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Dr. Osborne’s Zone
The Breakthrough That Changed My Life! - With Dr. David Brownstein
00:59:42
My favorite iodine supplement - https://www.glutenfreesociety.org/shop/grouped/ultra-iodine/ In this insightful conversation, Dr. David Brownstein, a medically trained doctor, shares his transformative journey from conventional medicine to a more...
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- [00:05]
A
You unlock this door with the key of compassion. Beyond it is another world, a world of science, a world of common sense, a world of sanity. You're moving into a land of both empathy and ethics, of nutritional knowledge and empowerment. You've just crossed over to Dr. Osborne. So, Dr. Brownstein, thank you so much for joining me. Really appreciate your time.
- [00:34]
B
Thank you for having me.
- [00:35]
A
So I'd love to just start with how does a medically trained doc get involved in the natural world of things? What's your story?
- [00:47]
B
Yeah, I certainly didn't start out that way. I started, I grew up in a conventional household. We didn't take any vitamins or minerals or pay attention to what we ate and just went to the doctor and we were sick. We took whatever the doctor told us to take and we didn't question anything. And I grew up with a bad case of asthma, severe case of asthma, you know, multiple trips to an emergency room. And when I was a kid, I was sure I knew how I was going to die. You know, I was going to figure I was going to die in a asthma attack. And so I, I had a lot of exposure to medical doctors just because I was sick. And I always found science fascinating and medicine fascinating. And since I was little, I always wanted to be a doctor. And so I geared my training at the undergraduate, you know, reigning undefeated national champion Michigan Wolverines. If you can't see this, I'll just make sure and to go to med school. And I went to med school at Wayne State in Detroit. And I bought into everything I was taught. I thought drugs were the answer to everything. I thought you di. You know, I was taught to diagnose pathology and then prescribe the one drug to treat that pathology. And I bought into it. I thought, I thought that's had the answer for everything. So I used to tell people back then, don't take supplements. It's a waste of money. I made fun of my mother in law for taking supplements. She was, she was way ahead of me back in the day. She was a big fan of Adele Davis and she used to get a couple newsletters and show me the newsletters and I thought, oh, you know, I just tell her you're just making, you know, expensive urine. And so I went to. Because I saw my family doctor a lot for my asthma. I just became, I just decided I wanted to be a family doctor. And it's what I went to med school for. And so I finished a residency and family practice and the, that's where I am. So I started practicing conventional Medicine as I was taught. And I was prescribing, diagnosing pathology and prescribing the drug to treat that pathology. And I was like, this was my. My only. This was plan A. There wasn't a plan B. This was it. This is what I thought I wanted to do my whole life. And around six months into that practice, I started to have the anxiety. Out of nowhere popped up, and I lost sleep for a couple of days, and I was getting up and getting ready to go to work, and it was about three nights overall of not sleeping great. I blurt out to my wife, I don't want to be a doctor anymore. I had never said a word to her before this. I met her when I was 18 at orientation at University of Michigan, the reigning undefeated national champions in football. And since she met me, that's all I talked about, was being a doctor again. There was no plan B for that. So she said, what's wrong? And I said, I'm not helping people. I'm just prescribing drugs that most of the time aren't treating the underlying cause of their problem, and they're just treating symptoms. And I'm having to prescribe other drugs to treat the problems in the first drugs. And, you know, the people aren't getting better. And I said, I can't do this for the next 30 years. She said, what are you going to do about it? And I said, I don't know. Now, at that point in our lives, she was pregnant with our first child. We had $100,000 in student loans. I didn't have any backup plan. And this anxiety started to overflow in me. I've never had that before. And that same day, I said that to her in the morning, getting ready to go to work, saw a patient in the office. And the patient had been bothering me to meet his chiropractor for a long time. His wife and my wife were friends and they worked together. So we've done something socially. And he talked to me about how his chiropractor really helped him. Not so much with adjusting, with, I don't know, giving him things, you know, later, there's supplements. I didn't really know what he was doing, but a chiropractor helped him much more than adjusting them. Now, before that, I never referred to a chiropractor. I used to tell people they were dangerous. I never knew what a chiropractor was. Never went to a chiropractor, never met a chiropractor. But we were taught in med school, they're dangerous, you know, people shouldn't see them. And so I used to pair with that as well. Well, in that. In that period of anxiety and lack of sleep. I saw that patient that morning. He gave me the chiropractor's name and number. At lunchtime that day, I called him and set up a dinner meeting for following Tuesday. And Tuesday rolls around, I come home from work, I tell my wife I'm going to cancel that dinner meeting. You know, I don't feel like going, and it's a waste of my time. And she said, it's too late. You know, that would be rude. You need to go. And as I was walking out the door, show me to be nice. And I went and. The chiropractor's name was Dr. Robert Radke. He had been practicing applied kinesiology and nutritional chiropractic medicine for. He was older than me, probably 20 years at that time. And we hit it off right away. We hit off a friendship right away. And he started talking to me about functional biochemistry, like actually looking at biochemistry, thinking about biochemistry, and figuring out why the biochemistry is disordered in people who aren't feeling well or have chronic disease, and how to optimize biochemistry or normalize biochemistry. Now, that was a unique concept to me at dinner that night. To go to med school, you have to take biochemistry, which I took, and I got an A. To be in med school, you have to take biochemistry again, pretty much the same course. I got another A. I thought I knew biochemistry, but what I knew how to do was to memorize these pathways and spit it out on the exam and then delete the files after they were out because there was. You didn't use them. You weren't taught how to use that stuff. So it was really just another science course that was kind of useless for medicine the way it's taught. And then at that dinner, Dr. Rhett, he's talking about functional biochemistry and what he's doing with his patients. And either he was. Either he was lying