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A really pleasant to read story. It's funny because I live in Switzerland and some of my friends debate the "ioded salt", and prefer to consume "natural salt" w
by Faaak 3y ago
A really pleasant to read story. It's funny because I live in Switzerland and some of my friends debate the "ioded salt", and prefer to consume "natural salt" without the additives. Funny how history can repeat itself.
I'm always impressed with all these doctors that would question the approach, try new protocols, and end up by finding a cure
- k__ 3y agoHow come that the disease wasn't widespread earlier?
- marcinzm 3y agoWhy do you say it wasn't present earlier?
- k__ 3y agoThe article made that impression on me.
- zweifuss 3y agoThis might interest you: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3169859/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3169859/ "The interests of people in the thyroid gland have always been immense because of the widespread prevalence of its diseases. Therefore the earliest references to the gland date back to 1st century AD. The Chinese, Egyptian, Indian, Greek and Byzantine medicines are especially rich in their knowledge on the subject."
- tekla 3y agoI am always flabbergasted when people question incredibly effective public health initiatives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goitre#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goitre#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodized_salt#In_public_health_initiatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodized_salt#In_public_health_... > Worldwide, iodine deficiency affects two billion people and is the leading preventable cause of intellectual and developmental disabilities.[1][2] According to public health experts, iodisation of salt may be the world's simplest and most cost-effective measure available to improve health, only costing US$0.05 per person per year
- evanjrowley 3y agoIt may not be a question of the initiative itself, rather, what conditions in Switzerland at the time led to an uptick in iodine deficiencies.
- suchire 3y agoMaybe they should just RTFA
- masklinn 3y agoThere was no uptick, CIDS was endemic to the alps as far back as roman times. Its consequences literally slipped into linguistic vernaculars (e.g. french as the insult "crétin des alpes", lit. "cretin from the alps", and "cretin" was the original term for CIDS-induced mental impairment).
- raverbashing 3y agoTiktok mind and some angry people can't comprehend how hard it was to actually get to the cause and solution to a lot of diseases
- k__ 3y agoCan I get some benefits of doubt please? :D I don't question the initiative. The article just read like it was some strange illness that affected Switzers around a certain time.
- hef19898 3y agoThe article mentions comments from the 19th century about the same subject. I think, that Switzerland, and especially those remote mountain regions, stayed more isolated than similar regions in France or Austria well into the early 20th century, making the issue stand out more in comparison.
- rurban 3y agoFrench alps had the very same problem. Austria I don't know. Many Austrian had the reverse problem with too much iodin and basedov eyes.
- bee_rider 3y agoI think it was. We just don’t think about it because we’ve defeated it completely by putting iodine in the most popular spice, and also people in the past were afflicted by all sorts of horrible illnesses. It doesn’t stand out from the noise of the past being generally a mess.
- k__ 3y agoAh, okay. The article just read like there were some unusual strange things going on around 1900 in Switzerland.
- jeffrallen 3y agoSwiss geology (retreat of the glaciers 10000 years ago) meant that the normal local products that would give a population iodine (milk and eggs) were themselves iodine-poor. A few parts of Switzerland which were not glaciated (i.e. Jura) did not have iodine deficient populations. Other places in the world had different geology and this different levels of natural iodine.
- VintageCool 3y agoThe article referenced mentions of goitre in Switzerland from Victor Hugo in 1839, Mark Twain in 1880, a medical survey in 1883, and Roman authors like Vitrivius and Pliny the Elder. It also mentioned that the iodine idea had been going around for a hundred years before the activities of the heroes of our story. Iodine had not been seen as a successful cure before because excess iodine causes a horrible condition. The key difference here was that Hunziker proposed regular use in minute quantities, and then Bayard tested the hypothesis with careful measurements and convincing evidence.
- the_mitsuhiko 3y agoGoethe wrote in 1779 about his travels to Switzerland: “Die scheußlichen Kröpfe haben mich ganz und gar üblen Humors gemacht (“The horrible goiters have given me a very bad sense of humour”). Definitely plenty of earlier historic evidence.
- gpvos 3y agoWhat makes you think it wasn't? The article doesn't claim so.
- nyokodo 3y ago> How come that the disease wasn't widespread earlier? The article makes reference to the Madonna on the Albrecht Dürer’s Dresden Altarpiece having an obvious goiter. That was produced in the late 15th to early 16th century. That’s evidence from the article that the problem was so common then that it was depicted in sacred art.
- kergonath 3y agoIt was. Cretinism was one of the manifestations of iodine deficiency. The trope of crétin des Alpes (lit. cretin from the Alps) existed for a reason. The manifestation was goitres and stunted development, with people who seemingly stopped growing up around 14. Pretty much the story’s subject. It was a public health problem before iodised salt. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_iodine_deficiency_syndrome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_iodine_deficiency...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- srott 3y agoIn Slovakia, another landlocked country with lack of natural iodine from rainfall or diet, dementia became part of the culture. 30% (!!!) of population suffered from dementia. Iodizing salt raised IQ by 10 point every 10~ years but the damage is irreparable…
- k__ 3y agoIn Slovakia dementia is on place 2 of the most common death causes. In Slovenia it's on place 19. Crazy. Oh, and here in Germany it's on place 6?! Wouldn't have guessed!
- ufo 3y agoIt was widespread but has always been particularly worse in inland mountainous regions. To this day, efforts remain to eliminate iodine deficiency worldwide. Maps with goiter prevalence can be found on the WHO's website: https://www.who.int/teams/nutrition-and-food-safety/databases/vitamin-and-mineral-nutrition-information-system/search-for-maps https://www.who.int/teams/nutrition-and-food-safety/database...
