Supplement Strategy: Iodine
What if there was a nutrient which accomplished the following?
What if there was a nutrient which accomplished the following?
- 1. Desensitized estrogen receptors in the breast.
- 2. Reduced estrogen production in overactive ovaries.
- 3. Reduced fibrocystic breast disease (FDB) which often precedes breast cancer
4. Caused more cell death than the chemo drug Fluorouracil .
- 5. Prevented rats from getting cancer when they were fed the breast cancer
causing toxin DMBA.
 | Evidence-based research supports the possibility that breast cancer may be | |
| an iodine deficiency disease. |
As iodine consumption has gone down, breast cancer rates have gone up. But the
research goes far deeper, exploring the effects of iodine supplementation on breast
disease and breast cancer. This important breakthrough has been in the research
pipeline for years but only recently found momentum. After sifting through 50 years of
iodine research and corresponding with researchers around the world, the editors report
that abnormal iodine metabolism, due either to bromide dominance in the environment
or a dietary deficiency of iodine, must be addressed as part of a preventive and or a
therapeutic strategy.
Iodine Deficiency Growing Worse
- Iodine consumption by Americans has dropped 50% since the 1970s as breast
cancer rates have risen (1). In the US Goiter Belt, where iodine in the soil is
- lower, breast cancer is higher (2).
- By contrast, the incidence and severity of breast cancer are less in Japan than
- in Europe and the US, attributable to the diet (3). Japanese women consume 25
times more dietary iodine than North American women and have lower breast
cancer rates (4).
- Meanwhile, since the 1970s, in the US and several other countries, iodine-
blocking bromides have been added to flour, some sodas, and medications,
exacerbating the iodine deficiency.
- Flouridated drinking water also depletes iodine absorption. Thus, as women
- consume less iodine and excrete more due to toxic elements, our risk for breast
cancer grows(5).
Iodine and Benign Breast Disease
- Blocking iodine in rats' food supply led to progressive human-like fibrocystic
- disease (atypia, sclerosing, calcifications, dysplastic changes) as the rats aged
(6). Supplementing patients with fibrocystic disease with iodine helped to resolve
fibrosis and reduced breast size (7).
- For women with painful breasts accompanying fibrocystic disease, iodine
- improved symptoms in more than 50% of the women who took 6.0 mg. of iodine
for 6 months (8), and brown sea alga improved pain and nodularity in 94% of the
women (9). From the editors' observations of the Iodine
Investigation Project participants, depending on the kind of iodine agent used,
painful breast symptoms have resolved in from 24 hours to two months.
- Since benign breast disease increases the risk of breast cancer
- (10), and iodine improves fibrocystic disease, we at Breast Cancer Choices
propose studies to see if iodine supplementation decreases the risk of getting
breast cancer and the risk of recurrence.
Iodine and Breast Cancer
- For breast patients, iodine's therapeutic mechanisms of action may be at least
- three-pronged: Hormonal (11), Biochemical (12-18), Genetic (19).
That is, iodine desensitizes the estrogen receptors, alters the chemical pathways
as well effects on the genes, resulting in less cell growth, and causing anti-tumor
effect by causing apoptosis (programmed cell death) of malignant cells.
- Iodine-rich seaweed exhibits an anti-cancer effect in rats and in the lab on human
breast cancer cells.
- Adding seaweed to rats' food delays the onset and number of rat mammary
tumors (20,21). And in the lab, mekabu seaweed plant induced cell death in three
kinds of human breast cancer cells. Mekabu had a stronger effect on the cells
than the chemo drug, 5-fluorouracil (22).
- Adding iodine to chemically-induced (DMBA) rat breast tumors stops the
- growth of the tumors. Adding iodine plus medroxyprogesterone gave the
highestlevel of response: the growth-suppressed tumors showed 100% times
the iodine content than the full blown (nonsuppressed) tumors. The researchers
suggest that the uptake of iodine was enhanced by medroxyprogesterone. (23).
As David Brownstein, MD, phrased it, "You cannot give breast cancer to rats that
have sufficient iodine."
- In small, preliminary patient studies, using the screening iodine-loading test,
breast cancer patients excreted less urinary iodine than healthy people, implying
iodine-deficiency (24,25)
Accumulating data has inspired several prominent researchers to call for the
immediate study of iodine as an adjuvant therapy for breast cancer (comparable
to the current use of Tamoxifen or Arimidex).
See references at www.breastcancerchoices.org/iodine