Just drink vegetable and fruit juice on the Reboot Diet plan?  No eating?  Yes, and you may be able to tolerate that because you do get ample nutrition.  But what about the headaches, and foggy brain – the detox effect?  Here, courageous one, are three remedies!

EVERY ONCE in awhile – so I don’t get out of practice – I do something decadent and unhealthy, but just one thing at a time… mostly.

So when my ole college buddy, Mitch, and I decided to walk from his home to be among the small fishes and egrets in a nearby estuary, I chose a honey-tipped cigar to commemorate the occasion, but left the beer behind.  Pellegrino was the substitute.

All the effervescence without the alcohol or the calories.

As we’re wont to do on such occasions, Mitch and I recounted some of our history together since the wondrous days at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and reconfirmed that although both our lives have turned out to be unconventional, they fit us well enough, are decidedly ours, and must be treasured.

If we don’t, who will?

But all this is not the kernel of this post.  The main point is about the detox effect that will occur to most of us when we embark upon a cleaner diet.

By “cleaner diet” I mean one dominated with fruits and vegetables.  Or, to take it to the squeaky clean level, I’m talking about a detox cleanse, one whereby you ingest only freshly made vegetable and fruit juice.  This is the subject of Joe Cross’s documentary, Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead, and the resulting “Reboot” juice cleanse diet.

This topic popped up in that estuary with Mitch.  He said,

“Hey, been meaning to ask you something.  Sometimes I feel sluggish, that I should be xxxx [means “eliminating”] more.  I could use a cleanse. [Who couldn’t?]  What do you suggest, Garm?”

I told him about the Reboot diet, mainly a vegetable and fruit juice cleanse, and about the so-called Chinese Detox Cleanse (I write about it at It’s Detox Time).  Then I cautioned Mitch to ease into it in order to minimize the uncomfortable detox effect.

If you’ve watched the Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead documentary (watch the trailer here), you may remember some mention of detoxing.  I know that one of the protagonists, “Phil” – who lost over 200 pounds on the Reboot diet – said not to worry if you get sluggish or headaches from detoxing because they would soon recede and be replaced with lots of energy.

This is true, but my concern for first-time detoxers is that they hide tail and scamper off immediately after feeling awful, never to return to the righteous alter.

“Hell no, cleansing is not for me!”

And that’s the kernel of this post, for what I want to tell you is that there are remedies to the detox effect.

Now, to be clear; by “detox effect” I’m referring to certain physical and/or emotional ailments that might arise after beginning your cleanse that you can pinpoint to the cleanse itself. Such ailments could be sluggishness, tiredness, headaches, nervousness, strong hunger or a skin rash.

If you’re a coffee power drinker, perhaps even constipation could occur because coffee helps with elimination, and if you stop drinking it, initially your toilet may get as lonely as your head hurts from the headaches, but neither will last beyond a few days. (Drink the Shake, #2 below.)

There are three simple things you can do to minimize or eliminate the detox effect when cleansing:

1. Transition Slowly. Before you begin the juice fast, take some time to ease into the new cleansing program.  How much time depends on where you’re starting from. If the thought of eliminating coffee, diary and meat during your cleanse makes you shiver, well you may need a couple of weeks to prepare.  Start reducing everything but fruits and vegetables, and then begin to eliminate, say, meat one week, followed by diary and then coffee.

2. Hydrate and Consume the “Shake”. During the cleanse, drink more water than you can stand, and a couple times of day, drink a “Shake” consisting of water, psyllium husk powder (fiber), bentonite (a liquid clay) and lemon juice.  (The psyllium and bentonite are widely available at health food stores or online.) This absorbs toxins and helps with elimination.  Drink it no sooner than one hour before or after your juice so the juice’s nutrition gets time to be digested.

3. Take Detox Baths. This is very powerful.  You need hot water in a tub, drinking water with lemon, baking soda, ginger powder, sea salt and a loofah.  The instructions are at the bottom of this post called, Detoxifying Your Way to Nirvana.

These three things should work for most of you. For the rest, just persevere!

If you’d like to learn more about the Reboot Diet, start with my post, Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead — The Reboot Plan which has links to some good stuff to help make you healthier.

