The simple answer to this question was answered by Dr. Brownstein in his book, 'Iodine, why you need it, why you can't live without it'. In it, he stated that in medical school, what medical students are taught about Iodine was specific to iodine deficiency & that is, 'table salt is iodized which is sufficient enough for the population as a whole and that additional supplementation was not needed & in fact could induce endemic goitre'. In his book, he goes on to prove that both of these statements are so completely wrong and in fact, without sufficiency in Iodine for the body, many chronic debilitating conditions, including hypo & hyperthyroidism are caused & or worsened. He has successfully treated both hypothyroidism & hyperthyroidism (goiter) with Iodine supplementation.
Having moved from BC to Ontario in 2007, I was so blown away with all the thyroidism & chronic conditions like; arthritis, fibromyalgia, eczema, psoriasis, cancer & more that so many people suffered with here in Ontario. Every doctor in North America used to learn about & use Lugol's solution, potassium-iodide or one of the 1700 pharmacopeia options available to doctors in their practice available until the 1950's. After that, pharmaceutical drugs were marketed as the best choice for a doctors prescriptions and Iodine was left out of their teaching curriculum, except in very small references. It was known as the 'Universal Medicine' or universal nutrient and a well known panacea, 'for all the ails the human condition' from the early 1800's through to the 1950's. Nobel Laureate Albert Szent Gyorgyi, the physician who discovered Vitamin C in 1928, commented, "When I was a medical student, iodine in the form of KI was the universal medicine. Nobody knew what it did, but it did something and did something good. We students used to sum up the situation in this little rhyme:
'If ye don't know where, what, and why, prescribe ye then K and I'
The medical community had great enthusiasm for Iodine, which started just few short years after Iodine's discovery in 1811. In Switzerland, a physician named JF Coindet had been using Sea Sponge very successfully to treat goiter. He thought that the active ingredient in Sea Sponge might just be Iodine, so in 1819, he tested tincture of iodine at 250 mg/day, in 150 goiter patients with great success. He found he could reduce significantly the size of goiter within a week in his patients and published his results in 1820. Currently the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for iodine is 150 micrograms over 1000 times less than Dr. Coindet used in his day.
Physicians & surgeons in the early 1800's would use it for everything that didn't respond to regular treatment, it's documented history, treating everything from: croup, lupus, chorea(a genetic neurological disease0 (Folk singer Woody Guthrie died from this), scrofula (a tuberculous infection of the lymph nodes in the neck), hip-joint disease, syphilis, acute inflammation, gout, gangrene, dropsy, whitlow(infection of the finger or thumb caused by herpes simplex virus), burns, catarrh (inflammation of the mucous membranes in the nose), asthma, ulcers and bronchitis.
We've had clients & friends reverse their rheumatoid arthritis of 17 years, help their eczema, cancer, anaemia & more with seaweed & iodine. Doctors around the world regularly prescribe going to the ocean to treat the symptoms of arthritis as it's recognized as known mineral deficiency. Since all minerals work synergistically in the body, having them all together in a bio-available from in seaweed does the body good!
Thalassotherapy and Iodine - discussing conditions like: Thyroidism, Fibrocytic Breast Disease, Endometriosis, Ovarian Cysts, Arthritis, Fibromyalgia, Eczema, Psoriasis, Cancer and more! Thalassotherapy is defined as the layering of ocean components onto the body; utilizing whole seaweeds, seasalt & ocean water over the body; allowing the absorption of important vitamins and minerals in a bio-available chelated form, for the purpose of achieving mind, body balancing.
