Not strictly true. A handful of doctors worry. The majority reminder are medical ignoramuses.
Today an article came across my desk, harking back to a newsletter I wrote a couple weeks ago, about universal inadequate nutrition, due to modern farming methods raping the land, depleting the soil and putting profits over quality and true food values.
As part of the report, I quoted Lancet Global Health, that around 5 billion people on earth are deficient in iodine; that’s out of a population of 8 billion. That’s pretty scary.1
You know, experts and pundits are talking about famine in decades to come. I think micronutrient depletion and deficiencies could become the real problem! We can’t live without iodine, zinc, manganese, etc. And of course the definition of a vitamin is something we cannot live without. Where is the necessary excess of these nutrients going to come from? Certainly don’t hold your breath waiting for governments—they are being advized by fools (or just not listening to good advice).
Now food manufacturers are part of the problem too (surprise?… not) Iodine deficiency was a major public health concern in times past. It wasn’t just about thyroid issues but growth and development in children. Many children grew up with dwarf stature. Marked iodine deficiency also leads to such severe mental impairment, it gave us the word cretin.
We now call that congenital hypothyroidism (congenital: present at birth, not inherited).
This condition receded when scientists woke up to it and began having table salt treated with added iodine. It solved a lot of the problems.
But deficiency is back, for a whole HOST of reasons! Today, people are getting less iodine because of changes in diet and food manufacturing. Researchers have increasingly been reporting low levels of iodine in pregnant women and other people, raising concerns about an impact on their newborns. And there is also a small, but growing, number of reports of iodine deficiency in kids.
Has Joe Mercola Lost It?
For nearly 2 decades Dr. Joe Mercola has been a great “influencer” in alternative health. But lately I have sat by and watched major changes in his output. He seems to want to take up with strange characters. I mentioned a while back the woman with a drinks problem who has now persuaded Joe that, for the rest of us, any amount of alcohol in the diet is deadly. Yet almost the same week, another report came out, confirming the health benefits of modest drinking, which are legion!2
In fact the study showed that people who drank roughly 12 – 35 glasses of wine a month (as gauged accurately by urinary tartaric acid levels) were much healthier than those who drank at the 3 – 12 glasses a month level.
And I’ve watch him telling us we need to eat MORE carbs, not less. 250 grams, even up to 450 grams, which I and colleagues find ludicrous. 120 grams is plenty and much more in keeping with our ancestral diet.
Then, before I have even finished this newsletter on iodine deficiency, Joe has declared the iodine is toxic, we are all getting far too much and we need to “detox”. This is in conjunction with Dr. Alan Christianson (an NMD), “widely regarded as a premier expert on thyroid issues.” Hmmm, if you look at his website and blogs, certainly he thinks he is.3
The co-guest Ashley Armstrong, a farmer, claims that “iodine accumulation is a big problem.”
Well, she and Christianson are adrift, that’s all I can say. He wants to blame iodine for the rise in Hashimoto’s (an autoimmune disease of the thyroid). But produces no compelling cause and effect association.
Put against the background that there are now literally hundreds of burgeoning autoimmune diseases, it seems perverse to say that the thyroid is different and has a unique cause for its increase.
I (along with others) blame rise in autoimmune diseases on the modern manufactured “ultra-processed” foods; pesticides; food allergies; chemical toxins of all kinds in the environment; GMOs; toxic seed oils; and stealth pathogens. All of these result in the immune system going cuckoo and attacking the person’s own body, which is what an auto-immune disease is.
Given the desirable presence of adequate iodine in all our systems, most especially the immune system, it’s important to get this right. So do you ignore me, or Joe?
I continue to lay the evidence in front of you.
Why Would We Be Lacking Iodine These Days?
At the beginning of the 20th century, goiter was very common in children in certain inland parts of the U.S., especially in what was called the “goiter belt” that stretched from Appalachia and the Great Lakes to the northwest U.S. These people were far from the sea and didn’t get enough iodine, which comes best from fish eggs and seaweed. Some of the kids were unusually short, deaf, intellectually stunted, and had other symptoms of a syndrome we now call congenital hypothyroidism.
Female infant with congenital hypothyroidism. The protruding tongue is characteristic
Public health experts realized they couldn’t solve the problem by feeding everyone seaweed and seafood, but they learned that iodine can essentially be sprayed on table salt. Iodized salt first became available in 1924. By the 1950s, more than 70% of U.S. households used iodized table salt. Bread and some other foods also were fortified with iodine, and iodine deficiency became rare. It worked!
But the happy days when all was taken care of by iodized salt are gone.
One reason is the practice of adding bromine to breads. Bromine is in the same chemical family as iodine (the halogens) and squeezes out the iodine, resulting in a functional lack. That’s been a problem for decades. Incidentally, fluoride is also a halogen substance (fluorine is a halogen). I don’t recall anyone debating that it might deplete iodine levels too but logically it should: the most active chemical substance wins and fluorine is so active it can eat its way through a glass container.
The truth is, manufacturers are not bothering to add iodine any more. They just don’t care.
Low salt diets often advocated ignore this important connection. Iodized salt still exists but we use less of it. Fancy-nancy cookery programs now advocate fashionable kosher salt or pink Himalayan salt, neither of which have added iodine.
“People have forgotten why there’s iodine in salt,” said Elizabeth Pearce, MD, of Boston Medical Center. She is a regional coordinator for North America in the Iodine Global Network, a nongovernmental agency working to eliminate iodine deficiency disorders.
Pearce noted a reported 50% drop in U.S. iodine levels in surveyed Americans from the 1970s through the 1990s, which is completely contrary to Mercola’s view.
Though iodine consumption is falling overall, most Americans are probably still getting enough through their diet, the experts say. But many doctors worry that’s not the case for women and children, who are most vulnerable to iodine deficiency.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical societies recommend that all pregnant and breastfeeding women get 150 ?g of iodine each day. You can get that from one-half to three-quarters of a teaspoon of iodized table salt.
In the last 15 years or so, according to Voice of America, U.S. researchers have increasingly reported seeing mild iodine deficiency in pregnant women. A 2021 study out of Michigan State University in East Lansing reported that in about 460 pregnant women in the city of Lansing, about a quarter of them were not getting enough. Incidentally, that implies we are all borderline and not getting enough.4
Many prenatal vitamins don’t contain iodine, noted study author Jean Kerver, PhD, also of Michigan State University. I find that staggering. That’s why doctors recommend that pregnant or breastfeeding women check labels to ensure they are taking multivitamins or prenatal supplements with iodine.
Some studies have linked even mild iodine deficiency to lower IQs and language delay in children currently, although there is debate about at exactly what levels problems start, Elizabeth Pearce said.
Try Googling “iodine accumulation” disorder. I’ve never heard of it except the natural accumulation in breast milk, where it’s needed, or excess accumulation in the liver, due to iodine containing drugs such as amiodarone.
Your call!
To Your Good Health,
Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor
References:
- Lancet Glob Health. 2024 Aug 29:S2214-109X(24)00276-6
- Domínguez-López I, et al “Urinary tartaric acid as a biomarker of wine consumption and cardiovascular risk: The PREDIMED trial” Eur Heart J 2024; DOI: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehae804
- https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2025/01/12/excess-iodine-thyroid-health.aspx
- https://www.voanews.com/a/doctors-worry-that-iodine-deficiency-a-dietary-problem-from-the-past-is-coming-back-/7930543.html