Know that I’ve done many detox cleanses, all varieties, and have sometimes gone through some discomfort.  But mark my words, it’s worth it — or perhaps I should say, it was for me!

Related posts:

1. The Reboot Cleanse Diet – Two Common Struggles
2. Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead — The Reboot Plan
3. It’s Detox Time

Do you know which foods you eat contain genetically modified substances?  No, you don’t, because unlike in Europe – where GMO foods are banned — the Monsanto-friendly FDA in America says “no labeling required”.  Should you be concerned?

WHAT DO you think of a large, rich, strong, politically connected company that seems to be hell bent on controlling the world’s food supply?

Wonder how such a company could do this?

How ‘bout by creating their own patented seeds that appeal to large corporate farmers because they are disease and pest resistant.  This angle takes care of market demand because the farmers produce greater yield and save on pesticides.  (A short-sighted benefit given that under this model, farmers can not save their own seeds, but must buy from Monsanto each year.)

At the same time, a company bent on controlling food production needs to ensure it’s got the legal and political cover to protect its rights to the seed, so that when such seeds pollinate the land of farmers who have not purchased it, the company can demand payment and threaten legal action. Which Monsanto has done. Goliath against David, although this time Goliath usually wins.

Diabolical strategy.  Unfortunately, this is not fiction.

This is the story by the reviled Monsanto and its GMO venture.  “GMO” – genetically modified organism, which in this case are the seeds that have genetically altered, but which, nonetheless, have been declared by America’s FDA (“Food and Drug Administration”) to not be materially different from non-GMO seeds. The FDA says GMO is safe.

How did the FDA come to that conclusion?

Well, apparently they didn’t.  Recently, thousands of memos have been uncovered that show ample evidence for a contrary conclusion, but this information was hidden. 

Why? 

Could be that the then head of the FDA’s policy was a former Monsanto attorney, who – after his stint with the FDA – jumped on the revolving door back to Monsanto as a Vice President.  A job well rewarded.

What makes the FDA’s position stranger is that Europe has banned GMO foods, and that many animals won’t eat it, including rats.  But Americas do, usually without knowing it, because in this country food labels need not specify that GMO ingredients are used.

There are many people and organizations devoted to bringing this matter to the public’s attention.  If just a small percentage of consumers refused to buy GMO foods, the food manufactures would not use them, and the farmers would not grow them, and – most sweet of all – Monsanto’s plan for world-wide food domination would be terminally pissed upon.

Monsanto would no longer have reason to sue farmers that did not buy their GMO seeds, but whose farms were so pollinated.  Monsanto could go back to producing and selling seeds as Nature made them.

The Institute for Responsible Technology and the Organic Consumers Association are two of many organizations fighting against the Goliath Monsanto and  GMOs in the US.

The Institute for Responsible Technology’s web site will get you up to speed on this issue and suggest how you can do your part to ensure that no one company dominates our food chain with a product that not only may be inferior and harmful to Nature’s seeds, but could eventually overtake them.

Organic Consumers Association has a very informative newsletter that you can subscribe to.  The recent article is entitled: Monsanto Nation: Taking Down Goliath.

If you have a creative bent, how about participating in the No GMO T-shirt Design Challenge? Design an inspirational t-shirt around the theme of “food fight”. There are eight more days left to submit your design and/or vote on one you like.  You can learn about this, and check out the design submissions at the Food Fight Challenge.

 
Finally, if you need an extra push to get concerned, at minimum, or – better yet – get into gear and take action, then watch this short video that lays out the problem and the solution:

IT’S TIME FOR A FOOD FIGHT from NO GMO on Vimeo.

Related posts:

1. The Dirty Dozen and Clean 15 – Food to Live By (Watch)
2. Easily Avoid Cancerous Plastics and Food Containers (Bisphenol A) — Watch
3. Sunday Special: An Inconvenient Truth about Our Food — Watch

Joe Cross and his sidekick, Phil, lost between them over 300 pounds on their Reboot Diet consisting of fresh vegetable and fruit juice.  I do the juice thing, and there’s nothing like it!  It’s invigorating, healthy and curbs one’s appetite.  Get inspired by reading about Joe and Phil, and watching their documentary, Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead. [Link to the trailer at bottom.]

