I recently discovered an article that Wombat posted ten months ago entitled “Hashimotos Autoimmune Thyroiditis: Eating for Health Applications for Recovery,” that spoke to some issues I've been mulling over. She posted the article in full here:

//www.curezone.org/forums/fm.asp?i=1635620


I'll just give you the link, and let it be the jumping off point for my comments. The article is a bit long but well worth reading.

I've worried about going on the Iodine protocol without having tested for Hashi's. Dr Abraham's article, “Facts about Iodine and Autoimmune Thyroiditis,” found here:

http://www.optimox.com/pics/Iodine/IOD-22/IOD_22.htm


reassured me somewhat, but still left me wondering if that was the whole story.

Every time Dr. Abraham, or anyone else, has mentioned that Hashi's didn't show up until iodized salt was available it's like a red flag to me. It seems counterintuitive.

I began trying to see the bigger picture of how Hashi's fit into the history of autoimmune diseases. I looked for info online about the etiology of autoimmune diseases. An article entitled “What is Autoimmunity?” found here:

http://autoimmune.pathology.jhmi.edu/whatisautoimmunity.html#approach


includes this graph of the prevalence of many autoimmune diseases (hopefully the image shows up; I've never tried this before):





As I looked at this graph two things immediately struck me. 1) Graves' and Hashi's, both thyroid disorders, are two of the three most prevalent autoimmune diseases, and 2) the preponderance of women who were afflicted with these two as well as other autoimmune diseases. Why so many women?

As you saw in the first article above, the author states that “the same system that regulates immunity also regulates reproductive cycles in women (Plapp, 2002).” The citation is found in the references at the end of the article for anyone interested.

However, another explanation occurred to me, one that I haven't seen anyone suggest. The fact that more girls than boys develop goiter in Iodine deficient regions seems relevant here. Dr. Abraham believes this happens because women need more iodine than men because of larger breasts.

What if more women than men develop autoimmune diseases because the lack of iodine is a causative agent in many, or even all, autoimmune diseases. This fact would be unrecognized by most docs and researchers because most of them don't understand the extent of the need for iodine, both need beyond the thyroid gland, and total quantity required.

I have another idea for a causative agent that might also involve the thyroid gland, and therefore more women, but I'm going to wait to see what reaction there is to this post.

Has the idea of women's greater need for iodine, and not getting it, as a source of their more frequent experience of autoimmune diseases already been proposed?

Sam