to me or there were other ways to treat people that I wasn't taught in medical school. He bought me a book at that meeting, Healing with nutrition by Dr. Jonathan Wright, who's an allopathic physician. And I went home with that book, and I went home charged up that, you know me, you know, this was exciting to me. So I opened that book and I read that book till two in the morning, and I had to work the next day, and I woke up all excited, and I called my dad in the morning before I left for work. And I said, hey, can you stop in the office? I want to draw a couple of blood tests on you. Now, my dad had his first heart attack at 42, his second heart attack, first heart attack at 40, his second heart attack at 42. Over the next 20 years, he had multiple angioplasties. He had two bypass surgeries. And at that point in my life, he was on 12 medications for heart disease, diabetes and hypertension. And my dad looked terrible. He looked like he was going to die at any moment. He was blue and pasty. He was popping nitroglycerin pills for angina like they were candies every day for 20 plus years. And he couldn't do anything. Anything he would do would cause chest pain. So we were all waiting for the phone call that he had died. And because of what I talked about with Dr. Ranke, because of what I read in that book the other night, till 2am, I drew two blood tests on him. I drew his thyroid levels, and much more in depth thyroid levels than what I drew what I taught in medical school. Full thyroid panel instead of just a TSH level. And we can get into that in our talk. And I drew his testosterone levels and his levels come back seven days later. His testosterone levels were below detectable limits from the lab and his thyroid levels were in the reference range, but in the lower part of the reference range. So I put my dad on two things. Natural thyroid, thyroid hormone and natural testosterone. Within seven days, his 20 year plus year history of angina melted away. He never used another nitroglycerin pill. Within 30 days, his face pinked up. He felt better. He was doing things without chest pain. I get his blood work again. And his cholesterol, which has been perpetually stuck in the three hundreds, on medication and on a terrible diet. I mean, my dad ate horribly, smoked, he was overweight. He never exercised a day in his life. I mean, my dad could eat like the best of them out there, but he looked better and he acted better. And his cholesterol now, instead of the 300, was below 200 without changing any of his bad habits. And I saw the changes in my dad talked about it with Allison that night. And I knew I made a change. So I went to the practice I was in which I was going to be a partner. And I said to the partners, no, my wife's ready to have that baby any day. First baby's coming, we're just waiting for it. I went to them and said, I'm not going to be a partner anymore. And they said, what's wrong? And I said nothing's wrong, but I want to go practice a different type of medicine. And they said, what's that? I said I'm going to do holistic medicine. Told them about my dad, his story, and they said what's that? And I said I don't really know, but I'm going to have to figure this out. And they said, why don't you just do it here? And I said no, I need to be in an office where people answering the phones, the nurses, the file clerks, everybody in that office is under working for one thing, for health. And so I left. And here I am 30 plus years later and I've written 17 books, write a national newsletter, got a busy practice, I'm practicing with my girls who are both doctors and having the best time of my life. And it was the best thing I did. And I do Credit my friend Dr. Robert Radke for that. He's the one who allowed myself to make that pivot in 180 degree pivot and walk the other direction. And it's been a great walk. Hopefully I can walk a lot longer on it. And I'm still figuring out what holistic medicine is, but I have a much better idea about it now than I did 30 years ago.
- [11:12]
A
That's amazing. I think we're all still figuring out what it is. Just to me it's amazing that you were humble enough to, to learn like the, the story. I, I, when I talk, I talk with a lot of doctors who, you know, who aren't natural or who don't go in that direction and just kind of do mainstream care and it's just hard to get through to a lot of them because they're just not willing to learn. They're just not open minded to even crack a biochemistry, nutritional text or anything else. And the fact that you just were able to do that just speaks volumes about, about your goodwill and what you really, you got into it for the right reason.
- [11:51]
B
So I tell, so I just saw this patient the other day, she's a high school senior and her and her mom flew out to see me and just talking to her and I said, hey, you know, what's the plans for next year? She's applying to all these schools, she's waiting to hear from Stanford and some other top notch schools. I said what are you going to go in? And she told me about, I said what classes are you taking this year? And she tells me and I said well what are you going to, what are you going to what's your plan in life? Or what, do you have any ideas? And she said, you know, marketing or something like that. I said, well, why are you taking physics and biophysics and calculus? And she said, well, you know, I was kind of thinking of medicine, but all the doctors I talked to hate medicine. And so I don't think I want to do that. I'm like, wait a minute. Well, let's spend a few minutes. So talked to her about it and I said, if you go into it for the right reason, medicine is fantastic. And said, it's been the best career. I couldn't ask for anything better. And my. The doctors I know that are unhappy in medicine are the ones that didn't go into it for the right reason. And I think if you. And look, conventional medicine has a lot to offer, too. It's not just one or the other. I think you can. I combine both of them. I think that there's good to take out of both. But you can. If you go into medicine for the right reason, it's a fabulous way to make a. You know, earn a living and, you know, helping people and doing the right thing. And I think I found one of the better ways to do it. So I tried to talk her into it, and she seemed a little bit more charged, you know, charged up about it when she left the office yesterday. So hopefully it made a dent in her.
- [13:28]
A
Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. I. I think we need more doctors that think along that way. We need more people that just want to get into it for the right reasons and just. Just be of service. You've. You've written a lot of books. One of the books I read of yours years ago was on the thyroid, on healing the thyroid naturally. That was actually when I was a graduate student and, you know, it stuck with me. I actually have. I have a copy of it, you know, right here.
- [13:56]
B
And that's an old version.
- [13:58]
A
It's an old version.
- [13:59]
B
Like I said, I love that cover. Let me find my. Oh, I gotta find my new cover. Here's my new cover.
