Why Iodine is important.
10 February 2009Iodine Deficiency and ADHD
While processed food is adding too much sodium to the diets of many people, there is a concurrent deficiency in iodine, a trace mineral added to many table salts.
Ingrid Kohlstadt, MD, a physician who specializes in nutrition, cautions that “Iodine, the primary trace mineral required for optimal thyroid function, is slipping away from our diets. We can take simple, inexpensive, and time efficient steps to prevent iodine deficiency, treat sub-clinical hypothyroidism, and improve overall health.”
- Commercial breads once used iodine, but have replaced it with bromide.
- Milk contains less iodine today than in years past.
- Soils are depleted of many valuable minerals, including iodine.
Unfermented soy products, widely used today, increase our body’s requirement for iodine. (Asian cultures that use soy generally eat sea vegetables, which are a good source of iodine.)
Dr. Ray Hinish notes that the average Japanese ingests about 13.8 mg of iodine daily, about 100 times the amount the US considers to be the daily recommended amount. Iodine is necessary for the production of thyroid hormones, and a deficiency can cause an enlarged thyroid gland (goiter), and mental retardation in infants. However, excess iodine can be damaging and large amounts can be fatal. Many health care practitioners can test for iodine levels.
In recent years there have been numerous articles published in medical journals around the world that link a mother’s iodine deficiency with her child’s later ADHD symptoms. Dr. Hinish points out that, like vitamin D3, iodine plays a part in all of the hormones in the body, not just the thyroid hormones.
He believes that, just as physicians are now recognizing the important role of vitamin D, they will eventually recognize a widespread iodine deficiency.
A 2005 study of children in China found, “The level of iodine nutrition plays a crucial role in the development of children. The intelligence damage of children exposed to sever iodine deficiency was profound…” Iodine supplementation helped raise their IQ scores.
[Asia Pac J Cln Nutr. 2005;14(1):32-42] Reprinted from Pure Facts, the newsletter of the Feingold Association of the United States FEINGOLD
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