I'm in the second month of taking 50mg iodine a day. Most normal, healthy people will reach iodine sufficiency in three months; taking in 1500mg total. At that point, they will lose 90% of daily ingested iodine within 24hrs. That's the definition of iodine sufficiency. While I'm not most normal people, I do tend to have some pretty normal physiological behaviours, medically speaking. I was having a difficult time getting iodine just a few days ago. But I found out that most food combines with iodine and takes it out of your body w/o the taker getting any! So I started taking iodine 20min - 1hr+ before food, twice daily with lemon juice. Tasted much better than iodine straight [which I don't mind much], but I remembered one of the foods that combines with iodine is citric acid! Doh! So, I switched that to what it should have been in the beginning. Which is raw apple cider vinegar. I'm guessing the vinegar creates an alkaline setting, that helps the iodine absorb properly. It worked. My skin started getting moist again.
How I've benefitted from iodine is multiply. My skin has moisture for the first time in my life. At times my over-dry heels are completely moist and soft. My hair is growing in much thicker. My constant leg cramps are almost non-existent. My previously life-altering menstrual cramps are near gone. I'm still almost bleeding to death with each one, but that's due to auto-immune attacks against my thyroid and not from iodine. In fact, I saw a slowing of flow for the first time ever after about a month taking iodine. I'm still having trouble sweating, but my sensitivity to cold has gone way down. Only the cold of winter will tell how well. I no longer have iodine-deficient constipation. And my energy is up, not way up, but comparatively, yes.
I have hypothyroidism and part of the cause is iodine deficiency. But I've learned that near everyone has iodine deficiency. We aren't getting enough in our salt, not eating seafood in huge quantities and our food no longer has any. The RDA (DRI) of .15mg a day may be enough for some to avoid goiter, but it isn't enough to prevent fibrocystic breast disease or PCOS or thyroid cancer. That's likely to require 6.25mg - 50mg a day. It's not enough extra to remove the toxic metals and halogens that are part of our daily lives.
But my hypothyroisdism is also due to Hashimoto's disease. That is my immune system attacks the thyroid when an immune system response is enacted. And an immune system response is enacted to anything that I'm allergic to, which is most everything food and airborne!