- [14:08]
A
Oh, that's very pretty, too. Yeah, it's a little more decorative. Yeah, for sure. But it just. It turned me on. I had some really good mentors in graduate school, and. And it turned me on to a. To a world of thinking about disease a little bit differently in terms of nutrition. And I really would like to pick your brain today for our audience about thyroid disease. And I'd like to start maybe first with low thyroid hypothyroidism and just kind of have you walk me through that? You'd mentioned earlier that what you ran on your father was more than just the standard tsh. So maybe we can just start with what is the appropriate investigation biochemically for somebody watching this to ask their doctor, hey, I want to do more than tsh. What are we looking at?
- [14:59]
B
Well, the thyroid gland sits here in the lower part of the neck. And it's a small gland, a butterfly shaped gland, that produces a hormone, thyroid hormone, that's essential for every cell in the human body. We can't live without it. And it has to produce enough thyroid hormone to drive the metabolic rate of every cell in the body 24, 7, 365 days of the year. So little variations in that thyroid hormone. It only produces about a teaspoon of thyroid hormone for a whole year. So little variations in that teaspoon have big effects on the body since every cell requires it. In medical school, I was taught that the. I was taught appropriately, thyroid physiology and biochemistry, that the thyroid gland is stimulated from thyroid stimulating hormone, or tsh, which comes from the gland in the pituitary, which is right behind here. And TSH is thyroid stimulating hormone, and it's named appropriately. It stimulates the thyroid gland to make thyroid hormone, which goes through the bloodstream and stimulates the metabolic rate of the cells of the body. So I was taught to check TSH levels only. And if the TSH level was above the reference range, it could have a low thyroid situation because the pituitary is producing a lot of thyroid, trying to whip the thyroid to make thyroid hormone. Yet something's wrong here. It's not making enough thyroid hormone. So in those cases, I was taught to give them thyroid hormone, primarily Synthroid or Levothyroxine or T4 Derivatives of thyroid hormone. Well, I wasn't taught to do anything differently in today's world because I just have two daughters who finished their training and they were taught the same thing. The only thing different with them is they were taught to check a T4 level. T4 refers to a substance called levothyroxine, which the 4 is 4 atoms of iodine are attached to the thyroglobulin molecule. That's primarily what gets released from the thyroid gland and goes to the rest of the body, gets taken up by the cells, and then, you know, drives the metabolic rate or does whatever thyroid hormone is supposed to do for those cells. So T4, when it gets invited into the cells, converts into T3, which is triiodothyronine, the active form of thyroid hormone. It has three atoms of iodine on it versus T4, which has four. That three atom thyroglobulin molecule, T3, binds the thyroid receptors in the cells and that's what ultimately drives the rate. So when I learned to look at the biochemistry a little bit in more detail, I was looking at thyroid hormone producing T4 and T4 converting into T3. I thought, why shouldn't we be checking that instead of just TSH levels? And after reading that book by Dr. Wright, I started to read other people's articles and books. And back then, that was early 1990s, there weren't that many, but there were a few talking about we should be checking the other thyroid hormones. Why not check the active form of thyroid hormone, T3? And what if somebody has a conversion block, they can't convert T4 to T3? It's called the T4 conversion block. What if they can convert T4 to T3? Yet there's resistance in the receptors of thyroid hormones to binding T3. It's called thyroid hormone resistance. If you're not checking this stuff, it doesn't exist. You'll never see it. What you don't look for, you're not going to see. So I started doing that full thyroid panel which was a TSH level free T4, free T3, a reverse T3, which is really important. I talk about all this in my book on thyroid and thyroid antibodies. And instead of checking one thing, I now check six or seven things and I get a much better, broader, more importance, more, you know, just more what's going on in that person at that time picture than just checking a TSH level. What I found over 30 years of doing this is just checking a TSH level is A, it's a, it's a lousy way. It's not the word I want right now, but it's a lousy way to assess thyroid function. And you miss a lot of problems with it and a lot of people are suffering because of that. So again, I have chapters on each of these things, you know, in my thyroid book.
- [19:24]
A
So just checking more in detail. You mentioned free T3, free T4, T3, T4, TSH and reverse T3 as part of that spectrum of what you're measuring versus the standard TSH by itself. You mentioned iodine. Do you measure iodine? Do you look at people's iodine levels as well?
- [19:45]
B
I do measure iodine. That is part of my. Everyone should have their iodine levels assessed. So iodine is an element that's, that's an essential element. For the human body, we can't manufacture iodine. We have to get it from the diet or we supplement with it. And recall that I said that T4 has four atoms of iodine attached to thyroglobulin. T3 has three atoms attached to thyroglobulin. You can't make thyroid hormone without iodine. Well, you can't make any hormone in the body without iodine because iodine concentrates in all the glandular tissues. The glandular tissues include the thyroid, the ovaries, the uterus, the breast, the prostate and the pancreas. And all these organs are producing hormones and they all need iodine to do that. And they also need iodine to have the normal architecture of the glandular tissue. So if we have enough iodine, we have normal architecture. What does that mean? It means it's normal. It's a normal butterfly shaped thyroid gland. It has no lumps on it, it has no nodules, has no cysts, has no bumps on it. That means breast tissue is normal. No lumps, no cysts, no nodules, no abnormal growth that are growing. Pancreas, ovaries, uterus, all the other tissues would be normal. And if I call this normal architecture, that's what we want. And iodine deficiency. What's been shown in animal test tube and human studies is that you get abnormal growths in these tissues. They take the form of cysts first. Cysts are fluid filled sacs, they're usually benign, but in the breast. Fibrocystic breast disease, which is one of the most common diagnoses you can make for young women out there, is a precursor to breast cancer in many studies. But you get cysts forming in tissues, goes on longer, the cysts become hard and nodular goes on longer. They take a hyperplastic appearance if you biopsy them and look at it under a microscope. And cancer is the end of that road. This has been shown in animal test tube, in human studies, in animal test tube, in human studies, you can halt and even reverse this pathway. Now, if you think about what's happening in our country right now, thyroid cancer is the fastest growing cancer. Breast cancers. A woman in the US woman has a 1 in 7 lifetime risk being diagnosed with breast cancer. Those are big numbers. One in seven women, one in three men. Similarly, prostate cancer, you have pancreatic cancer growing at epidemic rates. Ovarian cancer, uterine cancer, same thing. And we have a big, big mess in our hands. And I think that, I think that mess is caused in part, probably in large part from this iodine Deficiency epidemic we're facing. I have a book on iodine called Iodine. Why you need it, why you can't live without it. Iodine levels have fallen 50% across the United States over the last 50 years. And during that time, all those illnesses have skyrocketed and we're in trouble. And this, this MAHA movement is coming at the right time because America's sick right now. We need to make it healthy again. And it's going to come from a holistic, from a holistic approach. It's not going to come from a drug approach.
