Pashalis said:
It is very interesting. Brownstein talks about only 5% of the people he treated had detox symptoms and apparently he dosed many of them quite high from the beginning (12 - 50 mg or higher).
I also started it with a pretty low dose and low and behold, had rather strong detox symptoms right away at the first day. They are getting better now at the third day, I'm still at a fairly low dose but there is definitely somekind of detox still going on. I'll compile a more detailed list/summary about my experience so far, the next couple of days.
It indeed seems like the people here are WAY over that 5% mark in Brownsteins book. Why? What is different with us?
Well my experience of taking iodine went a little bit beyond the detox symptoms described by most here.
I started out with 4 drops once a day for a few days, then went up to 5 or 6. Then went up to 16 (8 twice a day) for several days, then back down to five once a day. A few days after I had probably one of the most horrible experiences of my life. It began at night after going to bed. Feeling of anxiety in my stomach and chest, rapid and heavy heart beat, racing thought, sweats, shivers and digestive problems (went to bathroom 4 times in the night) that lasted until morning. I felt like I was going crazy, going to die, or both. I slept a few hours here and there. Around 11am I felt able to get up, but for the next few days felt very weak, with brain fog and still a generalized background anxiety. This was accompanied by a depression about pretty much everything. Slowly, over the almost 2 weeks since that night, I have begun to feel a bit more 'normal' although even now I still feel 'out of sorts': lacking ability to concentrate and focus for long periods, a general woozyness in the head, stomach acts up a little now and then.
When trying to describe how I felt, I realised that apart from the horrible anxiety and its physiological effects, the really hard part was not being able to dissociate. I only realised this when I caught myself staring off into space for a few seconds, and also realised how calming that is for the mind (which is probably why we do it), and that I hadn't been able to do it for over 1 week.
I got some blood work done about 1 week after the episode, but there was nothing out of the ordinary except slightly high cortisol and high cholesterol. I had a thyroid scan, again nothing abnormal.
I emailed that Dr. Haskell guy, and he suggested it was "all likely due to hyperthyroid from over stimulating tsh production". He also said "I remember this happening when a person was on 75mg of iodoplus but it took a month for him to come down so you are lucky with having recovered so quickly." [I haven't really recovered fully yet].
I thought this was interesting because it suggests that iodine doesn't only act directly on the thyroid but on the pineal gland, stimulating it to ramp up production of TSH (Thyroid Stimulating Hormone) that in turn causes the thyroid to produce T3/T4 hormone. I was wondering if it also acts on the hypothalamus:
The two most important thyroid hormones are thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3) that stimulate the metabolism of almost every tissue in the body. The thyronines (Thyroid hormones)act on nearly every cell in the body. They act to increase the basal metabolic rate, affect protein synthesis, help regulate long bone growth (synergy with growth hormone) and neural maturation, and increase the body's sensitivity to catecholamines (such as adrenaline) by permissiveness.
Thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), which is produced by the pituitary gland, acts to stimulate production ot T4/T3 by the thyroid gland. The pituitary gland in turn is stimulated to make TSH by the hypothalamus gland by the release of "TSH Releasing Hormone" (TRH) which tells the pituitary gland to stimulate the thyroid gland (release TSH)
Sitting beneath the cerebral hemispheres are the thalamus and hypothalamus. The thalamus is a relay center between the periphery and the cortex. It receives sensory information from virtually every region of the body, filters all of the information, and then relays the filtered portion to the cerebral cortex. The hypothalamus functions much like the thalamus, but mediates its actions by controlling the release of hormones by the pituitary gland. Its major functions include regulation of body temperature, adjusting heart and respiratory rates, and stimulation and inhibition of eating and drinking.
Anyway, I told Haskell I couldn't understand why so many other people I knew (members here) had taken similar amounts without the same effects. He said:
"Yes, this is perplexing why some people can tolerate high doses of iodine and others cannot. Have no idea."
As he mentions in the video I posted here a few days ago, Haskell recommends no more than 3mg per day of iodine. I suppose he does that since there is no "one size fits all" and if you're going to recommend something like iodine to the general public, you should probably err on the low side. It's kind of crazy to think he recommends 3mgs and I was taking 160mgs.
For now, I'm just hoping I can regain some of my former relative peace of mind and focus I had before. I plan on restarting iodine soon, but 1 drop (maybe of 2% Lugols) will suffice, at least to begin (again) with.
So that's my iodine horror story.