A couple of posts ago I mentioned Leptin resistance and its role in causing problems for getting LDL particles out of the blood stream when they have done their job of delivering cholesterol to cells. Iodine deficiency is one of the possible reasons for this problem with the Thyroid and Leptin resistance and it ties in nicely with a at least a couple of population studies.
The Japanese have very low rates of heart disease, even lower before they started to discover westernised food. We are usually quick to credit this to their consumption of fish but it may not only be this sole source of sea food. The Japanese consume large quantities of sea weed using it as an additive in stews and soups such as Miso soup. Sea weed is a very rich source of Iodine and perhaps their super rich Iodine content diet is a big factor in their heart protection.
Backing this up was a studies in the 1950’s in Finland which had very contrasting levels of heart disease were although both east and west were poor the east was far unhealthier when it came to cardio vascular health. This prompted an in depth study of the dietary habits of east and west and the most significant disparity was that the west consumed significantly more Iodine which may be why they have less heart disease than the East. More on this at the link below.
Click to access cann_2006_iodine_in_cardiovascular_disease.pdf
Needless to say I now take a 200mcg Iodine supplement daily via a Sea Kelp tablet and so far my stomach seems to tolerate these quiet well with no irritation.
Surviving a heart attack and the NHS 
Thanks once again for your research and posting. I read a few bits and pieces about CVD to see what I can do to help myself and always find your blog informative and hopeful. Please keep posting.
Many thanks for your comment, nice to know there is someone out there
One of the criticisms of Ancel Keys is that in his infamous Seven Countries Study he used the heart disease data from eastern Finland despite the rates being so much higher than western Finland. I wasn’t aware of the iodine issue, but another difference between East and West Finland is that the selenium level of the soil in the east is exceptionally low, one-third of the already low western levels. Since the 1980s Finland has mandated that all fertilisers be fortified with selenium to make up this deficiency. Therefore the reduction in heart disease since Keys study that is attributed to reducing saturated fat could just as easily be due to increased selenium!
One of the factors here is the time period from which Keys drew his statistics, the 1940s and early 50s. At that time the majority of Finn’s were small farmers who would have grown a lot of their own food. Similarly the townsfolk would have sourced much of their food from the local area. The one big exception is bread grains, where Finland was a net importer. Prior to WW2 the imports were high-selenium wheat from North America, but this was impossible during the war. The production of potatoes increased substantially to compensate and most town dwellers gardened to supplement their rations. In the years following the war Finland was forced to pay heavy reparations to the Soviet Union for its “aggression”, so import restrictions and rationing probably continued into the 1950s. (remember that food rationing in the UK was only abolished in 1954). So Keys was looking at data from a population that was severely selenium-deficient, even by pre-war conditions that were already deficient.
Incidentally in searching PubMed for info on selenium and health I came across a paper that said that the average levels of selenium in the British population had declined following Britain’s admission to the EU as a result of substituting low-selenium European wheat for high-selenium North American wheat. So perhaps Brexit will have one benefit – probably the only one.