iodine crisis
This week, we are pleased to interview Lynne Farrow author of The Iodine Crisis. Lynne is a whistle blower, journalist, researcher, former college professor and speaker. Her own experience with breast cancer led to the discovery that someone had stolen a medicine with proven benefits reaching back 15,000 years. A medicine that not only helped her, but has helped millions.

She currently serves as the Director of Breast Cancer Choices, Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to the scrutinizing and reporting of the evidence for breast cancer procedures and treatments.

Lynne is also the editor of IodineResearch.com, where she has compiled materials for both beginning and advanced iodine investigators.

Why is there so much iodine deficiency? What are the applications of iodine therapy? Should I supplement with iodine? Which is the best way to take iodine? What troubleshooting should I expect? We'll cover all of these questions and much more.

Join us Fridays at 10 am EST and 4 pm CET for the Health and Wellness Show, where we expose the lies and emphasize the truth about health in our modern world. With us, as always, will be resident animal health expert Zoya, with her weekly Pet Health Segment.

Running Time: 01:51:00

Download: MP3


Here's the transcript of the show:

Jonathan: Welcome everybody. Good morning. Today is Friday, February 26, 2016. My name is Jonathan. I'll be your host for today. Joining me in our virtual studio here from all across the planet we have Doug, Tiffany, Erica and Gaby. Elliott is busy with school work so we wish him luck and the best of learning capacity that he can muster right now. Hey you guys.

All: Hello's.

Jonathan: So today we have a special treat for you. We have an interview that we recorded last week with Lynne Farrow who is the author of The Iodine Crisis and I will spare the introduction of Lynne because Gaby does that in the interview. She conducted the interview and did a great job. Do you guys have anything else that you want to say before we lead into this? I know we've all been doing the iodine protocol to different levels but does anyone have anything to lead up to the interview that you want to mention?

Gaby: I just want to say that we encourage discussion and questions. We can address them at the end of the interview.

Doug: Yeah, that's a good idea. If people have questions they can put them in the chat. I guess we won't be taking any callers during the interview but once it's over maybe we could?

Jonathan: Yeah, definitely. So if you want to call in, please wait until the interview is done. The US number for that is 718-508-9499 or you can visit the Blogtalk Radio page and you can call in via Skype on our Blogtalk Radio page. So we encourage people to do that if you want to call in after the interview or leave questions in the chat while it's going on and we can address those afterwards. Without further ado, let's go to the interview with Lynne Farrow and we will be back to discuss after this.

Gaby: Welcome to the Health and Wellness Show at SOTT.net. Today in our virtual studio we're joined by Jonathan, Tiffany and Erica. And today we'll have Lynne Farrow, author of The Iodine Crisis: What You Don't Know About Iodine Can Wreck Your Life. Lynne Farrow is a whistleblower. She's also a journalist, researcher, former college professor and speaker. Her own experience with breast cancer led to the discovery that someone had stolen medicine with proven benefits reaching back 15,000 years; a medicine that not only helped her but has helped millions.

She currently serves as the director of Breast Cancer Choices, a non-profit organization dedicated to the scrutinizing and reporting of the evidence for breast cancer procedures and treatment. Lynne is also the editor of the, IodineResearch.com website where she has compiled materials for both beginning and advanced iodine investigators. From obscure studies on iodine and the brain to pieces for the beginner looking for the widely accepted iodine protocol, the Iodine Research website is a wealth of information. Welcome Lynne to our show! We're so glad to have you here today.

Lynne: Well thank you! I'm excited to have a discussion about iodine.

Gaby: Well actually, before iodine, I wanted to mention something because I read your book last year and I practice now mainstream medicine and I've been familiarized with it since 1996 more or less and I have to say that I found it very inspiring to see how you questioned the breast cancer treatment guidelines and how so many people benefited as you shared your research on iodine. I had never encountered anyone who questioned those guidelines as you did. So I would like you to talk more about it; what was your experience with the medical field and the doctors who suggested that you should get this or that therapy for breast cancer?

Lynne: Yes, I welcome the opportunity to discuss that. I know when you're sick and you're desperate, certainly when you have a cancer diagnosis, you assume that everybody that's gone to school for many years has the truth and that there's no arguing amongst the people that have presented this information or the treatment guidelines. So I didn't know that there were treatment guidelines. I just thought that they knew the truth because they had been educated.

And then I started to proceed as I would if for example, I was buying a car. I would ask certain information about the car. Is there a consumer's report on this? Is there anything in writing about this? Just simple common sense questions. And what I found is when I was asking the surgeon, which is sort of the first person you see after you get a diagnosis, when she recommended radiation for example I said, "Is there anything I can read on that?" and they said, "Well that's just standard" and that was the end of the discussion.

So I tried to look up some other things about that and when I looked up in the medical literature, which is very easy for the average person to find on, pubmed.net. It's the national library of medicine. I knew they were going to be a little difficult to read but I figured my life is at stake here, I think I should look at this stuff. So I went through it and the last sentence of the radiation summaries said, "This does not offer any survival value". And I thought well then why are they giving it to me?!

So I learned just to ask those kinds of questions. I learned there are some very basic questions you can ask, the first one being, before you ask anything else is, "Is there any survival value to this and is there any overall survival value to this treatment?" And sometimes they will just give the results for people dying of breast cancer, not dying of other things. For example with radiation, if it's your right breast or left breast it doesn't matter. There is an impact on the heart. So some people may not die of breast cancer but they may die of cardiovascular disease.

But anyway I used that as an example because I went back to the doctor and said, "No, I'm not going to take this. There's a local recurrence benefit to radiation but I'm not going to live any longer if I take this." So then I was emboldened by my information and I started to look at absolutely everything they were doing and I found there was just not much benefit in most of the things that were recommended. And I just got, as I say, emboldened and it's something anybody can do if you're willing to ask your doctor where his or her information comes from.

Gaby: That is pretty amazing because it is really very basic questions, but most people by the time they get diagnosed with breast cancer and given that label, they don't have the inner strength even to ask basic questions. They are not raised by culture or education to even have critical thinking or do their own research. They just accept what is being offered to them without any questions at all. So do you have any recommendations for people that are really programmed just to follow the line, so-to-speak? Is there something that people could do just to realize that they could even actually ask that simple question of "What is the survival rate for this?"

Lynne: I think that's an important question you ask. Culturally we're raised to just take what people say and it's rude to ask a doctor, "Where does that information come from" or "What's the survival value of the treatment recommendation." But if you are shy about these kinds of things - and I don't blame anybody for being this way - you can write it on a piece of paper, almost have a script when you go in to see your doctor for recommendations and say, "Someone told me to get these answers." You can say sort of, "I wouldn't ask for myself, but my uncle Joe said to get this answer" or something like that. So then you're not put on the spot.

But your goal is to walk away from the appointment with something in writing that shows any recommendation has what the overall survival value is and what the benefit is, exactly what the benefit of this particular treatment is. Because I've been in situations where people that I've been in contact with will say, "Well I went to my doctor and she said there was a 40% benefit". Benefit, what does that mean exactly in specifics? Well the person clearly walked out of the meeting, the consultation without having any idea of what the benefit was because she didn't know to ask benefit. So, if you make a little script for yourself, a very short script and ask the questions; "Somebody told me to get this information during my research" and you're your physician understand you're researching this issue; you're not there just to take orders.

Gaby: That's a good one! I like it! I'm going to pass that around. It's incredible because it is as simple as that but people don't realize that they are entitled to have their questions answered, to have clarification. And when people though as programmed as they are, realize that certainly it is a possibility, it is very empowering. So I think yes, that was a very important point that I wanted to bring up.

Lynne: I think Gaby, it is probably one of the most important points because if you're not going to get information from people you're can't move forward with any sort of confidence. And one of the things that brought up is people say, "Well I'm going to get the surgery and then I'll ask question later" and they wind up having their lymph nodes dissected as part of the surgery without knowing what the value of getting lymph nodes dissected or how it will give information to the treatment. So that's one of the things that got me started out on researching breast cancer because the secretary in our college department had had her lymph nodes removed as a diagnostic procedure.

