deficient in iodine. Somebody who's generally healthy wants to start supplementing with iodine. You mentioned the dose before. or I think it was 12 and a half milligram. Would you recommend they get tested or can they just safely assume they're deficient and start with that dose?

The worst doctors be your own doctor, including doctors. You know, you it's good to have a it's good to have an independent person working with you and testing and things like that. So, I I would suggest it's before taking iodine, get your levels checked and work with somebody who's iodine literate. There are doctor are holistic doctors out there. Conventional doctors aren't going to be iodine literate. It's not going to be the case. Um so would I recommend people just taking iodine? No. I would get your levels checked and then you know work with people. Now the 12 milligrams was on my kids when they were 11 and 12 years old. Generally adults it started around 25 milligrams. Um that's about the average dose that I have most adults on in my practice. Remember I said earlier if they have glandular disease more if they have cancer the glandular tissue more. And um you know, you see your patients back, you retest them, you see how they're doing. And you know, it what's really cool with iodine is you can actually these things could be the good test because you can feel cysts and nodules in the thyroid go away when they go on iodine. Woman who has fibrocystic breast disease, lumps, it's like um hard rubbery lumps of the breast tissue, they go away. I mean, I've got case history after case history after case history of women with fibrocystic breast disease, you know, having normal breasts after 6 months or so of taking 25 to 50 milligrams of iodine. Um, one of my famous patients, I still lecture with her slides, you know, Maryanne. Um, she came in about year 10 of my practice. I learned about iodine and she was she's about my age, so she was like 40s. Um, and she comes in and she says her history was that she was getting a bilateral mastectomy in 2 weeks because of severe fibrocystic breast disease, which she's had her whole life. And her breasts were so sore she couldn't wear a bra. She couldn't let anything touch up against them cuz she said they were just so painful. She was wearing like just just loose fitting stuff, throw over clothes. She wasn't wasn't obese. She was like normal size. She was thin, but she couldn't wear anything. Couldn't certainly couldn't wear anything tight um because or even just clingy because she couldn't stand it. So, I remember when I did a breast exam on her in that first visit, I mean, her breast felt like alien tissue. I I don't even know what to say. I was palpating her breasts and it was like the only thing I could have likened it to was when I was a little bit younger. I used to take taekwondo in my adult my younger adult years and it had a punching bag and I had a punching bag at home and the punching bag was this blue hard plastic thing and heavy thing and her her tissue felt like that punching bag with bumps just the same plastic bumpy miserable not human's tissue. So, I told her at that visit that um I'd like her to cancel her surgery and move it out 3 months. I said, "If you're not any better in two months from doing this, I said, "It's going to take 6 months to a year to get your tissue to reorganize back to normal." But I said, "If you're not any better in two months and it's the same, then this might not help you." Now, she was seeing she was going to the University of Michigan, the winningest college football team in the history of college football, fibrocystic breast disease clinic, and she was seeing the chairman of the department. And then what they did there was they told her to come off chocolate, um, come off coffee, few dietary things. And in her case, it didn't make any difference. She just got worse and worse and worse. Finally, he threw up his hands and said, "You need get your breast, take it off." So, she had scheduled that surgery and then saw me. And so, I did an iodine loading test. An iodine loading test is where you take 50 milligrams of iodine at time zero, collect 24 hours of urine, and you're looking to see how much iodine clears out of the body through the urine. So, through through Dr. Abraham and I I was involved in this. We we found that when the body is iodine deficient, all the iodine receptors from head down to the toes are saturated with iodine. Um if you take 50 milligrams of iodine, about 5 milligrams of iodine will sort of be reutilized in the body. 45 milligrams will pee out. If you're really iodine deficient, you're going to hang on to much more than 5 milligrams of iodine. You'll hang on, I'm just throwing numbers out here to let's say 25 milligrams of iodine. and you'll pee out 25 milligrams. So, a normal loading test is 95% excretion. You'd hang on to 5% of that, which is five milligrams of that 50 milligram load. In her case, she peed out 25 milligrams. She held on to 25 milligrams. She was severely deficient. She had a 50% excretion rate. Um, so I put her on 50 milligrams of iodine. as part of a holistic treatment regimen. I put her on magnesium and B vitamins and vitamin D and vitamin A and whatever I found on her blood work. And two weeks later, she calls me and I asked her to call me in two weeks because that was her surgery date. She said, "I'm feeling better." I said, "How much better?" 5% better, but it's, she goes, "It's noticeably better. Can't wear a bra, but there's less pain." So, I see her back in a month and um now she's 20% better and she's she says we're on the right track here. And I I I just asked to do an exam on one breast just to see if there's any change. I feel her breast. It's starting to soften up. Still alien feeling. It's still plastic feeling. It still doesn't feel like human tissue. Uh but it's better. So, I see her back a month later and she says she's 30% better. She's occasionally can wear a very loose-fitting bra. She's wearing, you know, clothes that she wants to wear, a little tighter clothes. I mean, she's four years old. She's a nurse. She, you know, not dressing provocatively or anything, just wearing like what what women wear. Um, and um, she thanked me and she was crying at the visit saying, "I'm so glad I didn't have the surgery." And, um, gradually over 6 months, and it took a year before breast exam was totally normal. But at 6 months, I go to do a breast exam on her, and it's like human feeling again. Now, there's still some bumps in there, light bumps, but it's human feeling. She's wearing a bra. She can wear whatever she wants. She can now wear a swimsuit. First time in, you know, in ages for her. Um, and she goes back to University of Michigan for for her checkup. She starts tell So, the breast surgeon, so when I when I saw her that exam, I I told the story a little bit out of order because she had canceled the surgery. She saw the she saw the I saw her at two months. She was 30 or 40% better, something like that. And I said to her, "It feels like you you had breast transplants, breast transplants, because it feels human again." So she goes to the surgeon, I mean the the University of Michigan fibrocystic breast disease clinic somewhere after I saw her and doesn't tell him anything. He at first he he just comes in, does the exam. He does the exam and he says, "Feels like you had transplanted breasts here. What are you doing?" So she starts telling him and she said first he was looking at her in the eye then as she mentioned the word iodine started going on about you know her changes and what we're doing he started to look over her and he didn't roll his eyes at her but he was clearly not paying attention. She he let her finish and then he said okay I'll see you in 6 months and didn't ask anything didn't ask didn't didn't seem to care about it and she never went back again. So, I I've been treating her now for well, I don't know, 15, 20 years, something like that. And um she calls me up somewhere maybe 10 years into taking iodine. I don't maybe it wasn't 10 years. I I can't remember. It's in my slides with her. But um she was 100% feeling good, wearing normal clothes and exercising and living life and having her and still having her breasts. Um she calls me up and says, "It's coming back." What do you mean it's coming back? My breasts are starting to hurt and they're getting lumpy again. I'm like, that's really unusual, Marian. Um, are you I said, "Are you still taking the iodine?" She long pause. She says, "Oh my god, I forgot to order it. I ran out about six weeks ago, I think, and I I've been off it for at least a month." And I said, "You need to get back on it." So, she got back on it. It went away. So, this is my um um randomized blinded Um, I guess it's not a placebo because she didn't take anything but blinded a randomized blinded trial because she didn't know she it was a double blinded trial because I didn't know she wasn't taking iodine. She didn't know she wasn't taking iodine and her symptoms started to come back and it went right away as she went back on iodine. Um, so that story in various forms repeats itself over and over and over in our practice.

That's an incredible story. Wow. So adult dose starts at 12 and a half milligrams. 25 25 generally.

Okay, 25.

Kids of 12 and a half.

Okay. I want to come back to kids but let's stick with this for right now. You're talking about Lugol's iodine. It can be found in liquid form or a capsule actually a tablet I believe. Talk about Lugol's specifically, the history there and the different components of iodine that make that up.

