Iodine Retention

[Guest guest]

This is a spinoff of the discussion currently taking place under the 'Estrogen

and Iodine' subject line - a piece of that from MacGilchrist is pasted

below for reference.

I thought that this paragraph from the Optimox website might be relevant to the

discussion if it continues ...

" In patients with a normal gastrointestinal absorption of iodine but with a very

defective iodine retention system, the absorbed iodine is quantitatively

excreted in the urine with little or no retention. In these rare cases, the

loading test will suggest whole body iodine sufficiency (90% or more excreted)

but the serum inorganic iodide levels 24 hrs after the iodine load will remain

low (less than 0.13 mg/L). The inefficient iodine retention mechanism could be

due to either a defective cellular iodine transport system, or due to blockage

of this iodine cellular transport by goitrogens that compete with iodide for the

halide binding site of the symporter system. The defective iodine cellular

transport mechanism could be due to genetic defects or oxidative damage to the

halide binding site of the symporter (6). " Source:

http://www.optimox.com/pics/Iodine/IOD-11/IOD_11.htm

Dear Joan,

Two points in your post caught my attention and perhaps could do with some

discussion.

1) The guy peeing out more iodine than he ingested. Well, where did he get his

test done? Getting a run of the mill iodine in urine test can give wildly

inaccurate results. When the iodine doctors started using the iodine loading

test, they sent each sample to two laboratories. No two sample pairs had the

same result and sometimes the results from one lab were twice the amount in the

other for the same sample, if I remember rightly. Anyhow, wild discrepancies in

these samples.

According to the literature that I have read on the www.optimox.com site this is

probably caused by two things. (i) Most labs have machines calibrated for µg

and not mg measurements of iodine. (ii) There is a problem with the electrodes

used when doing regular testing for iodine. I believe that high levels of

bromide, which is very close to iodine on the periodic table, can affect the

reading for iodine. I believe that Dr Flechas or someone uses a filtering

technique on each urine sample to remove bromide so that it does not affect the

iodine measurement. If anyone is interested in reading up on this there has

been a paper published on the optimox site which explains it all much better

than I can. The iodine loading test takes the " bromide factor " into account.

Which is why it is done in only two labs who are specially equipped for it.

This might explain someone who is peeing out more iodine than he ingests.