Hi Everyone,
I hope your January was smooth and blues free! I know for some it can be the hardest month after the holiday season. I have gotten a bit slow on the blog front as I have been busy with clinic and teaching but it has been all good. I love the way the naturopathic medical profession are always kept on their toes due to new discoveries all the time and constant backlash in the media.
If you have been following my twitter feeds or FB page you may have noticed a few times I have posted about iodine. Iodine is a vital mineral and also known as a halogen. It’s history is quite something from being used in war on wounds through to breast cancer. I am not going to go into detail about iodine itself but there is a fabulous book called ‘The Iodine Crisis” by Lynne Farrow if you want to know more. However, I do want to share two cases of mother and child taking iodine (I am also not referring to kelp or sea weed here but plain Lugol’s Iodine solution). Iodine is a mineral that is required by every cell in the body and may I add iodised salt is not the way to go either.
Last year in January 2014, I saw a an 8 year old boy who was referred by a colleague of mine in Australia. His basic symptoms were….
tics, where he would twitch his eyes and face every now and then
aggression towards his younger sibling and other children at school
inability to ‘concentrate’ for too long in class and was labeled as a ‘dreamer’
re-occurring chest and ear infections
The mother herself was very well read and versed in nearly every diet under the sun, some I had not even come across (keeping me on my toes). He was already following a GAPS (Gut and Psychology Syndrome) diet for nearly 2 years prior to seeing me. He was on so many supplements that she brought in a list of them as she could not carry them all to clinic. However, in these two years he had lost a lot of weight but also seemed ‘hypoglycemic’. On this diet the ‘tics’ had cleared, aggression and the inability to concentrate for a certain period of time had improved. However, after about 6 months these symptoms returned but mum continued with the diet.
The school wanted him to see an educational psychologist in case he was ‘autistic’ but the mother did not want her son to be ‘labelled’ or ‘put into a box’.
He had some wonderful homeopathic treatment from his family homeopath which helped but the ‘treatment’ did not seem to ‘hold’, in other words symptoms kept returning.
Interestingly after asking mum about her health history and her pregnancy with her son, it turned out that she was ‘hypothyroid’ and went through some post natal depression. She was put on the traditional thyroid medication, which she felt did not help much but took the ‘edge off a bit’.
It is well known that the thyroid health of the mother during pregnancy is critical for the baby’s development especially for the development of the brain, in some cases it can be a causal factor for autism.
What is autism? What are the symptoms of autism? How does one diagnose autism or being on the spectrum which can vary from what they call ‘high functioning Asperger’s through to non-functioning full on autism’? Well there is plenty of information on the internet and I am no expert in this area and for some it is just a diagnosis with no further real help and support.
I started the mother and son both on iodine, initially on a low dose and the mum felt awful on it…and needed to do some detoxing (some homeopathy and liver gall bladder support) but her son started to shift! …He started to not only gain weight and have a better appetite but once he got onto a more optimal dose of iodine, ALL his symptoms cleared, the tics, the aggression as well as the ‘dream like state’. It seemed quite miraculous but it was obvious afterwards that his body was ‘screaming out for iodine’.
He did have an asthma ‘attack’ (as it is called) on starting the iodine but I believe it was his body’s way of doing a final clear out….which was amazingly managed with homeopathy and some herbs. He has now been on iodine for 12 months and is thriving. He is no longer on the GAPS diet (which he also disliked and I think was a cause for his lack of appetite and blood sugar issues) but he continues to follow a gluten free diet.
Mum is now doing very well so much so that in January 2015 she was taken off her thyroid medication. She is on a high dose of iodine now and she has also gained some healthy weight (as she was the typical adrenal looking type, slim and wired and in her own words a ‘control’ freak), increase in energy, no more signs of fibromyalgia (muscle fatigue/aches all over randomly) and continues to support her body through healthy eating and nutritional supplementation.
It has been wonderful to see what a simple amazing mineral can do in an era when information of such healing minerals has been lost.
Please note this was not iodine in sea kelp or sea weed etc. It is Lugol’s that contains iodine and iodide, both are key for optimal health. …more in Lynne Farrow’s book.
We live in times that requires us to be responsible for our health. There is plenty of information on the internet as well as in books and elsewhere that was not available before. Even my role as a practitioner has changed and it is inspiring and exciting to be around to experience all this…!
To health!