You're removing something out of your armpit, next to your breast and what happens is it has a 49% chance of giving you lymphedema which is a lifelong, very crippling disease. They did lymph node surgery in the old days to decide which patients would have chemotherapy and which patients wouldn't. But now even though we have these wonderful tests that show exactly what the tumour biology is, they're still removing the lymph nodes and it's completely unnecessary, has zero survival value, even if you have cancer in those lymph nodes it's not going to make you live a day longer.

Now this isn't something I make up. This is not alternative medicine. This is just reviewing the conventional literature. But it's one of those things that have become customary and the surgeon will say, "Well it's just standard. That's what we do." But it's not beneficial. So that's something to really look out for. Before anybody even gets into the surgery phase, please research the surgery itself because it's not just a mastectomy or a lumpectomy which is a smaller version, you're just taking essentially a large section around where the cancer is. They will also look at your lymph nodes and that has no survival value whatsoever.

And people say - I was just in a conversation with somebody this morning - and they'll say, "Well it makes sense to have the lymph nodes out if they have cancer". Well you have to examine your premise then if you think that's going to help because in this case it doesn't help survival at all, even though you're leaving some miniscule amount of cancer in your body, the lymph nodes are functioning in some way that don't make the cancer spread or don't contribute to your survival or lack of survival. And the downside is this terrible, crippling lymphedema. If you get that it's just awful. If you've ever had anybody in your family that's had it, you would know.

Gaby: Yeah. It is very important because most often I see people that go into these treatments, these surgeries and they don't even know what the surgery consists of. They're given the informed consent and they just don't want to read it but if they realize how empowering it is just to find out, even basic concepts, they will have a better prognosis from my point of view because they will have more inner power which is part of the recovering process. It reminds me of a story that I read about a surgeon, Bernie Siegel. I don't know if you know him.

Lynne: Yes.

Gaby: He's the author of Love, Medicine and Miracles who was saying how those patients with breast cancer that were giving a lot of trouble to the nurses and doctors had a better prognosis then those who just went along and were very compliant, those ones had a worse prognosis.

Lynne: Yes, I know the study you're talking about. The cancer doctors were asked to rate their patients in terms of being nice on a scale of one to ten, one being the nicest, ten being the pain in the ass patients and the pain in the ass patients lived longer than the obedient, "How are you doctor" type patients. So I think that there's definitely something to what Bernie Siegel says, that once you take control, you have a much better advantage, not just emotionally and intellectually but actually physically. It's the pain in the ass patients, the worst patients in terms of getting along with, they survive longer. It's fascinating.

Gaby: Yeah it really is.

Tiffany: I've noticed that also, if I could jump in. I've noticed that the pain in the ass patients get the better care too because they're totally on top of everything that's going on and all of the nursing staff knows it so they're minding their p's and q's and those pain in the ass patients do get the better care.

Lynne: You know I think you're right because when I went in to have my biopsy I didn't want local anaesthesia. I wanted the equivalent of novocaine what they would give in a local context. They just put up a terrible fight about this and they brought the head of anaesthesia down and finally I got what I wanted because I said, "Get me my clothes" when they started to give me an argument about local anaesthesia versus the general anaesthesia. I said, "Get me my clothes!" Well, I immediately got the local anaesthesia because they could see the operating room costs going out the window, my insurance - somebody was going to pay for the doctor to do this operation that would have gone out the window. So you can get what you want if they know you're serious. And "Get me my clothes" is one of those magic phrases that seems to get people what they want.

Gaby: Oh yes.

Lynne: You can be on a gurney being wheeled into the O.R. and if you're not 100% sure of what you want, and communicating it, just turn around, threaten to just walk out and it's amazing what you can get.

Gaby: Yes, speaking from the heart, literally.

Lynne: Yes.

Gaby: And tell us Lynne, aside from iodine research, why we don't know about iodine? Practically nothing at all, do you have any ideas?

Lynne: Yes. Since I was diagnosed with breast cancer and was looking for all sorts of therapies that had been used in the past and just reviewing the literature, I would go to medical conferences and I ran into somebody, Dr. Sherri Tenpenny who said, "Have you looked at iodine for the breasts?" And I said, "Well I've heard about it for fibrocystic breast disease but I don't think that has anything to do with breast cancer." Well all of a sudden I was in a leap and I thought "Well I'll look at this for a couple of weeks to see what she's talking about" and I looked at the conventional medical literature and there was a lot on iodine. So that sort of gave me confidence. I was a huge sceptic about this but my question was exactly yours Gaby. Why don't we know about this?

And then I found out after the two weeks turned into two months and two years of research, not just the medical literature anymore. I had gone back to actual medical textbooks and even into archaeologists and even anthropologists, all sorts of ways that I could document how iodine had been used. What I found out is that both in 1948 and 1961 there was an article published by somebody from the National Cancer Institute. It's now called the Wolff-Chaikoff effect. He said iodine shuts down the thyroid and essentially is poisonous to the body. And because it came from such an influential person, it was taken and taught in medical schools. And so most doctors are told that more than a milligram of iodine could be lethal, which is wrong! And what happened is the checks and balances in the medical literature is very poor. Nobody replicated the study. There was a Chinese group that did actually but it didn't count because they thought, "It came from China so what would they know?" So the poor Chinese article just got discarded and the Wolff-Chaikoff effect, because of the influential researchers that wrote it, became the dominant theory. So anybody who's in medical school now or since 1948 will have learned this false information.

So that's why you don't know about it. But if you go back before that and you look at the medical books, it's full; there are just thousands of medical books that talk about iodine. It was a standard of care. It was in the Merck manual. There were medical conferences and expos in England so I was able to document this back. At one time there were 1,300 iodine formulations that were patented and used.

But it was so quick because we're not historically sensitive or aware in our medicine. It's always the hot new thing in the paper and iodine got lost and they essentially I say, "Who stole iodine?" It was stolen by this publication and the reception of this publication, the Wolff-Chaikoff publication. So it was my job I felt, as a medical detective I was going to go back and resurrect every way iodine had been used from as far back as I could chronicle. And in my research I thought, "Wow! I've got it back to the 1800's. This is wonderful!" And then I went back further and I realized that people had been burning sponges - sponges I guess is a form of seaweed, so there's a lot of iodine in it. They would be using that for goiter, probably since the middle ages.

And then before that the Egyptians used certain seaweeds for breast cancer. And then I found in the archaeology literature they found a site only a few years ago in lower Chile 15,000 years ago had a medical hut where their healer prepared various kinds of medicinal seaweed products that were used and are still used in Chile in that area because the indigenous people would use it.

So I just tracked this all back and it seemed to refute everything that we'd been told about iodine.

Gaby: Huh! That's pretty amazing. And can you tell us some of the applications; where was iodine being used in the past before the 1940's came and it was then deleted from history?

Lynne: Well you know it's amazing and there are lists in the medical books. They would even inject it. If somebody had an ovarian cyst for example, they would give them iodine but they would also inject it into the abdomen to try and give local access to the iodine. This is in the 1800's when it was like the golden age of iodine. That was being used. Then it was used for arthritis. It was used for obviously the breasts. It was used for prostate disease. I was even able to get some iodine suppositories that were used for benign prostate disease and sold. So this is very well documented. This isn't just here and there. People published beautifully in the 1800's and early 1900's.

It was used for psoriasis and varicose veins. It was used for libido. Iodine was just the first go-to thing. If you couldn't figure out what was wrong with somebody, you'd try iodine. There's even in medical schools 70 years ago they had a little poem that boils down to, "If you don't know where and why try the SKI" in other words try iodine.

But those are some of the applications and obviously the breasts, the prostate and the brain. We have to remember that iodine deficiency is the leading cause of mental retardation in the world, according to the World Health Organization. But even if it doesn't lead to mental retardation, just your cognitive abilities are so determined by the iodine in your brain. It's essential. I can see it even in the adults around me that start taking iodine. They are just much quicker. And it works fairly quickly on the brain whereas other things like endometriosis and ovarian cysts might take nine months or something.

