Worried about the effect of Iodine on Hashimoto's - any advice?

[Lavender503]

I have Hashimoto's and feeling very anxious at the moment as my functional dr told me to take an iodine supplement as my iodine levels were/are low (I am on 1 grain NDT). I didn’t do my research which was silly of me as I usually am very thorough at checking everything before I take it! I have been taking an iodine supplement for 7 weeks and I am now feeling very worried about the damage it may have done. I was feeling fine, but the week or so I have been starting to feel like I am having a flare. Safe to say I have stopped taking the iodine immediately!

I have just ordered a blood test to check up on my levels to see what is going on but in the meantime, does anyone know about iodine and hashimotos? Now I have stopped taking it, will things start to calm down or will it have done irreversible damage in that amount of time?

Feeling worried as I felt I was getting somewhere and all my thyroid levels were going in the right direction and don't want to cause any more damage to my thyroid!

TIA

[TiggerMe Ambassador]

Welcome aboard

Here is a link to a good chat about Iodine experiences... healthunlocked.com/thyroidu...

You are only on a small dose of NDT it is quite possible you are under-replaced, if you start a new post once you have your results we'll be able to offer some advice

Your thyroid is already unable to supply what you need hence the reason for NDT which itself replaces rather than tops-up your levels so I wouldn't worry too much, you just need to fine tune your dose to give you a full replacement level

[helvella Administrator]

as my iodine levels were/are low

How was this determined?

And how much iodine were you supplementing?

[Lavender503 in reply to helvella]

I did a urine test through my functional medicine doctor.

I was taking 3 drops, each drop was 350 mcg so I think a pretty high dose!

[helvella Administrator in reply to Lavender503]

Well, good that they did a proper test.

We see some who have been told to take far, far more. Like 25 times that dose.

And others who have been prescribed medicines like amiodarone which contains a lot of iodine.

Or have had surgery in which large amounts of iodine were used.

That is trying to put into perspective the amount you were taking. Might have been enough to cause an issue, but it wasn't a massive dose. You could reach that with some foods quite easily.

[Lavender503 in reply to helvella]

Thank you for reassuring me. Everything I had read on the internet made it sound like it was a really bad thing so I panicked!

[helvella Administrator in reply to Lavender503]

We try to highlight the way that some people - on their own or with advice from practitioners - decide that because they are hypothyroid, they MUST not just take some iodine, but take as much as they can! That seems to be a knee-jerk reaction.

Unfortunately, we sometimes seem to have an opposite knee-jerk reaction and make it sound like having ANY iodine is a major issue.

Bear in mind that the main use of iodine in our bodies is to make thyroid hormone. If we are getting that from tablets, we do not need most of that. And levothyroxine is itself around 65% iodine so that increases total iodine intake (assuming no change of diet). NDT is more difficult to assess as there is iodine not just intrinsically in the hormone content but also in the colloid (content of the lumen). And they don't publish that information so we only have historical information.