Iodine, correcting false beliefs and growth

[sitting]

As part of the process I've understood more clearly the extent to which fear directed my life, my actions and decisions.

That's something I'm struggling with a lot - I'm afraid of so many things, and this fear often stops me in my tracks;

The above gives much deeper meaning to what C's have said -- regarding emotions that hinder vs. those that assist.

Our thoughts & emotions (I think) form the true basis for our spiritual development. Period. This from C's ... from Seth ... from Buddhism. All in direct & incisive commentary. At the end of the day, they're not really talking about much else.

(Specifically from Seth,) thoughts & emotions are the most potent energies we possess as humans. Perhaps to a scale we can't truly imagine. It's the guiding impetus for materialization (as in objects & events.) The energy behind the transformation of the ethereal into the physical. Our input into the mosaic. And our inherent right (and duty) -- to make timeline selections.

C's have given a partial list of what some negative emotions are. We all know them well. Greed, hate, anger, fear, attachment. Each of us can fill in the rest.

For Joe, fear runs dominant. For others ... something else. The results however are pretty much the same. A depressing feeling that life had run down the wrong track.

And when that realization hits home, it can really hurt. A hammer blow.

But when that negative emotion is finally understood and resolved ... you get a lightning bolt.

In Buddhist practice, ridding oneself of disturbing emotions falls under lojong. I've worked long and hard on all emotional fronts ... only to realize I've but just scratched the surface. But jealousy IS one place I've made progress.

I now truly rejoice at the good fortune of others. And what a liberating mental framework that has given me.

I could be wrong.

FWIW.

 

[Joe]

That's something I'm struggling with a lot - I'm afraid of so many things, and this fear often stops me in my tracks; I'm afraid of being attacked, afraid of 'getting out there', afraid to take a stand, even afraid of becoming successful. It's funny, in the past I always thought you guys are way past such thought-loops, but it seems it's not uncommon, that it is here to stay, and that 'the only way to it is through it', i.e. that we must constantly work on these things, acknowledge these fears, and to an extend learn to live with them.

I'm currently reading "Inviting a Monkey to Tea...", which really strikes a chord with me. I like the author's approach to befriend your monkey mind instead of battling it, a fight that we cannot win anyway I think. It's like, 'Oh, it's you again, welcome irrational fear! Ah, making me shake? Come one... Okay, do your thing already, I know that after a while, you will have enough...'

This is where I'm at currently, I try to learn to just live with this rollercoaster that is life with our little I's, the monkey mind. I try to just live through the episodes of fear, uncertainty, doubts, second-guessing myself and so on, and try to do what's in front of me anyway. Or use some strategies to help me endure them, like exercise, doing house work, change the setting, or if it's really bad, press myself to do one very small thing that requires some-willpower, and call it a day...

That's something I've just sort of realized myself, that it IS possible to handle these kind of emotions, that we DO have some control over them, we're not just victims of them, a victim mentality being pretty closely related to a fear mentality. So it's pretty liberating actually. There's a world of difference between feeling these negative emotions and thinking there's nothing we can do about them, and feeling them and realizing they don't have to rule us, that we can modulate and even change them with conscious effort.

So as far as thinking "us guys" would be past such things by now, the truth is probably that, while we're alive, we may never be past such things, and maybe for a very good reason: because the point is that we're meant to learn to handle them with 'impunity' or as close to that as possible, which I suppose means actively using them for our own progress rather than allowing them to hinder us.

 

[Joe]

The above gives much deeper meaning to what C's have said -- regarding emotions that hinder vs. those that assist.

It's interesting that so many things the Cs have said remain only as intellectual or theoretical constructs until you actually understand them (at least a little) from a personal, visceral perspective. 'Visceral' being a very appropriate word in this context because so many emotions (especially negative ones) are felt in the viscera (gut).

What are emotions that hinder? Not necessarily negative ones, but rather negative ones that are based on assumptions. I suppose there can be positive emotions based on assumptions that hinder also. The real problem seems to be the assumptions that go along with the emotions, or that create the emotions, that limit us in many ways, starting from how we feel and think, or think and then feel, and then how that influences us to act or not act.

A book I was perusing recently 'The Mood Cure' has some good info, the first few pages talk about the difference between true emotions and false moods which I found useful:

True emotions Vs. False Moods

Some negative feelings are unavoidable and even beneficial. They're what I call "true emotions." These true, genuine responses to the real difficulties we encounter in life can be hard to take. They can even be unbearable at times, depending on the kinds of ordeals we face. But they can also be vitally important. True grief moves us through our losses, true fear warns us of danger, true anger can defend us from abuse, and true shame can teach us to grow and change. These true emotions typically pass, or diminish naturally, and even when they get repressed or misdirected, they can usually be relieved through counseling. But when we suffer for no justifiable reason; when the pain of a broken heart doesn't mend like a broken bone; when rest, psychotherapy, prayer, and meditation can make little impact-then we must suspect the emotional impostor, the meaningless biochemical error-the "false mood." Figuring out the difference between false moods and true emotions is the first step in your Mood Cure. Once you've mastered that, you can move on to eliminate the fraudulent feelings, such as depression, anxiety, sadness, and irritability, that are interfering with your natural capacity to enjoy life.

Learning to Spot a False Mood

When your boss cancels a long-scheduled vacation, you may get justifiably angry, and the next day you won't have any trouble remembering what triggered your anger. At other times, you just seem to "snap" when your child forgets to take out the garbage. Later you say, "I don't know what got into me." The first case is a genuine emotion, the second is a definite counterfeit.

* Thinking of a loved one who has died may make you teary, but if every sentimental TV commercial brings you to tears, you're in the grip of false pain.

* PMS is notorious for its bad moods. If you're reasonably even-tempered the rest of the month, but become teary and nasty before your period, you're experiencing a clear-cut case of hormonally disrupted emotional balance-a false mood.

* We all make mistakes and beat ourselves up from time to time. But if you are finding fault with your behavior or appearance almost every day, it's likely that false feelings of low self-esteem are responsible.

You shouldn't have to live with these kinds of distorted moods on a regular basis. It's like having an engine that sputters, preventing you from having a smooth emotional ride. When your brain's emotional equipment needs a tune-up, you get clues: you don't sleep well, you worry too much, you start feeling overwhelmed, you lose your enthusiasm or your ability to concentrate. You might also start depending on chocolate, wine, or marijuana to get some relief. If you experience these kinds of symptoms frequently, you may have just come to accept them, assuming them simply to be unfortunate features of your basic personality. But chances are you're wrong. Now you have an opportunity to discover your true emotional nature.

The Primary Cause of Your False Moods

Your brain is responsible for most of your feelings, both true and false. In concert with some surprisingly brainlike areas of your heart and gut, it transmits your feelings through four highly specialized and potent kinds of mood molecules. If it has plenty of all four, it keeps you as happy as you can possibly be, given your particular life circumstances. But if your brain runs low on these mood transmitters-whether because of a minor genetic miscue, because it's used them up coping with too much stress, or because you aren't eating the specific foods it needs-it stops producing normal emotions on a consistent basis. Instead, it starts hitting false emotional notes, like a piano out of tune.

As the Cs said:

"When you begin to separate limiting emotions based on assumptions from emotions that open one to unlimited possibilities, that means you are preparing for the next density."

I don't know if separating and dealing with emotions in this way prepares for "the next density", but I'm pretty sure it makes life a whole lot more tolerable and even enjoyable, and I reckon that's good enough reason to practice handling our thoughts and feelings in this kind of pro-active, conscious way.

 

[sitting]

It's interesting that so many things the Cs have said remain only as intellectual or theoretical constructs until you actually understand them (at least a little) from a personal, visceral perspective.

That is so true. And it is so important.

When feelings (pain, sadness, anger, joy, sorrow ...) are real, we all know it. And when it's not real (like phony -- in ourselves or others) we know that as well. The sad truth is, much of our lives are actually lived at that (phony) level.

Here we're talking real emotions. The true power source & pathway for spiritual development. And what you've so courageously exposed recently, was/ is so real that I can almost touch it. We ARE dealing with core issues here.

Apparently your emotions (iodine enhanced) had bent you over. And not by a little. Thankfully, love from family & friends sustained you. It's good to hear the darkness is fading. You're so vital to this endeavor.

The list of disturbing emotions is long. But all are not needed. It takes just ONE to mess up a life. This has been an incredible realization for me.

In my extended family, jealousy (on part of some) was the ONE. To the point of almost wrecking families. (It's all the more bizarre -- as the combined financial resources were beyond wealthy.) Yet jealousy dominated relationships. And events spiraled out of control.

In simple (but accurate terms,) it boiled down to:

"You care more about your brother than you do me."
and
"you care more about your own parents than me and mine."

These two simple sounding sentiments (driving a chain of events) nearly put two previously healthy lives to an end. I simply had not known such despair prior. Thankfully all survived. When I talk of disturbing emotions (and their effects,) I know what I speakth. As does Joe.

FWIW.

 

[HifromGrace]

Joe, that's one of the most beautiful posts I've read in years - thank you.

(I'm referencing the opening statements of this thread)

 

[Martina]

''Just go and do what you were born to do.'' I just heard that on Birdman my sister's watching. I was never good at expressing myself properly, but I understand what other people are trying to say and I get you and it means a lot to me to read you. :)

What I want to say is: Joe you are simply awesome. I've never read anything so beautiful as some of your articles and I totally appreciate* and admire you. And thank you so much for being you. The simple fact that you and people like you exist makes our world, our lessens much livable and understandable.Thank you.


*I know that we think we (generally speaking) have higher emotions which might not yet posses, that's maybe why moi myself don't feel real, but I deeply, deeply decided to be/become real, consistent, objective and finding the truth. I don't care if it will take me few lives longer than you :), I'm really happy deep inside that in this lifetime I was somehow marginally as your member into this stuff. Cosmic Mind thank You for that.

 

[Charade]

Thanks for sharing what's going on with you, Joe. Also, thank you for sharing so much of yourself and your time with the articles you write and your radio presence. While it's tough to realize that none of that will change the world, you've certainly influenced and changed a lot of us on this forum and outside of it with your insight. So by touching so many people you did make a change, just not in a worldwide events kind of way.

Your post highlights the importance of doing just for the learning and sharing that goes along with the doing rather than having an expectation about the outcome of the doing.

I whole heartedly agree... The world scene may not be changing for the better as we would like and nor is it our right to change it. But you are changing those of us that are seeking truth. I consider you further down the path of knowledge (as many others here are) than I am. Your insights have been invaluable to me.

I thank you for your efforts. They reach and affect us much more than you might realize. May you always have the strength to carry on.

 

[Ennio]

Joe, just wanted to add that in being so honest and sharing your challenges and the process of your working on it - you have given others here, myself included, another useful way to approach our own difficulties. What seems most valuable is the mere fact of acknowledging those difficulties and being so open about their existence in the way that you have. It also seems to communicate that: Even if it sometimes feels (for whatever reason) like we are only inching forward against an onslaught, its ok. What we're working on here is a process and a journey after all. And its a very good thing to keep searching, sharing and doing even - or especially when - we're in the thick of a struggle.

As for your realization about fighting evil, I think its important to consider that that intention of yours is a big part of what has motivated and mobilized you to do as much as you have. Its no small thing and has also brought you to this point you are at right now.

 

[T.C.]

Even if it sometimes feels (for whatever reason) like we are only inching forward against an onslaught, its ok. What we're working on here is a process and a journey after all. And its a very good thing to keep searching, sharing and doing even - or especially when - we're in the thick of a struggle.

This was on my mind yesterday. It was in the context of "Should I be 'heading' somewhere?" "Where am I going?" "What am I achieving?" etc...

I was viewing it through the lens of certain C's sessions where Laura was asking things like, "What are we supposed to be doing?"

The quote/response that came to mind was, "You're doing just fine thank you very much!"

I came to realise the meaning of some of the things the C's and Laura have said about 'Building your power centre'. That by "Doing all we can" each day and living by what we think is right based on what we know and our level of awareness (while always trying to expand those) we're building something that we can't see: We're building our 'Power Centre'; we're building our 'Ark' for when the flood comes. As such, we ARE heading somewhere, going somewhere, even if we feel like we're in the same place today as we were yesterday and the day before.

As for your realization about fighting evil, I think its important to consider that that intention of yours is a big part of what has motivated and mobilized you to do as much as you have. Its no small thing and has also brought you to this point you are at right now.

I agree. Taking it to a personal, symbolic, subconscious level. It seems to me like how some Alchemists said that the actual physical experiments were a necessary part of the inner Work. I think that your gargantuan battle with the dark forces 'out there' were probably training in strategy and perspective, measure of control and influence vs. acceptance, on the darker forces within yourself.

 

[anartist]

In terms of animal feed, perhaps it is a North American thing, and supplementation is not used extensively in other areas(Europe, Asia,..)?

How Excess Iodine Is Undermining Thyroid Health and What to Do About It — Interview with Dr. Alan Christianson and Ashley Armstrong

Story at-a-glance​

• While iodine fortification in salt was introduced in the 1920s to prevent goiters, this intervention led to a dramatic increase in thyroid disease​
• Modern food production and industry has created widespread iodine overload through multiple sources: iodized animal feed, dairy cleaning practices, processed foods, personal care products and supplements​
• High iodine intake has been linked to increased breast cancer risk, particularly in populations with overexpressed sodium iodide symporters, contrary to earlier beliefs about iodine's protective effects​
• Thyroid antibodies are more predictive of thyroid symptoms than T4 or TSH levels alone, and genetic variations significantly influence how individuals metabolize iodine across generations​
• To reduce iodine exposure, limit processed foods, choose dairy and eggs from non-iodine-supplemented sources, review your personal care products and track your overall iodine intake​

Sources of Excess Iodine Beyond Table Salt​

The underlying sources of modern iodine overload isn't limited to fortified table salt. Christianson and Armstrong shed light on various sources contributing to excessive iodine intake:
1.Animal feed — Conventionally raised livestock are routinely supplemented with iodine, significantly increasing iodine levels in animal products. Armstrong emphasized that if animals are supplemented with iodine, the iodine levels in products like eggs increase five to 10-fold.
2.Dairy cleaning practices — The dairy industry commonly uses iodine-based disinfectants to clean teats and equipment. Although a hot water rinse helps mitigate iodine residues, the pervasive use of iodine teat dips introduces an additional, often unnoticed source of iodine into dairy products.
3.Processed foods — Iodine additives in processed grains and salt heavily fortify the food supply, making it challenging to control individual iodine intake if you consume processed foods. Christianson noted that many processed grains contain iodized dough conditioners. Even those that don’t explicitly list iodine often have significant levels when tested.
4.Personal care products — Iodine is prevalent in numerous personal care products, including some acne treatments, contributing to daily iodine exposure without consumers' awareness. Armstrong pointed out, "Many common acne treatments contain a lot of iodine because of its antifungal and antimicrobial properties."
5.Seafood and kelp supplements — While ocean-based seafood is a natural iodine source, fishmeal is also a common protein source for cattle feed, which increases iodine levels in eggs and dairy products.