Gaby: And what was your experience when you first started iodine? What did you notice?

Lynne: Well I had been taking a little bit of Lugol's for about a year, but for totally unrelated things and I really didn't understand what iodine was before I started researching. I thought it was something that just killed bacteria that was an anti-microbial. But then when I started looking into it I found there was an Iodine loading test which is a urine test to test your iodine and in order to take that test you get up in the morning and you take 50 mg of iodine. So I took that and I expected nothing. I was going to be in the house that day to collect urine. I expected nothing. And within an hour-and-a-half my brain just popped. We call it the boing because several other people have found the same thing. Not everybody. I don't know whether it's because you're so iodine deficient that it wakes you up first or whether the iodine goes to the place that needs it first, but I had had such terrible brain fog during the course of my life and especially in the last 10 years before taking iodine, that this was a huge boost to me.

Gaby: And today, sadly, we have a severe iodine deficiency. Can you tell us a little bit about the factors that contribute to this?

Lynne: Yes, I'd be glad to. That's one of my favourite things because my book is based on what I call the perfect storm of iodine deficiency. The reason we have such a huge iodine deficiency now that probably wasn't that bad 30 years ago is that iodine consumption is down by 50%. Why is it down? Well it was removed from baked goods and flour goods that used to be fortified with potassium iodate, which is a form of iodine and they took that out in the 70's and replaced it in flour with something called potassium bromate, which is a bromide and bromide and iodide are in the same family and they compete with each other. They're in the halogen family and they compete with each other so when the iodine was taken out, that was bad enough. But to add an anti-iodine fortification or a dough conditioner to the flour, it just purged the iodine.

So then you have this huge drop in iodine and whatever iodine you have left from say, seafood, the bromate in the flour is just going to purge it out. So there are two elements of the perfect storm; iodine is removed and bromate is added. So that brings the iodine in our diet, in our nutritional availability way down. But at the same time - and this is a huge part, this is the third component of the perfect storm - the bromide fire retardants and pesticides were introduced in the '70's as well.

Year by year after that you see thyroid disease epidemic just shoots up in those 30 years, 182% increase in thyroid cancer. Breast and prostate cancer are way up. It went from in the 1970's one in 23 women might get breast cancer. Now it's one in seven or one in eight, depending on your area. Iodine deficiency is an underlying cause of many illnesses but the underlying cause of the underlying cause is our bombardment with bromides in the form of fire retardants and pesticides. It's in food too, but not as much in food as the bombardment with fire retardants and pesticides.

Gaby: I didn't know how much this was a problem until I started iodine myself and started with severe bromide detox symptoms. Can you tell us a little bit about these detox symptoms and how can we counteract them?

Lynne: Yes. We have a group on Facebook called, Iodine Workshop and one of the main things we do there is if people become very sensitive to taking iodine and they get detox symptoms, the iodine workshop group will walk people through how to deal with that. I do that in my book too but some people need some tweaking so the online group is a big help.

The first thing is to try to understand what's going on, that when you take iodine, you're blasting off this sedating poison off the receptors because they share a receptor with iodine. So the iodine is going to move the bromide into your bloodstream. And you might feel nothing or you might feel sleepy or a little adrenalin rush or you might get a headache. Your nose might run. You might get itchy, that kind of thing.

There are several ways to attack the detox and one of them is just salt loading protocol which is measuring a certain amount of salt into a certain amount of water and essentially trying to escort the bromide out of the body this way so it goes through the kidneys and urine and you have less bromide in your bloodstream. You want to get that out as fast as possible.

We have other ways you can do that too if that doesn't work, Alka-Seltzer Gold. That's a rescue remedy you use when the detox is not working with the salt. That helps as well. But people don't start low enough is the general conclusion that I've reached. Some people can start at 50 mg and just do fine, have no symptoms whatsoever, or they might do the first day 50, feel great, take it the second day and all of a sudden not feel well. So start low, go slow is what we suggest. And if you're getting symptoms, you're just taking too much. The strategy we found is better to sort of work up slowly if you get any effect whatsoever.

Gaby: Yeah, that makes sense.

Lynne: What detox effects did you have?

Gaby: Well I had a few strange pimples. It was really acne-like and that's why I knew that I had an issue with bromide. But also mood changes, it was like PMS on steroids, so I increased my salt loading but I was really surprised because I've been doing detox throughout the years with far infrared saunas, vitamin C, and I thought I had a good handle more or less, on it but when it started with one single drop of Lugol's and it was a very low percentage of Lugol's iodine, I had these symptoms and I was like, "Whoa!"

Lynne: Yes, that's fairly common and zinc may help if the symptoms show up on your skin. Zinc may help that too. I'm going to put that in the next revision of my book to try to add what we do for people who are just having problems. The dark moods, that is really a sign of too much, but it also can be a sign of iodine withdrawal and that doesn't sound like what was going on in your case. People will be feeling good for a couple of days and then they'll slow down. One of the things that people often do is put a dab of Lugol's on their thyroid and if that works, if that pulls you out of the mood, then you know you're in withdrawal, it isn't necessarily detox.

Gaby: Hm. Interesting.

Tiffany: I've had some symptoms too. I've had the back rash, the runny nose, the itchy eyes, that really irritable mood, excessive urination that wasn't even helped with the salt water. I notice in the last few days I've tried the Iodoral, the pills and I notice that I don't have the same symptoms as when I take the Lugol's or the liquid iodine. Have you noticed any difference between people taking the Iodoral or the Lugol's? It seems gentler to me.

Lynne: Well it is digested at a different place but I think that the strength is not always clear, what's in the tablets and what's in the liquid. You may be getting less iodine. One of the forms of iodine that's in the Iodoral may be less. It may be more potassium iodide than iodine. But go with whatever you can work up slowly with and you feel comfortable with. But yeah, people have favourites, one over the other, but it's not clear why one is working. And then some people just swear by the Lugol's over the Iodoral and vice versa.

Erica: Muscle pain in the neck mainly and then in the low back region, would that be a detox symptom as well?

Lynne: Yes! Neck pain is one of the things that have come up. But also I know when I first started, I started limping and I didn't think it was in any way related and I was even calling my neighbour who had just had a hip replacement and I said, "How fast did the arthritis in your hip come on?" and had no idea that there was a relationship. For sure, because I took a 2-day break and miraculously my hip pain went away. But yeah, joint aches and that kind of thing, when it gets like that you have to back off.

Tiffany: I wanted to bring up another thing that I noticed. You said earlier that peoples' cognitive abilities get a little sharper. I notice I can remember names and numbers a little bit easier. And a bunch of us in the house were taking it and we joked and called it, "high-odine" because there's this feeling - we were all super giddy at one point. Of course it didn't last because the kind of depressive thoughts kicked in but I wonder is the "high-odine" feeling a detox symptom.

Lynne: No! I think it's a point at which you've blasted the bromide off the receptors and the iodine is getting in. It may be transitory. The bromide might come roaring back, but if you get that sweet spot - also name recall, word retrieval, that kind of thing has been reported in many people. And also you get impatient if you're around people that are not taking iodine because they can never remember peoples' names or places or that kind of thing.

Erica: I have a question on that as well. I quite taking the iodine for a few weeks and then I started again at five drops of the 12% Lugol's and I felt like I lost my memory completely. I had the exact opposite effect.

Lynne: Well if you're blasting the bromide off the receptors and that gets in your bloodstream you will feel sedated or sad or just brain fog. Brain fog is one of the worst problems. I personally found brain fog to be a terrible problem. But yes, that's temporary and that should wear off. Or take the salt water and see how that goes.

Gaby: In my case I've been with iodine since November and I've gotten to a point where I have found that I do great with six drops of 3% Lugol's every two days or one day on, one day off and so forth. And I've noticed a lot of emotional stability right now and we're only in February. So I wanted to know if you have testimonials, like in your case, what happened after a few months of Lugol's. Is it really getting better? Does it continue to get better and better?

