Iodine Deficiency

[GrumpyGoat]

I am pretty careful with our food--trying to be healthy and keep out unnecessary chemicals. From my research, I knew that NZ was low in selenium and we have been supplementing. However, for some strange reason, I completely missed the low iodine status of NZ soil.

Due to cultural reasons and personal preference, we do not eat shellfish or seafood. And we use Himalayan salt or sea salt instead of the iodized processed salt. (The Himalayan salt does contain some iodine).

Anyway, to make a long story short, it seems I have developed some iodine deficiency issues and also some possible thyroid issues.

I have since found this info at the MOH

Thought I would share & bring this topic up to make sure others are aware of it. It's not just third world countries who have issues with iodine deficiency and it is a growing problem here in NZ.

Now I am off to get some kelp!

[dilanium]

Parts of the midwest US is deficient of Iodine too- but people each enough processed food with iodine in it that it isn't much of a problem.

It's something to look out for if you're raising livestock as well.

[Duncan74]

Interesting as I don't add any salt into any food, even when cooking. I also don't really eat much bread. One of the reasons I don't eat much bread over here is as it's so salty. I do wonder about just how sensitive the average person is to these deficiencies. I'm not a fan for taking suplements for the sake of it, and I can't see how a uniform concentration of iodine in salt can be a good way to dose the population given the wide range of consumption, absorbtion rates and body sizes. Especially as there seems to be a pretty narrow target range. So a small woman that eats 6 slices of bread per day (breakfast and sarnies at lunch) compared to me that eats cereal and then pasta for lunch and is at least 1.5 the mass. And of course all the range of the poluation inbetween.

[Kanga]

Well iodine is needed in such trace amounts that fortifying bread is actually a good idea for addressing the needs of the population en masse cheaply, imo. The real problem is that the bread's ***** ...

GG, I used to make sure I ate a couple of brazil nuts a day and added a small amount of kelp powder and iodised salt to the bread I made when I was vegan. Haven't really considered selenium or iodine since abandoning veganism but clearly I should, thanks for heads up!

[sophiedb]

That's really interesting, to me anyway.

While I had thyroid cancer, I had to have radioactive iodine treatment twice. Prep for this was to eat an iodine-free diet (or as close as possible) for the 2 weeks prior. There's a US organisation for thyca patients that publishes a free cookbook for these times, and from the mailing list it appears that some US patients have a really hard time avoiding iodine. I presume that's the case for many elsewhere too, but tbh it was dead easy for me (e.g. we bake our own bread and have sea salt at home).

Based on that, I do wonder whether we have an iodine-deficient diet already.. but I haven't seen any signs or problems in DD or hubby (is not such a big thing for me any more).