 Hey y'all, welcome to What Chelsea Eats. Thank you so much for joining me today. In this video I'm going to talk to you briefly about the symptoms of iodine deficiency and I'm going to give you some tips on how to overcome them. I'm so glad you landed on my channel. My name is Chelsea Knudsen and I teach women how to heal naturally from female related conditions using food as medicine. So be sure to subscribe. Don't forget to hit the notification bell so that you don't miss an episode. Since I'm a coach for women's health I get a myriad of questions about symptoms. And today I want to talk to you about the symptoms of iodine deficiency and give you some tips on how to overcome them. So let's get right into the symptoms. The first symptom I want to talk to you about is hair loss. And I have a lot of experience with hair loss. I lost my hair two times. It's not short because I lost it but it's short because I cut it short. But now I have a thick head of hair. And there was a point where I had nothing but thin hair that I could do nothing with except pin it back and it didn't even look look good pinned back because it was so thin. When I would touch it my hair would fall to the floor or when I would wash it it would be in my hands. It was terrible. So I have some experience with hair loss. The next symptom I want to talk to you about is depression. Now depression can point to other things but depression certainly is a symptom of iodine deficiency and it usually comes in your depressed. You don't even really know what you're depressed about. You're just feeling down and it's because your hormones are in balance. When your when your iodine is low your hormonal system is not in balance because it's associated with your thyroid which is also in control of some of the hormones in your body. And if one gland is off then how can everything else in your body be in sync. The next symptom is headaches. If you're always getting a headache you may want to look at whether or not your iodine is low because just increasing your iodine intake may make those headaches go away. Have you ever experienced your tongue feeling like it was too big for your mouth? That may sound funny but technically I have experienced that. I was almost like why does my tongue feel like it's too big for my mouth almost tripping over my words and not able to close my mouth comfortably. My tongue was enlarged and it was due to iodine deficiency. So if you have that experience then you may want to check to see if your iodine is low. So the next symptom is difficulty losing weight or unexpected weight gain. That can be a symptom of iodine deficiency. Another symptom puffiness around the eyes especially underneath the eyes can be a symptom of iodine deficiency. Also swelling in the neck right around here. This is where the thyroid gland is and sometimes swelling happens in this area where nodules happen or goiter will happen which is just swelling because the iodine is low in the system. Comment below if you have experienced any of the symptoms that I've talked about so far. I would really love to hear what you have to say. The next symptom is fatigue or weakness. I experienced this and I experienced it because of low iodine as well as anemia. So just because you're experiencing fatigue or weakness doesn't necessarily mean that you are iodine deficient but if you're experiencing it because of anemia it is probably a high probability that you have low iodine. So you will need to get your iodine levels checked in order to determine whether or not the fatigue and weakness is coming from either iodine deficiency or anemia or low iron. Here's a big one. Dry flaky skin. I used to get this all the time and the place where it would show up most in my body is on my legs and my feet and especially my heels but the front of my the legs they look like scales like snake skin that's how bad the dry flaky skin was and that's certainly a symptom of iodine deficiency. The next symptom cold hands and feet or just feeling cold and not feeling like you can actually get warm enough and this is also a symptom of anemia or low iron. So some of these symptoms are interchangeable for other things and there may be other reasons a person may be getting cold may get cold hands and feet but I know that the two popular ones are anemia and low iodine in the body. The next symptom is hyperlipidemia and this one is kind of tricky you have to get a blood test in order to have it diagnosed but if you get your blood drawn and there are fat particles in the blood it's called hyperlipidemia and it is a sure sign of iodine deficiency. Another symptom is irregular or heavy menstrual cycles and see whenever your iodine levels are low it causes your thyroid hormone to be off and if your thyroid hormone is off it can contribute to irregular cycles heavy bleeding absent periods so it can be a symptom of iodine deficiency. Another symptom is impaired kidney function or weak muscles or stiff joints now you can also have this symptom if you have anemia as well but like I've been saying sometimes low iodine and anemia go hand in hand something I used to struggle with often is recurring infections like if you find yourself always getting a sinus infection or a yeast infection all kinds of infections of infections and bacterial problems just always sick that can point to low iodine as well. There are thyroid hormones that actually help with our immune system so if those hormones are off sometimes our immune system can't fight off infections as as efficiency as efficiently as it would like to because it contributes to our white blood cell count so if our white blood cells aren't like functioning normally it can't fight off the the infections that we may get effectively so we want to make sure that we have enough iron iodine in our body so that we can't fight off infections efficiently. The next thing is brain fog I don't know if any of you have ever struggled