Re: Weston Price and Iodine

[Guest guest]

I'm renaming this thread because it is too important to be missed. Please, everyone, remember to change the subject line whenever the topic changes!

So, the question is, what would Price say about iodine?

Zoe

A number of the natives that Price studied went through considerable trouble to get sea food particularly for their pregnant and lactating women. It is not a huge leap to think that it might be for the iodine content. It would be interesting to see if those people lived in areas that had low iodine in the soil.Irene

I suspect that the cultures Price studied were pretty homogenous, maybe thatmakes a difference.What would Price say about iodine?Lynn

[Guest guest]

>

> I'm renaming this thread because it is too important to be missed.

Please, everyone, remember to change the subject line whenever the

topic changes!

>

> So, the question is, what would Price say about iodine?

I suspect he liked it. He talked about high vitamin butter, and it's

likely that was a good source of iodine, even away from the sea. He

was also fond of cod liver oil -

http://www.applefamilyfarm.com/Cranberry%20Cottage/Kitchen/cranberry%20cottage%2\

0kitchen%20butter%20oil.htm

* Trace Minerals: Many trace minerals are incorporated into the fat

globule membrane of butterfat, including manganese, zinc, chromium and

iodine. In mountainous areas far from the sea, iodine in butter

protects against goiter. Butter is extremely rich in selenium, a trace

mineral with antioxidant properties, containing more per gram than

herring or wheat germ.

* The information above is from a variety of sources and

publications including the article published by Sally Fallon and

Enig and Dr. Xianti Hoo.

Dr. Price was often called to the bedsides of dying individuals, when

last rites were being administered. He brought with him two things---a

bottle of cod liver oil and a bottle of high vitamin butter oil from

cows eating growing grass. He put drops of both under the tongue of

the patient--and more often than not the patient revived. He was

puzzled by the fact that cod liver alone and butter oil alone seldom

revived the dying patient--but the two together worked like magic.

******************************************

It's also interesting to note that butter is a good source of

selenium. I wonder if that includes the grocery store butter most of

us buy?

Skipper

[Guest guest]

Very interesting, Heidi.

"When it is recognized that in the Sierra the available water is largely that provided to the streams from the melting snows and from rains in the rainy season, it will be realized that these sources of fresh water could not provide the liberal quantity of iodine essential for human growth and development. It was, accordingly, a matter of great interest to discover that these Indians used regularly dried fish eggs from the sea. Commerce in these dried foods is carried on today as it no doubt has been for centuries. When I inquired of them why they used this material they explained that it was necessary to maintain the fertility of their women." (Chapter 15)

Zoe

But the Asian cultures do tend to includea lot of fish and seaweed, and not much wheat.Actually if you look for a commonality of all thehealthy cultures he writes about (except the Plains Indians andthe Swiss), the common food they DO eat is FISH. Plus heexperimented a lot with cod liver oil himself. People wholive near the sea tend to eat seaweed too, I think the USis odd in NOT eating it. So that puts you back intolooking at vitamin D and iodine:"During these investigations of primitive races, I have been impressed with the superior quality of thehuman stock developed by Nature wherever a liberal source of sea foods existed. These zones ofabundant marine life were largely in the wake of the ocean currents drifting from the ice fields of thepoles. The Humboldt Current is probably the most liberal carrier of marine life of any of the oceancurrents. It leaves the ice field of the Antarctic and bathes the west coast of South America from itssouthern tip nearly to the equator, where the coast line changes direction and the Humboldt Current isdeflected out into the ocean. It meets here a warm current coming down from the coast of CentralAmerica, Panama and Columbia. If the superb physiques that Nature has established among the Maori ofNew Zealand, the Malays of the Islands north of Australia, the Gaelics of the Outer Hebrides and thenatives on several of the archipelagos of the Pacific, owe their superior physical development to seafoods ... "...When it is recognized that in the Sierra the available water is largely that provided to thestreams from the melting snows and from rains in the rainy season, it will be realized that these sourcesof fresh water could not provide the liberal quantity of iodine essential for human growth anddevelopment. It was, accordingly, a matter of great interest to discover that these Indians used regularlydried fish eggs from the sea. Commerce in these dried foods is carried on today as it no doubt has beenfor centuries. When I inquired of them why they used this material they explained that it was necessaryto maintain the fertility of their women.(Chapter 15).(And of course I'll point out that the food they have in common thatthey DON'T eat is wheat ... :-)-- Heidi