By Dr. Joseph Mercola

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Welcome everyone. Dr. Mercola, helping you take control of your health, and we've got part two. And this time we invited one of my favorite guests of all times, which is Ashley Armstrong, my partner in crime to... We revamped the entire agricultural system for the benefit of everyone here watching this. But we're here because we're both passionate about thyroid and we just happen to have on Dr. Alan Christianson, who is, in my view, the premier expert in the world on this topic. And he's personally helped me out, and I'm confident, when I shared this with Ashley, she says, "I got to be on the call next time." I says, "Great, this is going to be fun." I've done a podcast with two guests before, but they've been frequent, but this one's going to be great. You're going to love it.

And if you don't know who Ashley is, she, of course is, she has her own podcast, and she is the founder of Angel Acres and pivoted from her engineering degree to be a regenerative farmer and help create a system, a system to produce some of the healthiest food on the planet in the most ideal way. And she works with a lot of the Amish farmers. She's networked all across the country with them, and she's scaling up, and many of you now are getting her products in. We're just so happy that she's committed her work to do this and happy that she's here because she's a big fan of Ray Peat and has a really solid understanding of thyroid, which we've never discussed other than superficially. But now we're going to go deep. So welcome and thank you for joining us, both of you.

Ashley Armstrong:
Thanks for having us on.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Happy to be here.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
All right.

Ashley Armstrong:
And I'm excited because the food production really connects here. I've got quite a few questions at the end, but the iodine content, which impacts thyroid health, has significantly increased in our food production system over the last 20 to 30 years.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Spot on.

Ashley Armstrong:
Excited to dive into that as well.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
That'll be fun.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
And I think my observation or takeaway from our last interview, Alan, was that this was modern healthcare system, public health attempt to correct nutritional deficiencies. And what they've done, they've ruined this in three metals, fluoride, iron, and iodine. None of those should be in the food supply added as a supplement. We don't need them as fortified foods, and that's caused so many problems. So maybe we can start there, because that seems to... From digesting information and really meditating and implying a person, since our last conversation, it's become obvious to me that the nexus, the origin of this epidemic, massive epidemic is fortification of the food specifically with iodine. So, can you comment on that?

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Sure, sure. So historically, in the recent past, in the '20s, 1910s, they were trying to recruit young men for the Great War World War I. And about a third in areas near Michigan, near the Great Lakes had enlarged thyroids. They weren't eligible. So one of the attempts was to add iodine to foods. 1924, that started. Before then, autoimmune thyroid disease was a rarity in medicine. Most doctors, Joe in med school, there's all these things we re-read about in pathophysiology, and a lot of them we never saw. They were so obscure, and that's what autoimmune thyroid disease was for doctors then. But in the following decade, the rates of it among adult women went up 26 fold, not percent, fold. The rates of it skyrocketed, and there was tons of scathing reports and journal entries written, "Hey, this is a problem. We've just created a big issue here."

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
I'm wondering, what is the normal course of someone who's severely hypothyroid? Hypothyroidism could kill you, a Graves' disease. But hypothyroidism, I think is rare, whatever. I mean, you can get mixed edema, go into coma, but for the most part, you have so many serious symptoms that you're always going to seek medical attention. It's never a medical emergency.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Well, totally agreed. And for even further along, the autoimmunity is a separate variable from the hypothyroidism. Many people never have frank hypothyroidism, but they're still suffering from the autoimmunity.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
No, I'm referring to the hypothyroidism they were seeking to treat by the goiters that you referenced

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Oh, they weren't hypothyroidism. They weren't hypothyroidism.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
They just had goiters? I didn't know that. I assumed they were hypothyroid.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Nope, just structurally abnormal.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Is there any

Dr. Alan Christianson:
They just didn't fit the military criteria was what it was.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Oh, that is new. Did you know that, Ashley?

Ashley Armstrong:
No. And it's so interesting because livestock always follow suit. So, they added iodine to the salt then you're saying around the early 1900s?

Dr. Alan Christianson:
1924. There was never a mandatory federal step.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
100 years.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
But 1924, it started being done on a voluntary basis around the Great Lakes.

Ashley Armstrong:
So, then they did that for human salt, and then they started increasing. They were like, "Oh, well, if humans are deficient in iodine, then animals must be deficient in iodine." And so if you look at any mineral pack, any common conventional mineral packs, they're loaded with iodine.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Well, so fun thing to add to that point. Totally agree. The UK didn't fortify their salt with iodine in '24, but a decade after us, they started fortifying animal feed with iodine, and they saw the same problem about a decade delayed in humans.

Ashley Armstrong:
Because the same thing. So, Dr. Mercola sent me the link to your guys' last interview, and I think one of the big summary points there was that iodine accumulation is a really big problem that our nation is facing. And like you said, Dr. Mercola, it's one of those government interventions, oops. Like, oops.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
We're the benefactor of those oops.

Ashley Armstrong:
It's unfortunate because you've got one side of the coin that says, we're still deficient in iodine, and I know of people max supplementing with the iodine that they put on their skin. And then on the other side, we've got Dr. Christianson who has a ton of experience treating people with thyroid problems and showing, no, it's actually an iodine overdose. All of us are loaded in iodine. So, I can understand people's frustrations. As a social media user, as someone who's just trying to get healthy, they see drastically different views, and I understand how frustrating that is for people. And that's one of the things that I like to try to break down into simplistic terms.
And I hope we can talk about this a little bit more today, because I think epigenetics could also be playing a role too. Because imagine if you're born in a womb that has higher level, you're exposed to higher levels of iodine, and then you supplement with iodine, your food contains iodine. It's like similar thing with PUFA accumulation. We've changed the fatty acid profile inside of us. We're accumulating iodine generation after generation after generation. And so I would love to dive into, at some point in this conversation, practical take-home points of how one can address their own iodine overload problems today.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
You just opened up half a dozen wonderful discussion points.

Ashley Armstrong:
I know. I know.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Before we go there, I want to share one thing about acid.

Ashley Armstrong:
Because I think it's helpful... People were very confused. Because there's people all over the internet saying, "You're deficient iodine. Your thyroid problem is due to low iodine intake." And I think it's important for people to understand that that could actually be causing them a lot of harm with their iodine supplementation. And that's one thing I appreciate about you is step one, maybe assess your supplements. What do your supplements contain? What medications are you taking? Because that's an easy thing you can just take away potentially.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
It's also... I'll let you go on, I'll just comment on this one thing. It's also the food. And I get a big portion of my food from Ashley's farms, and the first thing I did was connect her after our interview and said, "Ashley, what do you clean the breast of your cows with?"

Ashley Armstrong:
Teats.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
And they were using I iodine or some of them were, weren't they?

Ashley Armstrong:
So, for the audience, you have to clean teats, you have to clean milking equipment. That's just good practice. And so unfortunately, another thing in addition to supplements and food and iodine in our salt is we've also moved into iodine based disinfectants all over the place. And there are alternatives. It's just iodine has been widely accepted in the dairy industry as cleaning off the teats. So, you do iodine teat dip. Well, I would say about 40% of our dairy producers were using iodine teat dip, but they were following that with the hot water rinse. So, I'm not too concerned about it. However, I told them we're going to switch to just hydrogen peroxide with the warm water rinse or vinegar.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Perfect.

Ashley Armstrong:
So, there's so many different options that you can use for perfectly acceptable disinfectants. It's just for some reason, iodine, you walk into an agriculture store and you go to dairy cleaning, and iodine is the most common option there. So, it's just more a little bit education. And most dairy producers are not going to be upset about it. They'll just say, "Hey, can I just use up my current shirt?" Of course, do a hot water rinse after, and then maybe switch to something like hydrogen peroxide.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
So, you bring up a really good point. Before you mention about how, the truth is that yeah, this has been fortified in ways that aren't really needed anymore. But the other side of this is that iodine, it's a really useful molecule in industrial applications. And because of that, along with fortification, there's a lot of industrial uses or process uses in which it's gotten into the food supply. So those are the main two avenues.

Ashley Armstrong:
It's like estrogen.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
And in Ashley's case, you're getting food from her and no idea that it's snuck in, the iodine snuck in through this route unless you know the specific details to look for. You've covered almost all of them though in your book and in your work. Go ahead, Ashley, you have to retort to my comment.

Ashley Armstrong:
Chickens and pigs are also heavily supplemented with iodine in their feed. And so, if they're just using a conventional feed, there's quite a bit of iodine added to that, and the amount in an egg can increase five to tenfold based on if iodine is added to the feed. There's no iodine in our feed. I promise. That's a mineral I forgot to look at, which is a good thing when I was formulating the feed. But they're also adding it to beef cattle minerals as well. So just general mineral supplementation, which is a good thing for many livestock. But who is formulating these, who's setting these barriers and requirements for microminerals and iodine levels in these mineral packs? That to me is another concerning thing, because again, we go back to the 1920s, added iodine to the salt. Oops, here we are today overloaded. So at what point are things and mineral packs going to change? I think it just more conversations with Dr. Christianson.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Well, I'd love to make one real high level comment early on too, is that I don't want iodine to come off as a villain or a bad guy or something that we need to avoid because it's essential to life. We need some. The difficulty is that there are genetic variations. Ashley talked about the epigenetic changes. We know that there's variations in human iodine metabolism. We know humans are adapted to different iodine environments, and those who are adapted to lower iodine environments, they can't tolerate what's even a slight excess and amounts that are harmless for others. So yeah, so many people genetically, and these are all the genes that correlate with those having risks for thyroid disease. So many have a genetic intolerance of slight excesses, and it's easy to get that slight excess. So that's the high-level picture that we're at.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
I want to pivot back to that goiter because I'm still intrigued with that observation. I did not know that was true, that I thought that someone had this goiter that's enlarged thyroid that almost always correlated with hypothyroidism.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
No.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
But it's not. And it's downsides

Dr. Alan Christianson:
No. Thyroid goiter's quite common.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
And that is the thyroid's glands response to lack of iodine is tries to make more, and it's just not working more so it just pumps... It's like exercise.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Well, that can be a driver of goiter, iodine excess can be a driver of goiter, and in many cases there's no clear trigger.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Really?

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Yeah.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Wow. So, any ideas what causes it?

Dr. Alan Christianson:
It correlates with exposure to alcohol and tobacco. There's also some gene correlations, but it's about three to 5% of most populations will develop goiters. If there's severe endemic iodine deficiency, the rates are higher. Severe iodine, excess rates are higher. It can overlap with hypothyroidism, but in most cases, there's normal thyroid function.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Not related. Yeah, yeah. Not related.

Ashley Armstrong:
Dr. Mercola, I think that Dr. Ray Peat has also mentioned x-rays and radiation.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Oh.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Sure. More of a historical driver, but common thing in the past was that radiation was used for swollen tonsils, and in those cases, just the free radical damage could trigger more damage to thyrocytes and more hypothyroidism and more thyroid enlargement, thyroid cancers.

Ashley Armstrong:
Speaking of Dr. Ray Peat, one thing that I would like to discuss would be, it sounds like on your last interview that you are familiar with the work of Dr. Ray Peat. You're very familiar with the work of Dr. Broda Barnes.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
I wouldn't say very familiar with Ray Peat's work in detail, just the name, the fact that he's around. I'm not in detail, familiar with his work. Very familiar with Broda Barnes's work, but just to put that out there.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
He's more familiar because he read your Your Guide to Cellular Health.

Ashley Armstrong:
Great. So, I'm heavily influenced by the work of Broda Barnes as well. And granted, it was in a different era. And so, I think that's one of the things I've learned the most from you, Dr. Christianson is, hey, maybe we need to take his work with a grain of salt, not

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Iodine salt.

Ashley Armstrong:
Iodine free salt. Maybe take that with a grain of salt. Because for those unfamiliar with the work of Dr. Broda Barnes, he drastically improved people's health in the early 1900s by supplementing, adding thyroid to their protocols. And he used NDT, so desiccated thyroid, and you can't deny the results that he saw. He saw increasing body temperature measurements. He saw resolution of symptoms. He even saw sometimes structural changes in individual's faces. His work and his book are pretty powerful. But now I start to question it a little bit, learning a little bit more about your work and hey, thyroid supplementation shouldn't be mass passed out. I think it is important that today's thyroid is largely just T4 prescriptions, whereas Broda Barnes was doing a little bit more NDT desiccated thyroid. But I was very curious. I had some notes. What are your thoughts on why he was seeing such improvements in health improvements in symptoms when he was giving his patients desiccated thyroid?

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Sure, sure. Yeah. So many had myxedema, many had overt hypothyroidism and thyroid replacement therapy makes a big difference for those symptoms. Yeah, very straightforward.

Ashley Armstrong:
Okay. Another thought I had was maybe the desiccated

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Let me just ask one question about that, follow up on that. You had mentioned natural desiccated thyroid, which is what Broda Barnes use, but I don't think that's even available today. Maybe they sell it, but is there a process where they actually take the active T3 out of that and it's just essentially T4?

Dr. Alan Christianson:
No. Part of the United States Pharmacopeia Assays for natural desiccated thyroid requires roughly nine micrograms of T3 per one grain dosage, give or take about 10% in the production process. There's no place in which they can manipulate the hormone content. They assay it, and surprisingly, about half of the raw material cannot end up making it to final manufacture because they assay it and it's just out of stock. They can't really fix it, they just throw it out and use another batch basically.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Is that a prescription or can you get that as an overcomer?

Dr. Alan Christianson:
So prescription porcine natural desiccated thyroid. We've got three brands right now in the United States. We've got Armour, Adthyza, and then NP Thyroid, and those are standardized, as I mentioned. There are some over-the-counter versions. Tough thing is just the not standardized.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
So the prescriptions are standardized. The over-the-counter ones are not.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Well, the prescription ones, yeah. Again, more than half the batches get rejected when they're assayed. So, we know that they're not effective. And even of those that are accepted, a certain amount do have post-production or recall that occurs. So, when they're watched, they're good. They're not perfect, but it does take a lot of analysis and assay. So, the drawback about nonprescription is just if they're not assayed in some way, we don't know the quality control. There actually have been a few studies done of the over-the-counter versions in which they've been purchased and assayed, and they've had a pretty big, they have active hormone, but it's a pretty wide range.

