Too Much Iodine Can Be as Bad as Too Little

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In this study of Boston vegans, concerns were raised about their iodine status, but one vegan’s iodine level was so high, they were excluded from the study. How is that possible? They were consuming kelp. As I’ve written in my iodine recommendations for a decade now, unless your neighborhood nuclear plant just melted down, no kelp—it just has too much iodine. And if you find yourself in Namibia, you might want to stay away from paddle weed as well. Other than that, though, and staying away from hijiki, which just has too much arsenic, sea vegetables are an excellent source of iodine.

There have been a few recent case reports of iodine toxicity in breastfeeding women eating soup made from kelp, also known as kombu, which explains this: “Iodine toxicity from soy milk.” Why? because it was made with kombu. But if you just read kombu on a label, would you think anything of it? Well, we should. There was a worldwide recall, complete with headlines like: “Café raid seizes banned soy milk.” A black market trade was operating in the banned soy milk, even though they faced half million dollar fines. That particular brand has since been reformulated without kombu.

The other way you can get in trouble with your thyroid gland is if you eat too many of them: “Hyperthyroidism caused by excessive consumption of sausages. After tests of the sausage revealed levels one might find in a dose of a thyroid hormone drug, like Synthroid, they “concluded that this patient had an exogenous hyperthyroidism caused by excessive intake of thyroid-containing sausages.”

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Image Credit: Joi Ito via flickr. Image has been modified.