Podcast episode in JJ Virgin's "Ask the Health Expert" series answering a listener question about iodine and breast health. The episode mixes sponsor ads with an expert interview: Dr. Alan Christensen (naturopathic endocrinologist) explains that high-dose iodine often reduces painful symptoms of fibrocystic breast disease for roughly 60–70% of women, but he argues this effect is not evidence of a simple iodine deficiency. He describes the sodium-iodide symporter (NIS) present in breast tissue (especially active during lactation and in abnormal tissue), notes that breast cancer cells concentrate iodine more than healthy tissue, and cites observational findings (including Japanese data) showing higher urinary iodine in women with breast cancer (about three times higher on average). The host closes with subscription/production notes.
Questions this episode answers
Approximately 60–70%.
About three times higher on average.
Chapters
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What about Iodine and Breast Health? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition expert and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Alex from Instagram asks, what about iodine and breast health? Hey, it's JJ and today I've got my longtime friend Dr. Alan Christensen, also known as Dr. C, with me to answer this question. He's the perfect person to do it. He's been diving deep into all things iodine and talks about it in his latest book, the Thyroid Reset Diet. He's a board certified naturopathic endocrinologist and a New York Times bestselling author and big time athlete too. In fact, one sport that he does that I don't know anyone else who does. Mountain Unicycling. Yep, really? We'll be right back with this answer, so stay with us.
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This is a really good question. And where this idea came from was from the observation that high dose iodine often improves the painful symptoms of fibrocystic breast disease. There were several papers that demonstrated this back in the early 90s and the mid-90s. And from this, some argued that perhaps these women had fibrocystic breast disease because of an iodine deficiency. And we also know that breast tissue does concentrate iodine. It can. There's a pump in the thyroid that concentrates thyroid. I'm sorry, that concentrates iodine inside the thyroid from the blood levels. And this is called the sodium iodide symporter. Sodium symbol is na, so it's called NIS for short. So the thyroid has nis, but the breast tissue may also have NIS as well. And it turns out the purpose of that is to concentrate iodine in breast milk. So iodine is in the blood, but often in amounts that are far too low to serve the roles where it's needed. And yeah, babies need to get iodine in their breast milk, so the breast tissue concentrates that. Now, with fibrocystic breast disease, yes, iodine lowers the symptoms for about 60, perhaps 70% of women, but not because it's treating a deficiency. So nutrients can help when they're treating a deficiency, but they can also work in ways that are unrelated to their role as nutrients. You know, if I went out in the yard and I snagged my leg on a thorn and I got it infected, it's plausible that I could take a liquid iodine, like a betadine, and pour that on my leg and help the infection. But that wouldn't mean that I got the infection from an iodine deficiency. It just meant that iodine was a useful drug in that state to lower the infectious risk. And it's a similar Thing with fibrocystic breast disease. So fibrocystic breast disease causes symptoms mostly from sodium retention in breast cells. And it turns out that flooding the body with iodine stops the uptake of water because you're shutting down those cells that would pull it in. So it's kind of acting like a diuretic on the breast tissue and lowering symptoms. Now, that idea has been also extrapolated to make people think that iodine is protective for breast cancer. And that's been coupled with the observation that Japanese women who can have a higher iodine intake generally have quite low risks of breast cancer. Here's some things we've learned, though. It turns out that there's a continuum of how much breast cells take up iodine. And when women are not lactating and they've got healthy breast tissue, that iodine pump is dormant. It's not really doing anything. The breast tissue is not concentrating iodine. When women are lactating, there's a small amount of concentration that goes on. When women have fibrocystic breast disease, there's a moderate amount of concentration. And when women have breast cancer, they have the highest amount of iodine concentration. So there is a connection, but not in the ways that you might have thought. And Japanese women, it's been studied, those who have breast cancer have been compared to those who do not in terms of their iodine levels. And those that have breast cancer have, on average, three times the iodine in their urine of Japanese women without breast cancer. And this has shown to be the case in other parts of the world as well. In fact, there's even been talk about using iodine levels as a way to screen for breast cancer risk. And there's also been thoughts about using iodine itself, radioactive iodine, as a treatment for breast cancer, because breast cancer is so hungry for iodine. So, yeah, breast cancer feeds on iodine. It often has a preferential need for it, and that's because of that NIS transporter. So women are often, when they hear my work about the benefits of lowering iodine, they think about conflicting things. They've heard saying that you need iodine to protect your breast tissue. And thankfully, it's just not true that your breast tissue will do just fine as long as you're maintaining normal thyroid function. And with iodine, that's quite easy to do. It's hard to get deficient. If anything, the data suggests that unhealthy breast tissue responds strongly to iodine, and a higher intake may even be a risk factor for breast cancer.
This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetoj.com.
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