Like iodine pills?
In: 4
Iodine pills work by flooding some glands and stopping radioactive isotopes staying in there and reducing the damage they take.
They don’t reverse damage, they just protect specific things. Lymph nodes I think.
Medication for radiation exposure doesn’t fix the damage to cells that is already done from radiation exposure.
Some treatments are designed to remove radioactive particles that may have made their way inside your body. This is called chelation therapy (amine polycarboxylates such as EDTA)
Iodine simply protects the thyroid gland if someone ate or drank something that is contaminated with radioactive iodine (I-131).
Another therapy that can be useful is blood transfusion. Radiation exposure can kill the cells that will become new blood cells. Some hormones can help the blood recover faster (G-CSF).
Sometimes the best treatment is a change of clothes and a good shower. Radioactive particles can stick to skin and clothing and continue to make someone sick long after leaving a contaminated area.
None of these treatments fix the damage that is already done from radiation exposure, however. Something like Rad-X from the Fallout video game series is unfortunately not a real thing.
Also, it’s worth noting that you can live just fine without a thyroid, so long as you take a pill (usually once per day) with the hormone that it makes. A common treatment for a very overactive thyroid (such as in Grave’s disease) is to *intentionally* take radioactive iodine and then follow up with thyroid pills (levothyroxine, aka T4). Iodine will *not* save you from nuclear fallout, just ask any of the non-feral ghouls or super mutants.
If you’re in a situation with something like radioactive fallout, the dust in the air and water and food you eat can become radioactive. If you breathe/drink/eat that, you now have radioactive stuff in your body.
Specifically of concern are radioactive iodine atoms, because your thyroid absorbs iodine rapidly. If you get radioactive iodine in your system it’ll be absorbed and irradiate you slowly and constantly.
So the iodine pills a specifically a form of iodine that bonds even more rapidly and strongly to your thyroid, blocking the radioactive atoms from getting in and you just pee/poop them out eventually.
So it doesn’t protect you from direct radiation exposure or from other sources, it just prevents you from absorbing the radioactive iodine.
EDIT don’t quote me, but I’m pretty sure the pills are potassium iodide, and yes, I do keep a bottle in my work bag as a just in case.
Radioactive iodine is used in treatment for thyroid cancer, where basically all of the thyroid tissue is being destroyed. Almost all iodine in the body is absorbed by the thyroid and hardly any of the other parts of the body. By giving a patient a radioactive iodine pill, any remaining thyroid tissue (after surgery to remove the thyroid), takes up that radioactive iodine, which then kills the remaining thyroid tissue, along with the cancer.
Iodine is a rare mineral that your body badly needs. Your body is constantly hungry for iodine and will absorb it from food and water.
If you are exposed to radioactive iodine, then your body will absorb it and hold onto it tight. It will stay in the body and release its radiation inside your body continuously for weeks or months.
However, if before you get exposed to radioactive iodine, you take some iodine pills, then your body will be full of iodine, and no longer hungry – so if you eat or drink radioactive iodine, the body will just allow it to go to waste, instead of storing it. You will only get exposed to the radiation until your body pees or poops the iodine out.
Your thyroid needs Iodine to function, and saps up as much of it as it can (it’s why we iodize table salt).
Among the decay products a nuclear explosion creates is a harmfully radioactive Iodine isotope. Isotopes are chemically identical to each other. So your thyroid absorbs the radioactive isotope, and you get thyroid cancer.
Iodine pills saturate your thyroid with safe iodine so that it won’t absorb radioactive iodine. It is safe to stop taking iodine pills after the radioactive iodine dissapates or is cleaned up.
Latest Answers