Welcome

Welcome to our Low Iodine Diet (LID) blog.

This blog is a record the foods and meals eaten while preparing for Radioactive Iodine (RAI)Therapy for treatment of thyroid cancer.

Meals and snacks we prepared during the LID.  See Tabs at top of this page for recipes, links and unsalted products we used.  See the link at the right, top of this page for additional recipe ideas.

After having a total thyroidectomy in August, 2012, my husband was diagnosed with follicular variant of thyroid papillary carcinoma.

One of the treatments for this type of thyroid cancer is radioactive iodine (RAI) therapy.  Since the thyroid naturally absorbs almost all of the iodine in the blood, when radioactive iodine is introduced into the body, any cancer cells that remain after surgery are typically killed with minimal ill effects to the rest of your body.

This brings us to the low iodine diet (LID).  Often doctors instruct their patients to follow a low iodine diet for 2+ weeks prior to the RAI therapy.  The purpose is to starve the body of iodine so that when the radioactive iodine is given, any remaining thyroid cells absorb it.

The diet is a little complicated in that you should not eat: dairy products, seafood, processed or bakery foods, foods from restaurants/carry out, whole eggs, foods containing iodized salt, most chocolate, red kidney beans and anything containing Red Dye #3---and that's just the short list!

While the diet is NOT non-salt it is low/non iodine.  Don't panic- your doctor will give you lists of foods that are approved and several online resources are available.  Check the links section on the right of this page for an online, 100+ page free cookbook prepared by the Thyroid Cancer Survivors Organization. So the short of it is- many foods/recipes may be easily prepared at home using salt that contains NO iodine and then avoiding the items listed above.

                             

I hope our experience will give you some menu ideas to make your journey less stressful and more flavorful.  Use the Day Tabs at the top of this page for information about the foods we selected for the Low Iodine Diet (LID) each day.  

YOU can DO THIS!

Wishing you and your family good health!