there's some fascinating information I want to share with you regarding iodine that goes Way Beyond the thyroid so it is true that the Lion's Share of iodine is stored inside your thyroid but there's also iodine in the breast tissue in the uterus in the ovaries in the prostate and I'm going to tell you why in the sperm in the stomach in your lungs and especially in your brain okay the front part of your brain that involve cognition Focus memory concentration and this is why if a infant is deficient in iodine at Birth they're going to
have some problems with their IQ they're going to have decreased intellectual capacity and so iodine is important and not just for your thyroid for other things as well now the other interesting thing about iodine is the requirements for iodine the rdas it's roughly in America it's about 150 micrograms not milligrams but micrograms but what's interesting about that is if you take a look at Japan they consume on average per day between a thousand to three thousand micrograms of iodine and they don't have nearly the problem with breast cancer with female reproductive issues and many of
the other iodine deficiency problems that we have in the U.S there just is no agreement in the scientific community on how much iodine we really need as far as a therapeutic dose they do state that the upper limits should be no more than a thousand micrograms but that's kind of an arbitrary number because people have taken a lot more without any problems in fact if you have way too much iodine and create the same exact symptoms as a deficiency in iodine now there's two general types of iodine the type that should be used topically in
in the body not internally like povidone iodine that's great for fungal infections on your toes or even a skin tag or a wart but you shouldn't take that orally there are other types of iodine that you can take orally but I would recommend taking it as a food base whether it comes from actual food like shellfish or even better yet seek help which is seaweed it comes in a package from nature that has all the other trace minerals and things that are connected with it because anytime you take one of anything in the body you
have to realize that you could throw off other things as well especially when we're getting into the trace minerals but you're more protected and you can tolerate it more if you take it from a food source like sea kelp of course the key about sea kelp is making sure it's high quality it comes from a an ocean that is very very pristine and healthy without heavy metals because you don't want contaminated toxic heavy metals in your sea kelp now there's some fascinating applications of using iodine to help with various body conditions and one of the
big things that iodine does is it helps to regulate estrogen especially if there's too much estrogen in the body as in estrogen dominance so what does that mean it means it can help you with heavy periods periods that go on for too long it can help with something called fibrocystic breast in fact relating to that topic one of the best ways to identify an iodine deficiency is through just the symptom of having breast tenderness most of the time when a woman experiences tenderness of the breast they're really just experiencing an iodine deficiency so you can
use iodine on fibrocystic breast ovarian cysts endometriosis fibroids because you have high levels of iodine in the ovary in the breast tissue in the uterus also iodine can be used for a prostate enlargement why because as men get older their testosterone goes down and the relative ratios of estrogen goes up so iodine is known to help prostatic enlargement but iodine is also good for other things like PCOS polycystic ovarian syndrome it's good for cystic acne it's good for TB upper respiratory infections because you have iodine in your lungs probably to act as an antimicrobial because
it's good as a defense mechanism for your immune system iodine is also good for something called croup which is a kind of this wheezing in the upper respiratory tract where you get this high pitched sound when you're breathing in usually you see this in infants or even this excessive weird cough which actually sounds like a dog barking as well as asthma I already mentioned toenail fungus it's a good remedy for that because it's anti-viral antibacterial oil anti-fungal and anti-candida I've done a video on how you can use iodine to help remove an award as well
as a skin tag I'll put that link down below and let's not forget in the importance of the thyroid so having enough iodine can actually help you to lose more weight it can help you with brain fog it can help you when you're excessively cold and have dry hair and dry skin and even constipation because it supports the thyroid gland and even depression as well but unless you consume food okay that is either from the sea or from vegetables that are grown on the coastline chances are you're not going to get a lot of iodine
in your Foods because if it's not in the soil it's not going to be in the plant and so there's always going to be a very very tiny amount of iodine in the soil but in certain areas of the country you could have literally a hundred times less iodine in those vegetables then vegetables that are grown by the coast close to the ocean there is a bit of iodine in eggs dairy as well as iodized salt and even sea salt but with sea salt there's going to be just small small amounts now another thing I
want to mention is that you can't actually have an allergy to iodine okay so some people have an allergy to shellfish for example that has iodine you might need to get your iodine from the straight iodine if someone is deficient in iodine the body is going to allocate or recruit iodine and make sure you have enough for the thyroid so it'll pull from different tissues and that can keep you deficient in certain parts of your body and sufficient in other parts one of the most accurate ways to measure iodine because the problem is if you
get a urine sample or even a blood sample in the morning you can have a false positive because you have the lowest of iodine in the morning so the best way to assess iodine is a 24-hour urine iodine test another simple test would be just to basically take a little drop of povidone iodine put it on your skin okay maybe on the inside of your your arm or your leg or your thigh and then just cover an area like maybe an inch by an inch and then see what happens within one hour you can put
maybe like a little patch Robert or a Band-Aid and if it disappears in one hour chances are you are deficient in iodine you need more because your body is sucking it up but if it's still there after an hour chances are you probably have enough now of course that's a crude way of measuring it but it's just one indication and like I said before breast tenderness is another uh classic symptom of a deficiency of iodine a couple of other ways that people are deficient is consuming uh maybe excessive amounts of raw cruciferous vegetables because there's
certain compounds in the cruciferous vegetables that tend to bind up that iodine also if you consume millet soy sweet potato you can also have the same problem people that are are vegan plant-based have to be very careful because they're usually eating plants that are deficient in iodine and they don't consume shellfish but on the other hand if they have sea kelp they're going to be okay if a woman is pregnant or lactating the demand for iodine goes up so they should make sure that they take a little bit more other things compete for iodine like
fluoride and bromide if someone is on a low salt diet because they have high blood pressure because the doctor told them to get off the salt they can also be deficient in iodine just from not having enough of the iodine in the salt but of course that would have to be either iodized salt or sea salt there's some other chemicals that commonly create problems for iodine perchlorate that's like a chemical waste product from fertilizers that they put in the land and then the runoff goes into the water supply and then it ends up in your
water so perchlorate blocks iodine as well as nitrates which is another waste product from fertilizers so the absolute best way to get your iodine is through a little sea kelp you can take some on a regular basis just take whatever is recommended on the back of the label but also start consuming more shellfish to make sure you have enough as well now I created another video that has gotten millions of views and this relates to using iodine to get rid of skin tags in warts if you haven't seen that video check it out I put
it up right here
