PLEASE tell me you are supplementing with selenium as well (havent read the whole thread..)?
If you don't, you may be inducing an auto immune disorder with iodine alone.
Haven't you read the whole thread 
?
http://www.longecity...post__p__624466 (page 1)
Due to the fact that it increases tsh, numerous studies concluded that it inhibits thyroid function even at moderate levels, while many did not look at t3/4 which indeed do not decrease until about the 30mg(!) mark. So which side is right? None entirely, I believe, but studies in high dose iodine are still lacking to find out whats true...
12. Don't do high dosages of iodine, just to think "hey, this is not high. I take more, and create a thread "because someone had to do it"". because, at very high dosages, you will likely get BLIND. Irreversibly. And at even higher dosages, death awaits. I personally did not get higher then 150mg iodine, and that ONLY when I was sick, and I am not sure this was save, and I probably won't do it again. Up to 100mg seem to be save, with exclusions (which I mentioned earlier). Every substance has a dosage where it gets dangerous. However, there have been instances where someone swallowed a small bottle and survived, lol.
The reason why iodine increases TSH is because TSH isn't necessarily a factor of thyroid hormone deficiency, TSH can also be stimulated for the sole reason of stimulating NIS receptors (Sodium iodide symporters) which helps transport more iodine.
Usually this will last for several months and then the TSH will go down.
This is exactly what happened with me, my TSH shoot up but my T4 are on the high side and I feel great.
"Modern" medecine has an irrational fear of iodine and they diagnose your thyroid function just based upon your TSH levels which is ridiculous and if you don't have the proper levels then you get prescribed thyroid hormones which do more harm than good.
150mg is fine, 130mg is the international standard that has to be supplied to citizens in case of nuclear fallout in order to protect the thyroid from RAI.
Up to 6 grams have been used but this would be very dangerous to give to someone with high halide intoxication or a goiter or a thyroid cancer.
I don't think 6g are even remotely healthy, the blindness thing happened in far lower dosages. Unfortunately I can't find the iodine review study that mentioned several cases of high iodine intake leading to permanent damage. I think it was around the 400mg mark, maybe 250...
iodine for thyroid cancer should be good though? Iodine activates apoptosis in cells, and it is much more effective in tissue that absorbs iodine more easily (i.e. breast tissue) - it should be even stronger for thyroid tissue.
I thought 100mg are the standard for radioactive iodine (nuclear fallout) protection?
some facts about iodine that I know:
1. high dose iodine pushes halogens (fluoride, bromide) out of the cells into the bloodstream, as well as aluminium, mercury (and more? don't remember, its been a few years since I researched iodine)
9. depending on your load with heavy metals and bromides, you might get massive problems when too many toxins reach the blood stream too quickly...
How do you know these things? Is there any evidence? I think the so-called "detox" symptoms are from iodine poisoning.
Most I know I base on abraham's studies, and basically all of the high iodine hype is based on it(
http://www.optimox.c...esearch_I.shtml). They show for example that subjects with high iodine intake had increased urinary excretion of bromine, fluoride etc.
Yes, they also sell iodine. Which means they may, or may not be biased. However, there have been a LOT of anecdotal reports that are in line with those studies by now, too many to ignore it. And pretty much everything seems to be like the studies suggest. Many of these anectodal reports also had lab work done. It is a pitty that there is no database to quantify those anecdotal reports.
It is not surprising that science may have gone the wrong way with iodine. Think about it: iodine without selenium may induce autothyroid diseases in some(So by lack of understanding, iodine made people sick). Iodine removes halides and heavy metals from the cells into the blood stream. Again, this looks like iodine makes people sick. while it is in fact the first step to detoxing toxic stuff from the body): The standard TSH test does not reliably say what the thyroid is doing, but it is used all over the literature, and iodine elevates TSH, indicating hypothyroid. The downfall of iodine as a medicine came from biased people who synthesized t3 or t4 and wanted to promote their way. And iodine was more or less the last medicine that was based on an element. People at that time had a bad feeling about this type of stuff, because at one time, bromide, and other toxic elements were actually used as medicine(You could talk about a elementophobia... another example? sodium. Evidence for high dose sodium increasing disease is far from conclusive, while there is now evidence that the opposite is true, within limits of course). So all of that caused a lot of confusion with iodine. Are you surprised? I am not. I am not saying that one side is entirely right or wrong. What I am saying is that this is a case of complicated relationships that led to the wrong conclusions in the 60ties.