THE OTHER night I was in front of my sister’s TV scanning for Netflix movie downloads.  In my humble opinion, most of the download offerings aren’t interesting, so I decided to check out the documentaries.

If I couldn’t be entertained, why not get educated.

What grabbed my eye was Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead, a documentary by and largely about an amicable, (no longer) fat and (no longer) sick Australian named Joe Cross.

I clicked the image, and the download Gods of the Interwebs promptly presented me Joe’s magnus opus. Soon, I got pulled into a sweet and moving story that to date has helped make well some pretty unhealthy people healthy (and thinner!) via the Reboot Diet.

The Story

Although Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead begins with Joe’s story and his unshakable determination to solve his physical issues via a 60 day juice cleanse, there is an important detour that, nonetheless, underscores the value of Joe’s approach and adds another wonderful success story to the film.

And that would be in the personage of “Phil”, a trucker who Joe bumps into along his journey who himself is fat (over 400 pounds), sick and nearly dead.  Joe makes Phil his project, and Phil gives back by sticking to the program and adding a lot of humility and pure sweetness to the story.  Moreover, Phil proves that even a grossly obese person with entrenched negative eating habits can completely revitalize himself.

Phil has lost over 200 pounds.  Joe, a smaller person, has lost somewhere more than 70 but less than 100 pounds, if memory serves.

They, and the hundreds of others who have since this documentary was released, did this by doing fruit and vegetable juice fasting. This means you drink freshly made juice produced by organic fruit and vegetables by a juicer and you ingest only this for however long you’re willing to do so.

Sixty days for Joe and Phil.

My 2 Cents

I have some experience with juicing.  I’ve done juice fasts and regularly drink a mostly-vegetable juice juiced up by my high powered Breville juicer every morning. (Scroll to the bottom to see it.)

Please take note of a few things:

1. The first thing to do is simply add freshly made vegetable/fruit juices to your diet.  Unless you’re a committed, disciplined type, don’t amend your current diet, just add the juice.  As the days go by, drink more and more of it, until you find yourself eating less and less of everything else.

2. If you’re a meat and potatoes type, don’t jump into a juice fast straight away. (See #1 above.)  Instead, start adding fruits and vegetables to your diet. Next replace meat and potato type meals with fruit, vegetables, quinoa and red lentils. Once all that’s accomplished, then try the juice fast.

Yes, perhaps like Joe and Phil, you could persevere through the inevitable detox headaches produced by a cold turkey plunge into the juice fast, but without the cameras following you around to steady your resolve, you might just fold and abandon the fast, and never return to the wonders of juicing.  Ease into this. If you could use a guide to move to a healthy diet, read my Diet 101.)

[Beware of the "Detox Effect" which I describe in the Reboot Diet and the Detox Effect . Also, read about the two commons struggles on the Reboot Cleanse]

3. Buy a really good juicer.  If it’s not easy to do the juicing, it will become the excuse to quit.  Mine is the top of the line Breville which I bought at a really good price at Amazon.com.

(See below, and if you’re price sensitive, know that there are cheaper Breville models, as well as reconditioned ones at Amazon.com)

4. Read the FAQs at the Reboot site and the Reboot Blog which contain great tips and juice recipes to help you succeed in this attempt to reboot your life via juice fasting.

I leave you with one more Reboot story.

This one is from TV’s Dr. Oz, who has his own Reboot diet that I wrote about last year: Dr Oz and the 14-Day Reboot Diet Plan. In contrast to the juice-based Reboot Your Life plan – the subject of this post – Dr. Oz’s Reboot Diet Plan is a 14-day program that focuses on the types of food and behavior that make us fat, and what to do about it from a doctors point of view.  Check it out at the above link.

Whichever reboot you do, do do (ha!) something to reboot your life.  You’ll thank yourself profusely.  Oh, if you need a kick in the pants, just watch the documentary, Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead.

The trailer to the Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead documentary is here.

Here’s the Breville Juicer that Joe Cross and I use. Click the image and learn more about it at Amazon.com, and there you can decide if it’s the juicer for you.

Related posts:

1. The Reboot Cleanse Diet – Two Common Struggles
2. The Reboot Diet and the Detox Effect
3. Dr Oz and the 14-Day Reboot Diet Plan

Take a guess… how many toxic chemicals reside in your body, or in your baby’s?  You’ll be so startled by the answer that you just may take these simple steps to become BPA free.  Pollution within people is so real, so pernicious, that scientist are now “mapping the human toxome”. [Watch Ken Cook below.]

Store food and water in BPA-free containers.

IT ALL adds up now.

100 years ago, it added up to zilch.

But today, all the hormones and antioxidants in meat, all the bacteria, pesticides and chemicals in fruits and vegetables, all the dyes, chemicals, trans fats and preservatives in manufactured food, and all the chemicals, petroleum by-products inside liners of cans, plastic bags or plastic containers…. Well… these add up to overwhelm.

Simply speaking, the modern (wo)man has become a toxic dumping ground, and it’s overwhelming our health!

Don’t believe me? Think I’m long in the nose, or hyperventilating?  Read on…

Consider what’s in our environment, food and water (a tiny, tiny list):

• 900,000,000 pounds of 400 different toxic chemicals are spewed into the air each year, says the Environmental Protection Agency.
• 1,050 chemicals are in food, mostly originating from plastic containers and wrapping.
• 1,000 contaminants are in ready-to-drink, already-treated drinking water.

To those who study toxic chemicals in our bodies, it isn’t surprising that various diseases have dramatically increased that cannot be explained by genetics or evolution:

• Childhood brain cancers have increased 57% between 1975 and 2002.
• Birth defects, like hypospadias, has doubled and now affects one in 125 baby boys.
• Autism, once rarely known, now happens to one in 111 kids, one in 70 boys.

Among these, one particularly ubiquitous toxic chemical is carcinogen neurotoxin, Bisphenol A (“BPA”).  It happens to be in 90% of us, including the newly born.

I’ve been aware of how damaging BPA is for some time, and it was a central character in previous posts about plastic water bottles, such as Plastic Water Has Gotta Go, for Your Sake! and Water Bottle Alternatives You Can Live With. So, I was very interested in the San Francisco Chronicle’s report about a recent study, published in the journal, Environmental Health Perspectives, which I will share with you.

Five San Francisco Bay Area families were asked to eliminate packaged foods from their diets and store food only in glass or stainless steel containers. After doing this for only three days… only three days of eliminating packaged foods… their levels of the chemical bisphenol A in their urine dropped by more than 60 percent, researchers found.

That’s the good news.  It’s good news that this particularly plentiful toxic chemical in most of us can be significantly reduced so easily.  The bad news is that it touches so much of what we eat, and therefore we become easily re-exposed.

You need to do two things to get rid of BPA:

1. Stop consuming BPA via plastic and other manufactured food packaging.
2. Select and consume foods that aren’t wrapped in plastic or in cans that leach BPA.

Reduce your BPA exposure!

– Use glass or stainless steel containers.

– Opt for foods packaged in alternatives such as Tetra Pak cartons.

– Avoid canned foods with the highest BPA concentrations: coconut milk, soup, meat.

– Frozen fruits or vegetables may be a convenient alternative.

– Do not microwave food in plastic containers.

Read the Chronicle report of how one family dealt with BPA contamination here.

Read an online copy of the Environmental Health Perspectives study, “Food Packaging and Bisphenol A and Bis (2-Ethylhexyl) Phthalate Exposure: Findings From a Dietary Intervention,” here.

Watch Ken Cook, President of the Environmental Working Group (“EWG”) demonstrate how minute chemicals matter:

If you wish to learn more about this, start with Chemical Body Burden. Good luck to all of us in this crazy world.

Related posts:

1. Buying Tap Water in Plastic Water Bottles? That’s Not the Issue!
2. The Dirty Dozen and Clean 15 – Food to Live By (Watch)
3. Water Bottle Alternatives You Can Live With

Up in arms about not getting a supply of Potassium Iodide or Potassium Iodate?  Relax. (Watch Dr. McKone.) They’re not a panacea and there are other natural remedies that can help with radiation poisoning should it come to that.

AS I was cruising the Net today, something caught my eye.  A doctor said something like, “Enough already with the Potassium Iodide – it’s very unlikely to be needed by people on the west coast of North America.  What is happening, however, is everyone’s getting stressed for no good reason!”

