Iodine and Hair Dye

[Kat]

Any of you really smart people know if there's iodine in hair dye? Would it be okay to use it on a low-iodine diet?

[Exy]

I'm not really smart and you should probably ask a doctor, and this is not something I know all that much about so pretty much don't rely on anything I say ever. But: there's no obvious reason why there should be any significant quantity of iodine in hair dye, at least not in the permanent and semi-perm dyes you buy at the drugstore. The dyes themselves wouldn't typically contain it, and none of the other stuff in a typical hair dye should contain much iodine, anyway. Most of what you'll find in hair dye is big organic molecules, plus peroxide and some sort of base like ammonia -- there may be some pigments in some colors of hair dye that contain some small amount of iodine, but I wouldn't think there's much.

Also, while there are (legitimate) concerns about the effects of exposure to the chemicals in hair dye, you don't absorb all that much. The concerns with absorption of chemicals from cosmetics mostly relate to really minuscule quantities of chemicals; I would at least assume smaller than would be a concern.

[BB Rodriguez]

Not that I know anything about hair dye either, but I can think of one reason there may be iodine in it. It's used as a mordant in at least one biological staining procedure. I don't know if hair dyes even use mordants, but I'd think they would just wash out if they didn't.

[WhyNot]

Full disclosure: this is a Google obtained answer, not anything I actually have knowledge about. And it doesn't answer the question, but it's a point of concern that some people needing to take care of their iodine intake should be aware of, namely, those undergoing thyroid ablation for thyroid cancer. Iodine 131 is a marker used to trace the cancer, and hair dye can cause excess absorption of iodine 131 and false-positives on tests looking for residual or recurring cancer! So if you've got thyroid cancer, don't dye your hair, or you could cause a false positive and get yourself treated for "cancer" that isn't there. http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejourna ... 22936.html


But I can't find any information on whether or not hair dyes themselves contain iodine. Sorry.

[Kat]

Ah. That tears it, no hair dye next week.

If I had just gotten answers saying "It's probably fine", I would have called the doctor to check. Since I got one that's pretty much "No way", I don't have to call and bother him about it.

[Exy]

Ah. That tears it, no hair dye next week.

If I had just gotten answers saying "It's probably fine", I would have called the doctor to check. Since I got one that's pretty much "No way", I don't have to call and bother him about it.

No, seriously, call. Don't give up something you want to do without being sure you have to.

I miss not having a real job, I used to be able to dye my hair all sorts of crazy ways.

[Kat]

Oh, and thanks all for the responses.

[Kat]

Ah. That tears it, no hair dye next week.

If I had just gotten answers saying "It's probably fine", I would have called the doctor to check. Since I got one that's pretty much "No way", I don't have to call and bother him about it.

No, seriously, call. Don't give up something you want to do without being sure you have to.

I miss not having a real job, I used to be able to dye my hair all sorts of crazy ways.

I'm not giving it up complete. I'm just postponing it, cuz I was going to be able to do it on Monday night; I was already going to have to call him on Tuesday for my bloodtest results (which I'm getting done tomorrow), and didn't want to bother him an extra time if the odds were against it being okay. We're just going to reschedule if he gives the okay when I talk to him on Tuesday.

And you are so really smart, Excalibre.

[WhyNot]

Yeah, do check with him at your next chat. It could be totally not applicable to you, your condition, or the specific test that he's using on you. Or it could be that that study's been invalidated by more current research, too. So it's definitely worth bringing up to see what he says. It was just such a shocking woah kind of thing to find I thought I should let you know about it ASAP.

For what it's worth, googling stuff like hair dye iodine gets really almost nothing useful, so if there is a problem, it's not widely known. Makes me think it probably is okay for most, but really, getting it done Monday instead of, say, Wednesday, probably isn't worth the risk. Getting it approved by your doc first is a smart choice.

[Exy]

P.S. Best of luck with whatever medical circumstances have you not dying your hair!

[Q.E.D.]

The correct thing to do if you want to know if a particular hair dye contains iodine is to look up the MSDS, which includes (among other useful information) the full listing of ingredients. Here, for example, is one for various formulations of Clairol Nice 'N Easy, from Proctor & Gamble's website. No iodine in any of them.

[Kat]

Thanks, Excalibre. It's radioactive iodine treatment for thyroid cancer, and my doc assures me it's simple and painless. Well, except for this pain of a diet until my appointment.

Mine is Revlon ColorSilk, Q.E.D.. I looked around on the colorsilk.com page, but couldn't find info on the ingredients. Not even anything that looked like a link to MSDS, but maybe I wasn't looking hard enough. I did email them on Thursday, but haven't heard back yet. I read the ingredients on the box (and man is that type hard to read) and iodine isn't listed, but I worry that one of the unpronouncable chemicals contains iodine. You wouldn't believe what all has iodine in it.

For example, from the Food Guide: rhubarb, potato skins, pretty much soy-anything, egg yolks, milk, cheese, etc. But I can drink beer, wine and spirits!

[Kat]

Incidentally, if you're curious, the doctor said yeah, it would be fine to dye the hair. Although, I didn't yet, since I didn't have the time.

Anyone else who has this question might still want to check with their own doctor, since I've gotten 3 different sets of (oral) instructions on after-RAI instructions from 3 different people (one from my endocrinologist, one from the Nuclear Medicine doctor who gave me the dosing yesterday, and one from the Nuclear Medicine doctor who gave me the RAI today). You can, however, tell your doctor that some anonymous weirdo on the Internet said it was okay.

I'm going with the set of written instructions, since both of the Nuclear Medicine guys gave me a copy.

[WhyNot]

Incidentally, if you're curious, the doctor said yeah, it would be fine to dye the hair. Although, I didn't yet, since I didn't have the time.

Awesome, thanks for the update! I suppose it's small consolation, but at least you don't have to suffer roots while they're doing their thing to your thyroid!