Do I need to bother about Iodine when I have Thyroid?

Most of the iodine that enters our body comes from the food that we eat. A smaller amount comes from the water that we drink. Iodine that leaves our body each day is usually replaced by the iodine that we eat and drink, so the amount of iodine in our body is just enough to keep us healthy.

Lobster, milk, mushrooms, nutritional yeast, oysters, canned salmon, salted nuts and seeds, saltwater fish (cod, haddock, and herring), sea salt, seaweed, shrimp and table salt are rich sources of iodine.

Iodine is added to food, such as table salt, to ensure that all people have enough iodine in their bodies to form essential thyroid hormones.

As developing nations are able to make the shift to iodized salt, their rates of iodine deficiency and the diseases associated with it have also extinct.

Use of Iodine

• Iodine is necessary to form thyroid hormones, which regulate the body’s metabolism.
• Promotes normal cell function,
• Keeps skin hair and nails healthy
• Overall growth and development.

Thyroid and Iodine

Dietary iodine is absorbed from the gastro-intestinal tract into the blood. The amount of iodine present in the body of an adult is estimated to be about 25 milligrams.

Most of it is concentrated in the thyroid gland, where it is stored in the form of thyroglobulin, a complex of protein and iodine.

About 30 percent is removed by the thyroid gland for the synthesis of the thyroid hormone, thyroxine, and the rest is excreted by the kidneys.