Iodine: a discussion, and perhaps a civilized debate page 29

[chahaya]

What is funny is that I am rethinking the amount of Iodine I want to take because of James's information, which I believe Paleobird would agree with.

Guess what, Hoss? Me too!

I am also glad he is challenging about mammography, chemo efficacy and providing interesting insights on the incestuous relationship between doctors, pharma, and authorities, etc; and also his research on cancer (e.g. he pointed out a link between HPV and breast cancer). This gives more food for thought and impetus for self research.

[chahaya]

Mercola is apparently unaware of the fact that the low rate of cancer in Japan has been linked to their higher consumption of soy that contain protective phytoestrogens that also happen to counter the adverse effects of excess iodine. Mercola though sits on the board of the Weston Price Foundation who is supported by the beef and dairy industries. So Mercola is paid to bash soy, which is the biggest competitor of the beef and dairy industries.

Seaweeds are also rich in immune stimulating polysaccharides that further reduce the risk of cancer.

Iodine does have estrogen blocking effects just like phytoestrogens, but there is no evidence that estrogen causes cancer to begin with. Estrogen appears to only be a growth factor for already existing cancers.

Just chiming on soy consumption by the Japanese and other Asian cultures. The types of soy that Japanese consume are mostly fermented soy, e.g. natto and miso soup. Even their soya sauce are fermented (it's not just stuff added with salt). They do consume tofu, which is the perhaps the only unfermented soy product that they consume in relatively larger amounts. In other Asian countries, we do consume a form of fermented tofu, fermented beancurd to be exact, it's an acquired taste and it smells funky (and I happen to quite like it). The Indonesians have a soy staple called tempeh (also fermented). The Taiwanese love their stinky tofu (also fermented tofu).

Japanese don't really consume soy milk, as far as I recall (visited there twice and my brother used to live there). That said, soy milk is consumed in other Asian countries, e.g. Southeast Asia (we are not known for our longevity like the Japanese, by the way), however it is not something that we drink it everyday. Personally I don't drink it now as it is over-processed commercially, with added sugar and stuff. I do fondly remember my aunt used to make soy milk by grinding a granite mortar in the past.

I think the soy usage in Western diets is pretty different. Soy milk is used for everything, and everywhere, and even used as replacement for infant formulas. There's processed (unfermented) soy in everything, e.g. tofu burgers, and the likes. The amount of unfermented soy intake is really high (in comparison to the Japanese). And I don't think fermented soy is consumed much in Western diets. Anyway, I don't know the actual chemical mechanics behind fermented soy and unfermented soy products, I just want to highlight that there's a difference in the types of soy that the Japanese take though.

End of my 2 cents on soy. Now I want to pick your brains for some questions that I have...

You have mentioned that "Estrogen appears to only be a growth factor for already existing cancers", can you shed some light how that works?

Would estrogen be a growth factor for cysts and fibroids? Iodine seem to have some good results on FBD specifically; could it be because of its estrogen blocking effects? What advice would you give to someone with FBD and uterine fibroids?

Finally, thanks for joining this thread, your recent posts are really interesting!

[Omni]

Chachaya
I also disagree with James on Soy
It is a legume, so technically not Paleo and belongs in the 20% portion of the 80:20 rule.
It is generally GM varieties that are grown with profuse applications of pestecide.
It has become a cheap "food extender" for both humans and livestock and there are very few products in the supermarket aisles that don't contain Soy in one form or another.
The potential benefit of Phytochemicals, like Phytoestrogens needs to be applied in an appropriate diagnostic sense, yes there may be certain conditions that may benefit from high soy intake, but this is not a blanket rule for the entire population, very much like the recent news flash I heard that everyone should be taking Statin medications as a preventative measure for CHD.

I like a dash of Soy sauce on the odd occassion, but don't keep any other Soy in the house, I get enough incidental Soy intake when visiting or go out to dinner.

But I am also interested in the questions you posed re Estrogen:

You have mentioned that "Estrogen appears to only be a growth factor for already existing cancers", can you shed some light how that works?

Would estrogen be a growth factor for cysts and fibroids? Iodine seem to have some good results on FBD specifically; could it be because of its estrogen blocking effects? What advice would you give to someone with FBD and uterine fibroids?

[JamesS]

Things James and I agree on :

Places where we differ:

The evil greed factor in medicine being so huge. BTW, I never said that big Pharma wasn't evil, just not to blame and bash the doctors.

Doctors are somehow above being corrupt or greedy? There are some good doctors out there, but I have met very few. Most doctors I have met are in medicine only for the money and they think they are God-like when in fact they don't know half of what they think they know.

