A good friend of ours just went through an ordeal with breast cancer. The incidence of breast cancer has increased to 1 in 8 women, with 4,000 new cases weekly. You might ask, could there be a preventive measure which is safe, cheap and widely available that has been overlooked?
The answer is
YES , and it's the essential mineral,
Iodine , which was added to table salt in 1924 as part of a national program to prevent Goiter. It turns out that this same Iodine in table salt is the key to breast cancer prevention as proposed by the following list of prestigious doctors:
Guy Abraham, MD (1), Robert Derry MD PHD (2) (3), David Brownstein MD (4) (5), George Flechas MD (6), Donald Miller, M.D. (7) (8)
Our Diet is Iodine Deficient
The problem is that we have been told to avoid salt because it causes high blood pressure, so dietary intake of iodine has dropped to low levels and we have a generalized iodine deficiency in the population. Currently 15% of the US adult female population is classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as iodine deficient. (9)
The RDA for Iodine is too Low for Optimal Health
According to Guy Abraham MD, our dietary intake of Iodine is too low, set at 150 mcg by the government RDA. Dr. Guy Abraham tells us that a healthier level of Iodine intake would be 100 times greater at 12.5 mg, which is the average Iodine intake for Japan, and this higher Iodine intake could explain why the Japanese have the lowest rates for cancer of the breast, prostate and thyroid.
How Safe is Iodine Suplementation?
Very Safe. Iodine is the only trace element that can be ingested safely in amounts up to 100,000 times the RDA. For example, potassium iodide has been prescribed safely to large numbers pulmonary (COPD) patients in amounts of up to 6 grams per day for several years. This postassium iodide is a well known treatment for COPD which helps mobilize lung secretions. (18)
The FDA has officially stated that Iodine supplmentation is safe and actually recommends 165 mg of Iodine for adults in case of Radiation Emergency to protect the population from thyroid cancer. (17)
"Iodine allergy" is a misnomer since this name applies to allergy to iodinated radiographic contrast agents, and not to elemental iodine which is quite different. (10)
Iodine Deficiency causes Fibrocystic Breast Disease,
Breast Cancer and Thyroid Cancer
Iodine,a well known topical antiseptic and antimicrobial agent, also directly kills cancer cells and serves as the key player in our body's surveillance system for removing abnormal pre-cancer cells. There is considerable medical research to support this statement. Dr. B.A. Eskin published 80 papers over 30 years researching iodine and breast cancer, and he reports that iodine deficiency causes breast cancer and thyroid cancer in humans and animals. (11) (12) Iodine deficiency is also known to cause a pre-cancerous condition called fibrocystic breast disease. (13)
Ghent published a paper in 1993 which showed iodine supplementation works quite well to reverse and resolve fibrocystic changes of the breast, and this is again the subject of a current clinical study. (14) (15)
Despite its obvious potential, not much has been done with Iodine treatment over the past 40 years in the United States. Since iodine isn't patentable and is therefore unlikely to be profitable to market, there is no money to fund studies for "FDA approval". However, FDA approval is not required since Iodine is already an additive to table salt at the supermarket.
Iodine Deficiency Diseases
As an interventional radiologist working in the hospital for 25 years, a large part of my job was evaluating thyroid abnormalities, nodules, and cysts with ultrasound, radionuclide scans, and needle biopsy. Although it was obvious these common thyroid abnormalities were due to iodine deficiency, I often wondered why none of the patients ever received iodine supplementation. The obvious answer is they should have been and that this is a blind spot in mainstream medicine.
Another part of my day was spent reading mammograms and breast ultrasound studies. Fibrocystic breast disease was quite common, and these women would return for needle aspiration procedure of the many breast cysts, and needle biopsy of the benign solid nodules. Many of these ladies returned multiple times for the procedures because the medical system had no useful treatment to offer them. Well, as we have just discussed, we now know there is a very useful medical treatment, namely, Iodine supplementation which not only resolves breast cysts and fibrocystic breast disease, it also resolves ovarian cysts and thyroid cysts. Actually Iodine supplementation has always been available, but again this is a blind spot in mainstream medicine, and hospital based physicians are unaware of it.
Which Iodine Supplement ?
There are many available. Lugol's solution has been the traditional one for many years. A newer iodine tablet is Iodoral from Optimox (16), and is the iodine supplement tablet made by Dr. Guy Abraham, a former professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UCLA who started "The Iodine Project" in 1997, and engaged two family practice physicians, Jorge Flechas and David Brownstein to carry out clinical studies of the hypothesis that the body needs 12.5 mg of iodine a day. More than 4,000 patients in this project consumed Iodine supplements from 12 to 50 mg per day, and in those with diabetes, up to 100 mg a day. They reported their findings that Iodine does indeed reverse fibrocystic disease; diabetic patients require less insulin; hypothyroid patients require less thyroid medication; symptoms of fibromyalgia resolve, and patients with migraine headaches stop having them.