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A
What, what? So, so iodine I. For clarity's sake, because this question comes up a lot. So many people say I'm allergic to iodine. And in my experience, they generally have been exposed to some type of radioactive iodine. They had a negative reaction to probably more than anything, the radioactive material versus the actual iodine itself. But could you comment to that?
- [23:25]
B
An allergy to iodine is an essential item. Every single cell in the body needs and requires iodine. So as you said, people can have an allergy to radioactive iodine diet that's given to them for CAT scans and things like that, medical procedures that's common. And what's not common is an allergy to inorganic non radioactive iodine. I can't tell you how many people that tell me they have an iodine allergy yet when I give them inorganic non radioactive iodine that the human body has receptors for. Whoever designed us, designed us to get iodine to take iodine in because there's receptors all over the body for iodine and very, very few people can't tolerate, cannot tolerate taking inorganic nonredioctive iodine such as what I described in my book as a supplement.
- [24:22]
A
What do you feel like is the driving factor behind the iodine deficiency? We've got the goiter belt up in the kind of the north, mid, northwest part of the country. But what are your thoughts on iodine deficiency and why it's so prevalent?
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B
So the iodine, you know, interesting with iodine, you talk about iodine with anybody, whether they have any knowledge of iodine or not. Everyone seems to be interested in iodine. Their eyes perk up a little bit. They stand up a little straighter when iodine is discussed because it's an interesting, for whatever reason, it's an interesting substance for people. So you're right. The goiter problem is where I live in, around the Great Lakes. It's the states that border the Great Lakes. It's Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and that state down south that we've beaten four times in a row, starts with a lowercase o or four in a row, so. And they did win a national championship this year. They won a two loss national championship and they're fourth place in the Big Ten. Congratulations for them. They're not undefeated reigning national champions like sw. Anyways, so iodine, if you draw a line from the central United States down, including where you live in Texas, the whole mid part of the US has seriously low iodine levels in the soil. And what's happened because of poor farming techniques and erosions and you know, things that iodine levels have fallen across the United States. And according to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which the government does every 10 years, and we're waiting for this last one. This last one was supposed to be released during COVID They haven't released it yet, but iodine levels have fallen over 50%. And during that time iodine levels have fallen over 50%. We've seen rapid rises in all the thyroid illnesses, Hashimoto's graves, hypothyroidism and thyroid cancer. Plus we've seen increases in all those glandular diseases, including cancer of the ovaries, uterus, breast, prostate, pancreas and of course the thyroid. And the first thing we should be doing to make America healthy again is let's correct iodine deficiency, which is rampant across the United States. It's in, we're all eating very, you know, we're all eating pretty much the same foods these days and the food supply is just deficient in iodine because the soil is deficient in iodine.
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A
Do you think that fluoridation has anything to do with it? Like, like competitive halide.
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B
So iodine is part of the halide family. If we go back in time to high school for those that did take science majors or you know, beyond the periodic table developments. Group 17, which is on the right side of the periodic table is the halides. And the halides, in order of their size are fluoride bromide. I'm sorry, fluoride chloride, fluoride chloride, bromide and iodine. And each of those halides are competitive inhibitors in the body. Meaning if you get one halide in at high amounts, it can kick the other ones out. Two of those halides are essential. We can't live without them. Every cell in the body needs and requires them. That's iodine, chloride, chloride we get from salt, sodium chloride. And two of the halides are toxic, non essential items that have no known therapeutic value in the human body. That's fluoride and bromide. Now we could argue about whether fluoride is helpful for preventing cavities, which studies have shown that countries of fluoridate versus countries that don't fluoridate have the same number of cavities. But fluoride is a very toxic element. It's a stream of electronegative substance that can damage tissues that should not be in our water supply, shouldn't be in our food supply. And if we're going to use fluoride for anything, perhaps we could put it in toothpaste and nothing else and that might be adequate for fluoride. But you know, we're getting over fluoridated from, you know, water and juices and everything else that it's, that it's in, it's in fluoride's in a bunch of drugs as a, as part of its chemical makeup. And bromide is another toxic ally that's all over the place. It's in computers and iPhones and electronics and carpets and curtains and food and drink. And my testing has shown over 30 years that we are over brominated and under iodinated and it's causing all these health issues that we're suffering with as a country.
- [29:05]
A
So practical application there. Filter your water, avoid medicines if possible that contain these halides and avoid foods and other toxic compounds that contain bromides
- [29:24]
B
and correct iodine deficiency. Because look, if you get enough iodine in, you can competitively inhibit bromide out of the body. So bromide's found in bromine, vegetable oils, it's in food and drink, it's in a lot of sodas. Bromide and fluoride are in some antidepressant medications, some asthma medications, and then it's in all this, you know, blankets and curtains and carpets and mattresses and things, you know, we can't get away from it in our country. A lot of brominated substances have been outlawed in Europe, we still use them here. So it's re. So what this has done essentially is this fluoridation of our water supply and this over promenaded everything else has made our iodine deficiency epidemic worse for us than it is for our predecessors. And I think that's why breast cancer rates continue to rise, ovarian cancer, uterine cancer, pancreatic cancer, thyroid cancer, as well as other thyroid illnesses like Hashimoto's and Graves disease going up at epidemic rates.