As an example, a friend of mine was put on Lisinopril for high blood pressure even though she had normal blood pressure except when she went to the doctor (white coat syndrome). They kept upping her dose starting at 2.5mg, then to 5mg, then 10mg and finally 20mg. The drug bottomed out her blood pressure one causing her to stroke. When they found her in the morning her pulse rate was 125 and her blood pressure was fluctuating shooting up to around 300/200, then bottoming out around 60/40 a few minutes later, then shooting back up and dropping back down....... None of her 5 doctors could figure out what was happening so I had to write them a letter explaining it to them. Basically the drug was bottoming out her blood pressure causing the adrenals to over react secreting an excess of epinephrine causing the spike in blood pressure. When the body realized it over reacted to the drop in blood pressure the epinephrine was cut off and the drug would bottom out the blood pressure and the adrenals would over react starting the cycle over again. I wrote in the letter that the evidence was in the pulse rate. Out of all the things that raise blood pressure such as calcium, insulin, sodium, angiotensin and epinephrine the only thing that will raise both the pulse and the blood pressure is epinephrine. So I added that if they were to put her on anything for blood pressure it should be a beta blocker, which helps reduce epinephrine release. The family took the letter to one of the doctors who got really pissed and threw the paper back at them in anger because I had to explain it to them. But the real kicker is when the doctor said that with her pulse rate being so low that a beta blocker would kill her. Not sure what Cracker Jack box the doctor got her medical diploma from but a pulse rate of 125 is in no way low. It is way above normal. Apparently though the doctor either realized finally I was right or consulted with the other 4 doctors because the next day they had my friend on a beta blocker.

Whole point here is that doctors are not the gods they often think they are and too often they don't know enough about REAL medicine to even address basic issues. This is a lot of the reason the U.S. has one of the worst medical systems in the world, currently ranked 38th in the world.

Doctors are taught primarily to rely on inaccurate lab tests and to address symptoms with drugs, not to listen to the patients symptoms and actually address the cause of the disease. If you still think I am wrong again I ask where are the allopathic cures for asthma, allergies, autoimmune disorders, herpes, hepatitis, thyroid disease, type 2 diabetes, etc? All of these are curable by holistic medicine but not allopathic medicine. See, in order to cure these diseases the disease itself and its causes have to both be addressed, which allopathic medicine RARELY ever does.

For example, when they try to treat type 2 diabetes do they address the address the magnesium and chromium deficiencies that cause the insulin receptors to close? Not at all. Instead they prescribe oral hypoglycemics that only address the symptoms and in the long run can damage the pancreatic islet cells leading to an insulin dependent diabetes in the long run.

And why is the remission rate for hepatitis so low in allopathic medicine? Simple, because the doctors assume that all hepatitis is caused by hepatitis viruses and rely on super inaccurate antibody testing and polymerase chain reaction (PCR, "viral load") tests to "confirm" the presence of hepatitis viruses. First problem with this is there are NO common lab tests that can confirm the presence of any specific virus. The only way this can be done is with electron microscopy that is time consuming, super expensive and like looking for a needle in the haystack. So the doctors rely on these lab tests that cannot confirm the presence of a virus then try to treat the patient with interferon, which has its limitations. First of all the body does not produce one interferon, it produces a series of interferons. And the interferons are tissue specific. In other words they only have a full effect on the tissues they are derived from. You cannot use lung interferon to treat viral hepatitis, you need interferon from the liver. Last I checked though they don't have a liver interferon. Second problem is that many cases of hepatitis are not viral to begin with. Hepatitis simply means inflammation of the liver. This can be from hepatitis viruses, herpes viruses, bacteria, fungi, mycotoxins, parasites, trauma and autoimmunity. Therefore, doctors cannot rely on antibody tests or PCR to diagnose viral hepatitis and interferon will not work for most cases of hepatitis.

As another example, why do so many doctors, including many so-called "AIDS experts" still call AIDS a disease when it is not a disease? And why do they ignore the fact that the primary cause of AIDS is the drug AZT (zidovudine). If they knew anything about medicine then they would know why. In fact, I got in to a debate with a doctor and nurse online once over this exact issue. They could not grasp the concept that HIV could not cause AIDS under the original definition, which is why the definition of AIDS was later changed to fit the virus. So they asked me what causes AIDS then based on the original definition. I told them that if I told them the would simply call me a quack and drop it so instead I told them I would ask them a series of questions and when they answered I would put it together for them. We had already gone over the super high false positive rate for HIV testing. So my first question to them was what happens to the immune system if the bone marrow is destroyed? They responded the immune system collapses. This was correct. EVERY immune cell starts out as stem cells formed in the bone marrow. No bone marrow, no stem cells, no immune system. My second question was the most well known side effect of the drug AZT is anemia. Why? They dropped it right there because they saw where I was going. AZT causes anemia because it destroys the bone marrow. This also leads to a complete collapse of the immune system and thus the low CD4 counts and opportunistic infections that give a diagnosis of the syndrome AIDS.