- mytailorisrich 3y agoWith the complex supply chains and processed/ready-made food we have nowadays I am wondering how much iodine makes its way into the diet of the Swiss today even without ioded table salt. I suspect that one of the issues was that most/all food used to be sourced locally, especially eggs and milk, which are good sources of iodine, with seafood probably mostly absent from the Swiss diet. Edit: apparently nowadays, and taking animal feed into account, Switzerland imports about 50% of its food.
- bombcar 3y agoMost processed food uses uniodized salt iirc, which is actually becoming a problem in parts of the USA where populations eat nothing but processed food.
- mytailorisrich 3y agoMy understanding is that in general there no need for supplements with a normal, balanced diet, especially with eggs, dairy products, grains, and others if iodine is naturally present in the environment. So if Switzerland imports a lot of those, raw, or in prepared/processed food, or even the animal feed for its hens and cows the Swiss today probably already get much more iodine in their diet than 100 years ago.
- dr_kiszonka 3y agoI was curious about your point about normal diet and have just looked it up. According to tables 1 and 2 in this article [0], it may be hard for some people to get enough (RDA) iodine from normal, not fortified foods. 0. https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Iodine-HealthProfessional/ https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Iodine-HealthProfessional/
- oivey 3y agoPeople have been struggling to get enough iodine for a hundred+ years. That’s why it’s added to salt. This isn’t a 21st century problem.
- lostlogin 3y agoWhat are the arguments used against iodised salt? Where would they get their iodine?
- emmet 3y agothey're afraid it'll give them 5G or whatever shite they make up on the spot
- meepmorp 3y agoSome people dislike the flavor of iodized salt. But what would you expect from future cretins?
- ch4s3 3y agoThere's literally no way anyone can taste the difference between iodized and non iodized table salt blind to the source. There's just so little there, it seems the Swiss standard is something like 25 mg/kg. There's probably more plastic in the salt than iodine at this point.
- tonfa 3y ago> There's probably more plastic in the salt than iodine at this point. Probably not in swiss salt tho (it's usually mountain salt, not sea salt).
- analog31 3y agoThey probably get plenty of iodine from packaged food since it doesn't all come from the same region any more.
- wahern 3y agoThe salt used in processed and prepared foods usually isn't iodized, contributing to declining iodine intake given the increasing consumption of these foods.
- tomjakubowski 3y agoindustrially farmed cattle are often fed iodized salt, which can make their dairy products a good source of iodine. depends on the farm's practices though https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29221567/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29221567/
- ufo 3y agoDepends on the country. That's the case in the USA but I'm not sure if it applies in Europe.
- analog31 3y agoGood point. I'd hope that there are other sources of iodine than salt in regions that have higher iodine content -- after all, salt was just the vehicle chosen for the supplement. But I can also see what you say about prepared foods.
- chasil 3y agoOne interesting use of iodine supplementation is during nuclear accidents, where it is given to flood the thyroid and prevent unstable iodine isotopes from being taken up. "Iodine-131 (usually as iodide) is a component of nuclear fallout, and is particularly dangerous owing to the thyroid gland's propensity to concentrate ingested iodine and retain it for periods longer than this isotope's radiological half-life of eight days. For this reason, people at risk of exposure to environmental radioactive iodine (iodine-131) in fallout may be instructed to take non-radioactive potassium iodide tablets... Ingestion of [a] large dose of non-radioactive iodine minimises the uptake of radioactive iodine by the thyroid gland." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine#Other_formulations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine#Other_formulations
- WirelessGigabit 3y agoI (while not living in Switzerland) am one of those people. I don't want to eat salt with iodine. I don't like the taste. Too metallic, like in baking powder with aluminum.
- nielsole 3y agoThe article mentions iodine is apparently not changing the taste of salt in blind tasting. Do you have information to the contrary?
- jmnicolas 3y agoTable salt has not only iodine added but anti-caking agents too so it might be what OP is tasting.
- WirelessGigabit 3y agoI don't. Personally I can taste the metallic taste. But then again, so can I after using baking powder. Maybe I'm more sensitive to it?
- wholinator2 3y agoYou should conduct a blind test! (If you haven't already). Conducting blind tests on my perceptual preferences has been incredibly eye opening. It's especially illuminating for cooking with spices. Trying to identify spices by taste is something i never though to do but really helped me elevate my cooking from, "i guess we'll try this", to intentionally placing and making informed decisions. I bet the same thing could be done with regular salt and iodized salt. Maybe a couple tests, straight, in water, baked in a cookie, put on an hors d'ouvres (who really knows how to spell that) or something. Could be fun!
- babarock 3y agoIt's spelled _Hors d'œuvre_ in French, using the weird ligature of o and e[1]. According to the Wikipedia article: > A number of words written with œ were borrowed from French and from Latin into English, where the œ is now rarely written. Modern American English spelling usually substitutes e, so diarrhœa has become diarrhea, although there are some exceptions, such as _phoenix_. In modern British English, the spellings generally keep the o but remove the ligature (e.g. diarrhoea). In the case of _Hors d'oeuvre_, it seems like the english wikipedia keeps the _o_. [2] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%92 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%92 [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hors_d%27oeuvre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hors_d%27oeuvre
- teew 3y agoIf you read German, the posted book review seems to me to be a trimmed-down version of this article (also written by the author) from 2022: https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/wie-drei-heldenhafte-aerzte-die-schweiz-vom-kropf-erloesten-581754522295 https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/wie-drei-heldenhafte-aerzte-die...