Posted 8/10/2015 2:17 AM (GMT 0)
I figured out that my dry mouth was from an iodine deficiency, and fixing that has nearly completely cured me of LPR, which was so bad at one point I thought my throat would swell up to closing. I hope what I've learned about this will help someone else improve from this terrible condition.
Most of us have heard that iodine is super important for thyroid function. So you're probably thinking, well my thyroid is fine! Why do I need more iodine? Apparently, there are a lot of other parts of your body that need iodine too. It turns out that iodine is supremely important for nearly every function in your body.
An important one for LPR sufferers is the salivary gland. Not enough iodine means your salivary glands won't work very well. How does that affect or cause LPR? Well, part of the job of the salivary glands is to release bicarbonate into the saliva that you swallow all day, anytime that acid creeps up into the throat. It's an automatic response that normally helps protect the throat from acid. If you don't have enough iodine in your diet, then this isn't happening. You can tell if your salivary glands aren't working optimally by noticing how dry your mouth is in the morning. Feel the inside of your cheeks with your tongue. If your cheeks don't feel smooth, but instead feel bumpy, with raised areas from pressing on your teeth, you need more iodine. In my case, I assumed my dry mouth was caused by the zyrtec and singulair I take for my allergies. I was wrong. After adding iodine to my diet, I fixed my dry mouth in two weeks!
A lot of LPR sufferers report feeling like something is in the way when they swallow. I had that too, and a strange click that happened when I swallowed. After the multivitamin and the iodine, it's almost completely gone.
If you want to give iodine a try, you should be sure to take a multivitamin with selenium, which is an important co-mineral to iodine and helps the body to get rid of any iodine it doesn't need. Also, start slow and build up. I take a multivitamin with selenium, and then separately take iodine in liquid drop form that I can add to my food - you need so little and it has no taste.
Here is a link to a good article about iodine, why you need it and why it's harder than before to get enough of it in our diets. There is a chart showing what foods contain iodine, but please note that this was writing for a US audience. Not every country adds iodine to salt. In the UK, they add iodine to milk (not organic). http://www.alsearsmd.com/2010/03/iodine-deficiency-a-teaspoon-for-a-lifetime/
If you like more science and long words, wikipedia has a good page about iodine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine_in_biology
This is likely not going to help every LPR person out there, but it was the solution for me, and I only write in the hopes that the information can help someone else avoid suffering when the fix could be as simple as a multivitamin with iodine!
Amy