Ashley Armstrong:
Broda Barnes was... He used Armour. And so, another thought that I had was, Hey, this was early 1900s. The cattle, the pigs, they weren't supplemented with iodine, so therefore their thyroids themselves contained low levels. Now we fast-forward to 2024, soon to be 2025. All the livestock are supplemented with iodine. Potentially their thyroids are now overloaded with iodine, such as for many individuals. And so maybe the Armour and the NDT, the desiccated thyroids are not comparable from early 1900s to today, and maybe they contain a lot more iodine. Are you aware of any testing of any of that?

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Sure, sure. So actually, the raw material is first assayed based upon iodine content and standardized for 0.2% iodine in the raw material for natural desiccated thyroid. The prescription forms are always porcine. There's really just two manufacturers of the raw material. 1980, the real big shift away from natural thyroid occurred because the standardizing, so there's first assay for the raw material, which still is iodine based, then they're standardizing per hormone content. And that's the second step. The second step didn't occur before about 1985. And in 1980, the problem was that you could standardize natural thyroid per iodine content, but not all the iodine was in the T4 and the T3, four and three or how many iodine atoms are present. There's a lot of iodine separate and in thyroglobulin and in other thyronamines. So, you could standardize iodine and you would get an approximation of active hormone, but far from perfect.

And there was a couple of editorials in JAMA about people who were on treatment for hypothyroidism, which should have been therapeutic, but clearly was not based upon their clinical presentation. They were still symptomatic and their scores were way off. And this was the big push for synthetic T4 only. And the advantage that it had in that era was that all the iodine in synthetic T4 was in the active hormone. So, if you standardized per iodine content, you were standardizing per active hormone. And that was a totally valid argument back in 1980 during the Carter administration. But it's not a valid argument today because the standardizing is based on active hormone, and that's written up in the United States Pharmacopeia.

Ashley Armstrong:
Got it. Well, I think many of the prometabolic, bioenergetic groups these days still do encourage or recommend from time to time the use of thyroid hormone supplementation. I have seen it help a number of individuals, but I do think there seems to be a very fine line. And you brought up a good point, Dr. Broda Barnes in the early 1900s, he saw it helped a lot of people. I would say in the bioenergetics space, there is a gray area of diagnosing hypothyroidism versus subclinical hypothyroidism. And I would say you potentially would say that someone with subclinical hypothyroidism should not be on thyroid supplementation.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Well, I make a distinction too, between whether something might help someone and whether it may cause long-term harm in ways that might not be apparent. And this would be a difficulty with really everything that has been done until just the very recent past. We're seeing more and more data saying that taking hormones from outside the body, people can feel better, people can benefit in various ways from symptoms, and even with normal levels still may have certain complications. So, if someone feels better, that's always a win. They've always improved their health in some way, but I'd love to have that happen in a way that doesn't take away from their long-term health.

Ashley Armstrong:
Because what Dr. Broda Barnes would talk about would be taking some level of thyroid and monitoring your body temperature, waiting one to two weeks, and then adjusting to try to reach 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. So that's commonly the discussion of taking exogenous thyroid to boost metabolic rates. And so, I think the biggest takeaway I've learned from you Dr. Christianson, is maybe there are long-term consequences to relying on that. So, I think step one for someone would be, how does one assess that they potentially need thyroid hormone support or they don't need thyroid hormone support? What is an actual reason why they should be on it?

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Well, a distinction I would make is whether it seems to help empirically, it wouldn't be a clear sign that it's safe or beneficial. At some point, the interventions that we can have in natural medicine, like thyroid hormones, they can have a nonspecific stimulant effects. Someone could take cocaine and feel more energized, but not be healthier from that. So yeah, I'd pull apart benefits from that. So, in terms of categories in which the benefit outweighs the risk, that really starts with overt hypothyroidism. So, when we look at the body's chemistry and we see abnormalities, the question to ask is that a compensation or is that a failure? Is that something where the body is doing its best to make due of the current situation or have all the backup mechanisms collapsed? And in the case of overt hypothyroidism, yeah, the brain is begging the thyroid to work.

This is Kirk yelling at Mr. Scott, "Scotty, we got to get to work. Give me more." And Scott's like, "But captain, the engines can't take anymore." So yeah, there's a point at where things decompensate and there the body is no longer in homeostasis. It doesn't have the balance it's trying to achieve. And in that case, external interventions, they're causing more benefit than they are causing harm. And that's where we're at with overt hypothyroidism. That's clearly the case when TSH levels are well over 20 and T4 levels are well below range. There's gray cases that are edging on that, but that's clearly a situation in which there's more benefit than harm.

Ashley Armstrong:
If someone has been on

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Let me

Ashley Armstrong:
Yeah, go ahead.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
... put up a question here though, because you brought up a point, Ashley, about the diagnosis and the Broda Barne's focus was on the temperature, and in our last conversation we discussed the, or actually, you discussed, and I learned that unless you have an unusual situation with respect to having your thyroid removed or coming off a thyroid hormone replacement that really don't need to measure the thyroid hormones, there's almost no benefit to it. But what's really crucial is to measure the thyroid antibodies, which is strongly suggestive of the cause of almost all hypothyroidism, which is the autoimmune disease. So how do you pair that against the recommendations by Broda Barnes and many others to measure their temperatures, basal body temperatures? Because I have not had a lot of good success with that, and I was taking thyroid hormone replacement. I'm not now since our last conversation, I'm over it completely. I mean, how do you reconcile that body temperature, especially when you have a low temperature?

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Back in Barnes day. So, 1972, everything changed with thyroid assessment. That's when we learned about how to actually measure

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Really?

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Yeah. Three pivotal things happened. We were first able to assay high sensitive TSH scores, we were able to assay T3 for the first time, then we're able to learn that T3 was mostly peripherally metabolized. Those all happened within a few months. So, this massive shift occurred in our understanding. During his time, we didn't know any of that. And there weren't. There was quotes from 1918 saying, if someone has these symptoms suggestive of myxedema, why not just give some natural thyroid extract? Funny thing. But in the earliest days, there was natural desiccated thyroid, there was thyroid extract and there was thyroid feeding, and there were thyroglobulin. So, there's like four completely different versions. Thyroid feeding was pretty much just like steak tartare, but thyroid tissue. So it was done in a lot of ways, way back when.

Ashley Armstrong:
Eat a whole fish head.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Well, yeah, they would take thyroid tissue that was just desiccated and not even processed, just chopped up, just minced basically.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Wow.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
But in Barnes day, the difficulty was that, and the quote that I was alluded to from 1918 said, "Hey, if someone has all these symptoms that are looking like myxedema, give them some version of thyroid and see if it helps." And in that era, that was reasonable, given what they knew and given their predictive powers, that was totally reasonable. And there was a lot of nonspecific signs that correlated with hypothyroidism before it was obvious, before it was at the point of myxedema and basal body temperature was affected by that. Since Barnes's time, we've learned that the thyroid basal body temperature connections are very real, but they're not as linear. They're not as tight as one might think. So many who are overtly hypothyroid will have a lower basal body temperature.

And during hyperthyroid storm, people often elicit a febrile response, but there's not a linear increase in basal body temperature as one moves further into hyperthyroidism. That wasn't understood during Barnes's time. He thought that you could use the basal body temperature to titrate the dose of thyroid, and sadly, he died from thyroid overdose. That was probably a big part of it. But we now know that during thyroid storm, there's a fever, but there's not a ratcheting up of temperature as you're getting closer and closer to that.

Ashley Armstrong:
So maybe that's why he had to wait two weeks after the thyroid supplementation to wait for that to come.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
So, your clinical experience, have you found, ever found benefit to measuring basal body temperature?

Dr. Alan Christianson:
If we were back in the olden days, and it was one more sign along with things, but currently I don't use it. For assay

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Okay. It makes life easier for all of us.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
... there's some thyroid hormone, whether they're on a good dose of thyroid hormone.

Ashley Armstrong:
So, I've worked with a number of individuals that come from a very restrictive background. So of course, in the modern-day diet culture, wanting to be extra model thin, skinny, lean, there are many women who have been on periods of very restrictive diets, and I'm talking prolonged eating 1,200 calories. And from improving their metabolic rate, we do see a rise in their body temperature as their energy production starts to increase because heat is a byproduct there. And so I've seen it correlate with improved health and just energy production. But I think what you're saying is potentially with thyroid supplementation, there isn't a direct line. It kind of

Dr. Alan Christianson:
What you're saying is spot on. So when someone's in a starvation response, their metabolism is impaired in a lot of ways. They can have a lower temperature, they can be centrally hypothyroid, meaning their brain is putting less of a signal on their thyroid than expected, and they can be peripherally, hypothyroid. These are all compensations. They're not failures, they're compensations. They're always, the body is compensating for having just too little fuel available.

Ashley Armstrong:
Because when I was carnivore low-carb, my body temperature was 96.5 degrees Fahrenheit, and now I'm in the 98s, adding a lot of carbohydrates with an improved metabolism. And so maybe it can just be a sign of general energy metabolism, but maybe isn't the best metric and tool right now for assessing thyroid health.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Well, another tough thing just to throw in with body temperature is where should someone's temperature be? And what is a normal healthy body temperature? Our reflex is always 98.6. That's from about a century old German paper. That's not considered a normal, healthy ideal, not that it's bad, but there's just such a larger range of normal than we thought a hundred years ago.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
What do you think that range is?

Dr. Alan Christianson:
It's probably a solid four or five degrees, and it encompasses

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Really?

Dr. Alan Christianson:
It goes a little above 98.6, but quite a ways below it for normal healthy adults, of course, menstruation affects that greatly. Many of things can as well. But if you're 98.6, it's not the law anymore.

Ashley Armstrong:
Okay. So curious on the best metrics to assess your thyroid and iodine status. And so, what I've gauged from you would be getting those antibody tests done on thyroid, not necessarily T4, T3, TSH to get the antibody test. But then also I'm very curious to learn more about this urinary iodine to creatinine ratio test. From listening to your work, it seems like those two are really good things to monitor as you're making changes to your diet lifestyle supplement. Can you talk a little bit about how those can be used as metrics?

Dr. Alan Christianson:
For sure, for sure. So, nothing bad about the thyroid functional test, TSH, T4, T3, but yeah, they're not predictive for most people of symptoms. There's such a loose correlation between them and thyroid symptoms. The antibodies are more predictive, they're more commonly correlating with symptoms and risks. And simple thing, Joe mentioned about antithyroid peroxidase, antithyroglobulin, there's a couple of others that are available, but those are two by far the most common and most typical that are evaluated. Iodine assessment, this is a tricky thing, and for the last century, there have been tons of researchers just pulling their hair out to what are the best ways to gauge nutritional status of iodine?

And there's a lot of good tools for populations, but because there's so much intra and inter individual variability, there's really no great tools for individuals. Once you're measuring 500 people, it doesn't matter how bad that individual test is, you can gauge that group and make sense out of the group. But applied to individuals, there really aren't metrics and there aren't tests that say, are you getting too much or too little? But there are good tests to see if you're at a therapeutic range, if you're trying to help your thyroid, if you're trying to reverse a thyroid problem, you can then see if you're at a range in which that's likely to help. And that's the urinary iodine to creatinine ratio.

Ashley Armstrong:
Dr. Mercola, have you ran that test yet?

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
No, I haven't. Yeah. Actually, in our new health coach system, I wasn't really going to focus on that too much because technically it's not that difficult. Compliance to it is somewhat of a challenge because you have to typically make sure you're married to a gallon jug for 24 hours.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
To be precise, it require 24 hour test. But further to your point, the test is not a mandatory thing. Probably the most useful way to gauge one's status is just by being aware of one's intake. If you do a good inventory of your intake from salt, food, supplements, personal care products, you can pretty well know what you're ingesting.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
And that's free and curative too. You kill two birds with one stone.

Ashley Armstrong:
So, I think that's another thing I appreciate about your work, Dr. Christianson is they're practical take home steps. You outline them and how crucial diet is. Can you talk a little bit about, because we were mentioning earlier, body temperature when you're on a low carb... When you're in a starvation state, your body temperature down regulates as a protective mechanism to down regulate energy production. When it comes to low carbohydrates, how have you seen that impact iodine status, thyroid health, because there's this message in the low carb space that it's well documented that your T3 is lowered when you're on a low carb diet. But many advocates say that that's just the body becoming more sensitive to it. And your reliance on ketones and a change in your body's energy utilization, glucose versus ketones and fatty acids, that diminishes the need for higher T3. What has been your experience with someone going low iodine but also low carbohydrates in improving their thyroid status?

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Well, so as a separate variable, everything you mentioned is spot on. Carbohydrate intake itself can correlate with the body's metabolic rate, and this correlates with insulin production. There's so many times in which insulin is at an excess, but if it's far too low, that can impair the peripheral activation of thyroid hormones. And the body can sometimes see extremely low insulin as a proxy for starvation, even if there's not a deficit of caloric intake, even if someone's eating enough food, but insulin is far too low, their body can start eliciting a starvation response. One of the more dramatic studies was on children put on a ketogenic diet for seizures. And in the study it was adolescent kids.

In the population, the normal baseline rate of hypothyroidism, overt hypothyroidism is about one in 1,250. So pretty rare, less than one in a thousand. But during the course of a two-month ketogenic diet for seizures, the rate of overt hypothyroidism warranting thyroid medication was 27%. So yeah, the one variable was that control groups that were medicated, that still had seizures but were not in the ketogenic diet, didn't have a higher rate of hypothyroidism. So that was one of the more dramatic studies. And we've seen other ones in pediatric populations and others in adult populations that are showing similar results. If one's intake of carbohydrate is radically low even on a eucaloric intake, then yeah, there are central ways and peripheral ways in which thyroid hormones are downregulated.

Ashley Armstrong:
Dr. Mercola, do you have any follow up questions there about

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
No. You can go ahead. Go ahead.

