A really pleasant to read story. It's funny because I live in Switzerland and some of my friends debate the "ioded salt", and prefer to consume "natural salt" without the additives. Funny how history can repeat itself.<p>I'm always impressed with all these doctors that would question the approach, try new protocols, and end up by finding a cure
Lovely article. It reminds me of the relationship of scurvy and Vitamin C. Despite scurvy being largely understood around 1750 the knowledge was forgotten or replaced with wrong theories as late as 1911. <a href="https://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm" rel="nofollow">https://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm</a>
My father told me that goitre's were quite common when he was growing up as a boy in Detroit in the 1920's. In my generation it was totally unknown. Yet I remember people affected by polio as a boy quite well. But I bet that millennials have no personal experience with it at all. Each generation moves forward and I can only hope there is a day when no one has any first hand experience with either cancer or Alzheimer's.
I think, outside Europe, this afflicted lots of places away from the coast, right? Like the middle part of the US.<p>I’ve always wondered if the iodine in the air is part of the allure of the seaside.<p>Coastal areas of course have produced a huge number of successful countries. Most of that must be the trade and logistics advantages. I wonder if getting the iodine right out of the air was another hidden major advantage though.
I'll always be grateful to the doctor who just noticed my throat being very <i>slightly</i> enlarged, even though I wasn't complaining. I had my TSH tested and found that I needed the synthetic thyroid hormone. It's cheap and you just take it once a day.<p>Iodine deficiency is ONE cause of goiter, but not the only one.<p><a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/hypothryroidism/hashimotos-vs-hypothyroidism#hashimotos-disease" rel="nofollow">https://www.healthline.com/health/hypothryroidism/hashimotos...</a>
This seems to be a slightly shortened version of an earlier article by the same author. The swiss weekly magazine "Das Magazin" published a german translation of this longer version in 2019 [1]. It is an absolutely fascinating read.<p>Since the article from OP is relatively short on images, the following are links to more images from the german article, with captions translated into english. Warning: images contain depictions of the medical condition discussed in the article. YMMV, but i don't consider them 'gross' or NSFW.<p>Image 1: <a href="https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/EzdPT4pM4HAAzsQiwi_L2d.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/EzdPT4pM4HAAzsQiwi_L2d.jpg</a>
Caption: Woman with goitre in Frienisberg, 1921.<p>Image 2: <a href="https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/5PhByWEba4W8L0W1EnHXiE.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/5PhByWEba4W8L0W1EnHXiE.jpg</a>
Caption: Woman with cretinism, 1928. (Today the word has a derogatory connotation, but primarily describes an illness of great cruelty).<p>Image 3: <a href="https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/Bu0SX8WY4gK8jMZgebpyss.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/Bu0SX8WY4gK8jMZgebpyss.jpg</a>
Caption: Six women with cretinism, ca. 1920.<p>Image 4: <a href="https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/8qBQEgsuqq-BMdsEAPN63U.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/8qBQEgsuqq-BMdsEAPN63U.jpg</a>
Caption: Found the solution to Switzerland's original curse: Heinrich Hunziker from Adliswil ZH, drawn by Marianne Zumbrunn in 1977.<p>Image 5: <a href="https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/7tdlChuPq-3AIeFiSvh5U1.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/7tdlChuPq-3AIeFiSvh5U1.jpg</a>
Caption: Experiments with the snow shovel: the Valais country doctor Otto Bayard, 1937.<p>Image 6: <a href="https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/5JGFFaXN48BA4xOsHXf0Zu.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/5JGFFaXN48BA4xOsHXf0Zu.jpg</a>
Caption: Sun-tanned outdoorsman: the Herisau general practitioner and later chief physician Hans Eggenberger, undated.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/wie-drei-heldenhafte-aerzte-die-schweiz-vom-kropf-erloesten-581754522295" rel="nofollow">https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/wie-drei-heldenhafte-aerzte-die...</a> or <a href="https://archive.is/rHzSV" rel="nofollow">https://archive.is/rHzSV</a><p>edit: formatting, removed german caption texts
For anyone interested in this area, I would highly recommend following the work of Iodine Global Network (and donating if possible).<p>They work with politicians and industry in a very targetted way to increase the use of iodised salt in food production where it is most needed in the world. They don't directly fund any of the activities, but create the relationships, conditions and understanding for it to happen - meaning they are an extremely effective charity, creating population scale change with very modest funding.<p>They also do lots of work to try to map the global picture of iodine intake from the very varied data available. Some of the results might surprise you - <a href="https://ign.org/scorecard/" rel="nofollow">https://ign.org/scorecard/</a>
I am increasingly convinced that the "thyroid hormones" T1, T2, T3, and T4 are simply a place to store iodine. When iodine is needed somewhere in the body it can be taken from T4, converting it to T3. But it's not the case that "T3 is the active form" as you'll read in the literature, it's that the removed iodine is the active or useful thing.<p>Changing the ratio of T3/T4 does cause a change in TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) but that's IMHO simply a signal that the iodine is getting used, so please send us more.<p>There are other tissues in the body that need iodine, as evidenced by the sodium-iodine symporter present on those cells, so to set the recommended daily iodine intake based solely on what the thyroid can use is IMHO a huge mistake.<p>Some things with interesting iodine research: skin cancer, breast cancer, type 2 diabetes, asthma, polycystic ovaries, fibrocystic breast disease, other cancers. But yeah, it cures goiter...
