Beginner’s Protocol

You were hoping for a 5 point bullet list with dosage amounts, but now you have another wall of text.

• Why is this so complex?
• Understanding what we are made of
• Supporting the most advanced machine ever
• Information overload
• Getting started

If this is still a bit too much, look into kelp for now and come back to this page when you have a few minutes to read. If starting kelp is still too much after reading my page about it, find someone that can help you run an Organic Acids and/or DNA test.

Why is this so complex?

Iodine is complex because it’s part of so many aspects of our health. There is also a lot of drama surrounding it and it even has “conspiracy” connections depending on how well we are able to decern marketing from reality. whyiodine.com/confusing

Dr. Brownstein has shared a protocol that he has used to help his patients. This is commonly referred to as The Iodine Protocol. A lot of books, doctors, group admins, and members refer to this protocol as essentially the gold standard. But the issue is that Dr. Brownstein has since seemed to have changed his stance on how much iodine to start with, and he also works directly with his patients to address outstanding issues before jumping into large amounts of iodine. His protocol may work well when he is in control of guiding a person, but that does not necessarily mean it works if we just dive into natural detox while potentially still consuming toxic food etc.

When I started researching iodine, the idea of jumping into these large doses of iodine itself as well as the other nutrients was a little frightening or at least confusing. Over the years, I have studied nutrition and biochemistry extensively. I was lucky enough to be able to build and use this understanding to reverse some serious health issues. What I share with you is just my success story and the information that allowed me to get here.

Understanding what we are made of

We are essentially bags of dirt and water suspended by sunlight. This is a pretty odd situation as we study how this works, but for now, let’s just use it to highlight the fact that we are nutrients.

Instead of an engine that is made of various proper metals, rubbers, and plastics etc, we are made of nutrients. When we use the wrong ingredients or use an engine incorrectly, we can expect the core parts of the engine to degrade over time, but for some reason, we assume our body is armored against time and the environment by carrying out some sort of destiny set into place as we or our family bloodline were gifted into existence.

Iodine is very important, but it’s only one of many nutrients. All of its potent abilities that allow so many people to regain their health highlight its deeply intertwined connection with our nutritional engine called metabolism.

Some people are not able to digest or metabolize fats well which means no matter what they eat they do not gain weight. We know pretty well that some people handle weight completely differently. A metabolism that can handle fat is completely different than a metabolism that cannot. This means some of us are running in completely different mode which means some of us have different repairs to make to our bag of dirt before we’re able to make repairs we see others performing.

This aspect is a huge part of the reason starting a protocol becomes confusing. Instead of “start here” it’s a parade of words that dance around our question due to liability on top of the fact that we’re all completely different and have completely different ideas of how the world and our health work. https://whyiodine.com/how-much-iodine/

Supporting the most advanced machine ever

It adds a layer of complexity at first, but it’s important to understand this aspect. Whether we are just diving into natural health or have known about it for generations, it can be helpful to realize we are doing one of the most amazing things ever. We’re using a machine to diagnose and repair itself. A bag of dirt suspended by sunlight, twitching just right to filter its exposure to diet and environment in an attempt to maximize the number of twitches.

But, imagine a society of dirtbags(too soon?) focused on anything but extending the number of twitches they are able to make? Now imagine being one of only a few people that are somewhere on this path to max-twitch? That’s pretty awesome, we finally realize we were living in a fog, now we just need to figure out how to support and rebuild our cells at whatever ability we currently have. No matter how discouraged we may have been in the past or at any time, it’s important to remember how lucky we are that we’re even pondering this situation.

Information overload

It doesn’t matter how well this type of information is organized or explained, there is a lot to take in. We have to go back to our old ways and devote part of our lives to learning this information. Otherwise, we lose our ability to maintain the most important machine ever which weakens our ability to understand the world we are a part of.

Luckily we are able to start slow and make positive changes over time. As we make progress, we will have more energy to understand more of this. This takes time and it’s a lifestyle change. I’d say the biggest hurdle in understanding how to get started for most people is the idea of accepting an overhaul to our life and our world. Most of us don’t like change because it opens the door to potential failures. But over time as we devote our time to learning this new world, we will eventually build confidence through knowledge which makes it much easier to begin making change. Making small changes over time allows us to move forward without overwhelming ourselves.

Getting started

I’m going to share with you what I have learned and what has allowed me to understand my body in an incredible way. We’re all different and have different abilities and understandings. Everything I share with anyone is just information that has worked well for me as I’ve worked my way through most of the symptoms I see so many people struggle with.

If we are looking for a quick answer to this, just skim(not skip) over all of this, for now, to begin building a general idea of what you may need to learn eventually. Start with whatever sounds easiest so you can slowly make some type of progress.