The Nobel laureate Dr. Albert Szent Györgi (1893–1986), the physician who discovered vitamin C, used Iodine freely in his medical practice. The standard dose of potassium iodide given in those days was 1 gram, which contains 770 mg of iodine.
Dr. Albert Szent Györgi writes:
"When I was a medical student, iodine in the form of KI (Postassium Iodide) was the universal medicine. Nobody knew what it did, but it did something and did something good.
We students used to sum up the situation in this little rhyme:
If ye don't know where, what, and why
Prescribe ye then K and I"
Iodine supplements are available from various nutritional supplement companies without a prescription. For example VRP (Vitamin Research Products) offers a bottle of 90 tablets (12.5 mg) of Iodoral for about about 25 dollars plus shipping. Other sources have similar pricing.
regards from Jeffrey Dach
References for Iodine and Breast Cancer Prevention
(1) Guy Abraham MD Iodine references at Optimox.com drdach
http://www.optimox.com/pics/Iodine/opt_Research_I.shtml
(2) Breast Cancer and Iodine : How to Prevent and How to Survive Breast Cancer by Dr. David Derry M.D., Ph.D.
http://www.amazon.com/Breast-Cancer-.../dp/1552128849
(3) Dr. David Derry Answers Reader Questions Brought to you by Mary Shomon, Your Thyroid Guide
http://thyroid.about.com/library/derry/bl1a.htm
(4) Iodine: Why You Need It, Why You Can't Live Without It (2nd Edition) by David Brownstein, MD
http://www.drbrownstein.com/singleproduct.asp?id=787
(5) Clinical Experience with Inorganic Non-radioactive Iodine/Iodide David Brownstein, M.D.
http://www.optimox.com/pics/Iodine/IOD-09/IOD_09.htm
(6) George Flechas
http://www.optimox.com/pics/Iodine/IOD-10/IOD_10.htm
(7) Iodine for Health by Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD
http://www.lewrockwell.com/miller/miller20.html
(8) Iodine in Health and Disease by Don Miller MD
http://www.donaldmiller.com/Iodine%20Talk.doc
(9) Int J Vitam Nutr Res. 1996;66(4):350-62. Total diet study: estimated dietary intakes of nutritional elements, 1982-1991.Pennington JA, Schoen SA. Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Washington, DC 20204, USA.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...&dopt=Abstract
(10) Effect of daily ingestion of a tablet containing 5 mg iodine and 7.5 mg iodide as the potassium salt, for a period of 3 months, on the results of thyroid function tests and thyroid volume by ultrasonometry in ten euthyroid Caucasian women by Guy E. Abraham M.D., Jorge D. Flechas M.D., and John C. Hakala R. Ph.
http://www.helpmythyroid.com/IOD1.htm
(11) Bernard A. Eskin et al. Rat mammary gland atypia produced by iodine blockade with perchlorate. Cancer Res. 1975 Sep;35(9):2332-9
http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/cgi/reprint/35/9/2332
(12) Cancer Research 46, 877-883, February 1, 1986] © 1986 American Association for Cancer Research Dietary Iodine Deficiency as a Tumor Promoter and Carcinogen in Male F344/NCr Rats1 Masato Ohshima2 and Jerrold M. Ward3
http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/cgi/reprint/46/2/877
(13) Hartmann, Lynn C. , et al. Benign Breast Disease and the Risk of Breast Cancer . N Engl J Med Volume 353;3:229-237 July 21, 2005
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/353/3/229
(14) Ghent,W.R., Eskin,B.A., Low,D.A., Hill, L.P.. Iodine replacement in fibrocystic disease of the breast. Can J Surg 1993; 36:453-460. drdach
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...=pubmed_DocSum
(15) Clinical Trial for Iodine treatment of Fibrocystic Breast Disease
http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct/show/NCT00237523?order=1
(16) Iodoral from Optimox
http://www.optimox.com/pics/Iodine/opt_Iodoral.htm
(17) Guidance on Potassium Iodide as a Thyroid Blocking Agent in Radiation Emergencies, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Food and Drug Administration, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), December 2001 drdach
http://www.fda.gov/cder/guidance/4825fnl.htm
(18) Bernecker C. Acta Allergol. 1969 Sep;24(3):216-25. Intermittent therapy with potassium iodide in chronic obstructive disease of the airways. A review of 10 years' experience.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...t_uids=5395878
by Jeffrey Dach
Iodine Deficiency by Jeffrey Dach 
Re: Iodine Deficiency by Jeffrey Dach 
Linear Mode