This brought back memories of being told that my grandfather had invested in a factory to make iodized salt in china - probably in the Shanghai area, pre-ww2. I do not believe it was a good business for him, but that is how these things go sometimes. My mother didn't have the visual or historical resources to really show me, as a child, what goiters were.<p>I never really got it until reading this article. But I've always made sure to have some iodized salt as I cook just to make sure we don't end up deficient, understanding that there was some easily avoided consequences at basically no cost.
The soil in the Austrian Country of Styria has notoriously low iodine levels. When visiting Styria in 1748, David Hume wrote:<p>'But as much as the country is agreeable in its wildness, as much are the inhabitants savage, and deformed, and monstrous in their appearance. Very many of them have ugly swelled throats; idiots and deaf people swarm in every village; and the general aspect of the people is the most shocking I ever saw.' [1]<p>That's why some traditional costumes in that region include a so called "Kropfband" (goitre bound). [2]<p>It's fascinating how much one's place of birth used to influence a life and medical biography and in many countries still does.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42843/42843-h/42843-h.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.gutenberg.org/files/42843/42843-h/42843-h.htm</a><p>[2] <a href="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kropfband" rel="nofollow">https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kropfband</a>
There's an amazing episode of Revisionist History about this.<p><a href="https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/way-to-go-ohio" rel="nofollow">https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/way-to-g...</a>
It's fascinating how determined people are with their positions, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that their position causes harm. We see similar arguments today against folate fortification of bread and fluoridation of water.
I had to start taking synthroid since about 5 years in my mid 40s. In my mid 20s I was into Tae Kwon Do and while sparring a guy taller and much heavier punch my in my neck. I have to wonder if he damaged my thyroid.
Reminds me of John Snow's discovery and demonstration of the cause of cholera, which I learned about in the context of casual inference in this excellent paper by statistician David Freedman:<p><a href="https://psychology.okstate.edu/faculty/jgrice/psyc5314/Freedman_1991A.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://psychology.okstate.edu/faculty/jgrice/psyc5314/Freed...</a><p>Actual science looks nothing like the shoddy paper churning that we see in much of econ and social science using questionable and assumption-heavy casual inference methods.
This article made me a little sad.<p>The article is about how people with a fear of iodine overdose resisted the idea of adding it to salt on first place.<p>I spent my childhood in Brazil, a country where there are a good amount of natural iodine. Yet the government decided to ignore the risks, seemly well known for more than a century, and jack up the iodine in the salt to levels beyond what any international standard recommend or tested. And now I hypothyroidism caused by iodine overdose.
That was a fascinating read - there’s even a great villain in Eugene Bircher (not to get into politics, but he definitely seems to have trailblazer the “right wing populist attacks successful public health measures” strategy).
New Zealand soil is naturally low in iodine, so by law iodine is added to certain foods (e.g. salt, bread):<p><a href="https://www.mpi.govt.nz/food-safety-home/nutrients-added-food/iodine-added-food/" rel="nofollow">https://www.mpi.govt.nz/food-safety-home/nutrients-added-foo...</a>
I take Lugol's iodine almost everyday (with Selenium). It dramatically upgraded my life. The first week could be wild (fever is expected) but people should know how this cheap supplement can help them.
Paywall free <a href="https://archive.ph/3wrzh" rel="nofollow">https://archive.ph/3wrzh</a><p>> in 1921, in the city of Bern, 94 per cent of schoolchildren had some swelling of the neck and almost 70 per cent had a goitre.<p>Gosh - it's surprising that years after discovering relativity and the like they were still figuring that out. (Einstein lived in Bern from 1903 to 1905 and developed his Theory of Relativity there).
I wonder if this was at least a factor in Switzerland remaining neutral in both world wars. If a significant portion of your military age men are unfit for military duty due to goiters, that would certainly affect your ability to conduct a war.
What an interesting read! Fascinating to see how the theory was conceived, tested, and put into practice -- and all that in the backdrop of other approaches, even with the spectre of iodine as a poison!
As a kid we always used iodised salt. Now, people seem to buy rock salt and variations with no indication of additives.<p>Does anyone have an idea of how much potassium iodide they might have, if any?
The use of the term cretin for those with stunted growth due to iodine deficiency was not a pejorative. Cretin is a different spelling of Chretien, French for Christian. It was short for "poor Christian", a term for those suffering misfortune.