Ashley Armstrong:
Okay. Well, then I'm curious. So, let's say someone believes that they're in a hypothyroid state, their thyroid antibody tests are elevated and they want to make actionable steps forward. I think hopefully that data you shared encouraged people to include carbohydrates that work well for you, support your body's energy metabolism. Insulin is not the bad man that people lend it to be. Of course, we don't want it to be elevated all day long, but spikes in insulin are important for normal functioning, including converting T4 into active thyroid hormone T3 throughout the body. And so, it's not something we need to be afraid of. So, can you talk a little bit more about the low iodine diet that you recommend for people to follow for one to three months? Because I did some playing around on chronometer and I have concerns about choline, biotin, calcium, C15 and a few other nutrients on a low iodine diet. So, I was going to pick your brain on your thoughts on how to mitigate those deficiencies in this phase.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Those are all excellent points. And to draw upon that, the studies that I've cited were studies that were not meant to put people on a diet that was ideal for their long-term health. It was something that was done short-term for one specific reason. And when I wrote The Thyroid Reset Diet, I did my best to think about it in ways to where if someone were on a diet like this for three, six or nine months, how can it be more nutritionally sound? How can they cover the bases more thoroughly? You brought up several excellent points. And the drawback is that most people, their sources of choline, C15, calcium are correlated with sources that are quite high in iodine from commercial sources. So, if people have more sources of eggs and dairy that don't have unusual amounts of iodine, that can make it even easier for them to maintain nutritional validity. And if your work is providing that, that'd be a wonderful benefit for us all.

Ashley Armstrong:
I was honestly, before your work, I didn't even know that eggs and dairy could be high in iodine. It's just not talked about. And I pulled up quite a few studies. It is alarming the difference in iodine levels between what the animals are fed, what they're supplemented with and disinfectants and what they're cleaned with. And for example, potassium iodide and calcium iodate, those are two very common things that dairy cows are supplemented with in their feed rations. In a confinement dairy, the cows are in more barn stalls and they're fed a daily ration. So, it's to the science. These confinement barns operate very efficiently. They know exactly how much all cows eat, what they need to get each day, so they're formulated in their buckets that they eat out of. And I had no idea the amount of iodine that these dairy cows are intaking through their daily rations.

And again, is this an oops thing, just like how the government added salt to our iodine, we're now loading animals with iodine? And I had no idea that this had the results that it does. Like I said earlier, you can increase the amount in eggs by five to tenfold just by having iodine in the feed. And with dairy, there were some that were 10 to 15 fold depending on the combination of what they ate, what the disinfectant was used to clean off the milk equipment or care. So I guess just yet another reason to know where your food comes from, to know your farmer, to ask these questions. But can you touch briefly on other... So be mindful of your dairy, where your dairy is coming from, your egg intake. What are other high iodine sources? Oh, seafood.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Yeah, ocean-based seafood.

Ashley Armstrong:
Okay.

Dr. Alan Christianson:

Back to your last point, just two more things to highlight upon. One of which is that the amount in those foods is incredibly variable. There's some samples that don't really have inappropriate amounts, but many do. So, when I put foods in those green, yellow, and red light categories, the thought wasn't what is the average intake or what is the listed intake from one source, but really from many, many sources, what's the reasonable possible amount that could be and exposed to? And if someone could get too much, I would call those red light foods. One more thing I'd love your feedback on, many of the sources I read also talked about fish meal as being a common protein source for some cattle feed and just being as one additional source of iodine in that, I don't know how common of a practice that is.

 

[anartist]

Ashley Armstrong:
It is a common practice. And the reason being is that fish meal is a by-product of the fish industry. And the conventional food system doesn't let anything go to waste. Nothing goes to waste. So, by-products are used in other agricultural areas as like waste. So yes, fish meal is added to a number of dairy feeds as well. Even chicken and swine production. It depends on, now there is wild caught fish meal and then there's seafood, or sorry, ocean-based fish meal, and then there's factory farms fish meal. So that can vary quite a bit as well. But that's another source as well. And sea kelp is a really big new thing for cows. So, kelp, seaweed supplementation, and it's relatively new. So, I've read a lot of USDA agriculture books from 1800s, early 1900s, and none of this stuff was talked about.

They didn't use any of this stuff. And that's a whole other rabbit hole of the talk about soil depletion and people believing that soil is low in iodine. I don't buy it. I think that the soil microbiome is shut off and that makes certain minerals not accessible to plants. And so how we test the mineral content and soil these days is a little bit questionable sometimes. If people are interested, they can look more into like Haney and regenerative agriculture testing and Gabe Brown where they talk about when you test soil properly, it actually does contain minerals. They may just not be accessible because the biology has been shut off by all of our heavy agricultural toxic chemical use. But yeah, so there's been a belief that the soil is depleted in iodine and then that's led to a rapid increase in supplementation of iodine sources, which I would say that sea kelp is a little bit more common than the fish meal though.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Can I just comment on that? It really shocks me to... surprised and shocked that people could be absolutely committed and putting lots of time, effort, and resources to eating as healthy as possible. Absolutely no processed food in their diet yet because of these stealth sources of iodine that no one is aware of, virtually no one, you're getting loads of iodine that never were before because of the confusion, the inability to think this thing true clearly that all animals need iodine supplements and obviously we are what we eat and many of us are eating the animals that are overloaded with iodine. I don't know, are there any practical strategies that you could use? I mean, we have an insider with Ashley with the farming industry, but do you have any recommendations you found to identify low sources of these food products?

Dr. Alan Christianson:
When I wrote the book, I identified which are the biggest outliers, which always have a lot or which may have a lot, and I call those the red light foods. And people who are prone to thyroid disease are better off really avoiding those or if possible, getting those from sources where we know aren't going to have excess amounts. And then identify the yellow light foods, those that have moderate amounts but are rather consistent that don't vary significantly. And those are things to where once someone has improved their function, I encourage them to add those back in, in measured quantities for more nutritional completeness.

Ashley Armstrong:
So, I think that that's an important point that you say right there because in the modern health space, we don't need more food fear. We don't need more

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Demand.

Ashley Armstrong:
Living in a state of fight or flight afraid of things. And I think that that's the most empowering thing that you have documented in your work. Dr. Christianson, which is, "Hey, for a period of time, keep your iodine intake low, let the body detox its iodine. And then when you get to a new baseline, your body's a lot more resilient to handle iodine in intakes that the body's designed to handle." The problem is we're in this new era where supplementing iodine all over our body is a very common thing. So, I think that that's the most freeing thing and something important for people to keep in mind. It's never a forever thing.

It's a, "Hey, we need to assess the iodine status in your body, potentially you're overloaded. Give your body the time it needs to detox it. And then once it does, then these aren't foods you should be afraid of." There are foods, you should always try to know where the sourcing is and where it's coming from, but I don't think it's something we have to be fearful of in the long run. But it's just unfortunate, like you said, Dr. Mercola, people could be putting in so much work and they're still so frustrated with hidden iodine in our personal care products, in supplements that we use that we don't know

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Well, in food.

Ashley Armstrong:
... and in food.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
That's where it's absolutely stealth, unless you understand those.

Ashley Armstrong:
So, I found a study that showed eggs from pasture raised chicken with no iodine in their diet, can have five micrograms per egg that's very low. Very low. There's more iodine in potatoes, whereas eggs supplemented

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Skin, that's going to be a funny one.

Ashley Armstrong:
True. Whereas egg supplement with iodine can have 100 micrograms per egg. That's a crazy difference.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Up to 250 in some samples. Yeah.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Oh my gosh.

Ashley Armstrong:
250. Yeah.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
That's crazy. If you have four, you're a gram.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
A milligram, a full milligram.

Ashley Armstrong:
I'm getting my eggs tested. So that's going to be sent in the beginning of the year, but I'm hoping we're five because there's no iodine source in their feed.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
I would love to hear the results from that, Ashley. I'd love to have some sources to point people out.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
She's got some of the best eggs out there. And more importantly, another, well, I'm not sure that you consider iodine a poison because it is indeed a beneficial nutrient, but one that it almost never is a beneficial nutrient is omega-6 polyunsaturated fats. Now, yes, there is an argument that's an essential fat, but there's another argument that it's not because if you're eating food, it is physiologically impossible to not get enough omega-6. It's impossible. Because you only need 500 milligrams. And even food that has virtually no fat in it has more than enough. Yes, your body can't make it. And that's why they call it essential. But the reality is it's impossible to not get enough unless you’re on a lab diet.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
You may not know this, but the only times that that deficiency has been demonstrated were when babies are fed nothing but skim milk and no other fat source or when people are in total parenteral nutrition, like all the nutrients are IV, there's no fat intake. But barring that, you're right. You really can't get fatty acid deficiency.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
You can't. It's impossible.

Ashley Armstrong:
And omega-6s are very similar to the iodine case, Dr. Christianson, where early 1900s, we were exposed to such lower amounts. Now it's like, oh my gosh, we are overloaded in everything. They've changed the types of fat inside animals that we eat. It's another, oops, oops. Our butter has become margarine. It's wild. It's wild. What these huge campaigns can do to change the food system. It's really unfortunate.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Now, there's one clinical condition that you're familiar with, I would really love to hear your feedback on, and that is the concern of iodine or radiation and causing thyroid cancer. And by this I mean talking about radioactive iodine emitted from nuclear blasts or explosions or fallout, and almost the universal recommendation is to take massive amounts of iodine. I don't even know what the amount is, but it's a large amount. So, I would really love to hear your view on that because, and the potential dangers of implement that because so many people, they got that iodine bottle just ready to take it if there's a nuclear bomb.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
I was just speaking to a big group of doctors in Toronto not too long ago. So, Toronto is the epicenter of thyroid cancer in North America, and their power plants are a big part of that. So, exposure to radioactive iodine. The radioactive iodine can build up within the thyroid in decades down the road, raise the risk for thyroid cancers. Now, the mechanism by which high dose iodine helps is a useful mechanism to be aware of. When you take a lot of iodine, you stop your thyroid from working, you stop it from doing anything, including absorbing iodine. Now, the World Health Organization has mapped out exactly what circumstances. It helps to take prophylactic iodine for radioactive iodine exposure and the age of the person involved and the timing of exposure are so narrow that there's pretty much never a case where it's helpful.

If you're below 14 years of age, if you're below 14 years of age and in advance that you have a 24-hour window of exposure, then you can use a dose of about five milligrams of iodine, which is a lot. And you can cut your long-term risk of thyroid cancer. Once you're past that age, or if you don't know your exposure window within 24 hours, there's no benefit. There's way more harm than benefit. And yeah, you're right. Everyone just panics and takes this stuff, but it's been mapped out how and when it helps, and it's extremely narrow and precise.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
So essentially forget about it.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Essentially forget about it.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
What doses they recommend? Is it five milligrams?

Dr. Alan Christianson:
It's weight based, age based, but it ranges between about a thousand micrograms and about 10 milligrams. And it depends upon... Yeah. But again, your timing of exposure has to be known. So, there's really no situations which within a 24-hour window when you're going to be exposed to this stuff,

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Or you can just eat a normal processed food diet and eat some, not whole wheat, but white bread that has one milligram on each slice.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
But the problem is that ongoing exposure to iodine doesn't have that same effect. You only need, it's a singular dose that's timed with your 24-hour window of exposure. It's not that you take it all the time and it's protective. If you have a single dose that's timed right before a 24-hour window of exposure.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Thank you. I was really curious about that after our last conversation. I should have asked him about that.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Shame about that news again. Yeah, I wrote about that quite a bit back then.

Ashley Armstrong:
Wow. It's almost like it's a hormetic effect. Oh, that some people would view as helpful, but if you take a step back, it's like, wait, what are you doing to your thyroid?

Dr. Alan Christianson:
It's just such a narrow window. We always assume that the effects of a nutrient are linear, that if a lack of a nutrient makes you tired, the more and more you take, the more energy you have. And that's almost never the case. I think about nutrients like keys to a car. If they're missing, the car won't go. But once the key is there, more keys won't make the car go faster.

Ashley Armstrong:
That is really great. And I think that that's an important thing for people to realize in their diet. Because I was at the store the other day and I overheard a conversation, someone saying like, "Yeah, I visited my doctor the other day, and they were just talking about how we're all deficient in iodine these days, and it's a huge problem. And they got me on an iodine supplement that I start next week." And this is a pervasive message that is happening right now, and it's dangerous. And that's the really sad thing, because people are doing it in pursuit of health and people saying that we're low in iodine. It's not any bad intentions. This is the messaging, but it's having consequences on our long-term health and it's alarming.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
And it sounds plausible. There certainly is a relationship that way, and it's also something that's an easy message to go viral. There's this big problem and one simple nutrient can help it and fix it, and it's just more complex than that.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
And it sounds natural.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Great.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Oh yeah, iodine. Great. Iodine salt. Yeah, let's have some more. Give me seconds and thirds.

Ashley Armstrong:
And similar to the omega-6 PUFAS, it's almost, it's actually impossible to not eat enough iodine unless, like you said, you're a raw vegan that doesn't salt any of your food and you're just eating raw vegetables.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
There've been half a dozen documented sources of iodine deficiency in the last several decades, and actually I diagnosed one of them.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Half a dozen?

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Half a dozen. And Ashley mentioned most of the circumstances, most involved people that were on mono diets of a cruciferous vegetable and no other food. Many had portions of the gastrointestinal tract removed for surgical reasons. But I saw one young man who was consuming his whole food intake was raw vegetables and mostly raw broccoli, like two, three pounds of raw broccoli per day in a blender and no other food. And he did that for about three, four months. He did develop an iodine deficient goiter. He did have some compensatory changes, and I just told him to knock it off and eat normal food and eat healthy food and take care of yourself, and he was fine. So yeah.

Ashley Armstrong:
Eating blended broccoli.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
He got a lot of vitamin K1 for sure.

Ashley Armstrong:
Oh gosh. Okay. So, I do have, I hope the listeners understand. I think just assessing your day-today on your iodine sources is important. The one issue that I see is that chronometer doesn't always track iodine. So the USDA database always doesn't test iodine. It's a really hard nutrient to say, oh, I'm getting X amount per day. It's almost impossible to dial that in. So, in order for the body to naturally detox our stored iodine that we may be dealing with that may be causing thyroid problems, is there a max thyroid level, or sorry, max iodine intake level that you would recommend, but even so how do you even monitor such a thing and does that scale with metabolism? So as an example, I'm 130 pounds, but I eat a lot of food upwards above 2,500 calories, whereas someone who's eating 1,600, 1,500 calories does the iodine intake. It has to scale a little bit with metabolic rates in terms of your body's natural ability to detoxify it.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Well, it does scale with body mass, with body size in amounts that aren't that huge. Now, two questions you asked. What was best ranges and what's the best way to know? So best way to know, I mentioned about just having a sense about your total intake. In The Thyroid Reset Diet, I've got some quizzes, iodine inventory quizzes. Iodineinventory.com is a free little online app. You can put your food, your supplements, your meds, it's in thyroid meds too, and they'll give you a good approximation of what your daily intake is. Those are probably the most useful ways to know what you're getting. In terms of how much amounts are healthiest, there's a range between roughly 20 and 200 micrograms that correlates with the lowest rate of adult onset thyroid disease. If someone has had thyroid problems or seeking to improve them, the short-term goal is staying below 100 micrograms.

