There is no doubt at all that our personal environments have changed in the last few decades.  One set of changes has been related to the element, bromine, in our diets.  The element bromine is part of the same chemical group as the other familiar elements,  fluorine, chlorine, and iodine. You may have heard recently about bromation and bromination, both terms of which refer to the incorporation of the element bromine into substances.

Recently the information is becoming available to the general public that neither of these particular forms in which we ingest bromine are healthy, because of its chemical similarity to iodine, which is needed for our thyroid hormones.  Bromine more readily substitutes for iodine in our body systems, including our thyroid hormones, but this combination renders our thyroid hormones inactive, or less active in our bodies, resulting in thyroid hormone dysfunction, causing hypothyroidism  in all of its manifestations.

Bromation is the process of adding the chemically bound bromate ion to  something, here most particularly flour.  The form in which it is added is potassium bromate, K BrO3, where the K stands for the potassium positive ion K(+), and the BrO3  stands for the negative ion, BrO3(-), which together form a neutral compound.     The ions separate to some extent in any water to which they are added, but the BrO3(-) stays together.   When this is added to another material, eg flour, it is called bromation.  When the flour  has no potassium bromate added, it is referred to as unbromated.  Unbromated flour is good.  We saw this on two bags of bread flour, different brands recently, and now this is the only kind of flour we buy.

There is another substance which has been added to foods lately, called brominated vegetable oil (BVO).  In this case, an atom of bromine is chemically incorporated into an organic compound, in this case the vegetable oil molecule.  The brominated vegetable oil has been used recently in citrus flavored soft drinks, and some energy drinks.  Though most soft drinks that I saw in a store recently, did not include BVO, it is good to check labels to be sure to avoid it.   We are avoiding all sweetened, carbonated soft drinks, which means we are excluding softdrinks as a source of BVO.

Our strategies to avoid ingesting the bad-for-our-thyroids, bromine,  are to:

• Go for unbromated baked goods
• Avoid brominated vegetable oil (BVO).