So, Dr. Lugol formed Lugol's solution in the 1800s and what he found, you know, iodine is a really cool element. If you bring up iodine to anybody their ears perk up. They don't but they might not know anything about iodine, they don't, you know, they kind of maybe have some idea that it's related to the thyroid, maybe they don't, but it's very rare if iodine comes up out in out in the world with doctors or just lay people, people come interested. Their their head snaps up a little bit. They're they they start looking at you or they start want to talk about it more. So Dr. Lugol found when he added iodine to to to a solution of potassium um that he could he could form he could put it into solution. He came up with Lugol's solution. Um, so Lugol's solution um 5% Lugol's solution where is a is a substance where one drop contains 6.25 milligrams of iodide and iodine. Those are two different forms of iodine. Um, one is a reduced form, iodide. One is an oxidized form, iodine. If we all go back to high school chemistry class, um, that um oxidized form means that in the outer shell of iodine, it's lacking an electron. It's looking for an electron. It wants to gather it from from vitamin C or something else, you know, out there. Um the reduced form, the outer shell has full complement of electrons. They're all paired appropriately, iodide. Um, now my first 10 years of my practice I was using iodide only, the reduced form. Why did I use that? I used it because there's a prescription item called SSKI. Um uh what is it? Saturated solution of potassium iodide and I could write a prescription for patients to get it. That's really the only reason I used it because I didn't know about iodine. Um, so I didn't know that Lugol's was different than that. That Lugol's has both iodine and iodide in it where where a lot of iodine solutions just have iodide, the reduced form, in it. Um, so what Dr. Abraham taught me, he taught me, the man taught me more than he'll ever know. Um, but one of the two top things he taught me about iodine was the different tissues of the body primarily respond to different forms of iodine. So for example the thyroid primarily takes up iodide, the reduced form, whereas the breasts take up iodine, the oxidized form. The stomach takes up iodide, different tissues take up iodine. And so if you want a whole body effect for iodine, what would be the best form?

Both.

Both iodine and iodide. Now having said all that, the first 10 years of my practice, I told you I was trying iodine on and off. It wasn't working. The iodine I was trying was iodide. D. I was trying it for the thyroid gland. I just told you that the thyroid primarily takes up iodide. That's true. Um, but it needs iodine to work inside the thyroid gland. I just didn't know any of this. You would think the thyroid should do fine with iodide only. It doesn't. It needs a combination. So to get the whole body effect for iodine in the best form I can tell you after 25 years of using it. You know in medicine there's not a lot of things you can say I'm 100% about but I'm 100% about that that the best form of iodine for the human body is a combination of iodine and iodide in the exact same formulation of Lugol's. It's it's about almost a 50/50 split between the two.

How do you feel about Nason iodine? I think Nason iodine is a good product but it's too it's microgram doses of iodine and it won't give you the detoxification effect that we need in our toxic world we live in. So iodine in the periodic table is in the family of halides, group 17. The halides include in the order and the size of the halides that they are fluoride, chloride, bromide, and iodide. Um, so each of these halides can competitively inhibit one one another. So too much fluoride can cause iodine to leave. Too much bromide can cause iodine to leave. Conversely too much iodine or you know we have iodine receptors. We don't have fluoride and bromide receptors. But larger amounts of iodine can cause the body to release fluoride and bromide which we don't need. So out of those four halides, two are toxic. Um that's iodide that's bromide and fluoride. They're toxic items. There's no known therapeutic value in the human body. We are inundated with these items. Fluoride is in our water supply. It's in a lot of medications, including a lot of antidepressant medications. It's in asthma medications. Um, bromide is in some medications as well. Bromide is a fire retardant. It's in computers and iPhones and and it's in blankets and curtains and bedding. And it's used as a it's used as a drink, a brominated vegetable oil and some soft drinks. It so we are over brominated, over fluoridated, under iodinated. This is why we're so iodine deficient. This is why we're seeing one in seven women with breast cancer. And the main reason, I think there's other reasons for it, but this is the main either the main reason or one of the main reasons. One in seven women have breast cancer. One in three men have prostate cancer. Epidemic increases of pancreatic, ovarian, uterine cancer. Thyroid cancer is the fastest growing cancer. Um, and totally in the weeds right now for for where the where I was going with your question.

Nason iodine, let's come back to that. It sounds like it's okay, but it's just not as potent.

So, Nason iodine. So, part of part of the benefit of iodine is we are over brominated and over fluoridated. And in the in the work that I did with Dr. Abraham and there were there were two other people involved with this work um Charles Hakala and Horge Fletches um and my partner Dr. Strength, three other people that you know we were testing people and and finding that iodine was able to detoxify particularly bromide out of the body a lot and that's a good thing because we're over brominated um and um Nason won't do that it's it's it's not high enough it won't do that period exclamation point um that's where Lugol's solution at the higher concentration is a much more effective substance for correcting iodine deficiency. The human body at saturation needs milligrams of iodine. There's two there's 2,000 milligrams or two should say grams of iodine. There's two grams of iodine that can bind to iodine receptors throughout the body from here down to the toes. Um Nason iodine and microgram dosing will never do that.

Okay. So it sounds like with the Lugol's you're going to push out bromide potentially fluoride. When that's happening, especially early on, if somebody is new to this and they've been building that up in their system for a lifetime, anything they need to do to help that detoxification.

So, sure, when you when you're getting rid of these toxic elements in large amounts, um people can get sick. We've seen that, you know, it's it's a Herxheimer reaction. They're over the detox fatigue, detoxification systems overloaded. So, another book I wrote was Salt Your Way to Health. And the the reason I wrote that book, it's a companion book to my iodine book because I never prescribe milligram doses of iodine for people without telling them without assessing their salt levels. And generally, most people are salt deficient and they need to take some extra salt in their diet beyond what's already in food. And there's good salt and bad salt and you know, they need to take good unrefined salt. So if if I'm going to give somebody 25, 50 milligrams of iodine, um I can assure you living in our toxic world, these people are overloaded with fluoride and bromide. I would I would assume even without testing people just tested so many people, I've seen the same phenomenon happen over and over and over. So when when the body goes to release bromide, hopefully fluoride, fluoride is harder to get out of the body. You need salt, you need sodium to bind to that bromide. You need chloride to help usher it out and be a competitive inhibitor here. So remember those halides, the four halides, bromide and fluoride are toxic. No known therapeutic value in the human body. That's what we're inundated with. The other two, chloride and iodine, essential items we can't live without. And we should have gram amounts of chloride and iodine in our in the human body. Um and um the in the old days before my time as a doctor, brome was used much more widely in medicine and there was you know you know there's Bromoseltzer um and there used to be commercials for it was brome it's al it's it's alka-l is what we have now it's bromeeltzer so brome was the main component of that substance so people could get brome toxic from the medicines they were taking brome toxicity can often appear as

Um, like they're drunk, you know, they're they're they can't walk straight, they can't think straight. And you know, if they'd show up in the air and the doctor would diagnose bromine toxicity, the treatment for it was salting the bromine out. They give them salt IVs, saline IVs. And so when I give them iodine and I know they're going to release lots of bromine, I'm going to give them salt to make sure they can help that salt come out. And sometimes if I've either made a mistake or or pushed somebody too hard or maybe I forgot to tell them to take salt, um, that they call me up and they don't feel good when they start iodine. I tell them, "Stop the iodine. I want you to take an extra teaspoon of unrefined salt a day for two weeks, however you want to get it in. Put on your food or put in the water, what whatever you want to do, and then start the iodine again." And I can tell you the vast majority of people those symptoms go away when that happens. Now, it's not just salt and iodine. Vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin A, magnesium, you know, selenium, whatever they, you know, whatever they need as part of a holistic treatment regimen also improves the situation.

>> Okay, before we leave salt, I want to make sure we're really clear here. It sounds like salt is something important in general, but I've also heard of a salt flush, specifically when somebody is new to iodine. Is that something you advocate for? And if so, what does that look like?

>> A salt flush, you know, look, I'm not sure what you're exactly referring to as a salt flush. But salt in the emergency room, when I used to do emergency room work, you know, as moonlighting and stuff, you see, and I see it today, we do it in our office, you see a lot of people are hyponatremic, very low in salt levels. And it's it's it's common in old people. It's common when people get the flu, you vomit or diarrhea, you're going to lose salt levels. And you know, the human body has it's really designed pretty neat, you know, where there's all these checks and balances to keep important things in this tight little range. And salt is one of them. You have all these hormones, aldosterone and um um renin and a couple of other ones that are designed to keep sodium in this range because we have gram amounts of sodium in our body. And the reason we have gram amounts of sodium is we can't make energy without sodium. We can't run any chemical rea almost any chemical reaction in the body without sodium. Um, so your body is tightly controlled where sodium is when sodium drops really low. Um, bad things can happen to people and so you give them salt. You give them either intravenous salt or orally salt. Um, I'm in the weeds again with where your question was with this.