I feel contrite because I’ve done my fair share of stoking the flames of, “Oh my god, the sky is falling”.  Certainly, one could interpret the several posts I’ve written about the Japan nuclear disaster as such, with their strong “Get prepared” message.

To reaffirm my position: I don’t believe that west coasters in America, Canada and Mexico are in imminent danger of being absorbed in a radioactive cloud floating here from Japan.  Even in Japan, the New York Times reports in its article, Precautions Should Limit Health Problems from Nuclear Plant’s Radiation, that the radioactivity fallout issue is a problem, but not a disaster – for now at least.

My intent in my posts on this subject is to say, “Hey, Japan is a wake-up call…. We need to be prepared here for something similar.”

In many places in North America, particularly the so-called “Ring of Fire”, earthquakes will happen.  Not a bad idea to be ready for them by having some food, water, medical supplies and radioactivity “mitigators” (my term) at hand.

So, I wrote various posts (see sidebar) about what’s happening in Japan, and how you could protect yourself if either the radiation there got to North America, or if what happened in Japan happened here.

Relax about Potassium Iodide

Back to my first paragraph… the good doctor was right – relax about the Potassium Iodide or Iodate.  It’s not a panacea anyway.

Potassium Iodide/Iodate protects ONLY the thyroid from radioactive iodine. If it is radioactive Cessium that is being released, Potassium Iodide/Iodate will not be effective in the reproductive system, kidneys, liver, and other places in the body where Cessium accumulates.

The same goes for another common element in radioactive fallout, Strontium… Potassium Iodide/Iodate doesn’t protect against it as it messes with your bones.

[Read more about Cessium, Strontium and how to protect yourself from them here: What to Do About Japan’s Nuclear Fallout.]

It ‘s also worth  noting that the thyroid radiation exposures from radioiodines after Chernobyl were virtually all internal.  The biggest cause of thyroid radiation after Chernobyl wasn’t in the wind, but in the milk!

Thus, if you were exposed to radioiodines, it would be nice to have Potassium Idoide or Iodate, but perhaps more importantly, it would be really good to have uninfected food stored.

So, don’t stress about it; rather prepare in other ways, which I’ll get into in a minute, but first watch Dr. Lawrence Berkeley Lab’s Thomas McKone tell Stacey Delo that he’s more concerned about stress levels we create for ourselves in the U.S. than nuclear exposure from the evolving crisis in Japan.

The Potential Disaster Next Door

If you live in California, you may know about the once-famous Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.  When it was in the planning stages more than 30 years ago, it was roundly rejected by many environmentalists and citizens concerned with nuclear contamination.

Guess what?

Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, which sits less than a mile from a fault line and right next to the ocean, was not required to include earthquakes in its emergency response plan as a condition of being granted its license to operate. (See  At California Nuclear Plant, Emergency Response Plans Don’t Include Earthquakes.)

Don’t live near Diablo?

OK, check out this map of nuclear facilities… where do you live?

(The boxie things are where nuclear facilities are located, and the circles are radiation test sites. Check it out here: National Radiation Map )

Live Your Best Life as You Prepare for the Worst

OK, so you’re starting to accept that there are no currently available supplies of Potassium Iodide/Iodate, and Dr. McKone has relaxed you a bit.  But that map above is starting to seep in.  So, what to do?

Find other radioactive poison “mitigators”.

Consider Eleuthero

After the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster, Russian and Ukrainian citizens reportedly received Eleuthero (also called “Siberian Ginseng”) to counter the effects of radiation poisoning.

Skipping around the Net, I found much anecdotal information that Eleuthreo was effective at helping with radiation poisoning, but have yet to see concrete proof.  It is still widely used in Russia and other Asian countries and has gained popularity in western countries as well.  And it has the added benefit of being an effective Adaptogen.

An Adaptogen is a herb product that is thought to increase resistance to stress, trauma, anxiety and fatigue.

See where I’m going with this?  Take Eleutreo and even if it doesn’t help with radiation poison, you’ll be relaxed about it! I’ve used it off and on for years, and though I’ve never been radiated per se (notwithstanding airport screening devices), I found it useful for cultivating energy and contributing to a sense of general well being (a totally non-scientific conclusion).

