Increased Iodine, Castor Oil Packs and Flu-Like Symptoms?

For 3 days I've been doing castor oil packs over my girl parts... I know I've got at the very least some cysts on the ovaries and general congestion, maybe fibroids. I also recently increased my Iodine dose (finally) to a full 50mg a day, taking it all in the morning now (I was routinely forgetting the second dose), and I think soon I am going to try 100mg and see what happens.

I've been having that body ache, flu-like feeling and fatigue at least for a few days, and I'm wondering if it's an actual virus I just picked up, toxin release, or maybe old virus getting mobilized either from the Iodine or the castor oil, somehow. My husband was sick recently, but it was more like a cold that turned into a sinus infection. I don't have any of that. Just kind of achey and tired. Dr. Brownstein thought I was anemic when I saw him a week or so ago and gave me some supps, but I've stopped one of them due to what *may* be the phytoestrogens throwing things off (possibly the fennel in it, not sure).

The other thing is actually worse hormonal imbalance since upping the Iodine to 50mg, basically i feel like I'm just about to get my period even though it just ended. Sore swollen, lumpier boobs, irritable, full feeling around the uterus, etc. I did wonder if it the herbal iron supplement could have been contributing, so I'm just taking the FE-Zyme and stopped the herbal.

Did anyone get worse before they got better in terms of symptoms, esp. hormonally related ?

Could the castor oil packs have anything to do with it? I'm going to keep going as long as it doesn't flatten me, and trying to be much more careful with diet, do more juicing, etc. Given that the Lugol's I'm taking isn't really a natural, food form of iodine, I do go back and forth on whether it's ideal, at at some point I hope I can switch to more of a food source from clean (if that's possible) kelp and other sea veggies, but in the meantime I'm kinda doing Dr. Brownstein's protcol.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated!