Ok everyone, we need to stay calm, which I know is the biggest challenge with something this serious, but let’s focus on the steps we all need to take:
Step 1: identify the products affected
Step 2: Inform all your patients – not just the ones you have prescribed these to this year, all your patients can potentially pass this essential information on to others who might be affected. Practice your real due diligence, and email your entire client base. We need to spread the word fast to limit the fallout for those of you old enough to remember the Bonsoy debacle, the magnitude of the error in iodine doses in these products is on scale with that – potentially providing people with 200mg (6,000 X UL) of Iodine) per serve
Step 3: Update your understanding of how an iodine excess can affect individuals, the markers and the manifestations – especially regarding delayed presentations & pathology resulting from cumulative exposure. This is something we will need to keep assessing & screening for over the coming months in these clients via not just TSH but repeat thyroid Ab assays.
Step 4: Conduct a risk-benefit analysis in each individual for the case of additional Selenium. This nutrient naturally has its own U-shaped dose response and adverse effects if we overshoot the mark but anyone who has been potentially consuming an iodine excess will, as a direct consequence, have a greater need for Selenium to protect the thyroid against damage from this. Iodine & Selenium are intrinsically integrated with one another in nature, in every diet, in our physiology and, accordingly, doses should be never considered in isolation.
Step 5: Know where to actually direct your anger! This is not the fault of these brands – though I note how fast some were to inform practitioners while others took their own sweet time, which is truly reprehensible. The blame lays squarely with the manufacturer, the only company name not being publicly shared and shamed! This manufacturer substituted a new unapproved raw material for their K-Iodide in January into their production line. The manufacturer worked this out retrospectively late last week and started contacting companies to alert them Friday evening!!! And for those inclined to TGA-bashing…it ain’t the time! At least we have a regulatory authority to respond – send out alerts to everyone etc.
Step 6: If you stock these products contact your supplier to enquire about your rightful reimbursement while not forgetting number 5! All these companies (practitioner only) are suffering a stain on their name that they had no power to prevent. It’s the manufacturer that needs to make amends here….big time.
This is so incredibly unfortunate…
😨 Of all the nutrients – the risks of iodine excess is something I talk about OFTEN and especially of late in pregnancy!! …and
😨 of all the products – it is these HUGE HITTERS in terms of numbers out there on shelves, in circulation & currently being consumed and
😨 of all the patient populations – two of the most vulnerable
Let us know if you have other suggestions regarding steps we, as individual practitioners and, as a professional community, should be taking in response to this