The answer is that it really doesn’t prevent cancer overall but it helps to prevent cancer of your thyroid gland.
You’ve been hearing a lot lately about people in Japan taking Potassium Iodide pills to help prevent them from getting cancer should there be a radiation leak from one of the messed up nuclear power plants. Maybe you are curious about how his potassium iodide helps prevent cancer — here is the answer.
Your thyroid gland is the body’s gas pedal. It’s located at the base of your throat and it kinda wraps around your windpipe like a butterfly. It’s about the size of a split plum — one half on one side of your windpipe and one half on the other. The thyroid secretes hormones that control your metabolism.
Too much thyroid hormone and you’re racing around like a maniac — but not in a good way. Your heart goes fast, you lose weight no matter how much you eat, and you sweat and feel weak and your heart gets worn out. Too little thyroid hormone and you have all the opposite symptoms. You are sluggish, you’re tired and sleepy, you get fat, your eyes get puffy and your hair gets thin. Either way, fast or slow, you get really screwed up.
There are exceptions to the rules but you don’t need to know about that unless you’re a doctor. There are names for all the various conditions that cause your thyroid gland to go whacky, but all you need to know right now is that a bad thyroid is either producing too much or too little of the hormones your body uses to control the rate at which your metabolism runs.
Atop the thyroid are tiny little glands that are called the parathyroid glands. They secrete hormones that control bone density and electrolyte balance – – it’s actually a lot more complicated than that but for now that’s all you need to know.
These glands make their hormones by using the iodine that they suck up from the food you eat. Some of us do not get enough iodine in our diets so that’s why a lot of table salt is “iodized” — they put iodine in the salt so that every time you sprinkle salt on your food, you get a little does of iodine. Some salts companies do not do this and that’s why you will see a label that says “This salt does not contain iodine.” It’s just like fluoride in your drinking water. Every time you drink city water, (in most places in the USA) you get a little fluoride to help your teeth stay hard. They put Vitamin D in milk for the same reason. Back in the old days, kids didn’t get enough vitamin D because of poor diets and the lack of sunlight in the winter. (Your body makes its own vitamin D from sunlight on your skin). The government decided that milk should have vitamin D added to it because all kids drank milk — supposedly. They still do it today so it must have worked out the way doctors and scientists planned.
Anyway, think of your thyroid gland as a sponge that loves to soak up iodine. If there is a radiation leak from a power plant, some of that radiation will be in the form of radioactive iodine and it will grab onto your thyroid like a key in a lock. If, however, you have taken a big dose of harmless iodine like Potassium Iodine, there will be no place left on the thyroid for the radioactive stuff to stick so it will dissipate. That’s the theory of why taking oral iodine helps to prevent you from getting thyroid cancer after a nuclear accident.
Don’t run around taking iodine if you don’t have a nuclear accident to worry about. You get a lot of the iodine you need from sea food, certain green leafy vegetables and table salt — relax and don’t worry about it.
I have previously read and wondered just how helpful iodine would be in relation to my underactive thyroid problem a while ago now, but there have been conflicting reports about iodine in general and so I dismissed it having got in touch eventually with Doctor Peatfield from Surrey – once I had tests done to solve the problem I knew I had an underactive thyroid. What I did learn though was that the iodine that was safe to use in the circumstances & the best one would be Formula II ‘Iosol’ Food supplement if you are going to use iodine at all! I worked out for myself I had a thyroid problem at the time but I was told my blood count was normal by the doctors I actually worked for then & it was 9 years before I found the help of Doctor Peatfield etc. and so I learned to find the info. I needed after I retired as a driving instructor because I bought a laptop to acquire the knowledge I needed. Even so I was so engrossed in being busy looking after my 3 small grandsons I did not follow up the risks a person with an underactive thyroid might suffer from a heart problem which caught up with me & so I was fortunate to recover from a quadruple heart bypass eventually. But moving away from a thyroid problem at the moment I would like to understand clearly how it makes an important difference to a person overall when someone is at risk of developing cancer which it seems we all share the risk of that possibility. I have a grave concern about my own sister who started to have cancer problems some years ago & has had several operations including removal of one kidney; she has had a session of chemotherapy which did reduce the size of several tumours but she felt so rough during this time she decided not to go ahead with the next one. Of course the inevitable has happened & tumours have now grown larger again. Over the long period of time I have tried to learn as much as I could about the problem but was not impressed with what the outcome was likely to be and so I do not know how to help her at this moment but I am not sure how much she has researched herself in order to try to understand how to help herself – she doesn’t want to talk about it! I know we are not the only ones in this predicament but I do know I am hoping for a miracle…. Jean Gittins.