[There’s more about Eleutreo and its use to mitigate radiation here.]

Clay aka “Bentonite”

Various types of clay are used throughout the nuclear world to contain radiation.  The stuff absorbs heavy metals and radiation.  If ingested, it can help draw out radiation poison via the bowels.  If applied to the skin, it can draw out various poisons through the skin.

There’s a web site called, Magnetic Clay with very interesting information about clay, particularly how it responds to radioactivity that you might take a look at.

There’s information at this site about various detoxification baths.  I’d like to underscore the effectiveness and value of detox baths.  I do them while cleansing and they work great.  Scroll down to the bottom of this post, Detoxifying Your Way to Nirvana, to read about it.

Fighting Radiation with Food

Taking this a step further – many steps further – I’d like you to do yourself a favor and click on this link to OasisAdvancedWellness.com and get the in-depth details about how the following foods, vitamins, minerals, herbs and other substances protect against and combat radiation.  You may come away feeling better about not finding a supply of Potassium Iodide/Iodate.

Sea Vegetables

Bee Pollen

Bee Propolis

Beets

Dried, Primary-Grown Nutritional Yeast

Garlic

Onions

Chlorophyll

Oils

Foods rich in pectin

Fighting Radiation with Vitamins & Minerals

Vitamin A

Vitamin C & Bio-flavonoids

Vitamin E

B3 Nicotinic

Calcium

Magnesium

Selenium

Zinc

Potassium

Iron

MSM

Fighting Radiation with Herbs

Siberian Ginseng Panax Ginseng

Gingko Biloba

Black & Green Tea

Astragalus

Milk Thistle & Liver Support

Fighting Radiation with Miscellaneous Substances

Distilled Water

N-Acetylcysteine

SSKI

Beta-1,3 Glucan

Lecithin

Papain

Thymus Extract

Charcoal

Thymus Extract

Charcoal

Organic Germanium 132

Other Recommendations

Natural Geiger Counter

Sea Salt, Baking Soda & Clay

Sodium Bicarbonate

Probiotics

Zeolite

That’s it for now.  I hope you realize at this point that there’s no need to stress out about not having Potassium Iodide/Iodate at hand.  There are many other promising ways to battle radiation.

If there’s one I missed, put it in the Comments section below.

Related posts:

1. Japan’s Radiation Fallout – Protect Yourself!
2. Worried About the Potassium Iodide Supply?
3. What to Do About Japan’s Nuclear Radiation Fallout

Confusion reigns supreme. What to do? Potassium Iodine for the thyroid?  What about Strontium and Cesium?  They’ll be in the radioactive cloud too.  Let’s dig in and found out what to do.  (Read what I’m doing!)

WOW, THERE’S much confusion about how to protect oneself from radiation.  The disaster in Japan has made the whole world focus on this, it seems – and appropriately so.

People on the west coast are concerned that a radioactive cloud will blow here from Japan and poison them. Potassium Iodine and anything else with “iod” in it has already flown off the shelves and is no longer available.

Since I’ve been blogging about the Japanese tragedy and am considered a health nut, I’ve been peppered with questions and concerns.  What I need to do, then, is write this post.  The intent is to debunk some stuff, clear up some stuff, and suggest… yes… some stuff.

My Disclaimer: I’m not an expert in this subject matter.  I’ve just spent some focused time reading and evaluating information provided by TV and the Internet.  If you are an expert and wish to correct something I write, please, please do in the Comments section below.  I DO NOT want to perpetuate falsehoods!

Iodine vs Iodide vs Iodate???

This is the first and most significant confusion point that I’ve observed.  Press reports have not differentiated between Iodine, Iodide and Iodate when speaking about what the Japanese government is distributing to its citizens to protect their thyroids; instead, their reporting uses these terms interchangeably.

They are different things.

What’s Iodine?

Perhaps as a child you got a small cut and your mother took a small bottle out of the bathroom cabinet and applied a strange smelling liquid with an eye dropper-like instrument to your cut.  That’s Iodine.

If you could read back then and looked at the bottle it might have said, “Poison”, because if ingested this type of Iodine makes you sick.

