9 Years ago an older friend of mine told me about iodine for the first time in my life. My initial reaction was that yeah, iodine is essential, but we only need a trace amount of it, no big deal, I use iodized salt. I could not have been anymore wrong. In the old days, 100 or more years ago, maybe trace amounts would be fine, but in today's world, where we are swamped with unmonitored fluoride medication, and saturated in bromine compounds found in everything that could possible burn in a house, by Congressional decree. Iodine is the only substance that will increase excretion of fluoride and bromine immediately upon when it is taken into the body. I was very hypothyroid at the time because of this halide poisoning, and was totally unaware to it. Dr. Mark Starr's book "Hypothyroidism Type II. The Epidemic" opened my eyes wide to the fact that most people you encounter everyday are hypothyroid, but remain undiagnosed by their Dr.s, and the only way this could consistently occur as it does, is if the Dr.s are purposely being steered away from thyroid condition diagnosis by medical procedure that appear to be designed to not reveal thyroid conditions brought on by the chronic addition of artificial fluoride to nearly all municipal waters in the USA.