- [30:24]
A
So correct the iodine remove as much as possible. The other halides that the body doesn't need that are non essential is this, so is this Is this something that you feel like is why thyroid disease is so much on the rise? You know, what, what would you say are the top, you know, five, you know, five things that are contributing to the deterioration of thyroids in humans today?
- [30:55]
B
Well, let's say the top five are all the same things because it's iodine deficiency. Number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and unless. So when I started doing holistic medicine, I treated my dad with thyroid hormone. One of the first member, thyroid hormone, testosterone were the first two things. His angina went away in seven days, and 30 days later, his cholesterol falls. 100 was 300 below 200. So 150 points or so without changing any of its bad habits. I start testing everybody for their nutrition and hormone balance. Everybody. Since my dad has gotten a hormonal and nutritional evaluation and I started finding all these hypothyroid patients out there, you know, for whether they had normal or not TSH levels, they started having T4, T3 thyroid antibodies, you know, all dysregulated. So I started using thyroid hormone. That was the first thing I really did for people, first thing I learned about, and I started putting people on natural thyroid hormone. And just like my dad, people are getting better from a variety of illnesses and they're getting their energy, energy back and their brain fogs improved and they're, you know, everything's practice is growing. I'm happy, they're happy. I think I'm doing them a service. Although I was bothered by how much thyroid hormone I was prescribing for people. Why, why so many people are requiring thyroid hormone to feel good? And so I went back to the biochemistry and started looking at the pathways and thinking, well, what are the cofactors that the thyroid gland needs to make thyroid hormone? And thyroid gland needs magnesium, it needs B vitamins, it needs calcium, it needs vitamin C, it needs iodine to make thyroid hormone. So I would try these cofactors in varying amounts of low, medium and high and to see if I could use less thyroid hormone that I was using. I would estimate the first 10 years of my practice, I had about 75% of my patients on thyroid hormone. Now, there were no ill effects seen with that. In fact, there were positive effects seen with that. But it was just, it was unsettling to me to have to use. You know, I didn't think we were designed by our maker to need thyroid hormone just because we're getting older. But none of the cofactors could get my level of prescribing thyroid hormone down they still need a thyroid hormone to feel good. And iodine was interesting to me, just like I said to you earlier that iodine is an interesting substance. Substance for most people, whether they know about it or not, they start talking about it, they become interested. I was always interested in iodine. I grew up in Michigan. I went to undergrad and med school in Michigan. I'm still in Michigan. It's the Quarter belt. It was known in the 1800s and 1900s that the goiter belt was an area of iodine deficiency. And are you okay if I get into that story of Gordon Belt? So in the. In the early 20th century, as the US was moving from east coast to west coast and the population was expanding, there was an epidemic of goiter that was starting to infiltrate the entire United States, but concentrated in the Midwest. And the U.S. government at its highest levels became concerned about this. They weren't concerned because people were having goiter, which is goiter means swollen thyroid. And they weren't concerned so much from people having goiter. What they were concerned about was the animals were having problems. The animals were having problems with the thyroid. They were having problems procreating, and they were having problems growing to the right size. And there was a concern at the highest levels of our government that as the population expanded from east to west, that the population was going to outstrip the ability to supply enough food to feed that population because the animals were not procreating correctly. So there was a doctor at Case Western Med School, and I am blocking on his name, and I can't believe I'm blocking his name out of me right now, who wrote a paper about. I was in med school that somehow caught the attention of federal government officials who asked him to do a study on animals to figure out if putting iodine in their feed would solve this thyroid problem they were having and the procreation problem they were having. So he put varying amounts of iodine in the feet of animals just outside of Cleveland, I think the Akron area. And he found the minimal amount of iodine added to animal food that all of a sudden cured their thyroid problems and their procreation problems and. And their size problems. He wrote up a paper on it, and he. The US Government used that same amount of iodine per weight for humans to figure out how much, the minimum amount humans need to solve their goiter problem. And so they. The easiest way and the cheapest way to get that into humans was in salt. So the government didn't mandate, but they encouraged the salt manufacturers to put iodine in Their salt. So that's how we got iodized salt. So iodized salt was introduced to that four letter state with a lower cast O. It's known as Ohio, but lowercase O04 against us last four years, by the way.
- [36:22]
A
And
- [36:24]
B
he did a study of teenage girls and he found that the goiter rate went down. I don't have those numbers in my head. Significantly reduced goiter rate when they gave them iodine and so they iodized salt. The same studies were done in Michigan shortly thereafter, and they iodized salt first in Michigan and Ohio and found the goiter rate went down. So the government encouraged all the salt manufacturers to make iodized salt for the rest of the United States. This is in the mid-1920s to late 1920s, and the goiter epidemic was held as the first public health miracle via the use of iodine and iodized salt. And it really helped things. You know, people weren't walking around with these huge thyroids anymore. And that's how we got iodized salt. Now the interesting part was the interest in iodine went down after that. You know, World War II came, World War II went, and then the goiter epidemic was gone. And big pharma started coming up with drugs. And iodine's a non patentable substance. It was cheap. It wasn't a lot of money to be made in it. And the interest just waned on it. And it was done. When I was in med school in the 1980s, I was very quickly taught about iodine, that iodine solved the cordial epidemic, that there's no more iodine deficiency in the United States because of that. And that was about it. You didn't really think about it. We weren't taught not to use iodine, but we weren't taught to use it. And we were taught that there's no. Basically we were taught there was no reason to use it because the, the deficiency caused from iodine deficiency, goiter is resolved. So it was, it was a, it was a public health miracle back then. But over the years, what's happened is our exposure to bromide and fluoride, the toxic allergens, has gone up. We're much more exposed to these things than our great grandparents and our grandparents and great great great grandparents were. And therefore our iodine requirements are higher now than our predecessors were. And I think that that's again the driving link between one in seven women with breast cancer risk, one in three men with prostate cancer risk, thyroid cancer, the fastest growing cancer, and then, you know, Pancreatic, ovarian, uterine, you know, the rest of them going. And I think the only way we're going to reverse this is correcting this nationwide iodine deficiency problem.