Lynne: Yes, it gets better and better. Your body has to get used to it. Don't forget you've been essentially on an iodine famine for years and years. It's a bounty where your body is finally getting the nutrition that it needs. You've probably have done damage to organs as well so you're going to try to repair damaged organs, if they can be repaired. So certain things, like ovarian cysts or other things are going to take some time. But one of the things about your cognition and your emotional ability is that you will just begin to train your body as to what to expect and the staggered doses that you suggest, a day on, a day off, I've also found that that's very helpful.

Previous to that we said pulse dose, which is five days on, two days off and people almost feel euphoric when they go into the off-days. That's been reported. But another set of people will go into withdrawal, like on the second day of the pulse dose where you're not taking anything, and then they'll change their mind and they'll go back on it. But your body will get trained to have a certain level of iodine and to understand that the iodine is there to stay, that it's not a compensatory mechanism to try to balance, expecting a famine around the corner, which you would expect people to do over the thousands of years. The thyroid gland is there to trap iodine and it will swell if it doesn't have enough iodine to create more tissues to have more traps essentially as the flies through the thyroid gland, it will trap the iodine in the bloodstream. So that's a good famine mechanism. Goiter is a really great compensatory method for your body to conserve iodine. But your body really doesn't know that iodine is not just a tourist in your thyroid gland, that you're committed to re-nourishing yourself and getting completely stable.

Jonathan: Is there a saturation point that can be reached or are we just doomed to be in a constant struggle with the pervasive bromide toxicity?

Lynne: There's a urine test that will measure saturation, but you're always going to be exposed, even if you're taking a lot of clean food and everything like that. You're going to be exposed to an anti-iodine which is bromide unfortunately, since the 1970's. So it's not like you can stop taking it anymore than you could stop taking water. And the seas are a mess because of the dumping of the pesticides and oil spill, clean up chemicals and all sorts of chemicals that are in the sea that have started to get sucked up by the seaweed. But there's no way around this. I'd like to say the seas will clean themselves up and we won't have pesticides and fire retardants in the ocean but it doesn't look like it's going to happen in our lifetime.

To go back to your question, is there a point where you're perfectly fine? You will get to a point where you've been on it for a couple of years and you're confident or you're just experimenting with your dose and that's an improvement. My feeling is that the main thing you want to do is try to get stable but you have to be patient in your body's cycle and the way it learns to just integrate iodine into every cell in your body.

Erica: I have another question.

Gaby: Go ahead.

Erica: A few people reported what would seem to be irregular weight gain as a result of doing the iodine protocol after several months. Is that something that you've seen in your patients or people that you talk with on your forum?

Lynne: Yes. Most people tend to lose weight as they go along but if you take too much too fast, your body has a mechanism for storing toxins in the fat cells and that's one of the things that we try to work on. It's not a race so if you're taking too much you may gain weight. Only a small percentage of people gaining weight take too much iodine. But you just have to go slower, is what I've seen is the only solution.

Tiffany: Yeah, I think I experienced that when I was taking high doses. I had the excessive urination but at the same time massive water retention.

Lynne: Yeah, it's like a barrel. I've had it too, where I try to go up, even after all these years I'll try to go up a little higher and in two days I have this barrel around my waist. Then it takes some time, and it does go away but your body is kicking and screaming that there's still bromide in there that needs to get out.

Tiffany: Some people have reported increased hunger too. Is that something that you've found Lynne?

Lynne: I'm always hungry. But I haven't noticed any difference in that, but you're right it has been reported. Basically it's often reported on people who just start and your metabolism is revved up. Your thyroid has been starving and so once it gets iodine, once it gets nourishment, your whole metabolism speeds up. So it may be something like that. Even people on thyroid hormones - which are doing nothing for them - they take iodine and all of a sudden the metabolism works the way it should work.

Also you have to watch, with some people because the metabolism goes up, their ferritin levels drop and they have to take something called Floradix to try and get their iron back if it's proved to be deficient. But a lot of these are just the shocks that you're putting your body into with this bounty of nutrition.

Gaby: Interesting. I also gained a little bit of weight but I felt like it was water retention. I was releasing a lot of toxins. I was also wondering would it be normal for a person to report that they are still having a lot of detox symptoms after a year? Could it be?

Lynne: If they're still having detox symptoms after a year or even a month, they're taking too much. We find that building up slowly is the best way. But some people just start out fine and don't notice anything. We don't know whether the iodine is washing right through them and that's why they don't notice anything or they don't get detox or they just have incredible compensation mechanisms so that they don't report any depression or acne or runny nose or something like that. But as soon as you feel any detox, that's when you slow down. And some people can't even take a drop of Lugol's and one of the ways I found with our patients in the breast cancer research group that we run, is to put the iodine on the heel. Put a drop of Lugol's on the heel, the toughest skin. We call that heel dosing, and that seems to slow down the entry of iodine into the cells. You can't put too much. You have to take very little, or dilute the iodine with 10 drops of water or something like that, and see how that works. It's surprising how beneficial that's been.

Now you'll hear a myth, because there was a study out there, that iodine is not really absorbed through the skin. It is! We've had so many people report back how effective it's been. One of the people was a 30 year old woman who had three children and she would just fall asleep when she got home from work and her husband would make the meals for the kids and everything. She was just using it on her heels and all of a sudden she just sprang up and became a normal person and had the energy to make meals and help with the household responsibilities. So that's something you might try as an alternative to taking the Lugol's or the Iodoral by mouth.

Gaby: That's good to know.

Tiffany: Yeah, I saw that on your website, lynnefarrow.net, so for all our listeners, if you want to try the heel iodine it's on that website. Yes. There's a little picture there, that whole formula. Its lynnefarrow.net/heeldosing, I believe is the URL but just look around the site and you'll find it.

Gaby: We'll check it out. On our forum we have had people reporting mercury detox. Have you had reports similar to that, who knows they have issues with any heavy metal and they start iodine and suddenly they start dumping a lot of heavy metals?

Lynne: I haven't done any research or seen any reports of that among our people, but we don't really ask about that too much. One of the ways it's measured historically - and Dr. Abraham has reported on this - that when you take iodine, heavy metals of lead and so forth, are excreted in the stool. So that may be helpful to people that are also working on mercury issues.

Gaby: Do you have testimonials that come to your mind right now that will give an idea to people of how useful iodine is?

Lynne: Yes, I have a number. Two people both had the same thing, one man, one woman, with Afib - atrial fibrillation is something where the heart gets a particular kind of arrhythmia and you're given a lot of medicine for this. We've had reports on this. The woman who did it actually has gone off all cardiac medications with her doctor's blessing. It makes you think and she raised this, "Well maybe there was nothing wrong with my heart. Maybe it was just a deficiency rather than something that's anatomical or inherently physiological". So we've had that. I find that to be an excellent report. And these are just people that have contacted me. Of course people that read my book may not contact me or report to the iodine workshop group. So we know that there must be more people out there.

Also historically there's a lot of documentation for iodine as a cardiac medication and therapy. I have on my site, lynnefarrow.net/mentalhealth, a psychologist in Alaska kept falling asleep and she would even fall asleep while she was counselling her patients. She took Ritalin, she ate coffee beans, she took thyroid medicine and nothing helped. She finally tried iodine and it's really changed her life. She wrote to me and she wanted to use her real name and put it on the web and stuff like that but I said, "No, everyone will be contacting you." But she was a great testimonial because here she's a mental health specialist and it profoundly helped her.

We've had a number of reports. We have a mystery novelist on our group and she was incredibly depressed. She was having trouble writing and she cried every day. And then she started taking iodine and she hasn't cried since except at her father's funeral. So we just don't really understand. Does it affect the brain? Does it affect the thyroid that affects the brain? But we just know the outcome is excellent in terms of peoples' moods improving.

And then because I deal with breast cancer patients, this has come up a number of times. Breast cancer patients will take it to try to prevent recurrence or if they just have fibrocystic breast disease they'll take it and they'll say, "What happened to my psoriasis?" because they've had psoriasis since they were 13 and all of a sudden that disappears. So that's a benefit your listeners should know because it's such a maddening thing to try to cope with.