• The world is toxic. If we don’t make an attempt to reduce our intake of these toxins by learning about food & water storage, cooking material and methods, beauty products, laundry products, fragrances etc etc, our system may never be able to make its way into healing mode. https://whyiodine.com/how-can-i-be-toxic/
• Some of the common foods I had been eating regularly turned out to conflict with my body in several ways. By temporarily reducing my diet to core foods that work well for most people, I was able to feel the effects that certain foods had on my system as I reintroduced them. My body cannot function properly if I am constantly consuming conflicting foods https://whyiodine.com/clean-diet/
• If my gut does not function properly, it’s like trying to drive to work with a leaking fuel tank. Hopefully by getting enough nutrition I can balance any gut dysfunction, but it’s wise to keep an eye out for common gut issues if we don’t seem to be able to move forward. If the symptoms on this page are familiar, learning how to support stomach acid and fat digestion is an important step if we’re looking for success http://sickoftired.com/stomach-acid/
• Our cells are in a race for nutrients. If a fire runs out of fuel, it goes out. If any process runs out of required materials, it cannot continue. Our cells are looking for dozens of forms of fuel and they need access to these fuels in amounts that do not overwhelm the system yet allow the system to have access to what it needs. A method called Pulse Dosing should be able to help us gain a better idea how our body is or is not working with various nutrients https://whyiodine.com/pulse-dosing/
• Now that we have a better understanding of what we’re going for, we might be able to try some of the nutrients that go with the iodine protocol. Increasing our unrefined salt intake by adding it to our food is a great way to start with all of this. My page about salt covers a lot of details of why salt is so important as well as resources to help understand more about how our body uses it. If we keep the Pulse Dosing method in mind, we should be able to judge how much salt our system wants. We tend to use a lot more unrefined salt than we assume, but don’t want to dive into it too quickly and potentially offset other electrolytes. I estimate that most people can benefit from a slow increase in unrefined salt intake by itself for at least a month. whyiodine.com/salt It’s probably wise to go very slow with salt loading at first. Some people are reading about this method and diving into daily use, but over time, a lot of people are offsetting their electrolytes by doing this whyiodine.com/salt-loading
• By eating well, we should be getting a good bit of the other electrolytes, but salt has so many uses as we start to clean our system up that we tend to need a lot more of it compared to other electrolytes. whyiodine.com/electrolytes We still want to learn how to balance our electrolytes because another important nutrient to help our system function properly is magnesium. As with all electrolytes though, if they are not all in balance, magnesium cannot function properly. If I don’t notice some kind of benefit or change in digestion as I take magnesium, I try other forms or I just slow down and potentially pause. I think its better to find a form that causes some type of benefit, but if I don’t notice anything at all as I take a nutrient, I don’t see any reason to continue taking it all the time. whyiodine.com/magnesium
• Vitamin C is a common nutrient that people tend to overdo. Taking enough vitamin C to force a bowel movement might be handy once or twice but taking that much of this stuff all the time is asking for an imbalance. If vitamin C is able to help us, we may want to focus on our whole antioxidant system which helps vitamin C work better. I have rarely noticed benefits from taking vitamin C at just about any dose. So I focus on whole food forms of vitamin C as well as different forms of C, but I don’t take much of it most of the time. Rose hip tea and rose hip powder have allowed me to feel vit C help heal something several times, liposomal with cofactors is my go-to now whyiodine.com/vitamin-c
• Selenium is an extremely important nutrient. But just like other very important nutrients, that means they are intertwined with a lot of different processes. If those processes are not able to function for several other reasons, then selenium may not be able to function right now. Due to this situation, I think it is wise to aim for foods high in selenium which should naturally contain other nutrients that our system requires as it attempts running selenium. But we may also want to ‘force’ the system a small amount with 50mcg capsules of selenomethionine. I usually use 200mcg about once a week, but 50mcg makes it easier to adjust dose. whyiodine.com/selenium

Now we’ve covered very common nutrients which may or may not be enough for our system to handle things being knocked loose by iodine. Some people start with high-dose iodine in an attempt to bypass detox symptoms. This situation is most likely possible due to iodine allowing the generation of iodolipids which wrap toxins and hormones in fat. This method may sound great, but it has several flaws with the main one being a random point at which the toxins are no longer suspended in fat and people end up with some kind of detox symptoms out of nowhere and are unable to figure out what is happening.

This is why I originally started with low and slow, and continue to do so after trying various amounts of high dose iodine. By going slow, I can feel what my body is trying to clean and repair. This has allowed me to slowly reverse engineer my nutritional deficiencies and balance my system. By listening to my body and trying small amounts of more and more nutrients I was able to do this without testing.

Some of us are so deficient in certain nutrients while being overwhelmed by various toxins that we can have a very difficult time getting started or continuing to move forward at certain points. This most likely means we have constant exposure to some type of toxicity which may include stress, trauma, lack of sleep, mold, or so many other aspects of life. If our gut is not able to digest nutrients or we have pathogens or other infections, we may have to focus our attention on resolving certain situations before we’re able to get our system flowing again with just nutrition and time.