Iodine and Preventing Breast and Prostate Cancer

Iodine Deficiency is one of the causes of breast and prostate cancer, and unlike many unchangeable risk factors, we can replace iodine and change our risk profile.

Dr. Brownstein, M.D. author of Iodine : Why You Need It, Why You Can’t Live Without It, is a physician who has studied the effects of iodine and other nutritional factors that greatly impact our incidence of cancer and other diseases.  Sadly, the USDA has given us a very low level that is recommended for “health”, which leads us to deficiency and disease.  When developing the recommended daily dose they only looked for the dose that would prevent goiter, and not the daily dose that prevents all diseases.  The real daily dose that is minimum for health is 12.5 mg/day and the highest is 50 mg/day.  

It is a fact that the thyroid gland requires 8 mg/day and average sized breasts require 5-6 mg/day.  Other tissues require iodine to function normally including ovary, adrenal, salivary glands, pancreas and colon. If you are deficient then you need more than 12.5-25/day.

If you think of the how iodine fills the thyroid as a bucket that must be filled with iodine, then the gland would be filled to the brim with 50 mg of iodine.  But daily the iodine is used in the functioning of the gland, so the bucket has a leak of approximately 5-6 mg/day that must be put back in again, daily.  You can see if there is less than 50 mg, say 25mg in the gland then more than 12.5 mg must be given to both fill the bucket and balance the outflow of 5-6 mg/day.

This bucket allegory works for breasts and ovaries as well.  But what happens if there is a deficiency of iodine, and the glands are “short of iodine”?  The thyroid over-works itself to produce enough thyroid without enough “building blocks”, and the gland gets larger, swollen, and begins to inflame and scar.  This makes the production of thyroid abnormal and the gland eventually will become “dead” or hyperactive from inflammation.  Iodine is integral to the hormone thyroid—T3 is one amino acid (part of a protein) plus three iodines.  T4 is the same with 4 iodines attached. You can see if you don’t have enough Iodines to attach to the tyrosine, then you can’t make enough thyroid.  Moreover, without iodine,the conversion of T4 to T3 will not take place (activation of the hormone itself) and thyroid peroxidase (enzyme) is not made which collects caustic H2O2, and the gland is damaged.  This is called Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.  

For breasts, it is interesting that the development of breasts in young women occurs a year before a peak in hypothyroidism.  The breasts steal iodine from the thyroid and vice versa and neither gland ends up healthy.  Thyroids are under active, and breasts become cystic, painful and swollen.  The breast changes are called fibrocystic and are rampant in the breasts of young women in the US, where iodine is deficient.  This correlation between iodine deficiency and disease in women occurs in Europe in areas of deficient Iodine as well.  Because men only have minimal breasts as adolescents they are less likely to develop hypothyroidism, or fibrocystic breast changes at puberty, but when they are older and gynecomastia appears, hypothyroidism is more common in men!

Iodine deficiency IS a factor in the development of breast and prostate cancer, but the assertion that estrogen causes breast cancer through iodine deficiency has been disproven and in his lecture at AMMG, he did not promote this inaccurate thought as much as he did in his book, released several years ago. That was inaccurate information. However, Iodine deficiency causes the changes necessary for prostate and breast cancer by allowing three similar chemicals to take its place in the cells—three toxic minerals: Bromine, Chlorine and Fluorine!  Our government is the cause of most of the toxic Bromine in many products and foods that we produce and eat.  We also put fluoride in our water,  which displaces iodine and causes cellular damage.  Chlorine is a necessary chemical to purify our water but it still is dangerous to our cells. In the US we all have to drink bottled purified water just to avoid our own tap water which have multiple chemicals dumped into it to make it “safe”?

If you are worried about Breast or Prostate Cancer then you must take 25 mg of iodine (Iodoral) with about a TBL of salt (sea salt) daily.  We also suggest Zinc, Selenium, Vitamin C and Multiple B vitamins to use the Iodine correctly.  If you want to prevent the diseases of our times and of aging, then this is an inexpensive and low risk way to hedge your bets!

This Health cast was written and presented by Dr. Kathy Maupin, M.D., Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Expert and Author, with Brett Newcomb, MA., LPC., Family Counselor, Presenter and Author. www.BioBalanceHealth.com.