Fitness

During my next 15 years, perhaps a dozen physicians told me to take thyroid tablets, but it is no easy trick to find the correct dosage. If you take too much, you become highstrung, nervous, wakeful; your heart nearly jumps out of your chest. Soon you become discouraged and give up until you either realize how important iodine is or are driven by sluggishness to try thyroid tablets again.

Later, for me, came the years of wanting children, with the accompanying heartaches and frustrations only a childless woman can understand. You spend hundreds of dollars trying to correct the unknown difficulty and take shots until you feel like a pin cushion. Hope rises at each intermenstrual period; crushing disappointment comes with the onset of each menstruation. Eventually you learn that the ovaries are usually damaged when the iodine deficiency has been too severe during the developmental period; taking iodine later cannot restore normal ovarian function. Then followed years of empty-armed despair, spent searching for children to adopt. Yet everyone of these abnormalities could have been prevented in my case and thousands of similar ones by five cents’ worth of iodine or at no cost if iodized salt had been available years ago as it is now.

In 1917, Drs. David Marine and O. P. Kimball showed that goiter could be easily prevented. These doctors gave iodine twice a year to 2,190 girls in Akron, Ohio; only five developed goiter. Among an untreated group of 2,300 girls, almost 500 relatively severe goiters developed. After this classic study iodized salt was made available; not one case of goiter should have ever again occurred. Yet recent surveys, made more than 30 years later, revealed that 55 per cent of the girls and 30 per cent of the boys in the Cincinnati schools had goiter; in Minnesota, 70 per cent of the girls and 40 per cent of the boys; in Portland, Oregon, 40 per cent of the girls and 22 per cent of the boys. In Cleveland, the incidence of goiter was found to be exactly the same as it was before iodized salt was put on the market. This valuable salt was not and is not being used. Figures like these are disgraceful. The ignorance and apathy which allow such abnormal conditions to be so widespread are likewise disgraceful. The amount of goiter among adults is not known, but the incidence is appalling when one considers that both prevention and cure have long been known.

The chief source of iodine is the ocean. The only parts of our country where adequate iodine may perhaps be obtained without using iodized salt is a narrow strip along the Atlantic seaboard, around the Gulf of Mexico, and in regions which in recent geologic ages formed the floor of the ocean, such as parts of Kansas, South Dakota, Utah, western Texas, and New Mexico. Foods grown on these soils usually contain some iodine. Other soils, although near the coast, contain little or no iodine. No food is a reliable source except ocean fish and seafoods. Even fresh-water fish in Minnesota are said to develop severe goiters. Many cities on the Pacific Coast use melted-snow water which is iodine free; despite nearness to the ocean, iodine deficiencies are common.

Iodized salt, approved by the American Medical Association, contains the amount of iodine that occurs naturally in unrefined ocean salt. When iodized salt is used throughout life, the iodine needs are supplied. No harmful effects can result from using this salt because iodine is lost continuously in urine, perspiration, and even exhaled air. Harm caused by not using it runs into millions of dollars spent for the surgical removal of goiter alone. The monetary value of the loss of efficiency resulting from an undersupply of iodine cannot be estimated. Surveys reveal that only 15 per cent of the salt purchased even in the goiter belts is iodized. So great is the contribution of this nutrient to health that the compulsory iodinization of all salt seems to be the only answer. Wherever this step has been taken, as in Switzerland and Austria, goiter has disappeared, and basal metabolic rates stay more nearly normal.

The iodine requirements are increased in early childhood, puberty, and adolescence, during pregnancy and lactation, and particularly at menopause. It is during menopause that goiters most often grow to be huge. No additional amounts of iodine need be taken at these times if iodized salt has been used continuously for years; the thyroid gland traps and stores iodine for future safety. If this valuable salt has not been used constantly, some form of iodine should be taken to meet current needs and make up the deficiency. Dr. William T. Salter, professor of Pharmacology at Yale University School of Medicine, writes (p. 132 of ref. 1, P: 35): “There are still clinicians and surgeons alive who favor one type of iodine preparation over another, but this is a problem in psychology rather than in clinical science.” This physician states that to correct goiter, one minim-a few drops-of Lugol’s solution every Sunday is sufficient. Any druggist can prepare Lugol’s solution in a couple of minutes; it costs little and is almost tasteless if added to % cup of water or milk. Often physicians who recommend Lugol’s receive poor co-operation because patients become discouraged by the slow improvement; goiters which could have disappeared are removed surgically at great cost. Despite the ease of prevention, every year millions of people who fail to obtain a normal supply of iodine pay for their neglect through a lack of mental and physical efficiency and alert- . ness; thousands more, through pain and misery.

When one has suffered personally from a deficiency of a nutrient, it is perhaps difficult not to overemphasize its value. I have been guilty of that. Years ago I found an unopened box of salt on the kitchen sink; since its label assured me it was free running but not iodized, I tossed it into the trash can. Later, my husband asked if I had seen the salt; I told him what I had done and why. He was understandably a bit irritable as he explained that he had wanted to put it into the toilet of our mountain cabin to keep the water from freezing and that he did not consider its iodine content of great importance.