Is your body starving for iodine?

Are you getting enough sodium in your diet?

Any doctor worth his salt (no groaning, please) should be asking that question of every patient. Because contrary to everything you’ve ever heard, evidence shows that avoiding sodium intake can be harmful to your health.

After my recent rant about the dangers of avoiding salt, my friend Joe sent me an eye-opening article about iodine. It’s three years old, but still very relevant today.

When researchers at the University of Texas analyzed about 90 samples of iodized salt, nearly HALF didn’t meet the FDA’s recommended level of iodine.

This is a significant deficiency because iodized table salt is nearly everyone’s primary source of iodine.

Here are just some of the key health issues linked to iodine:

• Helps prevent thyroid conditions such as goiter
• Helps reduce breast cancer risk
• Research shows it may also reduce risk of ovarian and prostate cancers
• Required for normal brain development in newborns and young children
• Iodine deficiency may contribute to attention deficit disorder

Sea water contains iodine, but oddly, sea salt contains very little. You can buy iodized sea salt, but if we can’t count on adequate iodization in table salt, I expect the same is true of iodized sea salt.

But there are two more good sources of iodine: seafood and seaweed. So I suppose that makes sushi the perfect iodine food, which is just one more reason it was the perfect dinner last night.

“Iodized Table Salt May Be Low In Iodine, Raising Health Concerns” Science Daily, 2/8/08, sciencedaily.com