What Does an Iodine Deficiency Have to Do with Cancer?

What Does an Iodine Deficiency Have to Do with Cancer?

Dr. David Brownstein: Let’s do the basics on people to help supply their body with the things it needs to function optimally, which is how we were designed by our Maker. If we supply the body with the right nutrients, it should do fine for a lifetime. So, I consider one of the basics iodine. Every cell in the body needs and requires iodine to function optimally. We can’t function optimally in an iodine deficient environment.

I’ve tested, along with my partners, over 6,000 patients. Over 96% were low in iodine, the vast majority significantly low in iodine. When I talk to clinicians around the country who are looking at this, they find the same numbers that I’m finding.

Dr. David Brownstein: Iodine’s main job in the body. Iodine has a lot of jobs in the body. The immune system can’t function without it. You can’t fight infections without it. But one of its main jobs is in the endocrine glands. The endocrine glands include the thyroid, the breasts, the ovaries, uterus and the prostate.

What are we having problems with out there? The thyroid, the ovaries, the uterus, breasts, and prostate. I’ve mentioned the prostate, I’ve mentioned the breasts. The fastest-growing cancer in the United States is thyroid cancer. We have uterine and ovarian cancer growing at epidemic rates. We’re having epidemic rates of problems with them.

Iodine’s main job is to maintain a normal architecture of those tissues. With iodine deficiency, the first thing that happens is you get cystic formation in the breasts, the ovaries, uterus, thyroid, prostate and, let’s throw in the pancreas in here as well, which is also increasing at epidemic rates – pancreatic cancer.

Cysts start to form when iodine deficiency is there. If it goes on longer, they become nodular and hard. If it goes on longer, they become hyperplastic tissue, which is the precursor to cancer. I say that’s the iodine deficiency continuum.

The good thing about iodine is, iodine has apoptotic properties, meaning it can stop a cancer cell from just continually dividing, dividing, dividing until it kills somebody. Iodine can stop this continuum wherever it catches it and hopefully reverse it, but at least put the brakes on what’s happening. Over 80 percent of women suffer from fibrocystic breast disease. That’s a precursor to breast cancer, which, as I said, one in seven women have. I say it’s an iodine deficiency problem, period. That’s what it is.

The CDC reports that iodine deficiency is one of the four major deficiency diseases in the world. And when you are not getting enough iodine, your defenses against cancer are weakened.