Hey ,

Sure, this can be iodine deficiency, but there are other possibilities as well. The first thing your friend can do is estimate how much iodine is in her diet.

We need 150 mcg per day, but people who do not eat processed foods or a low-salt diet might miss their daily quota easily. By the way, you can find a list of how much iodine is in foods here.

Iodine toxicity can happen when you consume more than 1100 mcg. This is hard to do with foods only. The supplements that I know of are much lower in dosing as well, so taking a supplement, in general, is safe.

If you would like to test for iodine to be sure, this is also possible. I recommend watching this video here.

But developing a slow thyroid can be done in several ways. For optimal thyroid hormone metabolism, we need iron, selenium, zinc, vitamin D, and magnesium as well.

Hashimoto Thyroiditis is an autoimmune disease that leads to a slow thyroid as well. On top of that, stress hormones can all on their own cause a slow thyroid as well.

If you would like to learn more about the signs and symptoms of mineral deficiencies click here for Magnesium, here for zinc, here for iron and here for iodine. Maybe your friend can recognize some other symptoms. This can help to point in the right direction.

If she experiences the typical slow thyroid symptoms (fatigue, concentration problems, hard to lose weight or weight gain, losing hair and/or thinning of the outer part of the eyebrows, constipation, depression, etc) I would recommend doing a full thyroid panel:
• TSH
• fT4 & fT3
• Reverse T3
• Thyroid Peroxidase Antibodies (TPO) & Thyroglobulin Antibodies

I hope this helps!

Hi  – I’ll also add that supplementing with selenium (through food therapy or supplement) before taking iodine is a good idea for those with autoimmune thyroid disease.

 generally yes, but as always, the best way to know what’s best for your unique needs is to test both iodine, selenium and thyroid antibodies. I share how to test for iodine here.

Hey ,

You for sure can try supplementing with Iodine. I just mentioned the 1100 mcg to let you know that supplementing with Iodine, in general, is very safe (unless your friend uses other supplements containing iodine!)

And yes, you can take iodine without supplementing selenium if there is no autoimmune thyroid disease.

Are you referring to the RBC Iodine test? Or to the iodine patch test? (For the serum Iodine test we don’t have functional ranges because the marker isn’t considered that reliable)

RBC Iodine
Because the RBC Iodine test isn’t everywhere available this one is harder to order. Honestly, I think RBC Iodine is a better marker than the urine iodine test. But since most iodine (70-80%) is stored in the thyroid gland, I would personally go for the Iodine Patch Test. Since most iodine is stored in the thyroid gland, it might be more sensitive to a lack of nutritional iodine.

24- hour urine test
The 24- hour urine test is a little less convenient, but if the body has enough iodine, we would like to see 90% of the iodine excreted via urine. Everything lower is an indication of iodine deficiency (you can find more information in this study.

And here’s more information about the Patch test (here’s the video to see how to execute it), which is a self-test.

Again, if you think that a low-iodine diet is at play, just use an iodine supplement and see what happens.

If nothing happens, it could still be a subclinical hypothyroid state. It just wasn’t caused by an iodine deficiency.

I hope this answered your questions!

Hi  – it usually takes a minimum of 1 month to start noticing a difference with normal/moderate intake, but of course that all depends on the dosage and therapies being used.

I encourage you to watch this short video on how to correct an iodine deficiency using a combination of food therapy and supplements.

Hope this helps.