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Could tap water be making you sick and tired ?

If anyone asked you – you’d give your health an F grade. Maybe you would report that most of the time, you feel

• Fatigued
• Frazzled
• Frumpy
• Freezing cold

These are all signs, that your thyroid is on a go slow.

The official name for the condition – hypothyroidism.

Just like obesity, diabetes, allergies and asthma – it is on the rise.

Why ?

Researchers from the University of Kent, suspect it has something to do with the water we’re drinking.

If you’re thinking, I knew it………………

P-O-L-L-U-T-I-O-N

is killing us and the planet.

Too much of a good thing

I agree with you, there are probably lots of unwanted chemicals that find their way into our water supply, their presence is worrying.

This problem is not caused by POLLUTION.

The chemical being fingered by the Kent researches, is actually a “wanted” chemical, one that is deliberately added by health authorities, to the water supply.

They add chemicals to our water ?

Yup. In addition to adding chemicals, such as chlorine to the water, so that bad bacteria don’t grow and multiply, authorities around the globe add fluoride. The reason – fluoride protects teeth from tooth decay.

The Kent team confirmed, this fluoride can be problematic.

Testing the waters

The Kent team took advantage of the health surveillance system in the UK, known as the national quality and incentive scheme (QOF), which requires British physicians to report on their patient’s health. The team specifically tracked hypothyroidism cases, reported from 7935 general practices in England from April 2012 to March 2013.

Armed with this data, they looked at the relationship between hypothyroidism and levels of fluoride in the water.

To do this, they used reports produced by the Drinking Water Inspectorate, a task force, which inspects the quality of the water flowing out of the taps of British homes and provides updates, based on individual postcodes.

The team used the 2012 data and crunched the hypothyroidism numbers – looking for patterns.

Neighbourhoods with more F (fluoride), got an F

After accounting for differences in the age and gender of residents of a neighbourhood,   they found that neighbourhoods with lots of fluoride, ended up with more underactive thyroids than expected.

Specifically, 30 % more.

The hypothyroidism “trouble” showed a dose response curve i.e. as the levels of fluoride increased, so did the odds of a person living in that neighbourhood, having a diagnosis of hypothyroidism.

NOTE : Any time researchers see dose response effects, it suggests the effect is REAL, rather than just something that is happening BY CHANCE.

What about the teeth ?

This study did not make any attempt to look at whether the neighbourhoods with more fluoride had significantly better teeth.

But, odds are, they did not……

Fluoride definitely does help teeth stand up to wear and tear better, but the helpfulness of fluoride requires the fluoride molecules to come face to face with the tooth surface.

Since when you drink water, you don’t leave it hanging around in your mouth for extended periods of time, very little of the extra fluoride goes to making teeth super STRONG.

Most of it is peed out.

Or circulates around the body, where it can get up to mischief.

And, based on this study, it does…..

Thyroid is the sitting duck

Iodine looks a lot like fluoride – both are classified as halogens.

The thyroid is susceptible to this “similarity”.

It’s big job is to create the thyroid hormones. It turns out, thyroid hormones are made up of a protein component, loaded up with iodine molecules. In the case of triidothyroxine (T3), there are three iodines attached to the protein, while in the case of thyroxine (T4), there are four iodines.

The chemical similarity causes confusion inside the thyroid gland.

The special iodine transporter, bringing all the iodine in, ends up transporting fluoride into the thyroid gland.

Fluoride accumulates…..

There is not enough iodine

Unfortunately, once the fluoride gets inside the gland, it becomes rather obvious that it not really a smaller version of iodine, it is USELESS. The fluoride cannot be used to make thyroid hormones and thanks to the “accidental” accumulation of fluoride, iodine is effectively, in short supply.

The transporter must work even harder to bring in more “iodine”.

Hopefully.

If there is lots of fluoride circulating and not so much iodine circulating, the problem persists.

Thyroid hormone production is compromised.

The body is on a GO SLOW, since the thyroid hormones are the cell’s coaches – they motivate the cells “TO GET UP AND GO”, the first sign of trouble, is your GET UP AND GO, has GOT UP AND LEFT.

This eventually ends up with a diagnosis of HYPOTHYROIDISM.

Oh dear !

Go without water ?

It seems rather ironic, but the healthiest drink in the world, water, could be contributing to your listlessness. Advising you to drink something else, is not going to create BETTER BODY CHEMISTRY, neither juice nor fizzy cold drinks, are healthful options.

So what can you do, to minimize your exposure ?

• Move ?   The practise of adding extra fluoride to the water is not universal. Some neighbourhoods do, some don’t. Find out what is happening in your neck of the woods.
• Install some kind of filtering system on the water entering your kitchen . You can buy systems that extract fluoride from the water, they are often quite pricey and vary in their effectiveness, but it is an option.
• Make sure you’re getting adequate levels of iodine.

You don’t need lots of iodine, but you do need a little and iodine is one of the chemicals, lots of us are short of…….

Fish and chips

The best sources of iodine are fish and sea vegetables – since there is plenty of iodine in the sea. Now you know why it is commonly in short supply – for many people fish is not a favourite.

Good news.   If you don’t like fish or live miles from the sea, then most governments around the world have your back. Iodine is routinely added to table salt. Think iodized salt. So, you can get extra iodine by liberally sprinkling salt on your food.

Supplement judiciously

If eating fish and salty chips is not an option……….. you may want to supplement.

BUT BE CAREFUL.

Just like too much fluoride is bad. Too much iodine can also be problematic, it can fire up your thyroid to such an extent, that it becomes giant sized i.e. you develop a goitre.

To avoid this, you need to make sure you have enough selenium. Selenium helps ensure the brand new thyroid hormone, that is being made in your thyroid gland, is in a form that your body can use.

Eish ! It is complicated………………… need some help figuring everything out ? Why not book a body audit, I can help you chase down your health gremlins, so you optimize your health.

Further reading

Want to discover more ways to create BETTER BODY CHEMISTRY ?