Ashley Armstrong:
And so, knowing where I think the biggest source would be if you're eating out at restaurants all the time, you're probably eating iodized salt, like a lot of it, if you're doing

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
And PUFA. High PUFA.

Ashley Armstrong:
... high PUFA, high iodized salt, any packaged food is going to have iodine added into it. Any grain products from the store, the grain, the flour that's used often contains iodine in it as well. A lot of fortification, iodine addition with packaged food. And that's an unfortunate thing.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
To that exact point you made, something that really had a big effect upon me was looking at studies showing that there's a lot of iodine in processed grains for sure. And some processed grains will say contains iodized dough conditioners, however, many that don't say that have just as much, if not more iodine when they're assayed. So, the mind-blowing thing that I learned from that one little point was that as much as there is not to love with a long ingredient list on processed foods, not everything's on the ingredient list.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
The study required legally.

Ashley Armstrong:
They can clump a lot into random terms. Those labels are not regulated as much as people think they are at all.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Not comprehensive.

Ashley Armstrong:
No. So basically, I think that those are two big things, like don't eat out as much, don't eat food with an ingredient list, prioritize home-cooked meals. So that would be like step one.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Well, and personal care products, which is another stealth source. I got a question on your thyroid quiz. Is that something you created?

Dr. Alan Christianson:
It is.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Okay. And how did you... Because it's so challenging to find accurate resources, and we're compiling

Ashley Armstrong:
FoodBuddy.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
... an app, Mercola Health Coach App, and part of that is the FoodBuddy. And we've downloaded 50 million data entries, and Ashley wisely advised me that we need to cut that down, and we are in the process of doing that. But even with that amount of data, there's a lot of confusion or data, and a lot of them don't even measure the iodine. And then it can have an egg, we already discussed. It could be five milligrams or 250 milligrams. So, what do you use? It depends on what you're eating. So, it's almost impossible to identify what's in your food unless you, anything, but almost broadly and generically as you've done with your red, yellow, and green foods. But how did you figure it out with your quiz? That's the curiosity I have.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
The iodine quiz was in terms of gauging one's iodine intake, is that what you're asking?

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Yes, yes.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
So basically that was seeing which food categories are eaten with which frequency.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Okay.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
And in terms of having a precise... I'm sorry, go ahead, Joe.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
How'd you get the data? I mean, if the data isn't really there, I mean, how do you figure this thing out? I mean, it's a big conundrum.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
There are databases that exist. There was about 638 foods identified and about 50 assays for each one. So, I did averaging and statistical analysis of them. And some foods had very consistent moderate amounts. Some had consistent negligible amounts, and some foods were just highly variable or always high. So yeah, the highly variable or always high, got a red light and the consistently moderate got a yellow light and the consistently low got a green light.

Ashley Armstrong:
I found the studies that Dr. Christianson used and Dr. Mercola there are some that are very well done because of how serious some people have to keep their iodine intake low before surgeries, certain surgeries. So, there is some high quality data, but I'm almost convinced that one has to just run their own reports. These are run their own tests these days to build a new database because the USDA food database is all over the place. All over the place.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Part of it in this case is just how capricious iodine is itself. It's so volatile and it varies so much from sample to sample and season to season. So, you can make broad approximations, but you can't make precise amounts, and that's adequate. Broad approximations are good enough to keep someone stable or keep reverse things when there is a problem.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
And you've been doing this for two decades, so your clinical experience validates this approach works, and that's what counts. You want a strategy that's going to win for you and you're going to get you the results you're seeking.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Three decades, please. Don't take away one

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. Okay. Sorry about that.

Ashley Armstrong:
Don't eat... Limit restaurant intake, limit processed food, assess your supplements, stop iodine supplementation, assess your personal care products. Something that I learned is that many common acne treatments contain a lot of iodine because again, the antifungal, anti-microbial beliefs. And so really assess what you're putting on your skin daily, and then it's time to be a little bit more critical of your day-to-day food choices, which Dr. Christianson has a green light, yellow light, red light. My biggest concern is that if someone just goes on the green light, like I mentioned earlier, the nutrients of choline, biotin, calcium, C15 and a few others.

And so, if you can, know where your eggs and dairy come from, know those sources, ask questions about supplementation, cleanliness of the others and all of that. But if that stresses someone out too much, if they don't have access to high quality eggs, high quality dairy, then like Dr. Mercola said, Dr. Christianson has three decades of success showing that, hey, a short term period of low iodine intake can solve a lot of problems. And so primarily stick to the green and yellow foods on your list. After three months potentially, reassess things, get potentially the iodine to creatinine ratio test and your thyroid antibodies tested. Is that a rough summary?

Dr. Alan Christianson:
That's a great synopsis. In the book I talked about those very nutrients being problems for those who are doing it for longer periods of time and some other ways to work around, but I'd rather people have good whole food options for that.

Ashley Armstrong:
And that's why if you can include eggs and dairy from a source you trust, you can cover those nutrients so easily.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
And you just happen... We just happen to know a source of that and it will be validated by testing, objective laboratory testing.

Ashley Armstrong:
I'm trying. We will increase slowly scale. I am big on no factory farming, small scale small farms, and so partnering with more of those. But I do think that just creating more awareness around the iodine as well can help maybe open others' eyes up with how they run their dairy operation or what they feed their chickens or things like that, because it's having profound implications, unfortunately. I do have one more question on the supplementation. Because I know in the bioenergetics space there are a lot of people who are on thyroid support, and it's not just T4. I think that there's so much well documented data showing T4 only is not helpful, unfortunately. It's causing harm, and the conventional literature shows that.

T4 only thyroid medication is causing a lot of harm. What Dr. Christianson brings in is, hey, there's health implications to long-term desiccated or T3 thyroid supplementation as well, because what I learned from you is that when you're on thyroid medication, that prevents your body's natural iodine detoxification mechanisms or it down regulates it slightly. And so given that we're now all exposed to significantly higher levels of iodine today than we were earlier, that could potentially lead to problems as well. So, if someone is on thyroid meds, T4 plus T3 combo or desiccated or T3, what is your biggest advice on mental outlook on, okay, how long is it going to take to get off this? What are practical steps to titrating down? Because that's a serious... It's not something that you can just snap overnight and be off.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
For sure. Yeah, so the high level idea is that taking a hormone is not the same as making a hormone. Taking it is not making it. And even if it's bio identical, even if the blood levels are the same as they would be in healthy people, taking a hormone is not the same as making a hormone. Our body has countless ways that we know of that regulate hormone byproducts, uptake, metabolism, mitochondrial usage, and that's the known unmeasurables. But there's unknown unknowns that go on forever. And when we're doing something from outside the body, we just lose more of that autonomy. So, the first thought is just if someone needs it long-term, and if they do, they should do amounts that are the best match their body's normal physiology, healthy levels and natural forms ideally. If it's not something someone needs long-term, I would think through if it's helping in some way, what are some other ways that one could achieve those same goals?

Are there other unmasked unidentified problems that are causing the symptoms? Are there other issues that it's covering up? And then if it's not needed, what's the best timeframe in process? There've been a couple of large studies on deprescribing of thyroid medications, and of course someone's got to have a thyroid to consider that. If a thyroid was removed or ablated by radioactive iodine, there's no remnant tissue left and people need therapy longer term term, but most with a thyroid can successfully take less or none, it is best to work with a prescriber. Most protocols are done over roughly two months, and typically doses are decreased in a 25% every other week, fashion over two months. And it does take working with someone to know how to interpret the findings. We talked earlier in the green room about how if someone tapers quickly, their TSH goes up, that's a good sign, that's a normal healthy sign. Some doctors don't get that and they panic. So yeah, most who are on meds they don't need long-term can take less or none, and you want to do as little intervention as possible with the body.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Yes. So, the green room discussion was about me personally going off of thyroid and instead of the two months, of course, I like to do things quickly, so I went off in two weeks, but I did it. Well, first of all, I'm biologically quite healthy, but in addition to that, I had a little secret sauce that I wanted to discuss with you, and that is photobiomodulation, which is the use of red or more properly in this context near infrared because red itself only penetrates a few millimeters and will not get to the thyroid gland.

So, you need at least 810 area or even 1050 to go deeper. So that's a big part of it. But if you give with that frequency over your thyroid gland with enough energy and many units don't have enough energy or they've got an unfocused way to put the light in there, but if you use the right energy and you get it in there, there's really good evidence in the literature. So this works and it worked for me personally. I've had no symptoms going off of this at all in two weeks, and it normally takes two months. So go ahead. I want to get your input.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
There's literature on low level laser therapy helping thyroid autoimmunity decrease requirement for medications. It's thought that the most central mechanism is that it helps the internal production of antioxidants by the thyroid. So, the thyroid gland, it's processing this highly volatile molecule iodine, and it's a big source of free radicals. That's why it's an effective antiseptic. So, in processing it, the thyroid is hugely dependent upon antioxidants like glutathione and superoxide dismutase, and the thyroid both generates antioxidants and has a lot of mechanisms to take up antioxidants made by the liver cells. So, it's flooded with those and it needs that, but when it's at a level of iodine that it can't tolerate, those mechanisms get overwhelmed and there's then cellular damage. So yeah, low-level laser therapy is one more way that may improve that antioxidant status while someone's thyroid is getting better.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
That's actually, LLLT is the older name when it first came out. Now it's more accurately referred to as photobiomodulation, which is more generic because most of that therapy is administered by LEDs, not lasers, and it's a lot less expensive to do it that way. I mean, I've got an actual laser, like a 15 watt laser that's like $30,000 worth for that, but you don't have to spend it for a tiny fraction of good LED unit. But there is another mechanism though, and that's what I discussed in my book, your Guide to Cellular Health is that your body requires energy. Imagine that to turn around any disease.

And when you shine that LED, that photobiomodulation light, that the 8/10 to 10/50 range where it actually penetrates, you are hitting one of the cytochromes, not cytochromes, the complex... It's Complex IV, specifically cytochrome C oxidase that actually uses that energy to radically increase the ATP production. So, it literally is putting energy right into your thyroid so it can do the things it needs to reduce inflammation, increase, decrease oxidative stress by increasing the antioxidants and any other detox or process, metabolic process is required. And almost all these processes require fundamental energy. So, I think it's something to consider. It's really powerful.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
I think the high-level message that you're bringing with this is that thyroid function is something that is not static. If you've had a problem with it doesn't mean you're stuck with it. If you do things that help your body in general ways that that can be useful as well. So, there's specific strategies and there's general strategies that are good, but this is something that can be healed by safe natural methods for most people.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
And you could do that with the sun too. The issue is that virtually none of us are out there enough in the sun. Ashley's probably one of the few people because when she's farming, she's out there a big portion of the day. But even then, and you can get it indirectly, but you need, it's such a low dose, relatively speaking, with respect to the joules of energy that get in there, that you need to be exposed for a good part of the day regularly for that to work. But if you're not, that's where these devices, you can put high amounts of energy over a short period of time, five, 10 minutes, a few times a day, and it's massively useful. I'm actually going to come up with a device to do that a little, maybe two by two inch, right put over the thyroid gland and inspired by you and just use a little band... It makes it easy and is even cosmetically acceptable.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
That sounds awesome.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
We don't have to put these... Yeah. So yeah, I'm just so enamored with this, this concept of using light to help accelerate improving your biology.

Ashley Armstrong:
I have one more bigger picture question.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Oh, no, no bigger pictures allowed here, young lady.

Ashley Armstrong:
One thing that I learned extensively from Dr. Ray Peat is that metabolic health, cellular energy is not just the thyroid gland. There's four different steps after the thyroid produces thyroid hormone. So T4 is produced, then there's transporter proteins that have to take those thyroid hormones throughout the body, that T4 must be converted to T3, cells must be able to accept that T3 and utilize it as the spark plug for energy production. So, there are a number of things that can get in the way of cellular utilization of active thyroid hormone. Even if your thyroid is functioning well, using the active thyroid hormone at various other parts of your body can be hindered. And that's one of the bigger reasons why in the bioenergetics space, some people promote the use of thyroid supplementation to help increase the amount of T3 active thyroid hormone available.

But I wanted to... So now I understand that potentially there are complications to relying on that in the long run, but what has been your experience with assessing cellular energy production from thyroid and how those can be disconnected even if your thyroid is functioning well, maybe there are blocks throughout the body and some of the blocks that the bioenergetics space talks about is like high omega-6 consumption, PUFA consumption, lots of stress in your body, in your life, and low sunlight, because as you mentioned, Dr. Mercola, sunlight is required for utilizing active thyroid hormone and allowing the cells cytochrome C oxidase and all these other steps along the electron transport chain. What has been your experience with addressing those parts of the thyroid system? Because that's a very holistic view of, okay, the thyroid gland produces the hormones, but now the cells all over the body have to use the active thyroid hormone, and there are a number of steps in between that.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Great, great question. Lots of things to... Lots of thoughts there. So one quick one is that I always like to think about mechanistic concepts, things we know about from how biology works, cell studies, especially animal studies, human clinical outcomes, what we see empirically from larger outcomes studies of humans given different medications, for example, and then also one big concept with thyroid hormone metabolism is that many have an idea. There's a bucket that has T3 and T4, and that's what the body is. And in truth, all the different tissues of the body have different thyroid hormone ecosystems. So, we call these thyronamines, and there's about a dozen and a half of known biologically active thyronamines. The thyroid active proteins. T4 is an active hormone in many contexts. Actually, reverse T3 is an active hormone in many contexts. So yeah, there's all these different ecosystems within the brain, the liver, the heart, the muscles, the adipose tissue, and they all have their own distinct balance of thyronamines.

So there really isn't a right or wrong answer across the board. But yes, there's countless ways in which any way your health is not right, it changes your balance of thyronamines. And the question is, does that cause a failure or does that cause a compensation? And it's hard to distinguish those things. Empirically, humans given T4 only versus humans given combination therapies. We've got a fair amount of data, and the data's pretty clear that humans who do benefit and need third medications, combination therapies that are more than just T4 are viable options in many cases, some exceptions like pregnancy and a few others, but in most cases, they're very viable options. And there's many people that do much better. One big study had people not knowingly take either T4 only or combination therapy in the form of natural desiccated thyroid, and it was a double crossover study.