>> Just salt flushing versus main salt.

>> So salt flushing can be used for a lot of things. You got to be careful with salt orally, especially if you give too much salt orally and I've used this in patients who are severely constipated. It causes diarrhea. Um, so I've used it therapeutically if someone's severely constipated, but I I don't do salt flush without iodine and vitamin C and I, you know, I primarily use salt flushing for severe constipation and that's all I do it for.

One of the big dietary changes that's as of more recent is the bromate in the baking. Can you talk about the history there? We went over this last time, but I think it's important we bring it up again as we're talking about these toxicities and how this really changed everything.

>> Before 1970, iodine was used as a conditioner in baking products. And so one slice of bread had 150 or 200 micrograms of iodine per slice of bread. It was the RDA for iodine. And so if you ate two slices of bread, you're above the RDA for iodine. Um, and I said 50 years iodine levels have been falling across the United States. It started around 1970. So what happened in 1970? 1970, for some reason, I can't really find the the incident article or the government edict telling bread manufacturers to stop using iodine as a conditioner. I don't really know where it came from, but most manufacturers of bakery products began using bromate, brominated flour instead of iodized flour as a conditioner, conditioning agent. And the the issue of using bromine instead of iodine in bakery products created a double whammy. Number one, it made an iodine deficiency problem that was already there much worse because that sometimes that was the only source of iodine for people was, you know, eating bread. And number two, it put a toxic halide into a commonly eaten product, you know, bread, cookies, cakes, muffins, you know, whatever. And so that is where I think led to this rapid decline in iodine starting in 1970 that we're still feeling today. And bromine has not been taken out of a lot of bakery products. You got to look at the labels and most times it doesn't even tell you. But a a good a good um, you know, company who's interested in the health of people will tell you they're using iodized flour instead of brominated flour. But you got to look at the labels and if it doesn't say it, call the company or just find one that says it.

>> Okay. So far we've gone over Lugol's, nasal iodine. The other major one I could see somebody using a source of iodine would be seaweed or even a seaweed supplement where they take seaweed and put in capsules. How do you feel about somebody using that if they say, "I want to do this more naturally."

>> Certainly, it's better to get your nutrients from your diet than supplementing with anything. Um, the problem with that is that our food supply is so adulterated right now that it's impossible in our toxic world with our exposure to fluoride and bromite at the levels that we have right now. You can't get enough in from food and we polluted our environment. We polluted the lakes. We polluted the oceans. Um, so interestingly seaweed and and ocean plants have the same mechanism to concentrate iodine from as low gradient in the environment in in this case in this in the ocean water to a high concentration inside the the plant and in our bodies from a low concentration in in our bloodstream and in the environment to a high concentration in the thyroid or the breasts or the ovaries or uterus or pancreas prostate. And there's a transport mechanism called sodium-iodine symporter and you need two sodium atoms and and to do this process and they're like little taxi cabs. They sit inside the thyroid gland and wait till an iodine molecule comes over there and taxi cab goes over the cell membrane with two sodium atoms needed to help this process. The the iodine gets in the taxi cab. The two sodium atoms drive the taxi cab over and an ATP molecule is utilized for this. So not only do we use two sodium atoms, we use one ATP molecule. These are crucial things for our body. This is where salt comes into play. Why you need salt with iodine? Partly to help with this. Now iodine inside the thyroid can be utilized to make T4 and T3 and whatever else it's supposed to do. Um, the the seaweed has the same sodium-iodine symporter. So it it also needs sodium and and to do this. Um, but this sodium-iodine symporter can also be overridden with bromide. So if there's too much bromide out here, not enough iodine, that that symporter is going to take in bromide and take bromide into the thyroid, take bromide into the seaweed. You're going to brominate thyroid hormone and the seaweed's going to be full of bromine. Now, I've tested over the years um various seaweed pills and and and seaweed things that you can get over the, you know, get on the market. What I found was the iodine level varied differently between these products and bromide levels would vary differently. My guess is it's just whether they're getting it from polluted areas that I mean, I don't know what's not polluted at this point. Um, so I think that with our exposure to so much bromide and fluoride, you're just not going to get enough. Is seaweed a better way to do it? Not necessarily, because that can be polluted, too. Um, the best way to do it is get your levels checked, get your bromide levels checked, and then as you go in iodine and a and a, you know, a known source of iodine, you can you can recheck your levels of bromide and iodine and see iodine levels going up and bromide levels coming down. you know, at the same time. And that's what we see in our practice.

>> Earlier you talked about 5% Lugol's. I know there's also 2% and I think over in the UK there's 15%. That might be just calculated differently and it's actually equivalent to one of ours. Can you explain the different percentages there?

>> So 5% iodine supplies one drop 6.25 milligrams of a combination of iodine and iodide. 2% you'll do the math with it. It's not a 50. It's a little under 50% TKI. So it's it's two and a half milligrams or so something like that of a combination of iodine and iodide. The problem I've seen is there's a lot of 2% iodines on the market that I don't know what it is. Um, I don't see iodine levels go up with it. Um, and I never tested it. I just tell people you need to get a Lugol solution or Lugol tablet of Lugol solution at that time. And I just had a patient this week with the same same phenomena, same exact same thing we're talking about. I did a felt a nodule in her thyroid, put her on 50 milligrams of iodine and she I got I rechecked her thyroid nodule six months later and I just called her today actually and said, "We might need you to get a fine needle aspiration of this." I said, "It grew a little bit and it looks, you know, the radiologist reading this as suspicious uh, you know, and needs a biopsy." I said, "It's unusual that happens if you're taking 5% Lugol's iodine." She says, "Well, I'm not taking I'm not taking that. Taking 2%." I'm like, "Where'd you get it on Amazon?" And she I said, "How much you taking?" She doubled the dose. You know, if I said uh eight drops, she doubled it. Hers to 16, which is pretty close to what I wanted if it's 2% iodine. And I said, "Either you get a biopsy right now or switch to 5% and let's recheck up ultrasound in a couple of months." And she chose to do the latter. And um, I've done this enough where I've also seen when they get on the right iodine, then the nodules will start to shrink down in size.

>> Have you heard of this 15% over in the UK?

>> I have not.

>> Okay. And brand name, there are different companies with Lugol's. I believe J.Crow is they claim to be the original or they have a deep history. Is there a certain brand you recommend?