- [38:48]
A
Do you, do you feel like, with, with iodine, one of the, one of the, I guess you could say one of the biggest groups that are out there, you know, talking about don't do iodine. Right. They're saying this is contraindicated if you have Hashimoto or if you have Graves. It's a question in a, in a conversation topic that comes up quite a lot. What, what is your opinion on giving iodine to people with autoimmune, whether it's hyper or hypothyroidism?
- [39:24]
B
Well, I think that's it. That's, that's easy. We can, we can take, we can tackle this in 20 seconds. So have, have iodine levels gone up or down over the last 50 years according to the government's old statistics? I'm asking you.
- [39:39]
A
Oh, you got it down 50%.
- [39:42]
B
Greater than 50%. Have Hashimoto's Graves disease, the two most common autoimmune thyroid disorders, gone up or down over the last 50 years? So autoimmune thyroid disease has gone up, iodine levels have gone down. I should do it this way. Iodine levels have gone down. That's called a negative association. Now, that negative association disproves iodine as the cause of this rise in autoimmune thyroid disease, period. Exclamation point. It's the end of. We don't really need to talk about it beyond that. It's done. And could, could iodine correct this autoimmune thyroid disease? Well, we, we should have studies for that perhaps, but iodine has not caused this. It's iodine deficiency that's caused it. And yes, I can tell you from 30 years of using, of treating people with hormonal nutrients that iodine cures Hashimoto's and Graves disease in a vast number of patients to. A hypothesis has to withstand all criticisms to be true. So if the hypothesis is that iodine causes Hashimoto's disease, that taking iodine causes Hashimoto's disease, or supplementing with iodine increases your risk of Hashimoto's disease, that's the hypothesis. Well, I've got an N of two that I raised that showed that's the opposite case. And I've written about this extensively in my thyroid and iodine books. But my two daughters, Haley and Jessie, are 12 months apart and my wife was smart enough to make the diagnosis because they were like the shoemaker's kids without shoes growing up. I was busy in this practice, and look, I was a good dad. I went into all their games and I was very involved and know, but. But, you know, I get home from work and the kids were complaining, being tired, and, you know, they got headaches and they were playing sports. And, you know, I. I didn't want to hear more complaints when I got home, you know, so I might have shut my brain off a little bit with them with some of the medical complaints. But anyways, we're having dinner one night. I think the kids were about either 9 and 10 or 10 and 11, and my wife says to me, do you think they have a thyroid problem? And my wife has hypothyroidism. I have hypothyroidism. And I remember I had like a fork or a spoon or something near my mouth. She says that I put the spoon down, I grabbed my forehead. I'm like, oh, you know, I haven't checked them. I check everybody else. I think every patient gets a hormonal nutritional evaluation, except for my kids. So I credit my wife with making the diagnosis because I had the kids come in, get some blood work. They have raging Hashimoto's disease, both of them. And so I checked their iodine levels as part of that. The iodine levels were low, which is the case with Hashimoto's disease. And I start supplementing them with iodine. And then over the year, over a couple years, I see their Hashimoto starters, which were in the thousands to start, come down. And now they're 30 and 29 years old. But by the time they were in college, they had no signs of Hashimoto's disease. When I lecture about this to doctors, I show the progression with their lab tests as they come down. And I kept upping their iodine dose as they went down. So that's an n of 2. That disproves the hypothesis that iodine causes Hashimoto's iodine supplementing with iodine causes Hashimoto's disease. It's actually iodine that treats it. And I don't know how many. It's got to be thousands of patients. Now, between me and my partners, it's multiple thousands of patients. We've tested over 8,000 patients, new patients in our office, for their iodine levels, and 97% have tested low. They're not testing quite as low now because a lot of them come into our office, have read my book, and they're Taking iodine on their own. But if they're not taking iodine, just kind of living the American life and eating the American way, they're generally all low. Most of them are low in iodine, over 97%.
- [43:50]
A
Now you're testing iodine. Are you using a urinary loading test for that or how are you measuring?
- [43:58]
B
The accepted measure of iodine levels is urinary excretion testing. So you can use a spot iodine testing. If no one's taking iodine, where they just pee in a cup and you go measure the iodine, they're taking iodine. The only way to measure it is with a iodine loading test. I described that in my iodine book that my mentor developed and I had a little hand in that with him, Dr. Guy Abraham. And it's a functional test of iodine status in the human body.
- [44:27]
A
So is that where you're giving them 50 milligrams of iodine and having them do a 24 hour collection?
- [44:32]
B
Yes.
- [44:35]
A
What do you think about people that with active autoimmune thyroid disease that start iodine? There's, you know, there's a number of reports that they don't feel as well or they start feeling worse. Do you, do you have a description or an explanation chemically for why that might be for some people?
