My Health should be my priority, but that’s not always the case. Our kid's health should be our top priority, but that is not always the case due to the lack of knowledge, wrong information and some accepted myths that are out there. We human beings are very often ignorant, even when our health is in question, and I’m not any different. Due to the mix of all those factors that I mentioned, we tend to make an enormous amount of mistakes. Some of the mistakes are blindly trusting and following the “wrong” people and not questioning their advice and decisions even though it is about our loved ones and us. WHO (World Health Organization) is “seriously” trying to warn people that Iodine Deficiency is something that has very adverse consequences, and it is directly affecting one-third of the world’s population. Here we are not only talking about the “third world countries”, but it is also happening everywhere. It is a primary cause of the thyroid problems which are related to the high amount of the miscarriages, infertility in both men and women, and much more but less visible health problems. With that in mind, we can say that it is a hidden public health issue which is a very real problem that is affecting and breaking many families. Kids who are born from the Iodine deficient mothers have a lower IQ’s, and that is something that is very worrying but hard to bring out, measure or compare. This sort of concern is one of the reasons why I started writing about the Iodine Deficiency. It must cost billions to treat the consequences of those “illness” and less smart kids will have a less perspective in life. Such thing will not only affect their lives and lives of their families but will have a much wider negative effect on the places where they live and the economy in general. Government’s should and must do more to protect us and help to resolve this public health issue, but, unfortunately, we cannot rely on them, as this could be well sorted out long time ago only if there was enough willpower. People’s well-being is a very serious thing that is a priority for every “reasonable” country, region or a city leadership and that’s why we need to do more, and that’s why it is so important to push them hard to do more. We cannot rely only on the doctors who are educated in the “big pharma’s” commercialised science system or wait for them to make the progress while the only progress is that the bank accounts from the pharmaceutical companies are growing bigger and synthetic hormones that are sold in the quantities larger than ever before. No doctor or very rarely one will tell you the things like you might need to check and correct the vitamin and mineral status, check your Iodine or Selenium status before starting to take the thyroid medication, or that you could fix that state with the proper nutrition. No matter what is the reason why they are not telling those things, that attitude is very shameless and actually, a very frustrating, and Hippocratic Oath is apparently “not existing”. Funny enough is that many nutritionists, doctors and health experts are calling RDA (recommended daily amount) a Really Dam Advice, and behind the claims, they have scientifically proven facts, but, unfortunately, we cannot read about it in the mainstream media. Sadly enough is that the today’s situation is the improved one, but still, the report claims that the 54 countries worldwide are iodine deficient.
To rub the salt in the wound, here are the Croatians results. Croatia is the country that is declared sufficient, but still there are 22.3% of the general population that are deficient and scary enough is that 53% of the pregnant women are deficient in the first trimester when that is a time when the iodine is the most needed for the baby’s brain and nervous system development. In the precise numbers, from the population of only 4,2 million, that is around 1 million iodine deficient people.
Even though it is all nicely wrapped up in a myth that Croatia is iodine sufficient country and iodized salt successfully resolved those problems. Unfortunately, the problem still exists to a great extent. The important fact is that the whole Croatian salt production is mandatory iodized by law, but there are quite a lot of countries where unfortunately this is not the case. Additionally, we must take into the account the doctors advice and guidance to cut the salt consumption, and we can only imagine what happens to the iodine consumption then?
The conventional approach is that salt iodization eradicated the goitre (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goitre) and the cretinism cases (the two most severe iodine deficiency disorders). I wouldn’t agree on that, as in my opinion cretinism is not eradicated, we are witnessing it a lot on the daily basis, and I even think that many politicians are probably just iodine deficient:)
The highest iodine consumption is in the Japanese population due to the diet rich in the seafood and algae, and with that goes the world’s highest life expectancy that cannot be undermined.
I’m constantly thinking of the possibilities how to help and in some ways improve the situation, but now I believe that “someone” doesn’t want the things to improve and that some fu…rs are preventing the things from changing for the better. I don’t want to sound like someone who is losing temper or being rude, but I really can’t get rid of that anger and sadness that such ignorance is routinely accepted, and health facts are hiding from the public. Most people think that it is happening to someone else or somewhere else and that they are not affected by it. There is an old saying: If you are not sick, it doesn’t mean that you are healthy! Illness is coming slowly, and our ignorance is not going to help for better, but it can change for the worse.
Excellent source of the information on the importance of iodine we can find in the book: Iodine, why you need it and why you can’t live without it, written by Dr David Brownstein (http://www.drbrownstein.com/)
More info about the extent of the iodine deficiency:
http://www.who.int/nutrition/topics/idd/en/
http://www.who.int/vmnis/iodine/status/en/
I’m Damir Katusic
I investigate, write, read and build things.
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