>> There's a lot of companies making iodine out there and and back in my day when I had the testing set up in my office. Um, and I go to Dr. Abraham four to six times a year when I'm seeing patients full-time. I got two kids. I got a wife. But I, you know, I made the effort and we we we would when I get there on a Thursday, we would get in the lab and we'd work 12 to 14 hours a day doing bench work testing things and we would test various iodine supplements. What we found was unbelievable. Was it they say they the companies would say it's 6.25 milligrams of a combination of iodine and iodide or 12 and a half or whatever the hell they'd say. we tested it wasn't there. So there was one company in particular I can talk to you about J.Crow. I haven't tested so I don't know. So I I was at a lecture and I was lecturing about iodine and the guy handed me this bottle and he said this is 30% cheaper than this company that's putting on this conference that's, you know, has this other bottle of iodine. So I looked at it. I read the label and it said each pill was 12 and a half milligrams of combination of iodine and iodide the same amount that Lugol's tab Lugol's was in. So I held it up to the audience and I said, "Hey, I've just told this was 30% cheaper. I don't know much about it, but here it is." So I get it home, I open it up and um I look at the color of the pills and they're they're close, but they're different. It's got this little different color. And I've been around iodine long enough, working in Dr. Abraham's lab long enough, testing things long enough to get an idea. Maybe this isn't quite right. So, I did a test in my office where I I took out 50 milligrams of iodine pills out of that bottle, crushed them up, you know, diluted them, and it tested their percentages. There was no iodine um iodine ine the oxidized formula. There was iodide because iodide is a lot cheaper than iodine. Um, so I called the called the guy who gave me that bottle who owned that company and I said, "Hey, there's no iodine in here." "Yes, there is. Read the label." I'm like, "I read the label and I did my testing. It's iodide. It's 12 and a half milligrams of iodide per pill, not 6.25 like there should be." And he said, "No, no, no. Oh my gosh." And voices got raised and and I I did another test with it where I did a mass spec analysis and there was no iodine in that as well. Um, so voices got raised and I said, "I want to know it says manufactured in Detroit." Um, he was from my area. Um, and I carried a few of his supplements and I said, "Tell me how you're doing the manufacturing because I knew how to do it. I had worked with Dr. Abraham on this." And he's hemming and hawing and he's and he starts talking and he doesn't know what he's talking about. But I called him on it. He said, "Okay, I don't manufacture it. Joe manufactures it in Wisconsin. Give me Joe's name and number." "No, you can't talk to Joe." "Well, you're calling Joe and I write down how he's manufacturing and call me back." So, he calls me back and he goes, "Okay, fine. There's no iodine in there. We just used iodide. Why did you do that?" "Cuz it was cheaper." And I said, "How'd you get the brownish color?" Which wasn't that's what tipped me off because the color was just off a little bit. He goes, "We used riboflavin, vitamin B2." Um, and um, we had a hard time working with iodine because it's unstable, which it is. Takes a little technique to get it into pill form. And I learned my lesson. I only I only try and use products where I trust the company. They will have independent testing and I know what's in what's in. Look, I'm not manufactured. I'm not there in that factory pouring the things together, watching the pills being made. But I do know enough now to to realize there's so much garbage on the marketplace, especially stuff from Amazon. There's labels that are made up that look like other labels. And I've talked to companies that I trust who tell me that there's counterfeit labels on sawdust products. They don't even know what it is. They do the testing and they can't even tell what it is. The labels look exactly like the real thing. And it, you know, there's the cool thing about iodine is you you could test I can test and say, "Hey, something's wrong here. It's not the levels aren't what they should be." Um, I can do the same thing with vitamin D. I can do the same thing with thiamine. I can do the same thing with riboflavin. I'm just trying to think of my lab slip. I can do with a few other things where vitamin C is another one. So much garbage out there. It's not vitamin C. It's sawdust. I don't know what the hell it is. But you know, you tell me you're taking 3,000 milligrams, you're not. It's your your serum levels. It's either not absorbable form or it's not in there. And these are good company names on these labels. I mean, these are popular names that, you know, are out there. And then when I switch them over to something that I know has 50,000 units of vitamin D in it, or I know it has a thousand milligrams of vitamin C in it, and they start taking the recommended dosing and I check their levels again, they come right up. So, the same things happen with iodine. It's important to use, work with an iodine literate healthcare practitioner who can help you with this and check your levels and make sure you're getting what you're paying for. If you're just buying stuff on Amazon because it's cheaper, beware. It ain't so. It ain't so good to do all the time.

>> Okay. Bottom line for you and your family, what brand do you use? And does it matter if it's liquid or capsule?

>> We use Lugol solution, 5% Lugol solution. We use that a lot. We make our own iodine right now. And um, part of the reason we make our own iodine was what happened with that, you know, what I just told you that story with. Um, so I know and I have the, you know, we make some of our own supplements and when when I when I formulate a supplement with a manufacturer cuz I'm not there in that plant mixing that stuff, but when I formulate a supplement, I I always tell the manufacturer if anyone tests these things, I don't want anyone coming back to me saying it's sawdust or something like that or it's not in there. You know, iodine is not in there. So, I want a 10% fudge factor more of anything, whether it's 100 milligrams of magnesium. I don't want it ever to come back 90. I want it to come back 110, you know, or 100 minimum. Um, so we make our own iodine tablets. It's called ITABs. Um, I have tested Biotics products. They're they're um IODesign HP. Those are good products. Um, but Biotics is is another one. There's a lot of false labels on Amazon. You just got to be careful. They get it from a good practitioner who's getting it from the company. Um um Lugol Tabs is another one that's a good product that's been tested and um that's what I use.

>> Okay, I said I wanted to come back to kids. Let's get there, but let's take it even further back. Somebody pregnant in dosing with iodine, somebody breastfeeding, and then let's move into younger kids and then teens.

>> The worst patient to treat is a, you know, is a pregnant woman because you, you know, if anything goes wrong, you know, how do you know what you did didn't cause that, you know, and that's, you know, but women should have their iodine, young women should have their iodine levels checked and rectified before they become pregnant. That's the best way to do it. In the first trimester of birth is when everything forms. All the organs form, the neurologic system forms. You need iodine for that to occur. If there's not enough iodine plus or minus not enough thyroid hormone in that time period, they're going to have glandular problems, thyroid overshooters, breast, prostate, pancreas, the same thing that we're seeing across our country right now. Um, so it's best to do that before they're pregnant. And if if women are in 25, 50 milligrams of iodine, which I'd like them to be going into pregnancy, I leave them at it through the pregnancy. Um, the we've had three kids in our 30 plus year well 25 year history of using iodine. We've had three babies born with neonatal testing because every neonate in the US is tested for thyroid problems when they're born who tested as severely hypothyroid at pregnancy. Um, that and and they're put on thyroid hormone and it's a, you know, can be stressful and a big deal and and, you know, phone call and all this stuff and the generally the doctors at the hospital are going to blame the mom from taking iodine in pregnancy and say that's what caused this. So of those three kids, what what happened with these three kids? First off, you kids can get hypothyroid in pregnancy and that's why they test every kid whether they're taking iodine or not. But when you look at the thyroid levels from the three kids, what you can see is the for whatever reason the thyroid gland was immature to develop in the baby and took a little bit of time. None of these kids were on thyroid hormone for a lifetime. These babies were put on thyroid hormone for a month or two until their thyroid gland finally caught up to their where it should be and then they were able to come off thyroid hormone. There was no harm in these kids and they were that's three out of I don't know I mean I don't even know how many hundreds and hundreds and hundreds if if not, you know, over a thousand. There's we have seven practitioners in our office. Um, so I like I like young women of childbearing age to have their iodine levels checked, have get them iodine before they become pregnant. The, you know, I have studies showing that over 50% of women of childbearing age are deficient in iodine according to WHO criteria, which let me tell you WHO criteria ain't nothing to to write about because their criteria is way too low, but they're even low on their criteria, which is too low anyways. Um, so, um, I think that answers that. What was the other part of your question?

>> Well, it sounds like from what you just said there, if somebody's taking iodine before getting pregnant, which is preferable, while they're pregnant, they continue on that dose.

>> I continue the same dose.

>> While pregnant.

>> But look, I'm checking other things. I'm checking their thyroid levels. I'm checking, you know, iron, B vitamin levels, you know, part of a holistic treatment regimen.

>> Okay. And then I would assume that would continue while they're breastfeeding.

>> Absolutely. The breast the only the only source of iodine for that baby is going to be in mom's breast milk. And if mom's like all the other moms in this country, they're going to be severely deficient in iodine. That baby's going to be deficient in iodine. Therefore, you're going to have, you know, iodine deficiency leads to intellectual decline leads to IQ decline leads to neural behavioral disorders. There's a whole idea and studies that show iodine deficiency may be the cause of our ADHD epidemic that's just come out of nowhere last 20, 30 years. Um, and you know, it's just a big mess. Everything's a big mess.

>> Okay. So ideal situation the woman gets her iodine topped up before getting pregnant. Continues supplementing through pregnancy through breastfeeding. Let's go to the child now who is weaning. How do you begin to supplement iodine and what at what age?

>> We have a new grandbaby and she's 14 months old and um, she gets iodine. So we we have we have babies supplement with iodine where they dose them down for their size and, you know, they'll, you know, it it depends on their body weight, but, you know, like six milligrams for a week or so, something like that, or two weeks, you know, we have different doses for, you know, as the babies get bigger and they use a liquid, the easiest thing is use a liquid iodine cuz they're drinking and they can get in their water or their, you know, juices or things like that.

