High Dose Iodide: Take Salt and Water With

Diet and Nutrition
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Not that I have evidence of harm in fact happening to anyone as a result of not following this advice, for reasons of organic chemistry I’d recommend taking a substantial amount of salt and water along with high dose iodide, such as 2.5 mg at a time and above.

The reason has to do with driving of equilibrium by relative concentration compared to chloride concentration, and also the absolute concentration of iodide. Amounts such as 2.5 mg are very large amounts of iodide to be dissolved in a small amount of water, or to be dissolved in water that has little chloride in it.

For example, if taking a 12.5 mg iodide capsule and not drinking much water in it, the ratio of iodide to chloride in the GI tract could exceed 10:1, which is extremely unphysiological and similar to the conditions for the Finkelstein reaction. Even a dose of 2.5 mg iodide could result in iodide concentration exceeding chloride concentration within the volume it is dissolved in.

Just personal advice as to what seems to me the best and safest approach.

2

What about at smaller doses, such as 1 mg? Would you see any kind of negative in not taking supplemental salt/enough water if one ingests such an amount?

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Almost certainly not a negative in the sense of an effect that would be perceived, but “even” 1 mg would, with no particular amount of water or salt, provide an extraordinarily high ratio of iodide to chloride (roughly comparable to each other, instead of chloride vastly dominating) in the local environment of the GI tract, and also relatively speaking an extraordinarily high concentration of iodide.

The effect that some report of “needing” a probiotic afterwards might well be due to creating a balance between these ions that is harmful to bacterial cells. There’s no particular reason why it would be of less effect on human cells.

I’m not saying it’s a disaster to omit this, but rather that it should be better to do it.

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Incidentally, with regard to just how much iodide a dose such as 12.5 mg is: The most concentrated natural source would be, I’d guess, sea water dried to salt. Sea water varies in iodide concentration, but an upper value is about 0.08 ppm. The sodium chloride concentration is about 30,000 ppm, or about 375,000 times higher.

So to get 12.5 mg of iodide from sea salt that had similar composition to iodine-rich seawater, a person would need to consume more than 4 kilos of salt.

Per day.

Not 4 grams: 4 kilos.

I would not sustain this for any extended time. However, I don’t have evidence of harm of doing so; on the other hand, there seems not to be a really large and extended track record of such usage. Nor, of course, did TC recommend extended use in his article.

In terms of how much iodide total the body “should” have, I don’t know, but it is not any great multiple of this and from reported values may be only a couple or a few times the 12.5 mg figure.

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I’m experimenting with 1 mg per day and won’t expect to see any changes in body temperature for a while. Nonetheless I’m taking 100-200 mcg of selenium per day to try to cleanse out the bromides at the same time and will continue to monitor salt intake/use of probiotics (I tend to eat a good deal of these in the form of raw sauerkraut, raw olives, greek yogourt and kefir anyways). Thanks for the pointers!

Just curious, have you also been supplementing iodine? What have your results been?

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Hi Bill,

How much salt and water are we talking here?

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I’ve been taking 4-5 drops of Lugol’s solution in my Anaconda for a year. I’ll actually be talking to my TRT doc this month to get a bit more “science” behind the dosage, as I’ve been on Thyroid meds for 3 years.

It is very cheap and very convenient (but taste like shit unless mixed)

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It’s been interesting finding what is said about the basis for total iodine doses (inclusive of iodide) as large as this. For example, multiple “health-food” type sources claim that Japanese intake averages 13.8 mg/day.)

In comparison with almost any food almost anywhere in the world, that would be a nearly incredible amount of total iodine, not possibly consumed in the diet, or at least not on any remotely normal amount of calories.

It turns out though that the Japanese do have some very high iodine foods.

But it does not turn out that Japanese average total iodine dietary intake is anything like that value. Instead, measured values are 1 mg/day at the high end and often only about a third that value: Iodine content of various meals currently consumed by urban Japanese - PubMed

With regards to studies on safe upper limit to daily intake, there is little published. However the Chinese found hypothyroidism to begin developing at 0.8 mg/day: http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/95/2/367.long

Iodine (I2) and iodide (I-) will not necessarily have the exact same effect: iodide is more chemically reactive. The product I bought is some undisclosed mixture of iodide and iodine. There is no way to tell whether what I have is mostly iodine, mostly iodide salt, or similar amounts of each.