There are forms of iodine, such as homeopathic remedies, that are ingestible, but they are not for protecting the thyroid against radiation, but for various health issues, including supporting thyroid health.

The pills that the Japanese government is distributing to its citizens are NOT Iodine pills. They ARE Potassium Iodide or Potassium Iodate pills.

Read more on this here.

What’s Iodide?

The chemist in you can read about Ioidide ions here, but what the rest of us need to know relative to protecting the thyroid from radioactivity is that our Iodide needs to be combined with Potassium; namely,  Potassium Iodide (chemical name ‘KI‘).

You know KI as the ingredient added to your table salt to make it iodized salt.  KI is approximately 76.5% iodine.

KI is often used in radioiodine-contamination emergencies (i.e., nuclear accidents) to “block” the thyroid’s uptake of radioiodine, iodine-131, which may be in the air after a nuclear explosion.

From ki4u.com, I get this:

Cresson H. Kearny, the author of Nuclear War Survival Skills, Original Edition Published September, 1979, by Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a Facility of the U.S. Department of Energy (Updated and Expanded 1987 Edition) states on page 111:

“There is no medicine that will effectively prevent nuclear radiations from damaging the human body cells that they strike.

However, a salt of the elements potassium and iodine, taken orally even in very small quantities 1/2 hour to 1 day before radioactive iodines are swallowed or inhaled, prevents about 99% of the damage to the thyroid gland that otherwise would result. The thyroid gland readily absorbs both non-radioactive and radioactive iodine, and normally it retains much of this element in either or both forms.

When ordinary, non-radioactive iodine is made available in the blood for absorption by the thyroid gland before any radioactive iodine is made available, the gland will absorb and retain so much that it becomes saturated with non-radioactive iodine. When saturated, the thyroid can absorb only about l% as much additional iodine, including radioactive forms that later may become available in the blood: then it is said to be blocked. (Excess iodine in the blood is rapidly eliminated by the action of the kidneys.)”

What’s Iodate?

Again, for the chemists in the house, an Iodate is a conjugate base of iodic acid.

For the rest of us, know that for our purposes, Iodate, like Iodide, needs Potassium to be useful against radiation.

Potassium Iodate (KIO3) has one more molecule of oxygen than its relative, Potassium Iodide (KI). Like KI, it’s designed to block radioiodine. As compared to KI, KIO3 was designed to have greater shelf life, have no bitter taste, and to be cheaper.

It’s  KIO3 that is being supplied to the Japanese people. (<– read that link.) That said, there is controversy about which is better, KI or KIO3.

I’d be happy with either. Focusing on KI for no particular reason (I hope) is chemist Leigh Boerner explaining what happens when a nuclear reactor leaks:

“… if a nuclear reactor were to leak, iodine-131 might be in the air. Which people might breathe in. Which could get into their thyroids. Which could cause radiation poisoning in the short term. In the long term, breathing radioactive iodine can cause thyroid cancer, especially in kids.

To minimize the damage, people who may be/have been exposed to radiation from a power plant can take iodide pills. These work by saturating the thyroid with nice, non-radioactive iodide. That way, if any radioactive iodine does come along, the body won’t absorb it–the thyroid can only absorb a finite amount of iodine at a time.

If people can get these pills 48 hours before or eight hours after radiation exposure, it can reduce thyroid uptake of iodine-131 and decrease the risk of radiation-induced thyroid cancer.

I do want to point out that this will ONLY protect against internal iodine radiation poisoning. Not radiation from cesium-137 and strontium-90, extremely dangerous fission products of uranium-235.”

Thank you, Ms. Boerner… you let me segue to the next part of this post, How to Protect Yourself from the Other Radiation Bits – Strontium-90 and Cesium-137.

[By the way, after the Chernobyl disaster, radioactive iodine-131 in milk became a bigger problem than it in the air. Check out the study in this pdf file.]

The Other Radiation Bits

If we were to have a radiation cloud envelope us, there’s more than our thyroid that would be in danger.  Strontium-90 likes to clobber bones and hangs out for a long time. Cesium-137 tends to concentrate in muscles, but can excreted from the body fairly quickly.  (Those two links are very informative, by the way.)

Cesium-137

My googling showed me that there’s a medicine with a funny name that works well at combating Cesium.  It’s called “Prussian Blue”.