- [44:52]
B
Well, so I don't think it's wise to, to. I think it's wise for people. I don't think it's wise for someone to listen to this and go, they're taking 50 milligrams of iodine, you know, and see how they feel. You know, the worst doctor is your own doctor. Be your own doctor, that's your worst doctor. You need someone independent of you, who is iodine literate. And they're out there. There's enough of them out there who are iodine literate and can properly test you and take it. So is iodine needed by everybody? Well, look, it's an essential item we can't live without. Every cell in the body needs and requires iodine. So should every single person take iodine forever the moment they land on the, on this planet? You know? No, I mean, look, I see people who get side effects from taking vitamin C. I see people get side effects from taking magnesium. You drink enough water, you can kill yourself. So, you know, it needs to be done appropriately. You need to measure levels. And, you know, most people, the vast majority, can take iodine and feel good with it. You know, iodine is one of the few. Do you use iodine?
- [46:02]
A
Do you oh, all the time. Yeah.
- [46:04]
B
With your clients that, you know.
- [46:06]
A
Yep.
- [46:07]
B
I mean, iodine is one of the few things you can put somebody on where they really feel better, like right away. There's. You can put them on all the. The other stuff, you know, a lot of the B vitamins and whatever, you know, herbal things and like that. A lot of it, they don't know. They take it because we tell them to take it. And maybe their labs are better, maybe they're not, but they, you know, they don't really feel any better with it. Iodine's one of. One of the few things it can give a real bang for the buck. And the buck is important because iodine's fairly cheap. The supplements go to. I'm in the weeds right now and I forgot what you just asked me. Oh, you feel good with iodine. So, yeah, there are people who don't feel good with iodine, and the vast majority of those are detoxing. It's called the Herxheimer effect. When you. They're overloaded because iodine's coming into the. An iodine deficient system. The receptors are all brominated and fluoridated. And then the iodine comes in, moves that bromide plus or minus fluoride out of there. And the body has to get rid of these toxic halides and can get overloaded and it can make people sick and like flu, like, particularly flu, like symptoms, headaches, fatigue, things like that. And in that case, usually what I tell people is stop taking iodine. Take salt. Salt's really important to take with iodine, unrefined, healthy salt, like Celtic salt or Redmond salt, and take a teaspoon or two of salt a day for two weeks, Go back to the iodine and the salt helps you get rid of these other toxic halides, bromide and fluoride, and minimizes that. It's very, very few people can't take iodine after doing that. I have a book on salt salt, your Way to Health that has, you know, it's just a mainstay of what I do in my practice. And that gets rid of most. Doing it this way gets rid of those few people who have problems taking iodine. Okay.
- [48:00]
A
So can't be allergic to iodine if you have side effects or symptoms. It's probably a detoxification Herxheimer type response from release of bromine and bromide and fluoride.
- [48:11]
B
I don't know if you can't be allergic to iodine. Look, you can probably have an allergy to, I think There are people that have an allergy to. There's definitely people have an allergy. Organified iodine in the form of iodine dyes given for radiologic testing. A Blue Moon patient, these are really infrequent patients probably may have an allergy to some iodine supplement. Maybe it's something in the supplement that's, you know, with the iodine. They are out there, but they're just few and far between. I mean, these are patient. Every few years, you know, something like this happens.
- [48:47]
A
Okay, I want to go talk a little bit about Graves, if you would. It's probably one of the most under discussed. Most people are so. Because Hashimoto's is more common. And so one of the biggest comments we get back is what about Graves? You mentioned, I asked you a minute ago with autoimmune thyroid disease. You said Graves or Hashimoto's iodine would be, would be kind of place to start. But what other kinds of things are you seeing that are helpful for people with Graves? Diet. Is there a diet change, other nutrients?
- [49:21]
B
I love treating people with Graves because they get better. And I have a whole chapter on that in my thyroid book. And Graves disease is a hyperthyroid, hyperthyroid condition, an overactive thyroid condition where the thyroid's being overstimulated from particular immunoglobulins. That's an autoimmune disease. So the body's producing these chemicals that are stimulating the thyroid to make a lot of thyroid hormone. And it makes people nuts. They don't like it. You can get fast heart rate, the nervous, jittery palpitations kind of goes along with that. But people can tolerate hypothyroidism or underactive thyroid much easier than can tolerate hyperthyroidism. So Grave has been written about for. I don't know, I don't remember exactly when it was first diagnosed, but it's got to be 100 plus years ago. You know what the treatment for Graves disease was 100 years ago?
- [50:17]
A
No.
- [50:17]
B
Iodine. There's much in the literature from the late 19th century to the early 20th century, case history after case after, after case history of treating Graves disease with iodine. And in our office we have several practitioners. We all pretty much treat it the same way. We use iodine all the time for Graves disease. And the conventional treatment for Graves disease is using radioactive iodine where you burn the. The radioactivity kills the thyroid gland as it's taken up. It's radioactive iodine. So it's. The radioactive material binds to the thyroid gland. It destroys the tissue. And treating somebody like that reminds me of, well, I got an infected fingernail here. What do you think, Doc? Well, let's just cut off the finger and we've solved the infection of the fingernail. So what we treat Graves disease with is clean up their diet, get sugar out and get gluten out of the diet. Because gluten cross reacts with thyroid antibodies to stop, stimulate the thyroid gland. Higher dose iodine helps to calm. The oxidative damage that's going on in the thyroid gland. And then things like B vitamins and vitamin C also helps to squelch that oxidative stress that's going on in the thyroid. And we just don't find Graves that hard to treat in our office.
- [51:47]
A
Yeah, I've had, I've had very similar experience where the gluten free diet, you know, for many, you know, will take their, their antibodies level down to, down to non measurable, you know, and then couple that with good nutritional support, good nutrients. So you're, you're measuring then going back to what you, you measure. So a full spectrum, a full array of different thyroid markers. Beyond tsh, you're measuring the different nutrients, including iodine. You're changing people's diets. Aside from gluten, as it relates to thyroid antibodies, do you find any other things? You said gluten, you said sugar. But are there any other foods that you find to be big triggers for people with autoimmune thyroid or just type of thyroidism in general?