Also, skin rashes cleared up with salt loading which makes the kidney prioritize bromide for excretion. This is actually standard procedure by the US military in case of acute (meaning its in the blood) bromide intoxication. The symptoms of iodine and bromide intoxication, at least when it comes to the skin, are identical.
What I know is that bromide can really stick around because it has a low clearing rate, while excess iodine is excreted within 24h. Salt loading clears my skin rashes that look like iodine or bromide rashes, but the thing is: I haven't had iodine for months now. So if it is the case that its iodine or bromide that causes those rashes, it can only be bromide for me, because iodine does not stick around so long.
I do not doubt that iodine itself can cause skin rashes too... BUT it would take much more for them to appear because of the much faster clearing rate compared to bromide. Especially in the US people have problems with chronic bromide exposure because it allowed as an ingredient in food products, for example, mountain brew. In the EU it has been banned a long time ago.
Blood tests for bromide can be missleading because it gets absorbed into the cells (chronic exposure). Only acute bromide levels can be detected, or, if you have a way to get bromide out of the cells, for example with iodine. It works because bromide and iodine have a very similar structure, so one can replace the other.
There are some labs that are offering urinary testing for halides and heavy metals in the US, and a lot of people on the iodine protocol use them. Maybe they have some sort of statistics, but I doubt it... privacy and such.
The thing is: the evidence for high iodine protocols is thin - most work being done by one researcher, small sample size, and he also sells the stuff. But his research sounds fine to me, there are plenty of people who agree through their experience, and there are some facts that I can not explain by iodine, for example the long duration of skin rashes that go away through salt loading, long after iodine supplementation was discontinued.
Also I have had a lot of positive effects, for example my hearing improved, I felt much better on "low"(1,5g/day) iodine supplementation (meaning low possibility for increasing bromide in the blood stream) or on high iodine, together with enough salt loading so that there were no detox effects. The most notable thing was how my mind could change from the glass is half empty to half full. Sure, that could be placebo, but I raraly felt as good as on high iodine, combined with salt loading, for an entire summer. I also had no need to take a mid day nap while on high dose iodine, while it should have made me tired (I should have been hypothyroid on high doses, but I was not, I was not hyperthyroid also, I was just fine, better then without iodine.)
I once hypotized that I may be loaded with bromide. But the detox symptoms didn't go away with time (they did with salt loading, but they returned if I continued with iodine and stopped salt loading). So, I was suspecting, just like you, that it after all could be iodine, that causes the rashes, not bromide. That, and all the warnings I heard, and the fact that high salt intake also has a negative sound to it (which may not be true after all) I decided to quit. But since the skin rashes didn't go away, I am intrigued... might it been bromide after all? Maybe I simply didn't give iodine and my body enough time to clear it ALL out. For the record: I could have been chronically exposed to bromide in my childhood for 6 years. Don't know for sure. But I have/had a lot of symptoms that make a case for bromide:
fatigue, sluggishness, impairment of memory and concentration, irritability or emotional instability, and depression, tendon reflex changes (actually my reflex area at the knee for example was not normal). I've had them since second grade...
This site also describes the low clearance rate of bromide, salt loading and other strategies to reduce bromide levels in the blood, symptoms, causes, low level bromism, etc...
http://www.gulflink....8.2.chap10.htmliodineresearch.com has a lot of iodine studies, however, that site is obviously advertising the high dose iodine view, and may be biased (I don't like the fact that I can't find anything about iodine toxicity on the site, for example...)
So basically there seem to be errors in the history of iodine research due to the complexity of the topic, at least), but we need replication of abraham's studies with a proper setup(bigger population, doubleblind), and I have the feeling that we will not see that for a long time, so its still controversial...
So now here I am, waiting for my selenium to arrive, already doing salt loading which is great for stress and anxiety too by the way... So I figure, why not start again with iodine and enjoy the benefits I once had?
An interesting study:
http://www.eje-onlin.../4/403.full.pdf
"Chronic iodine excess does not apparently increase the risk of autoimmune hyperthyroidism or influence the incidence and out- come of subclinical hyperthyroidism, which suggests that chronic excessive iodine intake may not be involved in the occurrence of autoimmune hyperthyroidism as an environmental factor."
Thanks for the study. I wouldn't conclude from this however that iodine cannot induce autoimmune disorders without selenium, though...