So, they were taking different ones, not knowing which they were on when, and pretty much no one said, "Hey, I feel better on the blue pill." when the blue pill was T4 only. But about 84% felt better on the combination therapy not knowing that it was. And there's good evidence that when it's done for appropriate participants, that the side effects are not greater and not worsened. So yeah, it's totally valid. It's something that I do endorse in many contexts. But yeah, T4 is an active hormone. The body does require that. Reverse T3 is an active hormone. Many others are as well, and they're used differently in all these different low-thyroid ecosystems of the body.

Ashley Armstrong:
Because I've seen... So, I just find it so fascinating that the body's always listening. The body is always sensing what's coming in, and it's always sensing the amount that's coming in. And so when someone's on a low calorie diet or a low-carb diet, the body senses that, and I've helped people through and seen, okay, when they're in that state for periods of time, their reverse T3 increases. So then reverse T3 will then reduce the amount that cells can actually utilize T3 at the cellular level. That's a protective mechanism because the body senses we can't push the pedal down on the car to go faster because there's not enough fuel coming in. So, the body's able to adjust these things in real time. Curious, what's the role that iodine may play in cellular utilization? So, if you're... Are there other areas in the body that can store iodine like the thyroid can?

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Well, so there's a couple areas that do, and sometimes the reasons are because they use them. Other times it's because of just embryologic overlap with the production of those tissues and production of thyroid tissue. The cases where it is used would be breast tissue. So that's a case where iodine is modulated, and that's a fascinating topic we could go pretty deep into.

Ashley Armstrong:
Wait, your breast tissue stores iodine

Dr. Alan Christianson:
It can.

Ashley Armstrong:
... in higher quantities? Wow.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
The mechanism is the sodium iodide symporter, and that's the same one that pulls iodine into the thyroid. And there's different degrees of expression of the sodium iodide symporter in breast tissue. So healthy, non-lactating breast tissue, it's not particularly active. Pathologic breast tissue, let me back up, lactating breast tissue. Now, the reason for this is in the case of the thyroid in the breast tissue, the amount of iodine in the bloodstream may not be appropriate for the thyroid or for the nursing baby. So, this is both a pump but also a gatekeeper. This can pull in cases of a lack or block in cases of excess. So, mom can get reasonable amounts in the breast milk. Now, there's pathologic changes that can occur both in fibroadenomatous disease, used to be called fibrocystic breast disease, and in many types of hormonally sensitive breast cancers. And in those cases, the sodium iodide symporter is overexpressed. So, there's a heightened uptake of iodine and then corresponding damage to the cells because of that.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Is this anything to do with the reason why David Bronstein and Guy Abraham had recommended iodine to treat fibrocystic breast disease and other diseases?

Dr. Alan Christianson:
That's what got the whole ball rolling with stuff. Guy Abraham, dear man, passed away. I spent a lot of time conversing with him, went through all of his literature and all of the citations. So, he was a gynecologist, and he saw some papers showing that doses of iodine that were above physiologically normal could lower the symptoms of fibrocystic breast disease for about two thirds of women for about a couple of months. And he didn't differentiate how a nutrient could be a nutrient and or it could be a drug. Niacin can lower cholesterol. Not saying that all high cholesterol is a niacin deficiency. So yeah, so what happened is that in fibrocystic breast disease, that sodium iodide symporter is overexpressed, too much is brought in and that can create some damage to the cells, which can cause swelling and pain and fluid buildup. Now, just like in the thyroid, high-dose iodine can temporarily stop the uptake. So, it doesn't work for everyone, and it doesn't work for long periods of time, but for short periods of time, you can lower the iodine uptake by high dose supplementation.

Now, they also started to theorize that the truth was that Japanese women generally had lower rates of breast cancer on traditional diets, and they had a higher intake of iodine. And so, they speculated a more broad way in which iodine had some palliative or protective effect for breast tissue. And we now know that the fibroadenomatous case wasn't protective, it was just shutting off the symporter. In the case of breast cancers, there have been assays looking at Japanese women and contrasting their iodine excretion, their urinary iodine in groups with their overall breast cancer risk. And those in the highest quintiles and quartiles have proportionally higher risks for breast cancer. And there's a linear relationship. So, the more they're consuming, the greater their risks are. So currently researchers think that the way in which the traditional Japanese had lower rates of breast cancer was probably from many, many factors. And if anything, the iodine was not a protective factor was probably the opposite. And that's borne out from population studies in other areas of the world as well.

Ashley Armstrong:
Wow, fascinating.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Yes, really, thank you for elaborating that. I was curious how they got diverted because that focus on many clinicians on using iodine therapeutically creates this massive confusion and people interested in actual medicine. As Ashley shared earlier today when she was in store earlier this week, and there's massive confusion and they're hurting themselves. And then one, the clinicians prescribing it or the patient's receiving it, that's the furthest thing from their mind. And there's no ulterior motive like there are in so many areas.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Couldn't be more.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
There's no benefit. They're trying to do the best they can and it's mistaken information. And that's why I'm so passionate about spreading your message far and wide because it's so simple. Well, it's simple. It's not easy, but it's simple because it does require some effort to just to find these low iodine foods is not easy.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Well, and I would argue that if you look at a lot of the extreme diets that many pursue for thyroid health, it's easier than those.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
This is easier.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
You're not cutting out as dramatically.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
It's not forever.

Dr. Alan Christianson:
It's not forever and it's not as extreme.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
I agree. So, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your efforts to do this and resolve my massive confusion to this area. I mean, it's just been thoroughly confused in my entire clinical career. I never... Because I got down the rabbit hole of the iodine was required to improve thyroid function. And interestingly, during COVID, I popularized the therapy of nebulized hydrogen peroxide and saline, which are the foundations of it. And there was this, David Brownstein had incorporated, suggested strongly encouraged people to use iodine as a disinfectant in there. Somehow, intrinsically, my gut feeling said, no, I never recommended iodine. I feel really glad about that. And we did wind up selling a thyroid supplement for a while, but it was like a milligram, a thousand micrograms. It wasn't high like 10, 12, 20 milligrams. That Brownstein's recommended

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Peroxide. Cool thing was you get that oxygen to break something down and then you get water. So, it's much, much less toxic.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
And it said doses, but it could be toxic at a higher dose. But we're talking a dose of 0.1%, which is 30 times lower than you get in the peroxide you find in the drugstore. So, it's a signaling molecule at that point, but it's also an antivirus idol. So, it's a powerful tool. And especially this time of year, I tell all my friends and relatives that the moment, the absolute first sign and signal, you just do that on literally and then did a few more times a day. That's it. End of story. You have no more problems with that. Actually, Ashley had literally, what was your results? She's one of them. The earlier this week, wasn't it the last week? What happened? You were doing that?

Ashley Armstrong:
I got sick just one night. Whenever I travel, I live on a farm, so I'm pretty disconnected from, I don't go to airports much. I don't go to big cities much. And so that's just a big change in my exposure. So, I need to carry around a nebulizer in my purse.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Well, she realizes it now. Explain that to her. But I think we talked, you had only had the symptoms for six hours. You had really, really new infection. Tell us what happened when you did the nebulization?

Ashley Armstrong:
Nebulized right away. And I'm totally fine now. So just getting viral

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
How long did it take?

Ashley Armstrong:
Two or three nebulizer treatments.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
One day. One day.

Ashley Armstrong:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
You did not have the... You woke up with the symptoms that were so bad, you couldn't breathe through your mouth.

Ashley Armstrong:
Well, I woke up mouth breathing because my nose was so bad.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
You couldn't breathe through your nose. I'm sorry.

Ashley Armstrong:
Nebulized with hydrogen peroxide and saline solution.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Saline.

Ashley Armstrong:
Boom. Done.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
By that night you were fine. End of disease.

Ashley Armstrong:
Which again shows hydrogen peroxide is totally fine as an anti-microbial option. Yet for some reason, everything is now relying on iodine instead.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Yes, indeed. It's crazy. Crazy indeed. Well, did you have any more questions, Ashley? Any more curiosity?

Ashley Armstrong:
A wrap up takeaway point, because I like to leave the audience with empowering and encouraging words.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Why would you want to do that?

Ashley Armstrong:
Because there's so much fear-mongering in the space. I think one of the coolest things is that go check out the work of Dr. Christianson and you'll see the results of people who have elevated thyroid antibodies, which many people get these days, and then their doctor's like, "It's an autoimmune condition. You got to deal with the rest of your life." And his work doesn't show that. And there are practical take-home points where you can reverse that. And so I think understanding these things should empower you to never identify as I am broken, I have this condition.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Amen.

Ashley Armstrong:
Here are practical steps where you may need to be restrictive in the short term with opening up possibilities of what you can consume after the fact once you reach a new baseline. I just think that that's so powerful.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
It is. Yeah.

Ashley Armstrong:
You shouldn't feel like you're stuck with the diagnosis for the rest of your life.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Great. Well, on that note, I want to thank both of you for joining us and Ashley for expanding the conversation and Dr. Christianson for all your pioneering work that we will be very soon widely promoting because the world needs to know about this information, it's something that they need to know, dispel the myths around this. So, thanks again. And oh, people, your book is The Thyroid Reset Diet, and I think, why don't you share your resources again, your website and your social media?

Dr. Alan Christianson:
Drchristianson.com. And wrong ways to spell it. Still get there. Yeah. Drchristianson.com.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Nice. All right.

Ashley Armstrong:
And then is the Green list, yellow list and red list on that website?

Dr. Alan Christianson:
It is.

Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Foods. Foods, yeah. Yeah, the foods. All right. Well, thanks a lot and we'll keep up the good work and we'll take it from there.

 

[daddycat]

How Excess Iodine Is Undermining Thyroid Health and What to Do About It — Interview with Dr. Alan Christianson and Ashley Armstrong

Alan Christianson is cointelpro disinformation, that's my assessment of him, so I don't waste my time with what he says.

 

[anartist]

Yes maybe Christianson is disinformation, but there is iodine being used in salt licks and feed. The point being is that we may not be deficient in iodine, but neither can we be sure how much iodine we are getting. Perhaps supplementing with iodine is not a good idea, without having an idea, perhaps via our thyroid, of how much iodine we're ingesting?​

The effects of iodised salt licks and teat dipping on the iodine content of cow's milk and blood plasma​

Bogdan Śliwiński <a title="National Research Institute of Animal Production, Kraków, Poland. bogdan.sliwinski@izoo.krakow.pl." href="The effects of iodised salt licks and teat dipping on the iodine content of cow's milk and blood plasma - PubMed">1</a>, Franciszek Brzóska, Karol Węglarzy, Zbigniew Szybiński, Eugeniusz Kłopotek
Affiliations Expand

• PMID: 26136134
• DOI: 10.5603/EP.2015.0032

Free article

Abstract​

Introduction: Milk has been identified as the ideal carrier of iodine in the human diet. The iodine concentration in cow's milk depends on the iodine intake in the animal's daily rations.

Materials and methods: The first experiment, which lasted for 90 days, investigated the effectiveness of salt licks containing 0 (control group), 150, and 300 mg I/kg (experimental groups) and the effect on the iodine content of cow's milk and blood plasma. The second experiment determined the effect of udder disinfection and iodine teat dipping with iodine disinfectant (experimental group) compared to chlorine dip (control group) on the iodine content of milk and blood plasma. Milk iodine and blood plasma concentrations were meas- ured using the Sandell-Kolthoff method modified by the Bobek and Kołczak procedure.

Result: Salt licks containing 150 and 300 mg I/kg increased iodine intake by 7.5 and 15.0 mg I/day, respectively. Average iodine intake in the control group was 6.23 mg I/day, and 13.68 and 21.10 mg I/day in the experimental groups, respectively. There were no significant differences in the average cows' milk yield, which averaged 21.0 ± 1.1 kg/day. Average milk iodine content was 53.8 μg/1000 mL (control group), 65.0 and 84.7 μg/1000 mL (experimental groups). Average plasma iodine content tended to increase in the experimental groups, but the differences between the groups were not significant. In the second experiment iodine udder disinfection and teat dipping increased average milk iodine content from 44.0 ± 1.6 to 59.3 ± 2.3 μg/1000 mL. Average plasma iodine content increased only slightly, with a non- significant difference between the control and experimental groups.

Conclusion: The iodine content of salt licks at 150 and 300 mg I/kg makes it possible to obtain from 65 to 85 μg I/1000 mL of cow's milk. Pre-milking udder hygiene and post-milking iodine teat dipping additionally increase the iodine content of milk by around 15 μg I/1000 mL milk, i.e. an increase of 35% in relation to cows from the control group.

Iodine in the feed of cows and in the milk with a view to the consumer's iodine supply​

Friedrich Schöne <a title="Thuringian State Institute of Agriculture, Investigation Unit - Laboratory, Naumburger Str. 98, D-07743, Jena, Germany. Electronic address: friedrich.schoene@tll.thueringen.de." href="Iodine in the feed of cows and in the milk with a view to the consumer's iodine supply - PubMed">1</a>, Kathrin Spörl <a title="Thuringian State Institute of Agriculture, Investigation Unit - Laboratory, Naumburger Str. 98, D-07743, Jena, Germany." href="Iodine in the feed of cows and in the milk with a view to the consumer's iodine supply - PubMed">2</a>, Matthias Leiterer <a title="Thuringian State Institute of Agriculture, Investigation Unit - Laboratory, Naumburger Str. 98, D-07743, Jena, Germany." href="Iodine in the feed of cows and in the milk with a view to the consumer's iodine supply - PubMed">2</a>
Affiliations Expand

• PMID: 27908415
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jtemb.2016.10.004

Abstract​

Milk may be an iodine source for humans, but its magnitude depends on the iodine content of cow feed. The present investigation focused on the iodine level of feed and milk in German feeding practice in comparison with the results of previous milk monitoring and dose-response experiments with dairy cows. In 73 samples of straight feedstuffs (41 concentrates, 32 silages prepared from grass or green maize) and a total of 83 vitamin mineral premixes and compound feeds, respectively, the iodine content was determined and along with the expected daily iodine intake of cows. In six Thuringian cow herds, the total cow diets (51 total mixed rations, TMR) as well as the bulk milk (n=77) were analysed for iodine. Cereal and legume grains and extracted meals from oilseeds had very low native iodine contents at<9-43μg iodine/kg dry matter (DM). Silages showed higher contents than the concentrates. In grass silage, the median amounted to 173μg iodine/kg DM. The significant relationship between the silages' ash and iodine content indicates contamination of grass during harvesting by soil. With regard to supplements, dairy cows received via premixes a mean of 1.2mg iodine/kg diet DM and this was in the magnitude of 0.8mg iodine/kg DM determined in TMR on farm. However, the resulting mean milk concentration of 105μg iodine/kg, median 100μg/kg, is only a half of that in dose-response experiments with 200μg iodine/kg milk at 1mg iodine/kg cow feed DM. The decrease of iodine transfer into the mammary gland and milk is caused by rapeseed meal (RSM) with the glucosinolates and their degradation compounds, e.g. isothiocyanates. By compensating for the iodine antagonist effects of diets containing RSM, more iodine should be added. Twice the current mean feed iodine supplement would optimize the contribution of animal-source food to the human iodine supply in Germany.
Keywords: Cows; Feed additives; Feedstuffs; Iodine; Milk; Rapeseed glucosinolates.

