Iodine Treatments for Radiation Exposure

by Dr. Mark Sircus, 14 March 2011

Second half of Interview

After testing over 500 patients, I found that 94.7
percent of my patients are deficient in inorganic iodine.
- Dr. David Brownstein

Clearly we are just at the beginning of this disaster and very far from its end, and already it is unprecedented in scope. "If this accident stops right now it will already be one of the three worst accidents we have ever had at a nuclear power plant in the history of nuclear power," said Joseph Cirincione, an expert on nuclear materials and president of the U.S.-based Ploughshares Fund, a firm involved in security and peace funding.

There is absolutely zero chance that this disaster in progress is going to stop now or any time soon, so precautions need to be taken right away by every citizen in the northern hemisphere that is downwind and on the track of the jet stream that will quickly carry radioactive materials first to North America then to Europe and beyond to Russia. This is all going to be much worse than people want to believe, so rush to get your iodine right now! Get your hands on whatever you can for in a few days there will be no iodine to have of any type.

Dr. Brownstein writes, "If there is enough inorganic, non-radioactive iodine in our bodies, the radioactive fallout has nowhere to bind in our bodies. It will pass through us, leaving our bodies unharmed. It is important to ensure that we have adequate iodine levels BEFORE this fallout hits." There is some very important information about iodine below not being presented by the government or press. This is an IMVA Emergency Alert and we will be updating this document in the days and weeks ahead so check back to the IMVA blog for the most current form.

Think again, think seven times again before you leap
and start construction of new nuclear power plants.
-Mikhail Gorbachev, June 2006

Though the United States, Canadian and European governments are not warning their citizens of the dangers that will drop down on them from the jet stream, this following video does a good visual job of showing what areas will be most affected. With the true size of the catastrophe starting to take shape populations downwind across the entire northern hemisphere had better start becoming concerned enough to secure supplies of iodine to protect themselves from one large part of the radioactive dangers.

Humans tolerate large doses of iodine so the very high dosages recommended for protection for radioactive iodine are not usually a problem except for those who already have serious problems with their thyroids, which is quite a lot of people considering how many are deficient in this vital nutrient. The government's recommendation of a onetime pulse dose might perhaps be appropriate when confronted with a nuclear blast but for chronic long term exposure, which is suggested with what is in progress in Japan, calls for different formula and dosages through time.

Dr. Michael B. Schachter says, "The treatment dose when a person is iodine insufficient is generally between 12.5 mg and 50 mg daily. Preliminary research indicates that if a person is iodine insufficient, it takes about three months to become iodine sufficient while ingesting a dosage of 50 mg of iodine daily and a year to achieve that while ingesting a dosage of 12.5 mg of iodine daily.

If radiation threatens, it behooves people to start taking the highest dosages tolerable to protect not only their thyroids but also all the glandular tissues as well. Iodine protects the thyroid, breasts, prostate and ovary glands as well as other tissues in the body from radiation if present in sufficient quantities.

When treating life-threatening diseases we do not have months to fool around with low dosages. We need to zoom up iodine levels quickly. And we need to get it concentrated to certain tissues or organs. Just to give you an idea of how high iodine dosages have been taken we have to revisit the 1930s when iodine was still a universal medicine present in the U.S. Pharmacopeia and used at much higher dosages than anyone even dreams of using today.

The usual dose for treatment back then was 300 mgs (46 drops of full strength Lugol's) to 1 gm (1000 mg, 154 drops). It is very important to realize that today's Lugol's is not universally the same as it was because of new federal legal requirements about concentration levels. The best company offers Lugol's at varying concentration levels.

Potassium iodide (also called KI) is a salt of stable (not radioactive) iodine. Stable iodine is an important chemical needed by the body to make thyroid hormones. Following a radiological or nuclear event, radioactive iodine may be released into the air and then breathed into the lungs of any being breathing that air. Radioactive iodine may also contaminate the local food supply and get into the body through food or drink. In the case of internal contamination with radioactive iodine, the thyroid gland quickly absorbs this chemical. Radioactive iodine absorbed by the thyroid can then injure the gland. Because non-radioactive iodine acts to block radioactive iodine from being taken into the thyroid gland, it can help protect this gland from injury.

There will be little or no time to consult doctors and other health care practitioners to get the proper dosage. The standard dose for potassium iodide during radiation emergencies: For infants, babies and children, KI is administered for exposure of 5 centigrays (cGy) or more. For birth through 1 month, 16 mg can be administered; for 1 month through 3 years, 32 mg can be administered; for 3-12 years, 65 mg can be administered; for adolescents ages 12-18 years, 65 mg can be administered (or up to 120 mg if the adolescent is approaching adult size).

My recommendation would be to use the Nascent iodine in high dosages to both saturate the thyroid (which makes it less vulnerable to chemical and radioactive attack) while it will also knock out any contaminants already absorbed. Nascent (atomic) iodine contains approximately 400 mcg per drop so 10 drops is 4 mg and 100 drops is only 40 mg so it's safe to take much higher dosages than is suggested on the bottle. In fact one has to completely ignore the suggested dosages on the bottle and take some of the information below as ones guidance for dealing with threatening radiation dropping down out of the clouds that are moving along with the jet stream.