[Guest guest]

I should've pasted this too, it's relevant here!

" Another sea product of very great

importance, and one which was universally available was dried kelp. Upon

inquiry I learned that the

Indians used it so that they would not get " big necks " like the whites.

The kelp provided a very rich

source of iodine as well as of copper, which is very important to them

in the utilization of iron for

building an exceptionally efficient quality of blood for carrying oxygen

liberally at those high altitudes. "

In Africa I found many tribes gathering certain plants from swamps and

marshes and streams,

particularly the water hyacinth. These plants were dried and burned for

their ashes which were put into

the foods of mothers and growing children. A species of water hyacinth

is shown in Fig. 130. The

woman shown in Fig. 130, with an enormous goiter, had come down from a

nine-thousand-foot level in

the mountains above Lake . Here all the drinking water was snow

water which did not carry

iodine. She had come down from the high area to the sixthousand-foot

level to gather the water hyacinth

and other plants to obtain the ashes from these and other iodine

carrying plants to carry back to her

children to prevent, as she explained, the formation of " big neck, " such

as she had. The people living at

the six-thousand-foot level also use the ashes of these plants.

It was formerly thought that dental caries which was so rampant in the

greater portion of Switzerland

was due in part to low iodine content in the cattle feed and in other

food because of iodine deficiency in

the soil. Large numbers of former generations suffered from clinical

goiter and various forms of thyroid

disturbances. That this is not the cause seems clearly demonstrated by

the fact that dental caries is

apparently as extensive today as ever before, if not more so, while the

iodine problem has been met

http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/price/price3.html (14 of

16)7/12/2006 10:46:35 AM

Nutrition and Physical Degeneration: Chapter 3

through a reinforcement of the diet of growing children and others in

stress periods with iodine in

suitable form. Indeed the early work done in Cleveland by Crile, Marine,

and Kimball was referred to by

the medical authorities there as being the forerunner of the control of

the thyroid disorder in these

communities.

http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/price/price15.html

(If you view this online you can use the PDF Search function for iodine

.... )

========

Very interesting, Heidi.

" When it is recognized that in the Sierra the available water is largely

that provided to the streams from the melting snows and from rains in

the rainy season, it will be realized that these sources of fresh water

could not provide the liberal quantity of iodine essential for human

growth and development. It was, accordingly, a matter of great interest

to discover that these Indians used regularly dried fish eggs from the

sea. Commerce in these dried foods is carried on today as it no doubt

has been for centuries. When I inquired of them why they used this

material they explained that it was necessary to maintain the fertility

of their women. " (Chapter 15)

Zoe

[Guest guest]

Thanks, Heidi! And thanks for the link! When I went there I found the following quote. Sounds like Price DID look at iodine, and it was one of the critical factors that differed significantly in the different diets.

"In other words the foods of the native Eskimos contained 5.4 times as much calcium as the displacing foods of the white man, five times as much phosphorus, 1.5 times as much iron, 7.9 times as much magnesium, 1.8 times as much copper, 49.0 times as much iodine, and at least ten times that number of fat-soluble vitamins. For the Indians of the far North of Canada, the native foods provided 5.8 times as much calcium, 5.8 times as much phosphorus, 2.7 times as much iron, 4.3 times as much magnesium, 1.5 times as much copper, 8.8 times as much iodine, and at least a ten fold increase in fat-soluble activators."

http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/price/price15.html

Zoe