I get TSH, Vitamin D, and a few other blood tests done 2 - 4 times per year. My Vitamin D levels have ranged between 50 and 90 for the last 3 years. My TSH didn't budge with iodine supplementation at any level.
Thanks for sharing that, eveheart.
I haven't been seeing nearly as many success stories from iodine use as I have been from RS, such as with FBG. Like Lex Rooker and me, other VLCers and ZCers have also reported high and rising FBG:
For zero-carbers over 50, the fasting blood glucose was often somewhere between 95 and 110 mg/dl and could even go as high as the high teens. http://lowcarb4u.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_archive.html
Famous VLCers Bear Stanley and Peter of Hyperlipid are a couple of the better-known examples of high FBG:
http://www.livinlowcarbdiscussion.com/archive/index.php/thread-779-3.html Iodine didn't help with my FBG or post-meal BG, nor with Lex's (I think Lex reported it as averaging over 100 mg/dl, IIRC), AFAIK, whereas RS quickly and easily started working for me. Hasn't Lex been using iodine for some time now? It would be good to get an update on that from him.
I had indeed seen the positive reports re: Brownstein, Abraham and past positive comments about iodine in this forum, which is part of why I tried iodine. Brownstein was mentioned here, for example:
Lex Rooker’s “5 iodine” is the same as that given by Brownstein (from “Iodine Why You Need It” 4th Edition page 55):
“Dr Lugol began using a solution termed “Lugol’s Iodine” that was a mixture of 5% iodine and 10% potassium iodide in water (...) Two drops of Lugol’s solution (0.1ml) contains 5mg of iodine and 7.5mg of iodide.”
I was particularly intrigued by Lex's report of a slight improvement in his PSA (though unfortunately no effect on his "prostate size, growth, or symptoms" -
http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/journals/lex's-journal/msg114579/#msg114579). Yet I found RS to work much better for me on FBG and other health metrics.
"The Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for adult men and women is 150 µg/day. The median intake of iodine from food in the United States is approximately 240 to 300 µg/day for men and 190 to 210 µg/day for women. The Tolerable Upper Intake Level (UL) for adults is 1,100 µg/day (1.1 mg/day), a value based on serum thyroptropin concentration in response to varying levels of ingested iodine." http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10026&page=258
As this shows, whether one considers three to six milligrams of iodine per day to be a megadose or not (the term was used here
http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/general-discussion/mega-dosing-iodine/msg108879/#msg108879 - but if that's not acceptable, is "high dose" an acceptable term to use?), it's way more than what is ingested by most people. So the question becomes, why do some people believe they need such unusually high intakes to maintain such things as normal FBG that others do not need high intakes of iodine for?
There are other key factors to consider beyond carb intake and iodine, such as whether the good gut bacteria are being fed sufficiently, and they reportedly feed on prebiotics. So one would presumably also need to get enough prebiotics and not just carbs. A wild diet that includes plenty of plant foods and honey naturally contains lots of prebiotics. The more one restricts plant food intake, the more difficult it becomes to get enough.
One of the more important prebiotics found in raw wild foods that have been consumed by humans for millions of years seems to be resistant starch. Once one recognizes that, then the question becomes how much is enough and how much is optimal? I've seen figures ranging from 15-50 g per day, IIRC. Some studies reported benefits from intakes of 15-30 grams per day (links for a couple of those studies and other basic RS info is available at this summary page:
http://authoritynutrition.com/resistant-starch-101).
Based on my experience and that of others, it seems that some health metrics can also help determine whether one's gut bugs are well fed, such as FBG, post-meal BG, basal temperature, warmth of extremities and overall warmth, resting heart rate, sleep quality, dream recall, food sensitivities/tolerance, Bristol stool scale, labido, ....
even the native Americans that were pretty much ZC most of the year ate wild berries and greens and plants etc. so there might be something to it that we need those too, for optimal health.
Exactly, Inger. The lowest average annual carb intake I've seen reported for any human society was a Greenland Inuit tribe at 2%. Anyone going below that is engaging in a novel experiment, and without the aid of the large livers of the Inuit and their special foods that are unobtainable in the USA.