- [52:32]
B
Well, look, I think they need to eat a healthy diet and drinking water is part of that healthy diet. Getting sugar out, sugar is just the worst. There's one thing that everybody should do is cut out refined sugar in their diet. I think it's the single most important thing to do. And then, you know, getting seed oils out, I mean, look, it's, it's, it's not. The more you can do, the better, the better it is. But simply cutting out gluten, cutting out sugar can make a huge difference in pretty much anyone's condition for almost anything, but particularly for thyroid problems and autoimmune thyroid problems.
- [53:08]
A
Okay, Is there, is there anything that you would like to add that you see that super common around, around thyroid that's less discussed, maybe not, not quite as well known that you feel like people watching would, would benefit tremendously from?
- [53:27]
B
Well, I mean the one, the one thing is, and you, you touched on it was, you know, this push by, you know, some naturopathic doctors out there that, you know, it's iodine is toxic and you should go on low iodine diets and there's just no research to support that. It's just, you know, one of, one of the things, if you, if you lower iodine levels enough in people. Yeah. The thyroid gland, if it's hyper, will slow down because there's just not enough iodine in there to make any hormone. But let me tell you, they're going to get problems with the breasts in their ovaries and the pancreas and the uterus and prostate and other glands of the body. That's, that's like I got a fingernail infection. Let's cut off the finger and we solve that issue. That's silly to do it that way. The literature doesn't support that hypothesis. We remember hypothesis has to withstand all criticisms. If that's the hypothesis that it's iodine excess causing all these problems, well, we already solved that because iodine levels have fallen over the last 50 years while thyroid problems, including autoimmune thyroid problems, have increased dramatically over that time period. It's negative association disproves that. So are there other things? It's just, you know, do the basics. Basics are, I would say the basics are just a couple of things. Drink water. The Human body's about 70% water. The brain's 80% water. Drink half your body weight in water. Two, get salt in. Second major constituent of the body is salt. Next to water, you know, about a teaspoon. If you have heart failure, kidney failure, you know, you got to again, work with an iodine literate, salt literate, water literate doctor or holistic literate doctor, you know, and don't be your own doctor with this. Three is balance the hormonal system using bioidentical natural hormones. Four is correct iodine deficiency. And the fifth thing I'd say is the basics is exercise. There's a disease out there. Exercise doesn't help. People need to get off the chair. They need to get away from the computer. The kids need to get away from, you know, the games that they're playing right now and, you know, exercise. And I don't mean, you know, going to a gym. You know, go to a gym. Great. If you don't want to go to a gym, put some tennis shoes on and go for a walk. You know, I tell my patients, you have to do at least 30 minutes a day every day. I don't really care how you feel. The only people that shouldn't be exercising are the ones that they exercise and they're in bed for two days later. You know, there's something else wrong that you got to correct first before they can exercise. But exercise helps everything. And you know, I'd say do the basics and you know, starting with eat a good diet and let's get crap out of our diet and hopefully RFK Jr and the MAHA movement and, you know, we'll be able to correct that and get our health back. Country's a mess, man. We're not. I feel I'm going to see the downfall of our country if we don't correct this. We spend 20% of our GNP on health care and what the hell do we get for it? We don't get better longevity rates compared to our, our equal, equal western countries out there. We're the, we're the worst. We get more mortality, we get more infant mortality, more maternal mortality at birth. We get more chronic disease. We're have, we're fatter than everybody else. All the other western countries on the planet, we have the mess. We have more chronic illness and we're dying earlier. And that needs to be addressed. And I think time is now. Let's do it.
- [56:59]
A
Yeah. Amen to that. I think, I hope that this movement creates an awareness and a self responsibility that people need to take apart and not outsource their health to other people's opinions and into, you know, to pharmaceutical medications as a reliance for, you know, as a. As opposed to doing their own part. I mean, I think, like you said earlier, I think there's good and bad. I think you could, you can use medicine, but if you don't, you don't use behavior and you don't modify yourself, you know, it's all for not. And the outcomes have been horrible.
- [57:29]
B
They're terrible. And we're paying a lot of money for those terrible outcomes. That's the worst thing. Just shoveling money down, down in a terrible pit. And that needs to stop.
- [57:41]
A
Yeah, absolutely. Where can people find you if we, we want to send them. Do you have a website or a practice? We can send them your way.
- [57:51]
B
So you can go to my website, which is Dr. Brownstein, B-O-W-N-S-T-E-I-N.com and I practice in West Bloom, West Bloomfield, Michigan. There's seven of us practicing. My two girls are there. You know, we're, we're still seeing new patients and we're having a fun time doing it. It's, it's a really cool office. And you know, if you, if you would have showed me this office when I was in med school when I was conventionally oriented to diagnosing pathology, prescribing the one drug to treat that pathology. I, I don't know what I would have done back then. Either my head would have popped off or maybe I would have started a little earlier looking at this. But I, I, I don't think I could have processed that, you know, back then. But medicine can be practiced the right way and it can be done the right way. And I think that we're doing it the right way. We're having a good time doing it.
- [58:44]
A
Well, I sure appreciate what you've done, appreciate your books and your work and your passion, and certainly appreciate your time today coming on to talk with me.
- [58:53]
B
Well, thank you for having me. Let's do it again.
- [58:56]
A
Okay, we'll do it. Thanks for tuning in to the Dr. Osborne zone. Don't forget to share like and subscribe for more content like this. And make sure you come back next Tuesday at 6pm Central Standard Time and Thursday at noon 30th for more episodes.
- [59:22]
B
Sam.