Again the point here is that doctors tend to be very ignorant when it comes to real medicine. They are mostly book learned and fail to research beyond what they learned in school, which is often outdated and inaccurate information to begin with. Then they are taught by the pharmaceutical reps how to cover up symptoms with drugs that will cause side effects that will require other drugs to address the side effects while creating new side effects that will require more drugs....... They have a better scam going than the iodine peddlers!!!

So if you wish to put your life in to the hands of doctors that are often too ignorant to know the basics of real medicine then that is your choice. Personally, I don't go to doctors. I have not been to one in 31 years because I have seen too many highly ignorant doctors over the years. If you want to keep bashing holistic medicine to push the unproven and low success allopathic medicine I will keep posting examples of their failure and the success of holistic medicine so people can see where the real truth lies.

The efficacy of chemo.

Have you ever looked at the research on these drugs on Medline? Even the researchers clearly state that chemotherapy has some severe limitations.

And how is it not quackery to use a cancer causing drug to treat cancer? Of course such quackery is rampant in allopathic medicine. They use depressants to treat depression, cholesterol lowering drugs that cause heart failure, osteoporosis drugs that increase the risk of bone fracture, diabetes drugs that cause pancreatic failure, asthma inhalers that reduce the symptoms but increase the frequency of asthma attacks,............

But getting back to the chemo, how is it not quackery to use drugs that have a 3% or less success rate not taking in to account other factors such as placebo effect of cancer recurrences? How is it not quackery when they are generally using drugs that simply kill cells at random, including healthy ones, but not addressing the cause of the cancers, which is normally viruses? How is it not quackery when the drugs can cause serious damage to critical organs? How is it not quackery to use chemotherapy drugs that kill so many of the people undergoing it from the malnutrition they can induce?

The health effects of soy.

And again, bring up the specific points of what makes you think soy is dangerous and I will address them. I have already written numerous posts on other sites debunking the myths being spread about soy on the internet and have posted plenty of studies to back up most of what I have explained. So go ahead and start with your points and I will address them.

[Paleobird]

So, let me get this straight. You would just totally ignore the focus of this thread, iodine, a topic on which we completely agree, and instead have it out with me about some tangent side topics?

If you would like to start a "Soy:Is it dangerous or not?", an "Are doctors evil money grubbers?" and a "Chemo: Does it work?" thread, great. I just don't think those should be the focus here.

[JamesS]

Thanks, breadsauce, I appreciate the sentiment. But really, when it come to actual iodine issues, James and I are pretty much on the same page. He overdoes the rants against the medical establishment a bit much for my tastes, but hey, that's just his viewpoint.

One that people don't have to read if they don't like what I have to say. If they do choose to read what I have to say though that does not give them the right to start with personal attacks just because they disagree with the evidence.

I never said that there weren't bad doctors out there or that money does not factor into the medical care industry. After all it is an industry. I only said that, when one pays regular HMO dues,

Ah, so your treatment did cost you as I pointed out earlier.

the more expensive treatments come out of the HMO's pockets thereby discrediting the argument that doctors give you treatments you don't need when herbs would work and suppress herbal cures because they want your money. My HMO would have lost a lot less money on my cancer if they had given me herbs, or baking soda.

And once again this has been addressed several times in the past. HMOs are bound to specific rules. If they knew herbs worked by searching massive amount of studies on Medline and they were ALLOWED to use herbs they they probably would to increase their profits. After all they pay doctors to not perform tests to increase their profits. So parroting the same proven misleading claim is not getting us anywhere.

You are also overlooking the well known fact that the HMOs have an "approved prescription list". Why so they only allow certain drugs to be prescribed? Because these are the drugs that they have invested in to. So they not only make a profit off the direct mark up they make selling the drug to the patient, but they also make money from being invested in to these drugs and the kickbacks they get from the drug companies. So they are not out of near as much money as you think they are.

[JamesS]

If you actually read both you would see that we are agreeing 9 times out of 10. He's just a bit more into the conspiracy of the evil doctors meme than I am.