Prussian Blue is available only by prescription. The Center for Disease Control (“CDC”) has included Prussian Blue in the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS), a special collection of drugs and medical supplies that CDC keeps to treat people in an emergency.

You can read about how Prussian Blue works here.

If you don’t have, or can’t get a “script”, a natural approach might work.

Dr. Loretta Lanphier presents a long and good list of various food, vitamins and herbal cleansers that can assist with radiation detoxification.

One that I have some experience with is betonite, a medicinal liquid clay that’s ingested, and absorbs chemicals and toxins which are then eliminated along with everything else.

Dr. Lanphier’s Sea Salt, Baking Soda & Clay Formula:

“Add one pound of good quality sea salt and 1 pound of baking soda to chlorine-free water. Soak for 20 minutes and then rinse with cool water. Adding one pound of bentonite, or other safe clay, to the sea salt and baking soda will increase the removal of radiation. Some specialists who work with radioactive isotopes use this method to remove radiation from their body. For an abnormally high level of radiation exposure one can use this method three times a week for one month.”

In this article, the Live Well Naturally web site offers a similar list of natural detoxification measures as that offered by Dr, Lanpheir:

“Add 4 ounces of chlorine-free unboiled water to 1 ounce of bentonite clay. Let sit for 8 hours, stir and drink once a day. Make sure you drink plenty of chlorine-free water throughout the day. You can also use other forms of edible clay such as French green clay.”

Strontium-90

As I searched around, I didn’t  find a protective agent for, or a specific detoxifier specifically tuned to Strontium.  However, my research indicates that many of the therapies beneficial to protecting against or detoxifying Cesium contamination is useful for Strontium as well.

In either case, the protocols involve detoxification, either through foods, herbs, cleansers, or a combination thereof.

“Modifilian” is an example of a food that detoxifies.

Modifilian is a natural dietary supplement extracted from the richest type of brown seaweed — Laminaria japonica.  (About 40 pounds of which is reduced down to one pound of Modifiliian.) This nutritional product is comprised of all the important organic elements found in seaweed.

Discovered by scientist after the Chernobyl disaster and applied to some of the Russian people who were poisoned with radioactivity, Modifilian was found to help detoxify the body of Strontium, and Cesium and protects the thyroid by covering it with iodine – a triple threat.

You can learn more about it here  http://www.modifilan.com/research.html and here http://www.naturodoc.com/library/detox/Modifilan-about.htm

What I’m Doing

1. I tune into a real-time Japanese TV station reporting constantly about the nuclear reactors and conditions in Japan.*
2. I keep tabs on the National Radiation Map, a real-time update of radiation levels in America.
3. I stay up to date with HuffPost, Yahoo News and regular old TV.
4. I have stored a few days of non-perishable food, many gallons of potable water, flashlights, candels, medicine and stuff:  See, Japan Tsunami Creates Health Concerns… Are You Prepared?
5. I’m ready to ingest some expired (in 2008) Potassium Iodate (KIO3) until the Lugol’s Iodine my mother bought me and mailed to me arrives.  (Dear ole Mom.) Lugol’s is more suitable to health issues other than radiation poisoning but it does have some KI in it, and it’s available, unlike KI and KIO3, so it should work.  Won’t begin any of this, however, unless it’s apparent that a worrisome amount of radioactivity is jumping the Pacific Ocean. (I live on the coast of California.)
6. I have bentonite, and sea salt and baking soda and various detox herbs ready and waiting.
7. Finally, as a sometimes practitioner of yoga, I have the flexibility – if needed – to bend over and kiss my a_ _ goodbye.

Yep.

*By the way, just a glance at that National Radiation Map will make it obvious that people in the USA could have a problem with a nuclear breach too.  We have many nuclear facilities.  And earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and the like.  Get prepared.

Remember, if I wrote something wrong or misleading here, weigh in at the Comments section below.  And post this on Facebook or wherever if you think it might be useful.  Lotsa confusion among us.

Related posts:

1. Japan’s Radiation Fallout – Protect Yourself!
2. Worried About the Potassium Iodide Supply?
3. Is Japan’s Nuclear Radiation Coming Your Way? Do This!