Another story is a couple of people have reported a benign prostate disease that improved. In three months it was incredibly improved with only waking up fewer times during the night and then by 12 months it was completely gone. There was no waking up during the middle of the night to pee. And this has been used for years for this but now we're getting current reports with people taking Lugol's and Iodoral and this is the benefits. And of course these men are ecstatic.

I could just go on and on about the different things, about people getting their singing voices improved that have lost their voice; men using it for libido, it raises testosterone. It alters all the hormones and the hormone receptors. It sort of balances them.

And then there was a single woman, 24 who should have been out dating and having fun and she was depressed and lethargic and she just watched TV every night and she just noticed that the doctor she worked for in the office was prescribing a lot of iodine. So without telling anybody, she tried it and I don't think she even did the whole protocol, but as she put it, "Whatever was wrong with me, iodine fixed". So it's made this poor girl who was a wallflower suddenly come out and be an active 24 year old.

But then I have hundreds and hundreds of breast testimonials where people have had fibrocystic breast disease for years and years to the point they were considering a mastectomy, it was that painful. And people have had them. I ran into a woman who had a subcutaneous mastectomy where they just sucked out all the glandular tissue out of her breast because she couldn't stand the pain anymore. So we have a huge benefit for that and the results are great with that. But also people that have calcifications which may be pre-cancerous, we've had results with those going away and being documented.

Now I can go on and on, but the show isn't that long.

Gaby: Tiffany had a question.

Tiffany: Oh, I was going to ask if any of the testimonials you have speak about fatty lipoma or sebaceous cysts going away when they take Iodine.

Lynne: Yes! Sebaceous cysts, dermoid cysts that kind of thing and yes, as a matter of fact I had one of those on my waist and it went away and I just noticed it wasn't there. That kind of thing, and allergies! That's one of my favourite things because every spring I would get allergies. That just disappeared and I don't lose the month of May anymore. Food sensitivities not being allergic to certain foods that I just couldn't eat, they're totally gone now. People have written to me saying that they haven't had a herpes outbreak since they were on iodine.

Lung conditions; in the 1800's books were written about just iodine and the lungs because there was a lot of lung disease during that time. But we've also had people get pregnant on iodine who were ready to have fertility treatments and they were going to just try one last thing and then they did and their hormones stabilized and they were able to get pregnant.

And of course type II diabetes. Even Dr. Flechas, one of the major iodine doctors, had a patient who walked into his office. The blood sugar was crazy high and she even went to the hospital and got it regulated and then went on iodine at the same time and gradually went off insulin because her blood sugar just got lower and lower and lower from taking the iodine.

Gaby: That's amazing! I imagine that without doing any special diet. It was just the iodine.

Lynne: Yeah. She didn't even do the protocol because we have a whole protocol. You take companion nutrients with it. It was just one of those things. Even Dr. Flechas was surprised because she was capable of lowering her insulin levels so much to nothing because she was just following her blood sugar.

But also there was somebody from India who wrote to me and said his mother-in-law was taking iodine and something fell out of her ears, like little bones he said, and that she started hearing again. And I thought this is crazy. But then I looked it up and I found out that that had been used in the 1800's and there's a name for that particular ear problem. I have the information to back it up. I'm not saying it's going to help every ear problem, but this particular kind that she had, benefited from it. One of the problems with talking about iodine and the benefits is you begin to sound like a crackpot or that iodine is kind of the Lourdes of medicine. But iodine is such a vital nutrient and if your body has been in a terrible famine for 30 or more years, it's not unlikely that it will help many things because the iodine is in every cell of your body. It's going to help a lot of different things.

Jonathan: Dr. Farrow, I have a question about cancer. I was curious if you're familiar with the Italian oncologist Tullio Simoncini...

Lynne: Yes.

Jonathan: ...who has treated melanoma cancer and I believe he also speaks to the idea of cancer being a fungus at its root and that is part of the reason why iodine works on cancerous cells and I wonder what your opinion is on that.

Lynne: Well iodine is a fungicide and it works on many different levels microbial levels. I don't know whether that's the action. He's gotten benefits from using iodine. I've seen his videos on the internet. When you have outcomes that are dramatic like this, it's very hard to explain what in what you gave the person, say iodine, whether it was the antifungal aspect or it was some other activity on the cells. Since we know how iodine works because of the researchers in Mexico that having studied this for years actually has the line of action on the cells. It alters cells in five different ways. So whether that affects the fungus or whether it has nothing to do with the fungus would be very hard to determine, just by casually coming up with that explanation. But I think it should be studied for sure. Even in the test tube if they could put melanoma cells in a test tube with iodine and then look at what the action is, he could establish that.

Jonathan: Sure. He's had amazing results even to the point of where the skin becomes completely clear and there's not even any scarring left.

Lynne: Well there is a lot of information about iodine on scar tissue. People have taken pictures, like they have a scar on their chest from an operation or something and they'll apply iodine twice a day and then just take pictures - I always encourage people to take pictures of anything and everything before they start because you're not going to have any proof that it happens until you show your pictures before and after.

So that's another mechanism of action that may be at work too, is that not only is Dr. Simoncini able to get rid of the cancer but another level of action may be working on the scar tissue. We know the outcome but we don't know the mechanism of action except, as I say, the researchers in Mexico that have looked at exactly what happens to the cells in their studies.

Gaby: Lynne, do you know of people with multiple sclerosis who benefited with iodine?

Lynne: Yes, and I've gotten emails from people and it doesn't cure the multiple sclerosis as much as it seems - I could draw this inference - is that people with multiple sclerosis have many other things going on and if you can make their life easier by reducing the other burden of disease or injury or disorders that are going on it really helps their quality of life. We've had mothers of children with Down's syndrome have emailed me, ADD kids, autistic kids. Their parents have written to me and the thing that comes up all the time with the ADD and the autistic kids is the ability of iodine to let the kids focus better. They can dance with their parents or they can just think more clearly. And one of the kids who had a disability, he was so articulate about this and most of us that have all our marbles didn't think about it this way. He said the difference he felt on taking iodine was it was like having a radio dial and when the dial isn't right on the station, things are sort of furry sounding and blurry and not clear. And he said "When I have my iodine right, it's like getting the radio dial right on the station". And I thought, yeah, that's what I feel like too but I never thought to put it that way.

Gaby: Me too actually!

Lynne: Yeah. So the fact that this kid was able to explain this, a kid with a profound chromosomal abnormality was able to improve - and obviously you can't improve the chromosomes but you can improve the terrain in which any health anomaly functions and that's why the outcome to me is more important than the mechanism of action. But it's certainly worth a try with these kids.

Tiffany: What about people who have had Grave's disease and had their thyroid irradiated out? Have you had any experience with people who've taken iodine who've had Grave's disease and if they have does it cause any kind of reversal to - I forget the name of the condition where the eyes bulge out a little bit?

Lynne: Yes, in Dr. David Brownstein's book he has pictures of a report from a person with Grave's disease because your eyes bulge out sometimes and there's a specific name for that. I can't think of the name of it. But he actually got a report back from a woman whose Grave's disease was corrected and her eye condition was also corrected. In my office I have textbooks from the 1950s, Harvard University Press on how they treated Grave's disease with iodine. That being said, I would go really slowly with iodine on anybody with Grave's disease. Just because Grave's disease is much more disturbing to people than being hypothyroid, but certainly there's a long record of its use and I think the iodine doctors use L-carnitine and a small amount of lithium as part of the Grave's protocol. But really you need an iodine literate doctor, to be very careful with that.

Tiffany: Well this particular person I'm thinking of, it has been 20-plus years since she had radiation treatment for her thyroid. So, are there any special precautions in that situation?

Lynne: I don't really know the answer to that, but we do have a lot of people that have had their thyroids completely radiated and are taking iodine very happily. But I really don't know. Every case is different. I'm not a physician so I can't make recommendations about what she should do but if she contacts other Grave's people who have taken iodine, that might give her some clues. That's why I always urge people to go on Iodine Workshop on Facebook to try to find somebody who has your situation and how it worked out.

