Can I start at 50mg?

One of the most common questions when starting iodine is how much to start with. There is not much info around iodine in general, so topics like this are based almost entirely on opinion.

There are two very common general concepts to starting iodine.

• Start with small or very small amounts, anywhere from 100mcg up to about 12.5mg, and work up slowly
• Start with large amounts such as 50mg or even more

There is a common idea that starting with larger amounts of iodine “bypasses detox reactions”, which sounds enticing when we are looking into getting started with this nutrient or healing in general. I will attempt to explain the issues I see with this while also explaining the concept in general.

Where does the idea of 50mg come from?

Dr. Brownstein pioneered the iodine protocol and used to recommend starting at 50mg. But he has apparently changed his stance on this and now recommends starting at 12.5mg. But something that a lot of people overlook or forget is that he works with his patients to address outstanding issues like stomach acid only as one example. So his idea of where to start is based on the idea of addressing issues before using large amounts of iodine.

In my opinion, this is why going slow is becoming a more commonly adopted idea. Most of us are still learning dozens of important factors to natural healing. It likely isn’t time to dive into large amounts of potent nutrients.

Wrapping toxins in fat

Dr. Brownstein also explains how we make something called idiolipids when we take enough iodine. This tends to require at least around 10-15mg of iodine but everyone is different and may or may not be able to do this at various levels of iodine.

As we’re generating these idiolipids, we’re wrapping toxins and hormones into these fat compounds.

This could be handy because now these toxins are not in our metabolism’s way, but we’re still walking around with toxins. The reason we have these toxins in the first place is due to the inability to remove them due to lack of nutrients due to toxins slowly breaking our cells. So knocking these toxins loose doesn’t change much whether we wrap them in fat or not, they can’t get out of our system yet.

For the most part, the idea of starting at higher doses is for the purpose of wrapping toxins in fat and “bypassing detox symptoms”. The idea of bypassing detox symptoms sounds great but unfortunately detox isn’t this simple. And wrapping toxins in fat is only temporary which mean we could drop the toxins at any random point and not realize why we do not feel right. I was an advocate for low and slow before starting iodine due to watching people mention they randomly did not feel well at all a few months into high dose iodine.

If someone starts taking 50mg of brown liquid and randomly feels the effects of a large amount of toxins being dropped into their bloodstream, they aren’t going to know how to explain what they are going through because we can barely think straight when this happens. We’re going to look for a doctor and never go near “those weird online health groups” anymore. So we don’t really hear about this unless we pay attention.

Stimulating vs solving an issue

Sometimes when something is broken, we can stimulate it back into action when we don’t have time or interest in maintaining or repairing it properly.

A few examples:

• We can smack an old TV or other device to get it working again temporarily
• A defibrillator can jolt a person back to life
• We can use coffee to make ourselves a bit more alert instead of taking more breaks, sleeping and eating better
• When a child misbehaves, we can yell at them or use some other type of stimulation. Or, we can stop feeding them petroleum based food coloring while also helping them understand the crazy world we’re in. I only use this example because I think it helps show the idea of stimulants vs solutions

The same situation can happen with large amounts of certain nutrients. Most energy drinks consist of mainly B vitamins.

Large amounts of iodine likely functions as a stimulant for a lot of people. If you think about it, dislodging a ton of toxins from cells and wrapping them in fat is a rather stimulating process. If we stop consuming large amounts of iodine, this stops happening. So it’s almost like iodine is jolting things to hold them in a forcefield, which would involve energy usage.

It’s not easy to explain or put into words but I think large amounts of iodine is stimulating us in ways. This might be ok when our system is running properly. But a lot of us have deficiencies that are limiting the amount of energy that can be passed around between various processes and reactions.

I personally do not find stimulating substances healing. One of our issues today is the fact that we are used to everything going 100mph. We need to slow down and allow our body to use energy to heal instead of go go go. There are going to be times that high dose iodine might work out better, but Imo this is only because we didn’t find natural healing till it was a bit late, or we’ve exhausted other options. But have we really exhausted other options? I point out about 100 things most people are not aware of in my videos here methylate.me

Urgency

Some of us are up against invasive measures to mitigate issues. If this is the case, it’s possible that dislodging toxins and holding them in fat can give us some extra metabolic energy to get ahead of the situation.

I think the most important aspect is understanding what high dose vs low dose might do. Without this understanding, things can become extremely confusing if they do not go as anticipated.

Unfortunately, iodine is not magic

Don’t get me wrong, iodine is a very important nutrient. I wouldn’t have spent years creating content for it otherwise. But it’s not magic.

We’re loaded with these toxins because we don’t have the nutrients required to remove them, or the cells that use those nutrients do not even exist ATM. Iodine can help us rebuild these missing cells but its going to take time and a lot of various nutrients. We seem to have a rather misguided idea that we just need to find that one missing nutrient and things will finally get better. This is sort of right but we’re made of a lot more than one or two nutrients which means the landscape is constantly changing as we progress.

It doesn’t work like some people assume

This is my opinion based on watching others or chatting with them for years.

There are plenty of people that share about their benefits from high dose iodine. But that doesn’t mean they’ve healed. A lot of people still have a laundry list of symptoms and ailments.

Most people do not understand what actual healing is, so most people might assume they are healed by something that might just be stimulating their system into gear. There is a big difference between feeling better and learning how to properly rebalance dozens of nutrients across trillions of cells.

This is likely the core of the confusion surrounding high dose iodine. But when most people do not see the big picture, its not easy to point out what individual nutrients might actually be doing. Most of the studies we look at for health info are looking at 1 or only a small handful of points of interest. This would be like looking at data on about a vehicle’s transmission because it keeps breaking, without realizing we’re causing the issue with massively oversized tires or bad weather.

Potential for reaction

I’ve touched on this topic in various ways but I think it’s important to highlight that there is an ability for a negative reaction from taking 50mg of iodine or potentially any amount of iodine.

It’s a bummer to point this out because it adds another level of what-the-heck to iodine, but it’s the reality of detox. We are a biological metabolism machine which can’t run on toxins. If we somehow push our body to detox improperly, it doesn’t feel good.

This is why you usually won’t see an experienced person telling someone how much iodine to start with because it’s much better to understand why we’re taking a certain amount of iodine. If we don’t understand why we’re taking a certain amount of a nutrient, it’s likely best to start with a very low amount and moving slowly with it till we have a better understanding of how our cells respond.

A few things to point out

We’re looking at this arbitrary number of 50mg and ignoring whether someone weighs 100 pounds or 200 pounds, or whether they are active and hydrated or not. There are endless variables.

What happens if someone is loaded with bromine, fluoride or other halogens which iodine can start moving around?

What happens if someone has a strong mercury toxicity which iodine can start moving around?

Iodine can liberate histamines. Some people have major issues with histamines whether they realize it or not. I mention a little more about histamines at whyiodine.com/allergy

I’ve written about this from other angles.