Questions from a newer member

[Guest guest]

I joined this group at the beginning of October on behalf of my

husband, and have been reading posts and archives and feel I have a

general understanding of Iodine supplementation. If anyone can offer

specific advice, I would be grateful.

My husband's symptoms include:

-Severe and debilitating fatigue and weakness. He has no energy,

tires easily but despite this cannot sleep at night. His sleep cycle

is so disrupted that he doesn't have one any more.

-Mild to moderate snoring with noticable sleep apnea when he does

sleep

-Chronic sinus infections, very painful, duration about a year, which

also make it difficult to sleep

-These infections have moved to the eye area, causing swelling of the

tissues around the eye, palpable swelling of the glands above the

eye, and severe swelling of the meibomian gland which now protrudes

down over part of his eye, making it difficult to close that eye.

He had a retinal bleed in that eye a little more than a year ago,

which was treated with laser surgery, before this other stuff

started. (dropped a screwdriver on his eye while fixing the car)

-Acid reflux, especially at night

-Lung difficulty, including persistent wheezing, and occasional

shortness of breath. Again, especially at night.

-Overweight

-Moderately high blood pressure (not treated) with very high

triglygerides

-Odd skin blebs and dandruff, excessive sweating, always feels warm

-Hemorrhoids

-Depression about how bad he feels. He is not able to be employed.

His hypotheses for this illness:

My husband feels that he has a toxic load of mercury. We did have all

the amalgam fillings removed at Dr. Huggin's clinic in 2006, which

only seems to have liberated a large amount into his system. He tries

to detox it with 2-3 times weekly hot baths with Epsom salts or

baking soda as receommended by Dr. Huggins, and lately he has tried

including magnesium chloride. When he sweats it out, he feels

somewhat better for a day or so.

He also feels that he has a systemic infection with fungus/candida.

He has taken colloidal silver for years and had managed to keep his

lungs clear (which had been a weak point since childhood) but for the

last two years it has not touched the lung/sinus problems.

My husband subscribes to the theory that his illness is caused by

inadequate diet (missing or suboptimal levels of key nutrients) which

are preventing his body from healing, and the presence of toxins in

his system. He is quite hostile to conventional medicine practice in

general and will not go to a doctor. We do not have the financial

resources to go to a naturalpath or alternative medicine practitioner.

He eats a very low carb, high protien/high fat diet and tries to

include raw foods. He also supplements with a significant amount of

salt based on Dr. Huggin's recommendation that he needed additonal

sodium. I don't think he has celiac disease, as it does not seem to

be wheat/gluten in specific that is a problem for him, but all carbs

in general contributing especially to fatigue and indigestion. He was

diagnosed as hypoglycemic as a teenager, although at age 50 now we

are more worried about high blood sugar than low. The carb

restriction also helps with the high triglycerides. He also was born

with only one kidney, which is somewhat larger than an average

person's who has two. His ferritin/iron is high, although not to the

level of hemachromatosis. There is a family history of diabetes and

heart disease.

He has read a lot of information on supplementation, and feels that

iodine might be needed because his temperature is low when checked in

the morning. It never reaches 98F during the day. He also thinks the

fatigue/overweight might be symptoms of hypothyroidism. He was

checked by a conventional doc a few years ago and told his " hormones

are within the normal range " without any specifics about T3, T4 or

TSH given. We are unlikely to do a loading test, but he has done a

patch test which disappears almost immediately (I realize the

limitations of this). He is also very hopeful that the use of iodine

might help significantly with the mercury detoxification. We have

decided to buy Iodoral, and supplement with the recommended levels of

A/B2-B3/Zn-Cu/Sn/Mg from the list on the breast cancer site.

If you've gotten this far, thank you for reading all this. My

specific questions are:

1. Would a 50 mg dose of iodorol to start sound reasonable?

More? There are not going to be tests, so we are going to dose based

on how he feels. I have read differing opinions on starting slowly

vs. going to 50 all at once: is there a consensus?

2. Are the amounts of the supplements designed for women? Do

they increase/decrease for men or per body weight? Are any of the

other treatements sex-specific or cancer-specific?

3. How can we know if there is bromide/mercury detox going on?

Most of the symptoms listed are so similar to what he already

experiences (sinus pain, lethargy, fogginess) that I'm not sure if we

will be able to detect symptoms that should make us modify our

protocol.

4. What is the collective wisdom on using iodine in a sinus

wash? Amount – form – frequency - additonal ingredients?

5. I would like more information, if it exists, about the

excretion of toxins with the salt loading: does it have the potential

to damage the kidney? Given that he only has one kidney, should the

salt loading be done prophylactically, or am I correct in my reading

that it is only done when symptoms arise? Is there a reason that the

salt has to be taken dissolved already in water, or could he continue

to use salt in capsules we load ourselves? (He uses the Real salt)

6. Is there any thing else I am clearly missing? My husband

reads so many alternative medicine sites (well, he did when he could

still see well enough) and always has some new thing to try, all of

which seem to have equal potential to be the miracle missing link,

and none of which have done any good up to now. Many of these I am

frankly skeptical about because I never see evidence beyond

antecdotal testimonials that they have any value. Based on the large

number of persons in this group, I am hoping that the generalizatons

that have been drawn from the collective experience here might be

more valid than a claim being made by someone selling a book. I

would like to try anything that have a better than random chance of

helping, but I do not have unlimited resources to keep throwing

spaghetti at the wall. I also am not sure we have unlimited time,

either, as my husband's functional capacity continues to diminish.

Thank you all in advance for your indulgence and any help you might

be able to give.

Rose