I'm in a similar boat. My thyroid hormone levels were out of whack (which I believe is due to my amalgams/mercury). My doc also gave me a Iodine challenge test and I turned out to be incredibly deficient in iodine.
I did a lot of research on the subject of iodine and found a great book that all mercury toxic people should read: "Iodine, Why you need it and why you can't live with out it" by Dr. David Brownstein.
http://www.drbrownstein.com/singleproduct.asp?id=787Our S.A.D (standard american diet) is incredibly low in iodine now. This is due to the removal of iodine in the bread baking process and all of the iodine killing chemicals in our environment. Those of us who were subjected to flouride supplementation in our youth often have thyroid issues because flouride will kill iodine and starve your thyroid of the one element it needs to be able to function. Take all the thyroid hormones you want...but if you don't give your thyroid motor the fuel it needs to run (iodine/iodide) it will sputter and starve.
Taking iodine has made me feel wonderful. My extremities have gotten warmer (always cold hands/feet/nose) and the constant daily fatigue is gone. Iodine has a natural chelating effect which pulls out bromine and chlorine (and other chemicals) from your system. There are some detox symptoms that go along with that (weird taste in your mouth and odd smell to your skin sometimes) all that goes away though. A few epsom salt baths and some exfoliation scrubs away the chemicals being pushed out through your skin.
Iodine has also been studied to be effective in healing up fibrocystic breasts and other breast cancer related issues. The breasts are the number two place in the body that needs iodine!
So, all I wanted to share here is that if you get tested and have issues with thyroid....please please please have your iodine levels checked too! The test is easy...you take a loading dose of 50mg of Iodoral (an iodine/iodide supplement) in the morning when you first wake up. Then you collect your urine for 24 hours. After the 24 hours you drop the collection off at the doc/lab and they send it in. They test for the amount of iodine you excrete. A person with adequate iodine levels in their food supply will excrete on average 90% of that 50mg supplement. A deficient person (like me) may excrete 20% of the supplement. This means that the deficient person's thyroid soaked the Iodoral up like a sponge cuz it was starving for it. Woo hoo...that loading dose made me feel so awesome! I had more energy that day than I new what to do with. All that with no buzzed feeling or racing heart.
Now I'm on 25mg of Iodoral twice a day (total of 50). I feel awesome and can't wait till the merc is out of my mouth and I can sit back and let my thyroid soak up all my iodine with out competition from the merc anymore.
Sorry if anyone thinks I hijacked this thread. I just wanted to share something that is an important "next step" to getting your thyroid tested.
In health!