>> Got it. So, they'd be using the same 5% liquid, but it's just spreading that out maybe once every two weeks.

>> Or more, you know, depending on their size.

>> And how quickly would that ramp up? I'm picturing somebody who's 8, 10, 14. Obviously, it probably has to do with body weight.

>> But just in a general sense.

>> As soon as they get to 50 pounds, you know, I'm using about a drop a day for them. And then, you know, 100 pounds, maybe two drops a day, which is 12 and a half milligrams. So.

>> So one of the things I think we better alert people to is that when they start taking iodine like this, like we've been describing, one of the things that might happen, and it's actually quite common, is TSH is going to go up. So, let's explain the physiology there and why that's not necessarily something to be concerned about.

>> You know, more than 99% of doctors out there and almost 100% of endocrinologists out there. Um, but that comment, so when I teach doctors about iodine, the first thing at the beginning of my lecture, I say, "What's the first thing you notice on a blood test when you put someone on iodine? Wait for a hand to come up. TSH goes up." And um, I say that's a good thing, right? And the ones who don't know about iodine are saying, "No, you're causing hypothyroidism." Ones who know about iodine are saying, "Yeah, that's a good thing." So, so the we call that sodium-iodine symporter, that little taxi cab waiting waiting inside the thyroid to go gather an iodine molecule, iodine atom and bring it into the thyroid so it can be make thyroid hormone and that thing is fueled by two atoms of sodium. Therefore, we need salt to go with the iodine and it utilizes a molecule of ATP, utilizes an energy molecule. So important that this happens, our body's willing to give up a precious ATP molecule to move iodine into the thyroid, the breasts, the ovaries, and then probably the rest of the gland tissue, even though it hasn't been studied as well in that stuff. Ford Motor Company makes cars in Detroit. And um, I'm assuming Ford Motor Company is not going to make their their, you know, I'm just pulling up something out of the air here. They're not going to make their Lincoln SUVs if no one's buying them. They're not going to continue to make them if no one's buying them because they're going to run out of money and it's just they're, you know, they'll go out of business. So, if a lot of people are buying their Lincoln SUVs, they're going to make a lot more SUVs because they want to make money on them. So, in the thyroid gland, I'm assuming the sodium-iodine symporter is not going to be made in large amounts if there's no iodine to move into the thyroid. If everything's deficient, our body's not stupid. We weren't designed this way to make a ton of sodium-iodine symporters to wait there for iodine to come in if people are iodine deficient for 10, 20, 50 years or whatever it's going to be. And what stimulates the production of sodium-iodine symporter is TSH. So all of a sudden when somebody who's doesn't have enough iodine and their thyroid gland and the breasts and the ovaries and the prostate and the rest of it needing iodine, um, guess what happens? TSH goes up to stimulate the production of sodium-iodine importer. More taxi cabs are made. More iodine is brought over. TSH goes up. How much does TSH go up? It goes up over the reference range. Sometimes double, triple the reference range. And um, now conventional doctors and the way I was taught in medical school was when the TSH goes up, you make him hypothyroid. Now in medical school I was taught to check a thyroid level, just check a TSH level. You don't have to do anything else. Goes up, they're hypothyroid. Goes down, too low, their hyperthyroid. Um, I don't do that anymore. I do a complete thyroid check every time I check thyroid hormone, which includes TSH, T3, free T3, free T4, thyroid antibodies and reverse T3. That whole complete thing can tell me more of what's going on. So as TSH goes up in these patients, two, three, four-fold, something like that, T3 and T4, the the active and inactive thyroid hormone levels are fine in these people. There's they're making enough thyroid hormone. The reverse T3 is fine. TPO and thyroglobulin antibodies aren't going crazy high. They're either coming down or staying the same or they're already low. They're staying low. So yeah, TSH is up. Um, the other ones are all fine and indicating normal thyroid function. More importantly, I'm not treating a lab test. If I see you in the office and I'm asking you, "Hey, how do you feel?" The answer I hear is, "I feel better. Got more energy. My brain fog is better. My hair is better. You know, hair was falling out." Or, "I'm cold. I'm not cold anymore." And TSH is up. They're not hypothyroid. They're feeling better. The TSH is a normal and expected response to rise. When you put someone on thyroid hormone who's iodine deficient, it'll rise for about three to six months, sometimes nine months in people, and come down back to normal. So, my advice is don't check the TSH for six to nine months, then you'll have to worry about it. And just keep seeing your patients back and make sure clinically they're doing fine.

>> Somebody tuning into this point, they're new to iodine, they're excited about it, they start supplementing, but say they take a little bit too much. Talk about what the body does with that extra to provide security of mind that the body has a mechanism in place to deal with this.

>> Can you take too much iodine? Can you take too much water? Absolutely. You can take too much salt. If there's normal kidney function, your body can handle huge amounts of iodine and excrete the excess. Um, those in congestive heart failure, those in um renal failure deserve a little bit more caution and that's why you don't be your own doctor. That's why you work with a doctor who can test you and look at you and do it. So the kidneys have more than adequate function in normal function kidneys get rid of excess iodine whether you're taking 100 milligrams or a gram of iodine um which we've had some people take.

When it comes to supplementing with iodine, one of the things I've heard is you want to make sure you're not taking vitamin C at the same time. Have you heard this? And then any other foods or supplements we want to spread out when we're supplementing with iodine?

>> It's a good question and it's a good it's a good thought because you were you're thinking, hey, I'm going to reduce. Remember I told you iodine is the oxidized form. It's lacking extra electron in its outer shell over here. So, it's looking for electron to make it iodide. And vitamin C is one of those things that can supply that electron as a reducing agent. Um, and so are you going to negate the effects of Lugol's by taking it with vitamin C? Theoretically, maybe yes. In practice, I don't see it happen. Um, I'm an end of one with it. I take it alto together. I have not seen that happen. I don't make an issue out of it with my patients. So, I don't when I write up how I want them to take their supplements, I don't separate them out. I'm assuming most of them are doing it like I'm doing it since I'm not telling them specifically to do that. And I don't see it clinically play out that way.

>> Well, let's talk about goitrogens. So, first of all, what are goitrogens? And then, how do you feel about foods like cruciferous vegetables, its impact on thyroid, soy, soy isoflavones, which are goitrogens as well? Let's bring that in.

>> So goitrogens are substances that cause goiter. Goiter is a swelling of a thyroid. Um, the there are goitrogens in food as you mentioned in the cruciferous vegetables, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, um soy, uh what other ones? Cabbage, cauliflower, spinach, you know, some other ones. And so should people limit those foods to help their iodine? I think that's kind of how you're asking the question crudely.

>> Yeah. Thyroid, iodine, just bringing it all together.

>> If they're not eating a vegan diet where primarily the source of food is that type of stuff, I don't see a problem with it as condiments and small amounts in their diet. And I I the only people I've had problems with are strict vegans and they eat a ton of that stuff. They tone of the um cruciferous vegetables. And then we have to do some working with their diet. But that's that's for people who eat more of an omnivorous uh paleo varied diet. I don't see that to be a problem.

So far, our focus has been on ingesting orally iodine. How do you feel about for testing or supplementing putting it on the skin and getting it that way?

>> So, good question. You know, there's an old wife's tale that, you know, if you iodine oxidized form has a brown color to it. If you paint iodine on the skin, you get a brown, you know, patch where you put it on the skin. And the skin is the third major repository of iodine in the body at siii iodine saturation. So it holds a lot of iodine, gram amounts of iodine if there's enough iodine in the body. The idea is that this brown color gets absorbed really fast and people are iodine deficient. And if it gets if it gets absorbed within 24 hours, they're iodine deficient. If it lasts more than 24 hours, they're not. It's not true. Iodine can sublimate off into a gaseous phase off the skin. It's been shown in one study and I I never found that true anyways clinically and it's a wise tale. There's there's no there's no reason to do that. Just not clinically relevant.

>> Is there ever a time to use it topically on breasts that are cystic or other areas of the body?