Invited review: Iodine level in dairy products—A feed-to-fork overview​

Author links open overlay panelG. Niero 1, G. Visentin 2, S. Censi 3, F. Righi 4, C.L. Manuelian 1, A. Formigoni 2, C. Mian 3, J. Bérard 5, M. Cassandro 1 6, M. Penasa 1, S. Moore 1, A. Costa 2, M. De Marchi 1
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ABSTRACT​

The theme of iodine in the dairy sector is of particular interest due to the involvement and the interconnection of several stakeholders along the dairy food chain. Iodine plays a fundamental role in animal nutrition and physiology, and in cattle it is an essential micronutrient during lactation and for fetal development and the calf's growth. Its correct use in food supplementation is crucial to guarantee the animal's recommended daily requirement to avoid excess intake and long-term toxicity. Milk iodine is fundamental for public health, being one of the major sources of iodine in Mediterranean and Western diets. Public authorities and the scientific community have made great efforts to address how and to what extent different drivers may affect milk iodine concentration. The scientific literature concurs that the amount of iodine administered through animal feed and mineral supplements is the most important factor affecting its concentration in milk of most common dairy species. Additionally, farming practices related to milking (e.g., use of iodized teat sanitizers), herd management (e.g., pasture vs. confinement), and other environmental factors (e.g., seasonality) have been identified as sources of variation of milk iodine concentration. Overall, the aim of this review is to provide a multilevel overview on the mechanisms that contribute to the iodine concentration of milk and dairy products.

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Key words​

consumer health
dairy industry
farming
iodine
milk

INTRODUCTION​

The milk matrix contains mineral elements of great importance in terms of quality and quantity. Calcium, potassium, magnesium, sodium, and phosphorus are the major minerals, present at relatively high concentration (Cashman, 2006). For decades, these milk components have been studied for their relevance at both nutritional and manufacturing levels. On the other hand, iodine is one of the trace elements of milk and therefore present in low amounts (Cashman, 2006). In addition to iodized salt and seafood, milk and dairy products are the main source of iodine in the human diet (Herrick et al., 2018; Censi et al., 2020). This mineral is fundamental to maintain the functionality of the thyroid gland and to sustain physiologic and metabolic processes regulated by thyroid hormones; thus, iodine intake and availability are important for human health to ensure certain physiological functions. Proper iodine supplementation strategies in dairy species can guarantee animal health, together with the consumer's iodine prophylaxis.
Iodine level in milk is affected by numerous factors along the entire dairy food chain, on a feed-to-fork perspective. The main driver is the level of iodine in the feed administered to lactating animals, which has been demonstrated to be linearly associated with the final milk iodine concentration. Such a relationship is well documented in literature (Moschini et al., 2010; Weiss et al., 2015; Antaya et al., 2019), even if the dose-response effect is far from being standardized due to several hurdles, including high analytical costs for the determination of this mineral in feed and milk, and the presence of iodine antagonists in several ingredients included in the animals' rations (Bath and Rayman, 2016). Some of the factors potentially influencing the milk iodine content, such as season and farming system, can be largely traced back to the effect of diet composition (Nerhus et al., 2018; Stevenson et al., 2018). The adoption of iodized teat sanitizers has been identified as a further factor able to increase milk iodine concentration. This happens due to the presence of disinfectant in the teat canal after postdipping and to the local absorption of iodine at the epithelial level, followed by a release of this mineral into the secreted milk (French et al., 2016). The scientific literature demonstrates that milk iodine concentration also has a genetic component in cattle, meaning that there is genetic variability for this trait as the populations diverge in terms of estimated breeding value for milk iodine concentration (Denholm et al., 2019; Costa et al., 2021). Different studies have described the importance of milk and dairy products in respect to iodine prophylaxis in humans (Herrick et al., 2018; Censi et al., 2020).
In this scenario, the aim of this review is to update the scientific community on the latest findings concerning (1) the most recent recommendations in terms of iodine requirements and adequate intake in dairy cows; (2) the major factors affecting the variability of iodine in milk and dairy products—namely, animal feeding, farm management, and processing at the dairy industry level; (3) the key role of iodine in human nutrition and health. The importance of milk and dairy foods as sources of iodine in humans perceived by the scientific community was also investigated through a posteriori analysis of bibliographic data.

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Iodine in Animal Nutrition​

Scant and dated information is available to determine the average iodine requirement of cattle, and adequate intakes rather than actual requirements are usually provided (NASEM, 2021). Given this, the term “adequate intake” is adopted throughout this review for consistency.
According to the recent guidelines reported in NASEM (2021), for the maintenance purposes of dairy cows, the adequate intake of iodine can be calculated as follows:Adequate intake, mg/d = (0.216 × BW0.528) + (0.1 × MY),where BW is the animal body weight (kg) and MY is the daily milk yield (kg/d). The calculation is valid for all categories of cattle (lactating and nonlactating), calves excluded, with MY assuming a value of 0 for nonlactating cows. The adequate intake for calves, as still functionally nonruminating animals, is estimated on the basis of the requirements for human infants as 0.8 mg of iodine per kilogram of DMI (NASEM, 2021).
Even if the diet is apparently balanced in terms of minerals and the intake of iodine seems adequate, the real amount of iodine absorbed may not be. In fact, the amount of iodine absorbed is “overestimated” in the presence of goitrogens such as canola meal. Goitrogens are organic compounds that interfere with the synthesis and secretion of thyroid hormones either by hampering iodine transport across the thyroid cell membrane (and ultimately reducing iodine retention) or by inhibiting thyroperoxidase (and ultimately preventing the biosynthesis of monoiodotyrosine and diiodotyrosine). It has been reported that diets with canola meal decreased transfer of iodine into milk by 50% (NASEM, 2021). Assuming that the synthesis of thyroid hormones is decreased to a similar extent, the adequate intake would be twice that previously estimated (NASEM, 2021). Given a typical dry cow (700 kg BW; 13.5 kg DMI) and lactating cow (650 kg BW; 35 kg/d MY; 21 kg DMI), such cattle categories would need to be fed, respectively, with 0.51 and 0.48 mg of iodine per kg DM in the presence of goitrogen-free diets (NASEM, 2021). Such values become 1.02 and 0.96 mg/kg DM, respectively, if goitrogenic compounds are also included (NASEM, 2021).

ANIMAL FEEDING, MANAGEMENT, AND GENETICS​

Iodine Concentration in Animal Feeds​

Table 2 summarizes the average iodine concentration of baleage, concentrates, hay, mineral supplements, silages, and TMR based on data retrieved from the literature. As expected, mineral supplements had the greatest iodine concentration, with Ascophillum nodosum meal and mineral premix accounting for 763.67 and 81.50 mg of iodine per kilogram of DM, respectively. Concentrates exhibited an average concentration of 1.95 mg of iodine per kilogram of DM. Still, it is worth noting that concentrates were characterized by a relatively high iodine variability, being the standard deviation equal to 1.09 mg of iodine per kilogram of DM and the coefficient of variation 56%. This indicates that we are far from a standardization of this mineral in complex matrixes like concentrates. Iodine concentration in TMR averaged 1.27 mg/kg DM, which is greater than the recommended concentration of about 0.5 mg/kg DM (NASEM, 2021), but far below the upper tolerable limit (5 mg/kg DM; EU, 2005). Similarly, wide standard deviation (0.64 mg/kg DM) and large coefficient of variation (51%) are reported for iodine concentration. Overall, this may be attributed to different types and levels of supplementations, which in turn are related to different nutritional requirements of cattle categories, specific feeding programs, and different farm management practices. Grass and legume baleage were characterized by relatively low iodine concentration, averaging 0.29 and 0.20 mg/kg DM, respectively. Similar iodine concentrations were observed for mixed silages and sugar beet silages, averaging 0.25 and 0.21 mg/kg DM, respectively. Among the considered feed ingredients, hay, corn silage, and grass silage present the lowest iodine concentration per kilogram of DM (Table 2).
Table 2. Average iodine concentration of baleage, concentrates, hay, mineral supplements, silages, and TMR (mg/kg of DM)

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Iodine Supplementation​

Iodine content of feed ingredients reflects the passive uptake of crops and vegetables from soil and water. This, however, is generally not sufficient to cover the adequate intake of a dairy cow, and inclusion of iodine supplements in the diet is fundamental to fulfill the adequate intake and support body maintenance, milk production, and fetal development. Type and amount of iodine supplementation in the daily ration is the major source of variation of milk iodine. In fact, the correlation between iodine supplementation and milk iodine concentration portrayed (Figure 1A) is linear and is characterized by different dose-response effects, as demonstrated by the slopes (Figure 1B). Regressions obtained from single studies, together with Figure 1A and 1B, are intended to facilitate the comparison between different trials and to present the response dose effect and the recovery rate of iodine from feed to milk in a synthetic manner. The linear regression obtained using all the data from the considered studies (Figure 1C) allows one to infer milk iodine concentration in the presence of a known feed iodine concentration.

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IODINE IN DAIRY PRODUCTS​

Iodine Concentration in Dairy Products​

Table 3 summarizes average iodine concentration in dairy products, including retail milk, different types of cheese, yogurt, protein concentrates, and whey. To date, iodine content has been well profiled in retail milk samples, addressing the effect of heat treatment (i.e., pasteurization and UHT), fat content (i.e., whole, semiskimmed, and skim milk), month and season of sampling, and farming system (i.e., conventional and organic). Iodine concentration in retail milk is not subjected to standardization and is thus extremely variable, from 91 µg/L (Walther et al., 2018) to 489 µg/kg (O'Kane et al., 2018). The recommended daily iodine intake in adult women and men has been established at 150 µg/d (WHO, 2007). Considering the minimum and maximum milk iodine level retrieved from literature, a glass of milk (125 mL) can provide from 11 to 61 µg of iodine, which translates into 7 to 41% of the recommended daily intake of adults, respectively. This review puts in evidence that a more stable iodine concentration in drink milk can be achieved through different strategies within the dairy chain (Coneyworth et al., 2020)—for example, by monitoring iodine intake in lactating animals (Arrizabalaga et al., 2020). In fact, the high variability of this mineral in retail milk has implications for the adequacy of iodine intake in consumers, which could result in more serious consequences for vulnerable groups such as newborns, children, and pregnant women (van de Kamp et al., 2019).
Table 3. Average iodine concentration in dairy products

Milk, μg/kg
Nerhus et al. (2018)	Semiskimmed pasteurized milk (cow)	54	149	117	200
O'Kane et al. (2018)	Whole pasteurized milk (cow)	24	470	467	473
O'Kane et al. (2018)	Semiskimmed UHT milk (cow)	12	489
Stevenson et al. (2018)	Whole pasteurized milk (cow)	96	3341	1981	5221
Stevenson et al. (2018)	Whole UHT milk (cow)	48	3141	2801	3431
Walther et al. (2018)	Whole UHT milk (cow)	220	911	351	1511
van de Kamp et al. (2019)	Semiskimmed pasteurized milk (cow)	64	159	38	358
Niero et al. (2019)	Whole pasteurized milk (cow)	5	254
Niero et al. (2019)	Semiskimmed pasteurized milk (cow)	5	359
Niero et al. (2019)	Whole UHT milk (cow)	5	305
Niero et al. (2019)	Semiskimmed UHT milk (cow)	5	267
Arrizabalaga et al. (2020)	Whole UHT milk (cow)	489	1901	1061	2721
Cheese, μg/kg
Nerhus et al. (2018)	Solid cheese (cow)	9	157	140	190
Nerhus et al. (2018)	Soft cheese (cow)	6	155	130	180
Nerhus et al. (2018)	Soft cheese (goat)	6	300	140	460
Nerhus et al. (2018)	Whey cheese (cow)	6	1,200	1,000	1,400
Nerhus et al. (2018)	Whey cheese (goat)	3	4,500
van der Reijden et al. (2019)	Solid cheese (cow)	32	186	0	522
van der Reijden et al. (2019)	Soft cheese (cow)	12	78	0	195
Yogurt, μg/kg
Nerhus et al. (2018)	Yogurt (cow)	6	155	130	180
van der Reijden et al. (2019)	Yogurt (cow)	4	72	4	174
Protein concentrate
da Silva et al. (2016)	Casein concentrates (cow)	1	371
da Silva et al. (2016)	Whey protein concentrates (cow)	4	4,348	2,530	8,040
Milk whey, μg/kg
van der Reijden et al. (2019)	Milk whey (cow)	44	75	0	197

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1
Data expressed as micrograms per liter.
Fewer data are available for commercial dairy products other than milk. Van der Reijden et al. (2019) reported average iodine concentration in cow cheese varying from 78 µg/kg (Tomino) to 186 µg/kg (Fontina), meaning that 30 g of cheese provides between 2.3 and 5.6 µg of iodine (i.e., from 1.5 to 3.7% of the recommended daily intake for adults). Similar concentrations have been reported for yogurt by both Nerhus et al. (2018) and van der Reijden et al. (2019), with average iodine concentrations of 155 and 72 µg/kg, respectively. Drastically greater iodine concentrations were measured in cow whey cheeses (1,200 µg/kg) and goat whey cheeses (4,500 µg/kg), suggesting that a portion of 30 g contributes 24 and 90% of the recommended daily intake, respectively. High iodine concentrations were also obtained for different kinds of whey protein isolates and concentrates, with an average iodine concentration of 4,348 µg/kg (da Silva et al., 2016). Such results suggest that iodine is likely embedded in whey proteins, but specific and dedicated studies are recommended to confirm this empirical speculation. More efforts should be made to define analytical protocols for iodine concentration, with particular regard to processed dairy foods. It will be useful to have a comprehensive overview of iodine concentration variability in a broader range of products, including more industrial-scale products in addition to laboratory or experimental-scale products.