Gaby: And network about it. What does the protocol looks like, so people can have an idea?

Lynne: Yes, you wrote a wonderful article about that, by the way. Thank you, Gaby. Basically you start out with the low dose iodine and try to work up to 50 mg, but we found it's beneficial to take with that vitamin C, magnesium; selenium especially if people have Hashimoto's and basically works from there. The B2 and B3 help a lot. We're thinking of adding zinc to that regimen. We're in a research project right now, seeing if zinc would be helpful to the whole regimen. But the thing is you can have a list of different things to take in this so-called protocol, but unless you know how to use those things, you can get into trouble. You might not. You might do fine just taking some iodine, but if you get detox and you think something bad is going on, it's really helpful to be in a group where people that have been doing this for 10 years can walk you through it.

People have said from just even taking Alka-Seltzer Gold they'll get themselves in trouble. They'll get a headache or a migraine or something. They take the Alka-Seltzer Gold and that relieves the system of the acidic burden. If you're not in a group where people are experiencing and seeing these things every day for years, you're not going to get the help. And the reason for being in a group and for starting low is that when I first started this project I remember a woman who was a nurse who hadn't been able to hug somebody since she was 13 because she had such breast pain and her mother had had breast cancer. Well she started iodine, immediately got a rash. The rash wouldn't go away. Even when she stopped she couldn't take a multivitamin that had iodine in it and so we lost her to iodine. This is a person who really needed the iodine but at that time we didn't know enough and there weren't enough people around that will walk you through taking iodine. You don't want to just lose people for a nutrient that can be lifesaving.

Gaby: That makes sense. Well thank you Lynne very much for all the information you have shared with us. I really encourage people to read Lynn's book The Iodine Crisis: What You Don't Know About Iodine Can Wreck Your Life and to check out the website. We have several websites. We have lynnefarrow.net. We have breastcancerchoices.org and we have iodineresearch.com. Is that right?

Lynne: Yes.

Gaby: There is a lot of information there for beginners, for professionals, for breast cancer choices. I found that website very impressive for anybody who has trouble with that disease, with that label. There is hope! There is a way to network. It was a great pleasure to have you here.

Lynne: Well thank you. It's been very helpful to talk to you and the team there because they're already so knowledgeable. You ask great question.

Gaby: Yes, we really love your book because it has a lot of testimonials, frequently asked questions, and you can tell that it's a product of information shared from a lot of experience and that is one of the most important things on these iodine experiments, experience and networking. So I thought it was really great. I think everybody should read it.

Lynne: Oh, well thank you. It was written because nobody else had written it and I wanted to get the information out there. It's a movement. This is the passion of my life since I've seen such benefits from it and I just hope everybody learns about iodine one way or the other and so I appreciate your doing this show today.

Gaby: Thank you Lynne. It was a pleasure. We will let you go now. Thank you.

Lynne: Okay. Bye.

Gaby: Bye.

Jonathan: So that was our interview with Lynne Farrow from last week, quite fascinating. There's a lot of stuff in there and just hours and hours, days of research that you can do on this topic.

Doug: Really excellent interview.

Tiffany: Yeah, it was great. And I like that she kept stressing to start low and go slow and if you experience detox symptoms, which means you're probably taking too much.

Doug: I think that's important because I know in reading Dr. Brownstein's book he does talk about taking the 10 drops of the 5% solution as kind of the standard, so when I started I went right to that and it was really a case of going too fast. I started to develop a lot of symptoms. So you want to start slow, as is her emphasis here. Don't just go gung-ho all of a sudden. I think the adage to that is it's a marathon not a race. Don't go faster than you have the ability to handle.

Jonathan: Yeah, that is really important advice. I can attest to that too. I know I've mentioned this in the past on this show but at one point last year I went whole-hog trying to do some sort of antifungal thing, but I was taking iodine and oregano oil internally at the same time and too much and killed off all of my gut flora and just had an awful month; depression, lack of sleep, hives, just crazy, crazy detox symptoms. And that was my fault for taking it too far. So it's really, really important when you get into health, stuff like this and you're not necessarily experimenting with, but you're trying new protocols on your own body, take it slow, start slow, watch the symptoms really closely and make sure that you don't overdo it.

Gaby: There was also a follow up from Lynne after the show. She wanted to add something about the neck pain question I think that Erica asked. And she said that niacin is something that causes neck pain in some people and it's listed as one of the adverse effects. Some people have to stop and build up slowly on niacin as well. So it is also like a trial and error process. It could not only be the iodine. It could be, in this case, the niacin. I do believe the niacinamide is a lesser problem in that respect, but something to keep in mind.

Doug: I think in a lot of cases people don't realize how much toxic build-up they have. Your body has a way of dealing with what it's got and making the best with what it can. I know in my personal situation, I basically was thinking, "No, I don't have any toxicity. I can just jump right in" and I think that in this day and age, everybody has some kind of toxic build-up. So there's always a chance that you're going to have some reactions. You probably will. Not everybody does obviously, but I think you can't just look at the state that you're in right now and think, "No, I'm fine. I can jump right in on this". It's really important to just start slowly for everybody.

Gaby: I think that is a very common mistake or problem in our forum. A lot of people have detox symptoms and instead of slowing down or taking even one single day of a break, they keep pushing forward. So that's something to highlight. So slowly but surely kind of thing.

Erica: And also how she stated that it is a lifetime process, kind of what we've shared about the diet, that all the pesticides and flame retardants and the pollution, that even if we think we're not that toxic, that you can be bombarded just where you are physically in an environment.

Jonathan: Yeah, I thought that was a really interesting point too, that we're not in a world where you can just bring yourself up to an acceptable level of iodine and then you're good. We are constantly battling environmental toxins, bad foods, so even if you correct the diet there are things that get into everything that you eat, but mostly I would think the influences of environmental toxins absorption through the lungs and through the skin. Would that we lived in a perfect world where we didn't have to worry about this kind of stuff but we do. And that's where we are. So you just need to maintain your health. You can't just fix it and be done with it.

Gaby: And we are very thankful that something like iodine exists for this.

Doug: Yeah!

Jonathan: Yeah.

Tiffany: I also thought it was good that she brought up the importance of networking with other people and not trying to go through it yourself. It's good that on her Facebook group people have been doing it for 10 years or so, so even if our forum members wanted to pop onto that group and see, I know we're all fairly new to trying this iodine, but eventually we'll become more well-versed in what to look out for. But networking is really, really important.

Jonathan: Definitely. And speaking of that too, I noticed recently on the forum, especially in the discussion thread about iodine, it has come up that the seemingly obvious fact that everybody is different. But it needs to be reiterated that every person's physiology and biology is unique and so there is not one protocol that will work for everyone. You really need to first of all, very closely and carefully watch yourself and how your body is reacting to what you're doing.

Second of all, get the test done, which I admit I haven't done yet and we've been looking into doing that here, doing the iodine loading urinalysis where you have to send in a sample. But those things are important to do so that you know where you're at; otherwise you run the risk of either taking it too far or doing the wrong thing and throwing the balance of nutrients out of whack. I'm sure in certain cases it can be life-threatening. I think that in most cases it's just threatening to your well-being. You have a job or you may have children or responsibilities in your life and you can't just take a month off to detox and have the flu every day.

Erica: And also not losing people to iodine like she spoke about. If people are doing this alone and they have the symptoms like the woman she mentioned and then they just stop doing it because it's too overwhelming or intense and they give up.

Gaby: Yeah, it could be tempting to go very quickly and take a lot because, "it's going to heal me" and all of that, but considering the experience, these peoples' experience covers across 10 years of research and testimonials. It does favour the slow approach and yes, most of us are really cannot afford a month off. We have to be up and running, so to speak. But it is doable I think. That has been my experience. I have not missed a day from work even though I had very pronounced detox symptoms with one single drop so I was like, "Okay, I'm stopping this for two days" and then I'm going to take it again and a lot of the salt loading protocols which can be started two weeks before you start the iodine. That will help you with the detoxing symptoms.