>> I have women use it on breast lumps and breast cysts. I also have people use it on Dupuytren's contracture, you know, points on their finger and if they catch it early, it can dissolve the fibrous tissue that's there. Um, you could put it on, you know, the the old um when I was young there was iodine you buy at pharmacy to put on cuts um because it sterilizes cuts. That's why they still use it in hospitals, you know, when I before surgery, you know, now they use this uh what is that chlorine thing? Uh, I can't think of the name of it because I don't we don't use it in our office, but um when I go to donate blood, they used to clean it off your arm with iodine. Now they got this chlorine thing they use chlorhexidine or something like that. Um, which is an oxidized form of chloride, which is not great for the body. Um, I always tell my I'm allergic to that. Just give me the iodine. So, if I ever went to surgery, I'd be telling them clean my body with iodine, not the chlorhexidine. Um, the so iodine can have applications on the skin as an antiseptic. As far as correcting iodine deficiency from putting it on the skin, it's not going to it's just you you can't get enough up into the serum to get into the glandular tissues to do it that way. Orally is the best way to take it.

>> Okay. What about inhaling? We could nebulize. I've heard of making salt pipes, adding iodine to that. How do you feel about those? Who was who was nebulizing iodine during COVID?

>> I know you and your team.

>> I see a hand up here. Oh, that's me.

>> Um, so it was it was before COVID. We I was having people nebulize the dilute solution of peroxide and iodine well before COVID and for bronchitis, viral infections, pneumonia, you know, sinus infections. And I wrote about in my book overcoming uh no no um holistic approach to viral disorders or holistic approach to viruses and um so um I have people nebulize iodine iodine and peroxide together. Um, it's a fabulous treatment of the lungs have a high concentration of iodine and iodine's used for the immune system. It's used to kill to create substances, you know, such as superoxide dismutase to kill foreign items in the body. Um, so iodine is very useful as as a nebulized substance.

>> What about a salt pipe? Have you heard of that or tried that?

>> I have not tried that. Um, I think I I think that would look I think if people just nebulize salt, which I'm sure a salt pipe would probably do the same thing here to when they're sick to get fluid, get salt levels up in their lungs to help break down mucus. And, you know, one of the reasons we salt, we we put a lot of salt in canned food is to keep bacteria from growing. And our bodies are the same way. We're much more likely to get sick when our salt levels are low. And we need to keep our salt levels up. I I am if if you could talk to a hundred of my patients, when I go over the blood work, I am always commenting on their salt levels. Hey, you're doing pretty good with salt. How much you taking? Or you're not getting enough salt. You need more salt in your diet. You need another teaspoon a day. Partly because it'll keep infections at bay. So, I think a salt pipe would probably be a good thing, even though I don't quite know what it is. But, um, nebulizing salt would be a good thing as well. Salt water.

>> From what I understand, it's taking one of these salt pipes, putting sea salt in it or another high quality unrefined salt, putting a couple drops of iodine, and then inhaling that.

>> Look, you got to be careful. One thing I found with nebulizing iodine, it creates a drying effect on the larynx. And initially when you start nebulizing iodine, you can cough and it gets it's like you're irritating a little bit. And then by the time you neb I tell people when you're sick with anything, you know, pneumonia, virus, COVID, whatever, flu to start nebulizing iodine and peroxide every hour until you're better. The first one, you know, it's a little irritating. With the second and third one, the irritation seems to go away. I think if you're going to use a lot of iodine that way, you're going to get irritated. But same thing with mine. So, you just use the right amount of iodide. Salt water's easy. That doesn't seem to irritate people.

>> Early in the conversation, you brought up something along the lines of when you were in medical school, they taught you that salt with iodine would be sufficient. Let's talk about the history there and then why that's not a good method of getting your iodine.

>> So what I mentioned earlier was um the only thing I was taught about iodine was iodine deficiency in the past created goiter of the thyroid and when salt was iodized iodized in the 1920s and spread across the US goiter went away. That's it. So there's no iodine deficiency in the US. I was in med school 1985. Iodine levels were already falling. Most people are already deficient in iodine by then. They're just they were falling then and they're falling now and they're just worse now than they were then. Um, so what I did what I wasn't taught was that um the government had been tracking these levels and iodine deficiency was increasing not decreasing since 1970. Um, so people need iodine. They need salt. You can't live without salt. Um, you know, one of the worst things you see is these these old people, you know, 80 years old and up and 90 years old and up, they get hyponatremic, man. It's like they're they're they're drunk on like a huge amount of alcohol. They can't walk, they can't talk, and they're going to die. And it's a serious thing. And if they just keep if old people if all of us but particularly old people keep their salt levels up when they get sick they have much more reserve to fight that illness. Um, and, you know, when people were calling me during COVID, I was telling them, you need to nebulize with salt water. You need to take salt every every bit of water. You need to keep your hydration but every glass of water, every bottle of water should have a pinch of salt in it and throughout your day. And the more salt you can take in the better you'll do, you know, when you get these illnesses. And that's what I see with with my practice. So I wrote about my book, you know, overcoming vir holistic approach to viruses.

>> Let's talk more about the quality of salt. We've talked about now the iodized table salt, but for somebody that's unaware and they've just gotten whatever salt at the grocery store, talk about unrefined versus refined. And when it comes to refined, some of the things they're doing other than adding that iodine that aren't good for us.

>> So I go through that in detail in this book. Um, and um, you know, I wrote that book because it was I got irritated at a uh column in the Detroit Free Press, a health column where the the RD, the resident dietitian was writing asking a question, "Is there any difference between sea salt and regular salt?" "No, there's no difference. They're both too high in sodium. Should be avoided because they cause hypertension or, you know, health problems." So I saw that article and I like, "Oh, that's my next book." Because she already I either write my books because I'm excited about something or irritated about something and that is truly why I went to write that book. After that, I actually I still have that little article. I lecture. I start off the lecture with a picture of that article and her pictures in that article and I thank her for writing that article because that got me to write the book. I was I was using salt for 15 years medically before that, seeing great results. I never just thought about it. I just it was working and what's the point of writing a book on that? So she wrote that. So all salt comes from the ocean and it's in its lifetime. Whether it's sea salt, refined or unrefined salt. So we're when you and I speak and when your listeners speak about salt. Sea salt is an is a ridiculous term. It came from the ocean. I I don't know what sea salt means. Came from the ocean. Is it refined or unrefined? That's the more important question, you know, for that salt product. So refined salt product has 98 some odd percent sodium chloride only. The rest of it is toxic items like ferrocyanide, aluminum silicate and a little bit of iodine added iodide added to it. Um, unrefined salt has over 80 minerals in it. It doesn't have those toxic items in it. It's much more effective for the body. It's much more utilized by the body. That's the type of salt to use. Over my career, I've tested three brands of unrefined salt multiple times and I found them clean of toxicities. All salt, all unrefined salt has some lead in it, some heavy metals in it. It's small amounts, but they all do. And however, there's all these other minerals in it that limit that exposure to it, and your body orally can get rid of that fairly easily. But the three brands that I found were clean and and and good mineral content were Selina's Celtic brand salt, Redmond's Real Salt, and Himalayan salt. And those are the three that I've tested. I even tested other ones. There's other ones out there that um I've seen some of their testing on there, you know, and if if COVID didn't make you question everything, I don't know what does. I question everything. I don't I don't know. I I don't trust the manufacturers listing their testing of their product unless they have an independent lab testing and they say it's an independent lab that tested it. Um, but those are the three that I've used in my practice and I've not seen lead levels go through the roof in the vast number of patients and I'm putting people in lots of salt. Um, and um, you know, there's a big thing about lead and salt recently. It was all nonsense. I mean, I've been testing people for 25, 30 years on this. You haven't seen it happen. And um, salt's an important thing for the body. And unrefined salt is much better than refined salt.

What would you say to the person at this point? They're buying into the iodine thing. They're going to up their iodine and this kind of pivots off the seaweed talk before. They want to do it naturally and they're going to up their seafood intake to get more. Talk about what challenges they may encounter there.