Effect of Heating and Skimming on Retail Milk Iodine Concentration​

The effects of heat and skim treatments on milk iodine concentration have been extensively investigated. However, most of the studies focused on retail milk samples where no corresponding samples of the same batch of milk were analyzed before and after the technological treatment. A simple comparison of differently treated commercial samples is not optimal for studying the influence of processing, because several other factors are likely to interfere with the iodine level. Therefore, it is advisable to evaluate the effect of processing on iodine concentration along the processing line. This would permit researchers to follow the same batch of milk along the different processing stages (Walther at al., 2018).
As regards heat treatment, significant differences in iodine concentration were not detected between pasteurized and UHT retail milk (van de Kamp et al., 2019), nor between unpasteurized and pasteurized retail milk (O'Kane et al., 2018). However, authors of both studies acknowledged that the limited sample size considered could skew the results in relation to temperatures used during treatment. To investigate the influence of heating on milk iodine concentration, Walther et al. (2018) analyzed the same milk samples before and after the UHT treatment. Iodine concentration of untreated milk averaged 95 ± 23 μg/L, whereas the same samples averaged 95 ± 25 μg of iodine per liter after UHT treatment, indicating that this treatment had no influence on milk iodine concentration. These conclusions were likely expected due to the fact that iodine is a mineral element (i.e., inorganic compound) and therefore is not subject to deterioration through heating. Moreover, at dairy plant level, milk sterilization is commonly performed as a continuous process, without contact with the external environment, and for a very short period. Given this, any arising differences between iodine concentration in raw and heat-treated milk can be due to an artifact. In a study aimed at validating a chromatographic method for iodine quantification in raw and processed milk, Niero et al. (2019) concluded that the variation in iodine concentration of commercial milk was more related to the milk chemical composition than to heat treatments such as pasteurization or UHT. Moreover, Arrizabalaga et al. (2020) observed a similar concentration of iodine along the fat gradient found in whole, semiskimmed, and skimmed UHT milk available in the Spanish (187, 189, and 189 μg/L, respectively) and French (201, 189, and 215 μg/L, respectively) markets. Similar conclusions were reported by O'Kane et al. (2018), who observed similar iodine concentrations in whole (488.5 μg/kg), semiskimmed (466.5 μg/kg), and skim milk (472.6 μg/kg). Due to the solubility of iodine compounds, O'Kane et al. (2018) hypothesized that milk iodine is likely to increase in low-fat milk, which indeed contains a greater soluble fraction compared with other milk as a result of the skimming process (Niero et al., 2019). Nevertheless, although this idea sounds reliable and is in line with the aforementioned study, it is fair to point out that this is a mere speculation inferred from a small sample size that lacks robust statistical support.

Effect of Season and Farming System on Retail Milk Iodine Concentration​

Scientific literature agrees on the seasonal variation of iodine concentration in bovine milk. In general, greater concentrations are usually found in winter milk compared with summer milk (O'Kane et al., 2018; van de Kamp et al., 2019; Arrizabalaga et al., 2020). Greater iodine supplementation and fewer iodine antagonists in winter feed are among the main direct explanatory factors of these differences. Also, differences in milk iodine concentrations across years and seasons can be indirectly related to climatic conditions of specific geographical areas, which regulate the beginning and end of the grazing period, and to the adoption of calving patterns, which lead to synchronous administration of mineral supplements at different levels depending on cattle physiological status and needs (Arrizabalaga et al., 2020). Such factors may hide or overlap the proper effect of season. In addition, assessing seasonal variations in iodine concentration of retail milk is even more difficult in the case of UHT milk. Indeed, there may be a wide variation in the time span between the treatment date and the purchase date, which ultimately creates challenges to date back to the actual milking season (Arrizabalaga et al., 2020).
Most studies also agree that conventionally produced milk is characterized by greater iodine concentration compared with milk produced under organic systems (Bath et al., 2012; Stevenson et al., 2018; Walther et al., 2018). Frequent administration of fresh forages with relatively great goitrogenic content and the reduced use of iodine supplements coupled with less frequent teat dipping are likely to reduce iodine concentration in organically produced milk (Flachowsky et al., 2014). Lower iodine concentrations in organic milk compared with conventional milk have been confirmed by Nerhus et al. (2018), although with a less evident trend in comparison to the previously cited literature. In contrast, the study conducted by van de Kamp et al. (2019) in the Netherlands resulted in no differences in iodine concentration between conventional and organic milk; similar results were reported by Qin et al. (2021) in conventional and organic milk produced in southern England.

Effects of Milk Processing on Iodine Concentration of Dairy Products​

So far, the effect of cheese-making protocols on iodine concentration in curd, cheese, and whey have been poorly investigated. Studies often show several limitations—for example, limited sample size, laboratory-scale products, or restricted geographical areas.
Van der Reijden et al. (2019) observed a linear relationship between milk iodine concentration and cheese iodine concentration, with R2 from 0.95 (semihard cheeses) to 1.00 (fresh cheeses). Such results were confirmed regardless of the cheese-making process and related cheese products; greater iodine concentration of milk was consistently coupled with higher iodine concentration of the manufactured cheese. Van der Reijden et al. (2019) reported that cheese ripening had a negligible to null effect on cheese iodine concentration. The most recent literature agrees that, during cheese manufacturing, milk iodine is mainly found in the whey (75 to 84% of milk iodine; van der Reijden et al., 2019) rather than in the curd where it has become incorporated (below 25% of milk iodine; van der Reijden et al., 2019). Such findings harmonize with the relatively low cheese iodine concentration (Nerhus et al., 2018; van der Reijden et al., 2019), and the extremely high iodine concentration of whey cheeses and protein concentrates (da Silva et al., 2016; Nerhus et al., 2018). This is also in agreement with recent findings of Niero et al. (2020), who reported a positive correlation (r = 0.22; P < 0.01) between iodine and lactose concentration in milk likely due to the solubility of both compounds. According to the current knowledge, it is not possible to understand the ratio between inorganic iodine (i.e., soluble or free iodine) and organic iodine (i.e., iodine associated with organic compounds such as caseins or whey protein) of cow milk. Based on the considerations mentioned here, we can speculate that most of the milk iodine is in solution or, at the most, in association with whey proteins.

IODINE IN HUMAN HEALTH AND NUTRITION​

The function of the thyroid gland is to produce T4 and T3 thyroid hormones. These are characterized by the presence of 4 and 3 iodine atoms within their molecules, representing 65 and 59% of their molecular weight, respectively. Thus, in humans the production of an adequate quantity of thyroid hormones depends on an adequate intake of iodine, the rate-limiting element for the synthesis of thyroid hormones. Iodine can be obtained exclusively through the diet or through iodine supplements and cannot be replaced by any other nutrient (Velasco et al., 2018). Following the current guidelines of the World Health Organization (WHO, 2007), recommended daily iodine intake is as follows: 150 μg/d in adults (above 12 yr old); 250 μg/d in pregnant and lactating women, due to the increased thyroid hormone synthesis by the mother and initiation of thyroid hormone production at wk 16 to 18 by the fetus, as well as the mother-to-newborn transfer of iodine occurring during breastfeeding; 90 μg/d in preschool children (0 to 59 mo old); and 120 μg/d in schoolchildren (6 to 12 yr old). Iodine deficiency causes a wide range of health side effects. Overall, diseases associated with inadequate thyroid hormone production are collectively referred to as iodine deficiency disorders. The consequences observed after enduring iodine deficiency depend on its duration and severity. Thyroid hormones are indeed fundamental for appropriate neurological development, and the period between conception and the first 2 yr of life (known as the “first 1,000 d”) is fundamental in the long-term brain development of the child (Mattei and Pietrobelli, 2019). Thus, severe iodine deficiency endured during fetal life creates higher risks of “cretinism,” miscarriage, and infant mortality (Laurberg et al., 2010). The same deficiency in adult life causes hypothyroidism and goiter (Laurberg et al., 2010). However, moderate iodine deficiency can also have consequences for human health, especially during pregnancy. Although data are still weak, because they come from observational studies, a growing body of studies have documented how the offspring of mothers who experienced mild to moderate iodine deficiency during pregnancy are more likely to show learning disabilities and poorer verbal intelligence quotient scores (Levie et al., 2019), and even more conflicting data exist on a possible association with autism (Velasco et al., 2018; Levie et al., 2020).
However, excessive iodine intake should also be discouraged. Indeed, iodine intake and thyroid functions are subject to hormesis, so their relationship follows a relationship-inverted pattern: not only inadequate intake but also excessive iodine availability are harmful to correct thyroid function, leading to goiter, thyroid autoimmunity, hypothyroidism, or hyperthyroidism (Laurberg et al., 2009). The quite small range for adequate iodine intake was clearly pointed out by a Danish population study, set to prospectively monitor the iodine fortification program. The study showed profound effects of even small differences in iodine intake on the prevalence of goiter, nodules, and thyroid dysfunction, with several environmental factors influencing the epidemiology of thyroid disorders, some factors acting via an interaction with iodine intake and others independent of iodine (Laurberg et al., 2006). The relatively narrow range between deficiency and a more-than-adequate intake is particularly evident during infancy: school-age children are great milk consumers and are more prone to an excessive iodine intake (Farebrother et al., 2018; Bath et al., 2022). Thus, many societies recommend a lower iodine intake in young children than that of 90 μg/d recommended by WHO (Committee on Medical Aspects of Food Policy, 1991). Although many data showed that even excessive iodine intakes in children seem to be well tolerated, at least judging based on the absence of short-term thyroid dysfunctions (Farebrother et al., 2018), it should nevertheless be avoided, because data on possible long-term consequences are still lacking. Also, pregnant women and their developing fetus, as well as breastfed infants, may be vulnerable to iodine in excess, although the implications of iodine excess are still poorly understood and data are conflicting (WHO, 2007; Lee and Pearce, 2015; Pearce et al., 2016). Recognizing the importance of iodine deficiency prevention, in 1991 the WHO established the goal to eliminate iodine deficiency, and 2 yr later the United Nations Children's Fund recommended Universal Salt Iodization as the principal strategy to guarantee an adequate iodine intake, based on the iodization of the salt used, including that derived from food industrial processing. Since the 1990s, great improvements have been made in the elimination of iodine deficiency–related diseases: according to WHO data, the number of iodine-deficient countries decreased by half, from 110 countries in 1993 to 54 in 2003 (UNICEF, 2008). From 2003 to 2017, the number of iodine-deficient countries in the world further fell by 64.8%, from 54 countries to 19 (Gizak et al., 2017). Although data demonstrate that improvements were achieved through specific campaigns in the past decades, it is still a long road to reach iodine adequacy and iodized salt coverage, even in developed countries and particularly in childbearing-age women (Gizak et al., 2017). Alternative valid sources of iodine are represented by milk and dairy products due to supplementation of iodine in cattle feed (Herrick et al., 2018; Walther et al., 2018). In numerous published reports, dairy products have demonstrated a significant role in contributing to the total iodine intake, especially in children (Censi et al., 2020; Bath et al., 2022). Cow milk consumption decreases during the lifespan, from childhood to adolescence and adulthood, paralleling the frequency of adequate iodine intake, which falls accordingly, demonstrating the importance of cow milk and dairy products as central contributors to iodine adequacy (Witard et al., 2022).

. . .​

FINAL REMARKS​

This review provides a wide-ranging overview of factors that contribute to iodine concentration in milk and dairy products and is primarily intended to make the scientific community aware of the importance of this mineral in animal and human nutrition. Several studies have demonstrated that milk iodine concentration is closely associated with its respective concentration in the feed. The correlation between the iodine concentration in feed and milk is linear and characterized by different dose-response effects according to the feed and presence of supplementation. Goitrogenic substances found in certain forage species are antagonists of iodine, and their specific effects on the concentration of iodine in milk remain to be further elucidated in cattle. From the present literature review, we also conclude that the iodine concentration in bovine milk can be affected by milking practices and industrial processing. In particular, the use of iodine-based products for teat cleaning is responsible for a notable artificial increase in the concentration of iodine in dairy cows. The effect of milk technological treatments had a minor impact on iodine concentration. Being strictly management dependent, the milk iodine concentration is expected to be scarcely heritable. Moreover, collection of accurate phenotypes on a large scale is rather difficult, as the predictive performance of mid-infrared spectroscopy is far from considered reliable enough to be implemented on the pool of traits routinely measured, representing an issue, for example, when attempting the implementation of animal breeding programs. The investigation of novel and closed mineral-related technologies (e.g., X-ray) should be considered in further research to improve the accuracies of mid-infrared tools. Consumers need to be informed of the importance of dietary iodine and deficit implications, as the human recommended daily allowance could be reached through dietary intake of milk or other dairy products. In recent years, interest in the contribution of milk and dairy to daily iodine consumption has increased, not just within the scientific community but also in various countries. Therefore, we expect milk iodine to remain an important topic in the future that deserves consumer education and attention in food science through scientific research and economic funding.

 

[iamthatis]

Yes maybe Christianson is disinformation, but there is iodine being used in salt licks and feed. The point being is that we may not be deficient in iodine, but neither can we be sure how much iodine we are getting. Perhaps supplementing with iodine is not a good idea, without having an idea, perhaps via our thyroid, of how much iodine we're ingesting?​

I'd say that yes, supplementing with iodine is still a good idea, even if just for the detox of heavy metals and resistance to all kinds of diseases, not to mention energy levels, and improved access the information field. Paying attention of course to the body, the emotions, thoughts, Herx reactions, other 'too much' signals. I know when I take it regularly, I need to be careful because it can be intense and I need to maintain a certain even keel to be able to do my job. But sometimes intense is exactly what we need - intentional suffering and all that. Apparently it is very hard to overdose, so any amount we're getting from animal products may be a moot point?

 

[daddycat]

The point being is that we may not be deficient in iodine, but neither can we be sure how much iodine we are getting. Perhaps supplementing with iodine is not a good idea, without having an idea, perhaps via our thyroid, of how much iodine we're ingesting?

I think it's easy. Go get a blood iodine test, or some other iodine test. Stop taking iodine for a couple months and watch how low the iodine plummets in the blood iodine test. Start taking iodine and watch the iodine go up. I don't know where you get the idea people are getting too much iodine, if not from disinfo like Christianson. Many or most people are filled with toxins and poisons, and iodine at levels around 12.5 milligrams per day can gently detoxify people over years.