Jonathan: Well I don't know if you guys have anything else to add right now. I didn't see any pronounced questions in the chat that we would need to address. So I think if everybody's good for the time being we will go to Zoya's pet health segment. Zoya prepared a segment for today's show and when we come back we will do a recipe on how to make your own Lugol's solution of iodine so that will be our recipe for today. So we will be back right after this.

Zoya: Hello and welcome to the pet health segment of the Health and Wellness Show. My name is Zoya and today I would like to talk to you about procedures at the clinic. Often veterinarians hear people complaining about the prices, sometimes outrageous prices. Some of the complaints are justified and some of them come from lack of understanding what they entail or include. So in this segment I will try to shed a bit of light on the topic.

First of all, let's talk about necessary and unnecessary costs. The bottom line is that each animal is different and it largely depends not only on breed, meaning various predispositions, genetic factors, etc., but also on nutrition, general upkeep and also other perhaps emergency situations. Just like with humans, anything can happen with our animals. We just need to be aware of it and take appropriate steps to minimize any possible consequences. For example, improper nutrition of dry food for cats can lead later to chronic kidney disease but also improper nutrition of raw food can lead to various imbalances too.

There are a lot of examples for dogs too including for example, gastric irritation in some large breeds like German shepherds etc. So some veterinarian visits are unavoidable, even if your pet appears to be healthy it's always wise to do routine checkups, especially if you know that they are predisposed to something. But if everything is okay, no need to do it often.

Now about vaccinations, in several previous shows I already talked about the topic of vaccinations and that animal vaccination is a racket and for many clinics it basically constitutes a large portion of their profits. So this is where you could be a smarter owner and don't fall for this kind of extortion. If it's possible in your country, ask for a titer test. It may cost the same as the excessive vaccinations but at least you will avoid the complications that come with excessive vaccination. And you will avoid possible future problems. So basically it may be cost effective in the long run.

Another area is dermatology. There is a well-known notion among veterinarians that dermatologists can be the wealthiest doctors because they will never run out of patients and also because you can never completely heal dermatological problems but you can only control the symptoms. So as you can see, if your dog has skin problems, then it can lead not only to a great misery for the dog, but also to a large hole in your pocket. Some skin diseases, allergic like topic dermatitis and some are caused by mites like sarcoptosis. Some are hard to prevent, even with good nutrition and upkeep but the general rule of thumb is that a pet with a good immune system has much less changes of having a serious dermatological problem meaning that if you will make sure to do your best, you may lessen the changes of inflammation in the dog and then it may improve further general chances of their recovery or not getting the dermatological problem at all.

There are a lot of other areas like dentistry where proper nutrition and upkeep are interconnected and if you make sure to educate yourself on those topics it may greatly lessen the costs. When it comes to dentistry you also need to remember that animals are similar to humans and if they have a foul smell from their mouth and their teeth are yellow and don't look good, imagine a human with such condition and think whether or not it sounds right to you. So in such a case a visit to a veterinarian is warranted and your pet's teeth should be cleaned unavoidable under anaesthesia. And this has its own nuances, risks and repercussions including in the pocket.

So many pet owners are wary of anaesthesia and it's true that it carries some risks, but sometimes the risks are negligible, especially if done properly and with constant monitoring. Sometimes the risks can be greater when a pet has a heart condition or senior pets for example. I think that at this point and before I will go on, to explain to you what are the main differences between costs in a large and technologically equipped clinic so to say, and a simple spay/neuter clinic. It's important to know that many, if not most veterinarians try to do their job as best as they can. They love their job and it's important to them that your pet will receive the best care they can provide. Sometimes veterinarians can be ignorant like with the topic of vaccinations or nutrition and some of them indeed can be greedy. But many of them also have not much choice because they have to adhere to the policy of the clinic where they are working.

But most of them do try to take into account that not many people nowadays can afford the full range of affordable services and that's why many pet owners choose to go to a simple clinic that will take only for example $50 for a spay instead of $400 in a larger clinic. When it comes to operations I'm not going to tell you what is best of course. If you can afford it, then the most expensive option is more secure, but I also saw the work in simple clinics and the procedure could be done successfully just as well. Basically you need to be aware of all the facts and then to make an educated decision.

So here are all of the possible factors that may influence the cost of the surgery. Factor number 1 is that low cost cleanings do not typically require or offer blood work before surgery. One main reason for this is because most young, healthy animals do not have any underlying metabolic issues but there are always exceptions. If the clinic provides a blood work option, your cost will go up. But if you decline the blood work or if the clinic doesn't offer it, if you're pet has an underlying medical issue, liver or kidney disease, bleeding disorder, etc., the vet and staff will not know and the risks for surgical and post-op complications will go up. Or your pet may die. Blood work helps your vet and staff know what risks are present, what anaesthetic drugs to use or whether your pet can even safely have surgery.

Factor number 2 is that low cost clinics do not usually place an IV catheter or give intravenous fluids to your pet during surgery. One of the reasons for this is that most high volume spay/neuter veterinarians are able to perform surgery in a fraction of the time of many others, often less than five to ten minutes, simply due to experience. But why might an IV catheter and fluids be important? Fluids provide assistance with blood pressure stability and profusion to organs. If your pet has trouble with blood pressure, decreased profusion to important organs it may cause them to fail, typically not seen for days or weeks after your pet goes home. Most young, healthy animals will not have this problem and typically the surgery is quick, but not always. If your hospital provides this your costs will go up.

Factor number three is those low cost clinics have limited staffing and cannot provide constant attention to your pet before, during and after surgery. There are often only one or two veterinary technicians or assistants on staff during a typical surgery day and there are commonly multi-tasking. The most consistent times there are complications or accidental death is right after surgery in recovery. This is true for any hospital or clinic. If your pet is not directly monitored by a technician at all times, if they have any difficulty in surgery or recovery it is possible that a minute or two or more may go without the difficulty being noticed. This is not intentional of course. It has to do with the number of staff available. If a hospital provides constant nursing care and monitoring for your pet, your cost naturally will go up.

Factor number four is that low cost clinics do not routinely monitor CO2 levels, ECG, blood pressure and constant body temperature for your pet during surgery. A pulse oximeter is usually the only monitoring device present, monitoring heart rate and oxygen profusion in the blood which are important and sometimes there isn't even a pulse oximeter. But other vital signs can be important too. Hypothermia can make recovery long and difficult. ECG readings may help determine any heart abnormalities, abnormal CO2 levels can be deadly. Again, the most common reason for not monitoring these things is that the surgery is often less than five or ten minutes so significant changes are unlike in young, healthy animals. If your hospital provides these other monitoring devices, the equipment costs money and the trained, certified staff member must be paid to be there, use them and know how to manage any complications so that also causes your costs to go up.

Factor number five is low cost clinics do not provide a full comprehensive physical exam and vet consultation for your pet before surgery. Exams are limited due to the number of surgeries that must be performed in a day. You do not have an opportunity to discuss your pet's health and concerns with the vet before the surgery is performed. There may be an area on your drop-off sheet where you can write your concerns, however you'll likely never see or meet your veterinarian. If your hospital provides time and opportunity for a comprehensive exam and discussion with your vet, then it can also influence your cost naturally.

And Factor number six is that low cost clinics are not the best option for higher risk pets. Large and giant breed dogs, senior pets, brachycephalic breed, those with flat smashed faces, obese, in heat, pregnant and aggressive dogs and cats, those with a history of medical issues, etc. Low cost clinics are not typically set up to handle emergencies if they arise or hospitalize animals overnight for additional care if necessary. They lack the proper equipment, training, staffing and time to handle anything outside of a normal, healthy patient surgery and recovery. If your hospital is set up for this, your costs will go up.