That is because:

1. I have personally witnessed numerous examples of doctor incompetence, idiocy, lunacy and corruption.

2. I have also done considerable research in to what actually goes on in the medical system including unnecessary operations, FDA approval of untested drugs, manipulation of studies to get drugs approved, hiding known side effects to get drugs approved, illegal investments in to pharmaceutical companies by FDA officials overseeing these drug companies, allowing known highly lethal drugs to remain on the market some even over the counter, etc. Are many of these conspiracies? Absolutely, which is why I wonder you are not more interested in verifying these facts since millions of people or more have died as a result of these corruptions over the decades. You want to convince people to use poisonous, carcinogenic chemotherapy drugs for their cancers while showing no concern for the rampant corruption leading the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands each year due primarily to dangerous pharmaceuticals. Why is that exactly? For example, as I mentioned before even the FDA estimates there are over 16,500 people a year that die from their approved NSAID drugs. Those numbers are actually quite low since deaths are often listed by the side effects of these drugs such as heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, hepatitis, etc. rather than the drug itself. Just like deaths from chemotherapy or radiation therapy are listed as death by the person's cancer instead. So we have at least 16,500 deaths annually according to the FDA by this drug class alone. Now add in deadly antidepressants, diabetes drugs, chemotherapy drugs including AZT, etc. and the annual death toll by pharmaceutical drugs skyrockets. So again I ask, why no concern over the millions of people who have died and the others that will die in the future at the hands of these deadly pharmaceutical drugs?

[JamesS]

JamesS, clearly it was frustrating being a non member and reading those threads when you had a contrary view. I appreciate the effort you took to respond. I am sorry this was your welcome. I hope you stick around about you obviously have a lot to offer this forum.

I will probably be around off and on. I don't have a lot of time normally. I have other places I post, am working on two books, taking care of someone who with iodine poisoning from a pharmaceutical drug one of those "real" doctors gave him even though he did not need it, trying to run a business, teach classes, do consultations and if possible get a little sleep and have a personal life.

I just happened to see Grizz post about this forum calling everyone who was disagreeing with him "trolls" so I had to check out what he was talking about since we have butted heads numerous times in the past. When I started reading a lot of the misinformation being presented I just had to jump in. So anyway, I will be popping in and out depending on my schedule.

As far as the personal attacks go I am pretty much use to it. You should see how hated I am on Curezone for exposing the quackery there. I have the honor of having more complaints filed against me and being banned from more forums on Curezone than any other individual in the history of Curezone. The Webmaster finally banned me since I was discrediting the claims of many of his advertisers such as the promoters of excess iodine and "oleander soup" and heavily discredited "liver flushes". Funny thing is that I had one of the top three most active forums on Curezone and in just the last 3 years climbed to number 25 of the top 300 forums based on the number of views. The only forums ahead of me have been on Curezone a lot longer that I was. So I made a lot of enemies on Curezone and numerous personal attacks against me was a daily occurrence there. In fact, I still see people posting lies and other personal attacks about me to this day even though I have been there for months. Still, I get tired quickly of the condescending remarks such as making reference to conspiracy theories or the "tin hat" comments. When people have to resort to such insults it only shows they have no real evidence to come back with so they resort to trying to discredit the person by implying that they are as Grizz put it a "nut case".

[JamesS]

Agreed, debate the topic not the individual, information is what counts, if you want team sports go to the relevant sports channel.

Just on the Iodine thing I noticed some comments regarding Iodine allergies, I do not believe there is such a thing technically, as it would very quickly result in death, there is Iodine toxicity which everyone is susceptable to although sensitivity may vary and this seems to be the issue with CT scans, what most people refer to as Iodine allergy is an immune response to specific proteins found in shellfish, one of these being from the Keyhole Limpet which is used in many vaccines and raises the question of Vaccines & Allergies, but that is another story.
I found this little statement regarding the CT reaction below:

.IV Contrast Dye. This reaction is non-allergic but can result in anaphylaxis because the high concentration of the dye causes mast cells to release their contents, which mimics an allergic reaction. While there is no test available for reactions to IV contrast, most patients can take the dye safely by taking oral steroids and anti-histamines hours before the contrast is given. The contrast is usually given in a less concentrated form to these patients. Let your doctor know if you’ve had a past reaction to IV contrast before receiving it again.

Yes, I totally agree. It is like people claiming they have allergies to sulfur. Sulfur makes up so much of the body that if they were actually allergic to sulfur they would be having an allergic reaction 24/7, not just when they ingested something with sulfur that is present in nearly all foods.

[JamesS]

Amen. (and wtf?)

James, nice to have you on board and a lot of people around here are decent. Paleobird's welcome (not) is not characteristic of this forum.

You have a lot of interesting things to say and I am hoping you offer a bit on the athletic threads too! Welcome, dude.

Thanks.

If you want to post a link to what you want me to respond to specifically I will take a look. My time is really limited and I don't want to spend a lot of time searching through the whole forum.