Plate III.
In plain words
Two tablets. The difference is iodine.
Both are food supplements you swallow, not thyroid medicines. The thyroid needs selenium and iodine to make its hormones. These supply one or both, and which is right for a given person depends on whether iodine is already arriving from the diet.
Selen Pro
Tablet, 30
One hundred micrograms of selenium as L-selenomethionine. Selenium alone, for someone whose iodine intake is already adequate.
Selen Pro Max
Tablet, 30
The same hundred micrograms of selenium with a hundred and fifty micrograms of iodine, which is the full European reference amount.
How many, and when
One tablet daily. Do not exceed one tablet a day. A food supplement is not a substitute for a varied and balanced diet.
What these will not do
Neither of these treats a thyroid condition and neither replaces thyroid medication. Iodine in particular is not harmless in the wrong situation: in some thyroid conditions extra iodine makes things worse, which is why the two products exist rather than one. If you have a diagnosed thyroid problem, or you are taking thyroid medication, speak to your doctor before starting either one. That is not a formality.
One gland.
Two elements.
The thyroid is built out of iodine and it defends itself with selenium. Both are trace elements, which means the body cannot make either one and has to take them in. Two products sit in this segment. One supplies selenium. The other supplies both.
01 / Two elements
Iodine is the material. Selenium is the tooling.
Thyroid hormone is assembled around iodine. Take the iodine away and there is nothing to build from. Selenium does a different job entirely. It sits inside the selenoproteins the gland uses to convert hormone and to protect itself from the oxidative load its own chemistry generates. European law authorises a claim for each of them, and the two wordings are not interchangeable.
Iodine contributes to the normal production of thyroid hormones and normal thyroid function
Selenium contributes to the normal thyroid function
Selenium contributes to the protection of cells from oxidative stress
Selenium contributes to the normal function of the immune system
02 / The two
Selenium alone, or selenium with iodine.
These are not two strengths of one product. Which one is right depends on whether iodine is already arriving from the diet, and that is a question for a doctor rather than for a shelf.
01
Selen Pro
Tablet · 30
One hundred micrograms of selenium per tablet, as L-selenomethionine. Selenium contributes to the normal thyroid function, to the normal function of the immune system, and to the protection of cells from oxidative stress. One tablet daily. Do not exceed the recommended daily dose.
A food supplement is not a substitute for a varied and balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle.
02
Selen Pro Max
Tablet · 30
The same hundred micrograms of selenium, with a hundred and fifty micrograms of iodine as potassium iodide, which is one hundred per cent of the European reference value. Selenium contributes to the normal thyroid function and to the protection of cells from oxidative stress. Iodine contributes to the normal production of thyroid hormones and normal thyroid function. One tablet daily.
If you have a thyroid condition, speak to your doctor before taking it. A food supplement is not a substitute for a varied and balanced diet.
A hundred micrograms is a considered dose, not a maximum one.
It sits well under the European tolerable upper intake level of three hundred micrograms a day and well over the fifty-five microgram reference value. It also sits above the ceiling France sets for selenium in supplements, which is why a European launch would carry a lower strength rather than this one. We would rather write that down than let a number travel further than its licence.
03 / What is in them
One element, then two.
Both tablets are built on the same hundred micrograms of selenium, supplied as L-selenomethionine and declared as the element rather than as the compound. The second adds iodine. Every figure below is on the carton and every percentage is calculated against the European reference value in Annex XIII to Regulation 1169/2011.
Selen Pro, one tablet
Nutrient and form
In ours
Of reference value
Legal minimum
Selenium, as L-selenomethionine 250 mcg
100 mcg
182%
8.25 mcg
Selen Pro Max, one tablet
Nutrient and form
In ours
Of reference value
Legal minimum
Selenium, as L-selenomethionine 250 mcg
100 mcg
182%
8.25 mcg
Iodine, as potassium iodide 200 mcg
150 mcg
100%
22.5 mcg
How these two are written
Each line names the compound, states its weight, and then states the element it delivers. Nobody reading them has to guess which number is which, and no percentage on this page rests on an assumption. It is the format we are moving the rest of the range towards.
The one thing worth saying twice
Iodine is not neutral. In some thyroid conditions extra iodine makes matters worse, which is the entire reason two products exist rather than one strength of a single product. That choice belongs to a doctor who knows the diagnosis.
A
03 / The line
What is a supplement not allowed to say?
European law lets a food supplement say that iodine contributes to the normal production of thyroid hormones. It does not let one say that a product corrects an underactive thyroid, replaces thyroxine, brings TSH back into range, or does anything at all to a nodule or a goitre. Thyroid disorders are classified conditions and they belong to medicine.
There is a second rule, and it is the one that changed this page. A supplement may not suggest that an ordinary varied diet cannot supply what a person needs. That is why this page does not open with a map of depleted soil, which is how we first wrote it.
So here is the soil argument, at the size the evidence will actually carry.
Selenium intake depends largely on how much selenium is in the soil where the food was grown, and soil selenium varies widely between regions. A systematic review of intake and status across Europe found intakes in Eastern European countries lower than in Western Europe, reflecting lower soil levels. Worldwide, an estimated one person in seven has a low dietary selenium intake.
Stoffaneller R, Morse NL. Nutrients 2015;7(3):1494 · Jones GD et al. PNAS 2017;114(11):2848
We went looking for a soil survey covering Ukraine, Georgia or Uzbekistan and did not find one. Every promising result for Georgia turns out to be the American state. Until somebody measures the ground we sell on, the paragraph above is what we can say, and we would rather print its limits than borrow someone else’s map.