Personally, based on information I have seen from othermolecular docs, a large portion of those with hypo issues can be easily returned to optimal health with proper supplementation. Those that cant be returned to optimal thyroid function with supplementation alone generally need much less armour when supplementation is employed.
There is a lot more to thyroid function than just lack of base nutrients for proper creations and synthesis of thyroid homeones but there is an abundance of competing elements we are flooded with every day.
Iodine is a halide, so is fluoride, bromide and a few others. We are exposed to massive amounts of the other unneeded/toxic halides daily and are deficient in iodine. That means that in addition to low iodine intake we force out what little we do get with an abundance of the unneeded toxic halides.
Even if a person does get ample iodine (which Dr Brownstein for example found only 5% of his many thousand patients did) its forced out by other halides.
Let me try and put this into terms many here will understand.
think of clomid/nolva, they are a couple oestrogens that bind to the estrogen receptor but dont activate it. However since they bind to the same receptor as estrogen they prevent estrogen from binding and doing its thing.
bromide/fluoride and the other halogens basically act like clomid in the example above the compete at the receptor level with iodine so iodine cant do its job. So not only do we need iodine in ample quantities to meet our bodies needs we actually need more because it has to directly compete with the other halides we are bombarded with.
Most of us in the US have been drinking fluoridated water our whole life, this displaces iodine. No wonder there is a hypo epidemic in this country.