As some of you know, I contribute strongly to the T Replacement forum.
What I have noticed is that there is a lot of new young guys, and older, who show up with low testosterone. Most of these guys have thyroid issues and many of those have not been using iodized salt and/or vitamins that list iodine.
There are some of the factors:
many are eating prepared meals or restaurant meals that are typically not prepared with iodized salt.
salt shakers in restaurants typically don’t have iodized salt.
breads used to have iodine as a dough conditioner and that was stopped years ago and now bromines are used which is all the worse because bromines interfere with what iodine you have.
many are now using sea salt. Sea salt does not contain iodine unless the package states that it is “iodized”. Some use some exotic salts that people thing contain iodine, but there is no useful amount of iodine.
doctors have forgotten about iodine. Typically then would never ask about iodine intake or suggest taking iodine, even when lab work shows thyroid hormone problems. Doctors will ignore thyroid hormone cases until things are really bad, then prescribe Rx thyroid meds for life when there may be a simple iodine deficiency.
with older guys with blood pressure issues, doctors will get them on a low salt diet and create iodine deficiencies. Most doctors a clueless.
doctors do not know how to properly interpret thyroid lab results and don’t know what labs to order
when one is iodine deficient, TSH increases and years of high TSH can lead to thyroid nodules that produce thyroid hormones outside of the thyroid control loop. So iodine deficiency can progress from hypothyroidism to hyperthyroidism with risks of thyroid cancer.
when your thyroid processes iodine, there are enzymes that take care of some nasty metabolite chemicals that can cause thyroid auto-immune diseases. You need to have selenium in your supplements to enable these enzymes to function. If you take supplemental amounts if iodine, you need selenium.
Some thyroid experts believe that 90% of North Americans are iodine deficient.
In warm blooded animals, body temperature [read general metabolism] is regulated by the action of fT3 on mitochondrial in your cells. If fT3 inside the cells is low, your whole energy/vitality status is compromised. The mitochondria burn fats/lipids in your blood, you can see the implications of that not working right.
You can read the ‘thyroid basic’ sticky in the T-replacement forum. There you will see how you can check your functional thyroid function by checking your body temperature when you wake and in the mid afternoon. Interpretation of thyroid labs is there as well as suggested labs and labs to avoid. body temperatures are the bottom line. If temperatures are low, one has functional hypothyroidism
When I see thyroid issues and iodine deficiencies associated with so many guys presenting in that forum, I am forced to consider that iodine deficiencies might be causing these cases of hypogonadism.
Your body can store around 1 gram of iodine, mostly in the thyroid. If one is deficient, you cannot get out of the hole with 150 micrograms of iodine in your vitamins. So once you drop into the hole, you cannot get out without major amounts of iodine. Best to avoid getting there in the first place. Remember, you need selenium with iodine, and best to gets lots of trace elements in a good multi-vit.
After doing some research it seems the best food source for iodine would be sea vegetables such as kelp and wakame, containing %500 of your daily value. %20 of DV can also come from 4 ounces milk, 1 egg or 1/2 cup yogurt. Good thing I’m eating minimum 6 eggs per day lol.
Regarding selenium, “A selenium-containing enzyme is responsible for transforming a less active thyroid hormone called T4 into the more active T3.” Best source would be brazil nuts. 1 ounce of brazil nuts contains 10x the DV, so a few a day would suffice. Other selenium rich foods include oysters, clams, liver, and kidney.
Thats not an easy question. If you assume that your thyroid is already storing a lot of iodine, you are looking at a maintenance dose. I think that 1/2mg per day would be [might be] OK. But if your iodine stores a low, you need a lot more iodine and the amount depends on many variables, perhaps 1mg per day would be good for marginal cases. If you were out to flush bromines from your body, you need high serum iodine levels for a while.
When you look at the lab ranges for TSH, often 0.5 - 5.5, you have to wonder about a 10:1 ratio in a critical hormone. The ranges really reflect the statistical “normal” distribution of TSH levels in the sample populations. The range, unfortunately, is interpreted by doctors as a range of normal health. But my point is that this range of TSH levels probably reflects differing degrees of iodine deficiency as well as sub-clinical hypothyroidism. Unfortunately, doctors define clinical hypothyroidism as TSH above the upper lab range. Do you see a circular argument here? My point in this is that iodine status in the general population is probably all over the map, so how do you know you status? TSH is only one factor. Body temperatures are a measure of what is going on in your cells in terms of fT3+mitochondrial action.
So I return to guiding these decisions based on your waking [AM] and mid-afternoon body temperatures. In the thyroid basics sticky I make suggestions for iodine replenishment [IR] to address low temperatures. If one has a thyroid disease, the game changes.
[quote]KSman wrote:
Thats not an easy question. If you assume that your thyroid is already storing a lot of iodine, you are looking at a maintenance dose. I think that 1/2mg per day would be [might be] OK. But if your iodine stores a low, you need a lot more iodine and the amount depends on many variables, perhaps 1mg per day would be good for marginal cases. If you were out to flush bromines from your body, you need high serum iodine levels for a while.
[/quote]
Hello KSman, what would you recommend to a man in his early 50s who has iodine deficiency but is taking high blood pressure medications? WebMD doesn’t approve of the higher potassium intake. Perhaps I could look for an iodine supplement without potassium. I’m mainly wondering as both my parents are developing many health problems(my mother specifically with thyroid problems) for quite some time now and I would like to help.
High blood pressure occurs when the arteries loose elasticity. This can be from the muscle tone of the muscles that wrap around the arteries. These need to relax to allow a surge of blood to expand the artery, then the muscles recover the shape and then need to relax again. Low T and/or higher E2 can cause problems and TRT can lower blood pressure in some cases.
Then there is damage to the endothelium, a one cell thick layer of cells that protect the rest of the arteries from the blood that is destructive to the rest of the arteries. When things go wrong, its called endothelial dysfunction. What makes that worse? Low T, elevated estrogens, low DHEA, low Vit-D3, insulin resistance. How to improve?
high potency B-complex multi-vit with selenium, iodine and other trace elements [chromium if an insulin/glucose issues]
mini aspirin
fish oil, flax seed meal/oil, nuts
Ubiquinol form of CoQ10, 50 or 100mg [not cheap]
avoid taking a lot of ibuprofen
natural source Vit-D
5000 iu vit-D
vit-C and other antioxidants
Some degree if endothelial dysfunction can be over come as measured by homocysteine [not CRP which is not cardio specific].
You are worried about possible potassium overload.
see if you find anything there, the fact that this problem might occur does not mean that it will, labs are needed, the amount of potassium intake from iodine might not be significant