One hundred drops a day is a strong dose, but when treating life threatening diseases it would not be unheard of to use upward of 200 drops a day in divided doses, but if you get your iodine on the day the news is sounding the radiation alarm I would jump right to 100 drops or 50 drops in divided dosages for children. It is my belief that the Nascent atomic form is much more efficient than the molecular form meaning you would need less but when confronted with a cloud of radiation one wants to work beyond the speculative. Again the government is recommending a onetime dosage, which makes sense if there is no time to address iodine deficiencies.

In normal conditions it is important to remember that one should not shoot straight up to these dosage levels; rather, start at low dosages and monitor for detoxification reactions, which will be less if sodium bicarbonate and other substances are used in conjunction with it. But in emergencies involving radiation we have not the luxury of time so one has to thrust iodine levels up sharply in burst dosages.

Dr. Brownstein said he was using 200-300 mg with his prostate and breast cancer patients, and those who have metastases needing the highest dosages. He also uses both Lugol's and Nascent reserving the Nascent for his more sensitive patients. There is also the tablet form of varying dosages (Iodoral), which is used by more than several of the iodine doctors I know.

Iodine is needed in microgram amounts for the thyroid,
milligram amounts for breast and other tissues,
and can be used therapeutically in gram amounts.
Dr. David Miller

Potassium iodide can be found in many health food stores. Combinations of iodide/iodine can be obtained from holistic physicians. Iodoral, Iodozyme HP, and Lugol's solution are examples of this form of iodine. I prefer the Nascent iodine, especially for children, because it is gentler on the system being that it is in the atomic form making it easy for the body to convert it into the needed forms-iodide and iodine.

These onetime high pulse dosages of potassium iodine are necessary during an emergency but they do not come without some risk of side effects, which include: severe allergic reactions (rash, hives, difficulty breathing, tightness in the chest, swelling of the mouth, face, lips or tongue), black, tarry stools, confusion, fever, irregular heartbeat, metallic taste in the mouth, mouth sores, numbness or tingling of the hands or feet, skin rash, stomach pains, swelling in the neck or throat, unusual tiredness, weakness.

Endocrinologic side effects have included both hyper- and hypothyroidism. By inhibiting the release of thyroid hormone from the thyroid gland, iodide can cause goiter and hypothyroidism. This has been called the Wolff-Chaikoff effect, occurring in approximately four percent of patients and may be more likely in patients with cystic fibrosis (CF). Iodide may induce hyperthyroidism, called the Jod-Basedow effect, when given to patients with preexisting iodide deficiency or autonomous, "hot" thyroid nodules. Iodide can cause parotid gland swelling.

Usually, side effects of potassium iodide happen when people take higher doses for a long time but they can occur from taking the government's recommended onetime pulse dose. The standard warning from the mainstream is that "we should be careful not to take more than the recommended dose or take it for longer than you are told," which is only once. "Side effects are unlikely because of the low dose and the short time you will be taking the drug." This is not good advice at all since too-low dosages will not protect one from the radioactive iodine fallout and the short time of application is absolutely out of the question when the fallout will be continuous, as it will be because of the continuous venting of radioactive materials into the atmosphere at the crippled Japanese reactor sites.

When faced with a radioactive cloud it is absolutely imperative that you take iodine, whatever iodine you can get your hands on. If the only iodine available is topical iodine that is not suitable for oral use then you should paint your body and your children's bodies with it. Few people have ready access to the Nascent iodine so will not enjoy its ease of application in repeated measured dosages that are more gentle to the system, thus yielding fewer side effects. Because Nascent is in the atomic form (I¹), it is absorbed faster and that can also be advantageous in emergency situations. Its only downside is the expense of having to use so much of it.

Don't Trust Governments Recommendations

Dr. John W. Gofman, Professor Emeritus of Molecular and Cell Biology in the University of California at Berkeley, has written extensively about the effort to belittle the menace of low-level radiation. People associated with the nuclear and medical industries assert falsely, "there is no evidence that exposure to low-dose radiation causes any cancer-the risk is only theoretical," or "the risk is utterly negligible," or "the accidental exposures were below the safe level," and even "there is reasonably good evidence that exposure to low-dose radiation is beneficial and lowers the cancer rate." By any reasonable standard of scientific proof, the weight of the human evidence shows decisively that cancer is inducible by ionizing radiation even at the lowest possible dose and dose-rate-which means that the risk is never theoretical.

Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling described this process as follows: "The rays of high-energy radiation are like little bullets that shoot through the body. They tear electrons away from molecules and through subsequent reactions of the molecular ions that are formed, the molecules may be broken in two, some atoms may be torn away from them, some new molecules may be formed. The dose of 500 roentgens that usually leads to death by acute radiation sickness causes about 500,000 changed molecules to be formed in each cell. If any of the special molecules [that control the process by which the cell divides] happen to be damaged by a single little bullet of radiation from a single radioactive atom, it may be changed in such a way as to cause the cell to divide much more rapidly than the other cells. This cell may then produce a colony of rapidly dividing cells, which in the course of time would outnumber the normal cells of that type. Then the human being may die from cancer-perhaps leukemia, bone cancer, some other kind of cancer-caused by the single radioactive atom that produced the single little bullet of radiation."

Radioactive materials, plutonium in particular, affect the
deepest level of the human being-bone marrow, DNA,
genetic structure, inner organs and the deepest of emotions.
The message is clear. We have created a horrific heritage.
Jeremy Sherr

Iodine will do nothing to protect a person from uranium, cesium or plutonium contamination so one has to turn to heavy metal detoxification to remove these other particles as fast as possible.

For the governments perspective on potassium iodide please go to the CDC site.