Why Sea Vegetables?

My interest in learning more about sea vegetables, (commonly known as seaweed) comes from advice given to me by my Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioner. As a quick background, I've been going to see this person for 2 years and have had really great success with TCM. Its really helped me to be more healthy and more aware of my overall health. Also, in comparison to western medicine which is a couple hundred years old, TCM is a couple of thousand years old.

In my family all of the women have a history of under active thyroid glands. The thyroid controls a important functions in the body, like regulating metabolism and controlling growth. When people develop hypothyroidism, the symptoms (tiredness, depression, weight gain) can be really severe. There are many causes for hypothyroidism, but deficiency in iodine is the major cause. The western treatment for an underactive (hypo) thyroid condition is a combination of drugs that are synthetic versions or animal-derived thyroid hormones.

Because I'm genetically predisposed to this condition, I was told by my TCM practitioner that increasing my sea vegetable intake could help lower my chances of developing it myself. With that in mind, I've decided to learn more about sea vegetables so that I can incorporate them more into my food. I'm deciding to focus on 3 main objectives:

1. To learn about sea vegetable types, accessibility, nutritional benefits, medicinal qualities. The personal aspect of this objective is to learn how to incorporate sea vegetables consistently into my personal diet. Documentation will include images, recipes and personal thoughts on the experience.

2. To learn about the harvesting of sea vegetables from documented sources and (hopefully) through talking with people who already participate in this activity. I would also like to experience the harvesting firsthand by visiting one of the sea vegetable companies in Mendocino, CA and participating in the harvesting.

3. To learn about the environmental issues surrounding sea vegetable growth in terms of water pollution, harvesting, sustainability, etc. This ties into objective 2, because I'm personally curious to know where its safe to forage for sea vegetables.

Sea vegetables are a highly nutritious whole food option that most people (with the exception of asian cultures) don’t regularly incorporate into their diet. Sea vegetables are also interesting because they're part of the limited food category of food that still can be foraged for.

So that being said, this is where I'm starting from.