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The curse of the goitre in Switzerland

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Re: The curse of the goitre in Switzerland

#171

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

analog31 wrote: post #121
Faaak wrote: post #2

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. I'm always impressed with all these doctors that would question the approach, try new protocols, and end up by finding a cure

They probably get plenty of iodine from packaged food since it doesn't all come from the same region any more.

Unclear but Germany is monitoring iodine intake and insufficiency is on the rise.

https://www.klartext-nahrungsergaenzung.de/wissen/lebensmitt...

Re: The curse of the goitre in Switzerland

#172

Post by vladms »

routerl wrote: post #33
NelsonMinar wrote: post #4

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. https://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm

Lovely. Thanks for posting that. With all our popular narratives about the inevitability of scientific progress, it's always refreshing (from a historical point of view) and important (from a personal, ethical perspective) to remember that there's no guarantee that chronologically later developments will necessarily be improvements on earlier conclusions. It brings to mind our current replication crises in science.

Depends what you mean by "development", as the article does not describe developments on treating scurvy, but rather somehow random actions based on wrong assumptions (ex: limes are the same as lemons; acidity is all that matters).

And even if in this case the initial solution was correct, it was still observing a correlation, as they had no clue why lemons do the job.

My conclusion based on the article is that just experimenting is not enough, you also need to develop and test a complex understanding of the system. We probably don't cherish enough as a society, that some of us (as in: trained researchers, etc.) have a mindset that expects both replication and understanding, even if being humans we don't always reach this ideal.

Re: The curse of the goitre in Switzerland

#173

Post by lostlogin »

tourmalinetaco wrote: post #100
kergonath wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much the same as against fluorine in water in the States: it’s unnatural/a globalist conspiracy/killing our traditional way of life/a plot to subdue the people for . There is no scientifically sound reason against it.

There’s scientifically sound reasons for not wanting to drink fluorine, namely that the science is still out for whether it’s useful when used alongside regular topical applications. Not to mention excessive fluorine can stain or pit the teeth, and that it may even destroy nerve tissue. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/magazine/magazine_article/fluor...

> the science is still out for whether it’s useful when used alongside regular topical applications.

That’s a meaningless comparison. The whole point is that people aren’t doing topical application.

A similar debate to this is the adding folate to flour or bread.

Re: The curse of the goitre in Switzerland

#174

Post by AlbertCory »

I'll always be grateful to the doctor who just noticed my throat being very slightly 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.

Iodine deficiency is ONE cause of goiter, but not the only one.

https://www.healthline.com/health/hypothryroidism/hashimotos...

Re: The curse of the goitre in Switzerland

#175

Post by meepmorp »

mosburger wrote: post #96
meepmorp wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people dislike the flavor of iodized salt. But what would you expect from future cretins?

FWIW, that was addressed in the article: > Whatever chefs might claim, this fact is well established: in 1995, Unicef, concerned about the sensitivity of children to odd flavours, commissioned a study in which rice was prepared with salt iodised at ten times the maximum recommended concentration. In double-blind taste tests, the iodine was undetectable.

I'm just repeating what people have told me.

Re: The curse of the goitre in Switzerland

#176

Post by agnosticmantis »

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:

https://psychology.okstate.edu/faculty/jgrice/psyc5314/Freed...

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.

Re: The curse of the goitre in Switzerland

#177

Post by hankman86 »

rmason wrote: post #106

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'…

Only if sensible people continue to run the public health authorities.

You now have people that refuse to vaccinate their children against measles, COVID vaccine hesitancy is a widespread phenomenon with some people resorting to heresay remedies like horse dewormers instead, an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist is running for US president and polling with double digit numbers.

Health-related insights are particularly susceptible to targeted misinformation. And in an era of social media, this can quickly become a majority opinion.

Re: The curse of the goitre in Switzerland

#178

Post by ufo »

phkahler wrote: post #24

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. Changing the ratio of T3/T4 does cause a change in TSH (thyroid stimulatin…

The thyroid is by far the largest consumer of iodine. It stores iodine in thyroglobulin, which is the precursor to thyroid hormone. I don't know the numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if the thyroid released more iodine by breaking down thyroglobulin than breaking down thyroid hormone.

Re: The curse of the goitre in Switzerland

#179

Post by ufo »

dghughes wrote: post #116

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.

I'd assume that the null-hypothesis is that it's unrelated. The most common cause of hypo is Hashimoto's thyroiditis, an autoimmune condition. More likely to appear the older you get.

Re: The curse of the goitre in Switzerland

#180

Post by [deleted] »

kashunstva wrote: post #142
kergonath wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You pretty much cannot have too much iodine. It is a good idea to use iodised salt in general. [edit] fair enough, I need to qualify that. You pretty much cannot get too much iodine with something that looks like a normal diet, and in any case iodised salt is not what push iodine levels over the top. And in a normal diets, iodine deficiency is much, much more likely than iodine overload.

> You pretty much cannot have too much iodine You may wish to research the Wolff-Chaikoff effect.

[deleted]
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