>> You are not going to get enough iodine in to counter the toxic exposure to bromide and fluoride in our modern consumer world that we live in. Period. I can tell you tested enough people that's just the way it is. So the the that's number one. Number two, the oceans are polluted, the lakes are polluted, fish is polluted with mercury. I have people eat a lot of fish have high levels of mercury, plus or minus high levels of arsenic, and we often have to detox people. It's a mess out there. Um, so wild fish is better than farm-raised fish, but it's all polluted right now.

>> You mentioned before the fact that you and your wife both have had thyroid problems and both your daughters. If you're okay with it, let's zoom in.

On your story, your challenge there, and then your recovery and how iodine fits into that. You know, in med school, I was straight as an arrow. So, it didn't vary. Didn't.

And then six months into practicing medicine, I realized this kind of sucks. I'm putting people on too many drugs that aren't treating the underlying cause of illness. More drugs to treat the side effects from the first drugs. And I could see my patients weren't going to get better. I made, you know, I knew what I was doing.

And, um, you know, my dad was my first and my best patient who was suffering from severe heart disease. And he had his heart attack at 40, second heart attack at 42. And over the next 20 years developed continued angina, chest pain every day, taking nitroglycerin every day for chest pain. Over that 20-year period, he had two bypass surgeries, couple of angioplasties. He was on 12 medications to control blood pressure, um, diabetes, and, and heart disease, and chest pain, you know, chest pain going on with that, and cholesterol. So, he looked awful. Looked like he was going to die at any moment.

And, um, so the short end of the story is that a patient got me hooked up with his chiropractor, who I never referred to chiropractors before that. I tell people, don't go see them. They're dangerous. I didn't know what one was. Never met one before. Didn't know what the philosophy was, but all I knew was we were taught they break people's necks and cause paralysis and whatever, you know.

Um, so I, I realized six months into practicing, this is not good. I'm not sleeping because of this anxiety. All I wanted to be was a family doctor my whole life. That's all I geared my training towards. At the, the University of Michigan and the, the winningest college football team in the history of college football. Um, and, um, I didn't have plan B. And I told my wife, I can't be a doctor anymore. I don't want to. I didn't say that. I said, I don't want to be a doctor anymore. And she said, what's wrong? I'm like, I'm not helping anyone and they're not going to get better on this regimen. I can, I can already see it. So, in that lack of sleep, and it was the first time in my life I had anxiety.

Um, this patient I saw was working, his wife worked with my wife, so we had done some things socially, and he said his chiropractor really helped him. And he said it wasn't the adjustments, it wasn't the best, you know, the biggest thing. It was this nutrition thing that he did. And so I set up a meeting with the chiropractor and, you know, went and met him. His name was Dr. Robert Radkkey. Became a dear friend of mine. It was a wonderful guy, very smart. Starts talking all this functional biochemistry to me and all these pathways that I learned in undergrad and I learned in medical school and then it, it went because you didn't use it. You know, you had to memorize it for the test, spit it out on the test, and you're done. I got two A's. I didn't know anything. This guy, this chiropractor knew way more than me. He was way smarter than me. And I came home and I told Alison, I met one of the smartest doctors I've ever met in my life.

And, you know, um, so we became friends and he brought me a book at that meeting, Healing with Nutrition, um, by Dr. John the Wright, who's an allopathic physician. I took that book home, read the section on heart disease, and the next morning I called my dad up. And I read that book till 2 a.m. And I wasn't sleeping for a week before that. I, I was lacking sleep, but I was excited now. So, I, I called my dad the next morning before he went to work and I said, "Can you come in the office? I want to get a couple of blood tests on you." From what I read the book, what I talked about with Dr. Radkkey, I drew his thyroid levels and a whole panel of thyroid levels for the first time. I drew his testosterone levels. Thyroid levels were in the reference range, but in the lower part of the reference range. His testosterone levels were below detectable limits, near zero. So, there's a whole history of testosterone deficiency causing heart disease. There's a whole history of hypothyroidism causing heart disease. And I put my dad on two things a week later. I put him on the natural thyroid hormone and natural testosterone. Within two, within a week, he calls me up and he says, "I'm feeling better." Um, and I have energy. And my dad looked pale and pasty. I was waiting for the phone call that he died. We all were. It was terrible. Nitros were popping like candies. So, uh, I'm a week later, I'm feeling better. I'm not short of breath. And I'm not, I didn't have chest pain today for the first time. Never had chest pain another day in his life after that. 30 days later, he's feeling much better. My, my parents' friends are asking my mother, "What's he doing? He looks better, you know, and he's able to do stuff now, you know, yard work or whatever." He's able to do things where he couldn't do anything. And he, um, I get his blood drawn again, his cholesterol in the 300s, fell below 200 without changing any of his bad habits. Still had no angina. And I saw that and I'm like, "This is what I want to do in medicine." And, um, I decided I'm gonna do holistic medicine, even though I didn't know what the heck it was. And, um, so that's what I began working towards.

And, um, what did you ask me, Jesse?

>> It sounded like somewhere along your journey you had a thyroid issue.

>> Oh, so, so from that moment on, every patient that I, until including today, every patient gets a whole hormonal evaluation. So, um, and that includes a, a whole thyroid workup. So, in my case, I had, I grew up with severe asthma as a kid. I had inhalers and I had ER visits and I had steroids and I couldn't breathe. And, you know, it was miserable and I, I knew how I was going to die back then. I knew I was going to die from asphyxiation from an asthma attack. I mean, I just didn't know when, but I knew that's how I was going to leave the earth.

So, I see my dad's improvement and I start going to conferences. I start reading books, read every book that I could get my hands on and reading articles. I'm staying up late at night and I'm excited about medicine and medicine's good. I'm making, I'm making changes. I'm not prescribing so many medications and, you know, correcting nutrient deficiencies and helping people with their diets and, you know, and, and people are going to get better. I was sure of that and over the last three decades now, I've seen it.

So, I start testing myself and I've got hypothyroidism. I didn't know. Um, and I had these casein antibodies, you know, to dairy and it was, was reacting to dairy. I didn't know, you know, look, I ate whatever the hell I wanted back then. You know, I used to love a quarter pounder without cheese, large fry, large Coke. Um, and, um, so I changed my diet, corrected my hypothyroidism. I don't have asthma anymore. Um, I play tennis four days a week. I work out seven days a week. I'm, I have inhalers around. I hardly ever use them. And sometimes when I get a cold, the asthma flares a little bit and I use them. I don't carry them with me. I don't carry them to tennis with me. I don't prophylax. I don't use steroid inhalers anymore. Um, I don't go to the ER. I mean, I haven't been to the ER in decades. And now I don't know what I'm going to die from, but it ain't going to be from that. And so when the holistic approach to me worked fantastically and, um, um, I see the same result in my patients and, and my kids who had Hashimoto's disease don't have Hashimoto's disease and they're taking 50 milligrams of iodine. Um, one's taking 50, one's taking 75. So, for the, the doctors of the world that are promoting this iodine causes Hashimoto's disease, as Ricky said to Lucy, explain that one to me. We got two N of two. They're taking 50 and 75 milligrams of iodine, or Hashimoto's titers are gone. I can show you a study, case history after case history after case history. Any of the seven, seven other partners, six other partners away can show you the same thing.

>> As we wrap up here, I'd love to hear a couple more case studies over the years, patients you've worked with, different health challenges, and then what changes occurred when you applied iodine. We talked about Maryanne before in her cystic breasts, but in a different realm of health challenge and how iodine came in and helped.

>> So, um, I give you one more. Um, this was a lady with, um, metastatic inflammatory breast cancer, the worst kind, stage 4. She comes to see me and she's given three to six months to live. She's in her 70s. Um, she looks sick. She was pale, pasty, you know, no energy. And the oncologist told her, you know, offered her a chemo that didn't sound like it would do much. And she just said, "I'm not doing that." And she came for my evaluation.