My wife noticed a large increase in sweating. This might not have to be from increased metabolic rate. For example, while I have no evidence that it’s so, hypothetically it could be that this is a mechanism for getting rid of above-normal iodine levels. (Possibly well-above normal, as her dose has been 12.5 mg/day, and the total body content of iodine may normally be only about 20 mg total.)

Alin, as to how much water and salt to go with it, nothing extreme, whatever is reasonably comfortable, such as a glass of water and the amount of salt that might be with a salted meal and it might very well be taken along with that meal. But if taking no or almost no water and/or no salt, then with doses this high, until absorbed, the concentrations would be really high and the balance between the ions really abnormal.

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[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:Alin, as to how much water and salt to go with it, nothing extreme, whatever is reasonably comfortable, such as a glass of water and the amount of salt that might be with a salted meal and it might very well be taken along with that meal. But if taking no or almost no water and/or no salt, then with doses this high, until absorbed, the concentrations would be really high and the balance between the ions really abnormal.

[/quote]
Thank you

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Sorry to hog this thread, but does anyone know what TC means by ‘anything substantially less is probably a strong indicator’ - what is substantially less in terms of points/percentages/degrees?

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Bill, do you know why certain people get acne flare ups when consuming to much iodine? TC mentioned that acne is a mild side effect. I know that personally whenever I eat iodized salt I break out, not bad but, enough for me to have finally made the connection.

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I don’t know; there is a potential connection in that the other than the skin stores about 20% of the iodine in the body, and in terms of immediate uptake, I suppose it might be that on a given intake of iodide, the skin might take up an even greater percentage than that. But that would affect acne, I don’t know.

Btw, as a fact I learned just now from, one hour of sweating during intensive exercise such as soccer can result in loss of about 52 mcg of iodine; or producing a liter of sweat can result in a loss of about 37 mcg. In one Chinese study, about 38% of athletes were found to have a urinary iodine/creatinine ratio so low as to put them at risk of goiter, and 46% of them had grade 1 goiter, compared to only 1% of sedentary students ( Sports Nutrition: Vitamins and Trace Elements, Second Edition - Google Books )

It seems clear that it’s easy to become iodine deficient if physically active, particularly if not consuming much iodized salt, and for example personally I have not been consuming much.

While I don’t think the cause is iodine deficiency, perhaps somewhat interestingly, my temperature today in the afternoon – not waking, daytime! – was 96.6 F. I’ve actually had it in the low 95’s. I have normal free T3 levels and normal thyroid values in every regard. My expectation is that the cause is the body regulating temperature according to what would be normal sleep temperature even while awake, rather than any deficiency, but it will be interesting to see if the iodide supplementation does anything.

(If nothing else, some of the life extension people dream “If we could only lower body temperature by 1 degree F, that should increase lifespan by 10 years,” so perhaps I will live and stay healthy to 99 or something!)

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I still feel as if my thermometer is off, I’ve had waking temperatures ranging from 96.2 - 97.1 and day time / night time temperatures of 97.1 to 98.2 so far. My diet didn’t seem to have much iodine in it though, and I realized my sea salt said it does not contain any. I certainly sweat a lot though, and with the diet change recently I’ve been colder. Wonder if it’s related.

Thanks for the information though Bill! Might as well add some in with the prices.

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Potassium Iodide is much better tolerated than is generally reported.

Here’s a study in Uruguay where they were taking 1.4 grams - 6 grams per day to treat recurrent staph skin infections, they were dividing it up into three doses daily and taking with water (no salt). The author says the dosis was well tolerated. Treatment was for a year. There was also a study in israel where they were treating tinea capsis with SSKI mixed with flavored syrup as I recall giving 1-2 grams per day to children as young as 3 years old for an extended period of time. About 7% of the children didnt tolerate it well. In the 50’s they also gave in the 1 gram level to asthma patients for extended time periods. So much for the maximum safe dosage of 1mg/ day.

Low body temp, can be caused by lower than normal absorption of thyroid hormones-its an energetic process not through diffusion like Test(if you look at the molecule it has a polar part to it that would be somewhat lipophobic). The Academy for Hypothyroidism has a good write up on it citing studies. I don’t know about the LEF article but what I’ve read about body temperature is that below normal its a direct steep correlation with death rate. Gradual drop in basal metabolic rate is usually cited as the limiting factor for life span. Maybe your T2 is low.