So now you can understand the range of prices in various clinics. There are liability waivers to be signed and information is provided to help owners make reasonably informed decisions. However most places do 30-50 surgeries a day and shelters and low cost clinics simply cannot afford the time and staffing to have lengthy discussions with every owner about the differences in what they do and what full service clinics do. And 99.9% of the time pets recover well in these facilities and there are no issues so these discussions do not typically take precedence. That being said, owners should take some responsibility and do their own research. If a surgery is $400 in one place and $50 in another, you must use common sense and ask questions to discern this. Conversely, just because a surgery cost is higher at your vet, it doesn't mean that they offer all these other services that I mentioned. Again, you must ask questions. Do you provide blood work? Does my pet receive a comprehensive physical exam, a limited exam or any exam at all? What sort of monitoring is done? Will there be a technician with my pet at all times? Do you give IV fluids? What do you do in the event of an emergency? Are you prepared to handle an emergency? Understand the services offered so you can make an educated decision.

In summary, make sure to educate yourself to provide your pet with optimal and upkeep and this can significantly lessen chances for development of various problems and visits to a veterinarian. If there will be such a need after all, make sure to ask questions and know what you're paying for.

Well this is it for today. I hope you found the information useful and have a great weekend and good-bye.

Jonathan: Alright, thanks a lot Zoya. There's some good information in there and definitely very important to make sure that the service that your pets are getting is good. So for our recipe today we're going to go over how to make Lugol's iodine solution. Just a little disclaimer: We're not giving you information that can't be readily found on the internet. There are a lot of different sites that have recipes. One of the most popular is a guy on YouTube - I forget his name now - but shows how to make that up. So if you look for "how to make Lugol's" you will find a number of different recipes. We're just doing it here for our listeners who might be interested.

And also just to disclaimer, we are not your doctor nor are we medical professionals so of course if you are doing anything to your body in a medicinal way, make sure to consult with your physician or whoever your healthcare professional is and be sensible. It's kind of like we were talking about before the pet health segment, its best not to jump into things without first of all knowing your body, knowing the potential risks and having the willingness to start slow.

So with that said, basically to make Lugol's iodine solution you need potassium iodide and iodine crystals. These can be obtained in a number of places online. I believe eBay is the most common place but you can take around. But you want potassium iodide, spelled with a "d" at the end, and iodine crystals and the ratio is 2:1 so two parts potassium iodide and one part iodine crystals. Now this recipe is for a 10% Lugol's solution which is pretty strong, so you may want to double the amount of water and then make a 5% solution, depending on your application.

So you want to start with distilled water. Use a glass container. Use four ounces of distilled water in a glass container. Mix in 33.7 grams of potassium iodide into the water. That's 1.18 ounces. I should also say make sure you have a scale. Don't try to eyeball this stuff. Get a kitchen scale. Do it the right way. So 33.7 grams or 1.18 ounces of potassium iodide into the water and then you want 16.9 grams of iodine crystals. Put that into the mix. Be very, very careful not to touch the iodine crystals. This is very important. They can burn your skin because they're so concentrated. If you do touch them with your bare skin, wash right away, wash it off as much as you can and preferably use wooden utensils for this. Use a wooden spoon. Don't use metal.

So just to reiterate, that's four ounces of water, 33.7 grams of potassium iodide into the water then 16.9 gram of iodine crystals into the mix. Stir with a wooden spoon until they have dissolved into the solution and then cover with a non-metal cover and let it sit overnight or give or take 10 hours. Then in the morning when you come back to it, stir it up again and you have your 10% Lugol's solution.

If you wanted to make a 5% solution, double the amount of water to eight ounces as opposed to four. I have made this before and I can attest that it works. I find it helpful to store in a cool, dark place away from the sun in a glass container and then keep my portion for daily usage in a small bottle with a dropper. So I just transfer it out as needed, into the small bottle. It is so concentrated that it lasts quite a long time so if you can get the potassium iodide and the iodine crystals, you can make enough of this to last yourself well over a year, if not two or three years.
So that's the recipe. Have you guys ever made this before?

Gaby: No, I buy it.

Tiffany: No, not personally.

Jonathan: So I guess I'm the mad scientist of the group. I can attest that it's real iodine and it does the trick but I just want to reiterate one last caveat about this with the iodine crystals. I can't state enough that you need to be really, really careful with iodine crystals, especially if you get the pure iodine on your skin and you leave it there for a minute, it can burn, it can leave scars. It's really intense stuff, the crystals by themselves.

Doug: Maybe wearing gloves.

Gaby: Could you repeat the grams?

Jonathan: What's that Gaby? Oh, yes. So four ounces of water, that's 118 millilitres, 33.7 grams of potassium iodide and 16.9 grams of iodine crystals. Now the ratio is 2:1 but there's a little bit more potassium iodide in this recipe because it's not completely soluble in water so you use just a tad more of the potassium iodide. But if you go with this recipe it's 33.7 grams of potassium iodide and 16.9 grams of iodine crystals. And mix the potassium iodide into distilled water and dissolve that completely before you put the iodine crystals in. Let those dissolve. Let it sit overnight and then you have your solution.

Erica: I have a question Jonathan and you may or may not know this, but you said it could store for several years. Do you know if the potency goes down after time?

Jonathan: I don't, honestly. I don't really have any experience with that, but I can tell you in my own experience with storing it, what I've done is take a couple of sheets of parchment paper and then laid them over top of a mason jar and then screwed the lid on over top of that and just been very careful not to let it come into contact with the metal lid of the mason jar. However, it puts off vapours and it's a pretty impressive thing. After having it stored in the same spot for about a year-and-a-half now, there is iodine staining on the shelf where I've had it sitting and I actually did have it corrode one of the lids to the Mason jar to the point where I had to replace the lid. And it never came into contact with it, so that was just the vapours coming off the iodine actually corroding the lid.

So if you can I would recommend just going full blast, get a glass container that has a glass lid but we aware that wherever you store it, you will get some off-gassing and you will never, ever get it out of the floor.

Gaby: Okay.

Jonathan: In a couple of different spots I have spilled small amounts of iodine onto the counter or onto the floor and you can get a good amount of it out but there is always a little stain left and it's pretty potent stuff and it stains for a long, long time.

Gaby: Have you tried using vitamin C to clean it up?

Jonathan: No, no I haven't. That's a good suggestion. I will try that.

Gaby: Well it's one of the solutions that are spoken about on the iodine research.

Jonathan: Cool. Now I'm curious about that. I'll have to try that. Again, if it makes you feel uncomfortable to try to make your own Lugol's iodine, go with that and just purchase some. This is for people who might be able to or have the inclination to make their own. I have found it to be useful and helpful but you want to make sure that you have these ratios down to the gram, to the milligram if possible. So use a really good scale. Don't just go from what I said here today. That's a place to start. You can use that recipe to make it, but look it up, do your research, look up other people who have made it and just make sure that you have that knowledge in your head before you get into it. And don't touch the iodine crystals with your skin and don't spill it, for god's sake!

Tiffany: How much did you pay for the crystals and the potassium iodide?

Jonathan: You know it was a while ago. Off the top of my head I don't remember. It wasn't that expensive. I want to say like between $20 and $30 for each.

Gaby: That sounds reasonable.

Jonathan: When I made a first batch, I made a full quart of this stuff, so that was a lot and I still have a lot left, so it lasts for a very long time.

Erica: Maybe a lifetime.

Jonathan: Yeah, perhaps. You're really using it a drop at a time so yup. Well that's our show for today so we'd like to thank everybody for tuning in and for our chat participants. We had a pretty busy chat here today so that was awesome. Thanks again to Lynne Farrow for being so gracious and doing the interview with us. We really appreciated her time. And we would like to encourage you to stay tuned for the other two shows on the SOTT Radio Network, The Truth Perspective tomorrow; Saturday at 2:00 p.m. eastern US time and Behind the Headlines on Sunday at noon, eastern US time. And we are slowly moving to a network and if you tune in to Behind the Headlines this weekend you can hear more about that and we will tell you more as we find out more about when we're actually going to be switching. So we'll give you more info on that. Thanks again. Have a great weekend everybody and we will talk to you next week.

All: Good-byes.