So I evaluate her and I was working with Dr. Abraham at the time and we were testing patients. And Dr. Abraham loved to test my patients because of where I live. I live in Michigan, the winningest college football team in the history of college football at the University of Michigan. And, um, we border the Great Lakes, which is very low in iodide. All the states around the Great Lakes have very low iodine levels. Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan. The state down south starting with a lowercase O is very low in iodine. Bunch of cretins live there, by the way, uh, which is severe iodine deficiency. So he was interested in my practice because we are in a severely iodine deficient area and he assumed most of my patients would be severely iodine deficient. He was right because we started testing hundreds of patients at a time. I was collecting urine and either dragging the urine with me or the urine little things with me or I'm, you know, mailing them to California and then go out there and test them. And finally set up a lab in my office to test people and was doing it. Um, and, um, um, so Dr. Abram wants to, wants to do a study with me with comparing women with breast cancer versus women without breast cancer, measuring their iodine, fluoride, and bromine levels.

So I see this woman, let's call her Susie, and she's diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic, um, inflammatory breast cancer, given three to six months to live. So, I talked to her about going in this study and she signed up, you know, signed the appropriate papers and we checked a 24-hour urine, time zero, without iodine. Then we put her on 50 milligrams of iodine after that. And then we checked one day later, 30 days later. We were measuring iodine levels, bromide levels, and fluoride levels.

So Susie, I, I guess I should go back in time. Susie's given three to six months to live. She sees me. I do my evaluation. This is before I knew about iodine. Two years later is now when I meet Dr. Abraham and I'm doing, we're doing this study. So, she's still alive two years later, even though she was given six months to live. Three to six months to live. She's still, she was feeling better. She wasn't feeling great. She was a lot of pain, you know, not much energy. Couldn't babysit her grandkids, is what she really wanted to do. So, I get her in this study now, two years into it. She's still alive. And, um, I wrote about her in my iodine book. Uh, but I lecture with her too. You know, I lecture with her slides.

So we put her on, she does her, her urinary iodine test. Her, her test before she took iodine was iodine levels were in the dumpster, you know, near zero. Her bromide levels were through the roof. They were trying to think of my slide, 150 milligrams per liter, which is near toxic levels of bromide and fluoride. We, we never could get fluoride to test as a competitive inhibitor of iodide. It's such a small, severely electro negative element that it's really toxic for the body and the body doesn't like it floating around and binds it tightly in the bones. It was, we couldn't measure it. So we don't know if iodine helps with fluoride or not. Um, theoretically it should, but we, we couldn't prove it. Um, the only way you can prove that is doing bi-bone biopsies and we, we didn't do that.

So, um, Susie did her iodine loading test, time zero. One day later, after taking 50 milligrams of iodine, she did it again, and then 30 days later. And what we saw was the same thing we saw with the other nine breast cancer patients in that study, which I document in my book, that iodine levels went from really, compared to women who didn't, I did nine women with breast cancer, nine women without breast cancer, that's the only thing I screened for that came in the office sequentially. And what we found was compared to the women without breast cancer, the women with breast cancer had 50% lower iodine levels and at least 50, or they were just over 50% higher bromide levels. And over that 30 days, iodine levels went up in the women with breast cancer, as you would expect, because they were taking 50 milligrams a day. Bromide levels peaked early into, at the one day thing, and then started to come down. Um, and, um, during that time period of that testing, Susie calls me and she says, "I got a problem. What's the problem? My night shirt is turning yellow over my breasts." Now, Susie, inflammatory breast cancers, you get these nasty looking lesions sticking, you know, coming out of the normal skin tissue. It looks like, like flesh things sticking out. It is, it's not pretty. And, um, I said, "Why don't you come in, bring this shirt with you, and let me see you?" And this is in the middle of our 50 milligram a day thing, about two weeks into it. So, she brings her night shirt in. Her night shirt is clearly yellow right here on the inside. The rest of the shirt's white. Um, and I look at her and her nails are yellow. And I have pictures of these and I, I show these in pictures. Her nails are yellow, like, like about like this color yellow. The winningest college football team in the history of college football shown here. Um, and her, her eyes weren't that yellow. Um, and I said, "How you feeling?" I feel great. I am now babysitting my three grandkids. I have more energy than I've had in a long, long time. And I want to thank you. She goes, but I don't know what this is and this. And, um, I said to her, I think it's bromine toxicity. The yellow color matched the color of bromine. Is the same color here on her shirt. I said, "Let me take your shirt and I'll test it." So she agreed. And I called Dr. Abram. I'm all excited. You won't believe this case. I got this shirt. Great, Dave. When are you coming? I said, "Two weeks." He goes, "Great. We'll test it. We, we'll do the test. We'll take a piece off the front, a piece off the back, and we'll measure the iodine and bromide levels." And, you know, we could do this test. And we, so him and I for the next two weeks, we talk on the phone. We designed this test to do it. And I go out to California, except there was one little hitch. I couldn't find the shirt. And the shirt's lost. So, Susie kept taking the iodine, 50 milligrams a day. She never wanted to go down. Um, she died four years later from inflammatory breast cancer. She lived a great quality life till the very end. My regret with Susie is I should have, um, used more iodine in her. I put on 100 or 200 milligrams or more, something like that. Now, um, and the shirt's lost. So, I tear my office apart. I put two people in my office searching for the shirt. No one could find it. I look at home, no one could find it. It's gone, you know. So, um, 10 years later, we move houses and I moved to the house that I'm in right now. As I'm cleaning out a cabinet in my office, stuffed in the back of this behind the books. I, you know, if you can, if I showed you over here, I got books stacked up everywhere. Behind a row of books was a package sealed. And the famous shirt is in this package. I'm like, "Oh my god." So, I called Dr. Dr. Abraham had died by then, unfortunately. And I called Charles Laka, who was a pharmacist who was one of the original guys who worked for Dr. Abraham. I said, "Charles, I got the shirt." He knew what it was immediately. We, we designed the study. Charles, you know, we, we did the study. Charles had the equipment to do it in his lab, in his lab. And the bromide levels were through the roof on the front of the shirt. There was no bromide in the back of the shirt. And, you know, this was the first time really showing iodine competitively inhibited bromide in the human body. And, um, you know, it was, she's the most vivid that I've had. I've had other people tell me when they go on iodine and they take baths, they'll see yellow, like a yellowish ring around the tub for a couple of weeks at the beginning. They're, they're detoxing. I believe they're detoxing from bromide as well.

>> All right, Dr. Brownstein, last question for you. You've shared a lot here today. If somebody can only remember three things and take them and apply them in their life, what would you say to them?

>> Can I make four things?

>> Sure.

>> First thing, University of Michigan is the winningest college football team in the history of college football. That's the most important thing. All right. Second thing, iodine deficiency has been increasing over the last 50 years. The vast majority of the population is in the United States is deficient in iodine. Third, iodine deficiency causes Hashimoto's and Graves disease. It does not. Iodine does not cause it, as shown by the inverse correlation of iodine levels following. And, um, the last thing is work with a, work, work with an iodine literate doctor, a holistic doctor who can help you with this. Um, conventional doctors are not iodine literate and, um, they don't know how to test for it. They don't know how to, they don't know how to deal with anything with iodine. I wouldn't even bother with that. And the last thing is read, educate yourself. You're, you're, you're the best judge of your health and you know where to go with your health. I wrote my books for patients and, and physicians. Um, I think they're easy enough to read for both. And, um, I write them in simple terms because I don't think medicine should be that difficult. And, um, iodine deficiency is not that difficult a concept and iodine repletion is not that difficult a concept. Although some holistic doctors seem to have that blocker or whatever they have that, you know, they like saying that iodine is causing the Hashimoto's epidemic when clearly that's not the case. Um, but you're in charge of your own healthcare decisions. Find someone who's aligned with you. That's, that's how I'd finish it.

>> All right, doc. Really enjoyed the conversation. This was a true master class on iodine. We're going to link up your books, link up your website, everything in the show notes. I appreciate you. Thank you. Go Blue.

>> Thanks, Jesse. Go Blue.

>> Thank you for watching. Stick around here for this other great interview. You don't want to miss it. I'll see you over there.

Every single cell in the body needs iodine. Every tissue needs iodine. Iodine is an antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral. It's a heavy metal chelator. It's my shield. We use more nutrients when we're in a state of stress. If your body's fighting an infection.

Get Our Mobile App

Why 97% of People Are Iodine Deficient (How Much You Actually Need) | Dr. David Brownstein

Transcription