with brain fog but I struggled with brain fog and I also struggled with memory problems like I couldn't remember certain things and so and I was also having difficulty learning and that's not my MO at all like that's not who I am in general so when I started struggling with that I was just like what is up with that but that is a symptom of iodine deficiency. The next symptom is changing of heart rate now you might say well sometimes I get a rapid heart rate well that is a symptom of anemia or low iron in iodine deficiency sometimes people can get a low heart rate like your heart will start beating slower and so that's the sign of iodine deficiency if your if your heart rate is slowing down occasionally. I'm not saying completely slow all the time but just having periods of a slower heart rate can be a symptom of iodine deficiency. If you have been diagnosed with Hashimoto's disease or hyperthyroid or any kind of thyroid condition before you start taking iodine you should check with your health care provider. If you have reversed iodine deficiency can you do me a favor and comment below and let me know what it is you did to reverse your condition because we can all learn from everybody and down in the comment section I would love to get a conversation started with this topic because I'm actually going to do a few more videos on this topic because I think it is a silent deficiency that people struggle with on a regular basis and they don't know that they're struggling with it and it could be just as something as simple as adding a iodine supplement or eating more foods with iodine in it that can help reverse this problem. So if you have experience with this please comment below because I would love to hear it. I'm going to give you some tips on what I think you can do to help overcome iodine deficiency one is you can get iodine from the foods you eat and one of the first foods that you can use is dried prunes. One of the things that I do with dried prunes is I either stick them in my smoothie because they sweeten up my smoothie I'll chop them really tiny and put them on top of my salad or I'll just pop them in my mouth as a snack or like if I need to pick me up I'm maybe hungry but I'm not quite ready for dinner or breakfast or something like that and I'll eat a few prunes they are full of iodine. The next food that I like to eat is nori wraps and a couple of months ago I did a video on how to make vegetable wraps I'm going to link it down in the description box below and up above in the cards so you can click on that video and see how I made the nori wraps with the with the vegetables and you can get iodine from eating nori they're full of iodine. The next food you can eat is one of my favorite foods I like to add it to salads I like to add it to soups and that is kelp noodles I also did a video a couple of months ago on how to soften kelp noodles I'm going to put that video down in the description box and up above in the card so you can take a look at that but if you just add prunes nori and kelp noodles to your diet you can increase your iodine intake. Also the next thing I'm going to mention is the supplement that I like to use if you don't want to be bothered with trying to get it in your diet every day by adding some type of a seed vegetable to your diet you can actually take a daily supplement called liquid iron I'm sorry liquid iodine and the type that I like to take do you see the lines it's the way the sun is coming into my office sorry about that y'all so here is my j crows lugals two percent solution do you remember being a little kid and I know in the 70s what used to happen is when we would get a sore cut my grandma what she would do is get something called macuricorn. Macuricorn I think that's how you say it and it was red and basically it was an iodine solution and she would put it on top of the sore and it would make the sore feel better and so um what you can do to even check to see if your body is deficient or not as you can get yourself some iodine and before you go to bed you take a q-tip and you take some of this solution and you paint it on your arm like right here just paint a square on your on your arm and you just go to sleep you don't have to cover it up or anything it'll dry it'll just be packed like a patch of red on your arm and in the morning if the patch is either faded a lot or gone you will know that your body needs the um iodine but the way you take this and it it has it's a dropper so let me just show you so it's a dropper and it has that much in it and so one dropper full of this is 12 000 micrograms and that is one dose so you can take this and you can put it in some water and drink it or you can squirt it in your mouth and swallow it it doesn't really taste like anything but if you just take this every day this will give you your daily amount of iodine that you need now the other thing I want to tell you is very difficult to overdose on iodine you would have to take a ton of iodine in order to overdose on it the only precaution that you need to take is if you have been diagnosed with some type of thyroid disease you just need to check with your doctor before you start taking it that's it if you want more information on this topic I'm going to be doing a series I think there's two more videos in this particular series but if you want to talk to me you can always sign up for a free consultation with me a free 10 minute strategy session the link is in the description box below now you know what the symptoms of iodine deficiency are and you've got some tips on how to deal with them how to overcome them in my next video I'm going to be talking about why we as women need to make sure we are getting enough iodine if you like this video please give it a thumbs up share it with a friend and if anything that I've said in this video has helped you please comment below because I would love to know what it is and I will talk to you all later