I want to tell you something about one of Mother Nature’s gifts. I am sure that some people taking the trouble to read this blog have tried to get information on garlic. It has been used, of course, in food preparation for centuries. In about the middle of the last century a group of medical researchers in Japan were studying it and they found something that alerted their curiosity. When the inside of a garlic bulb is exposed to air by cutting or crushing it, vitamin B1, also known as thiamine, is worked on by an enzyme that exists in the bulb. It converts thiamine to a disulfide derivative that they called allithiamine. This name was given because they found it in other plants within the allium species that includes garlic. Garlic also contains about twenty sulfur containing compounds called thiols that are important in the normal use of cellular oxygen. Originally the investigators thought that this newly discovered substance had lost the biochemical properties that are known to be initiated by thiamine in animal cells, including humans. Further study in animals showed that it had biologic properties that actually exceeded those exhibited by the original thiamine. In order to understand why this was an important discovery I have to remind you about the action of thiamine in the body.
The human adult body is made up of between 70 and 100 trillion cells. Each has to use oxygen to create the energy that enables it to function, as has been discussed in previous posts. Thiamine is the “spark plug” that “ignites” glucose, the fuel of all our cells and it is particularly important in the brain, heart and nervous system. Its absorption from the foods that contain it, its journey in the blood to the cells that require it and its delivery to those cells, involves complex biochemistry. It has long been thought that the RDA of thiamine is sufficient and that any form of megadose would be of no physiological value. This is because the enzymes that require it cannot be accelerated in their function by introducing an excess of the vitamin. Remember from an earlier post that most vitamins are cofactors to enzymnes. This is essentially correct in healthy people whose diet has remained excellent over the years of life. We know from history that it required months of huge doses of thiamine to cure advanced beriberi and sometimes it was too late since there was permanent damage. The enzymes that require thiamine to function to full capacity begin to deteriorate when there is an overload of glucose and an insufficiency of the vitamin, as discussed in the “Choked Engine Syndrome” in an earlier post. In order to recuperate this efficiency, the enzyme needs to be “hit” with much larger doses of thiamine. The normal physiological mechanisms for absorbing dietary thiamine are inadequate for large doses and that is where allithiamine comes into the picture. Further research showed that this disulfide form of the vitamin did not need the complex biochemistry to absorb it into body cells.
A Vitamin B Research Committee was formed in Japan because of their vested interest in beriberi that was still seen quite commonly in 1965 when they published their work in Tokyo in a book entitled “Thiamine and Beriberi”. I was lucky to receive an English translation from one of the members of the Japanese committee. It has within its pages a cornucopia of information that is of vast importance in our modern era. The discovery of allithiamine sparked a long period of research that led to synthesis of a huge number of thiamine derivatives that can now be separated into a group of disulfides and non disulfides. The most efficient derivative is thiamine tetrahydrofurfuryl disulfide (TTFD). It is sold as a prescription item in Japan as Alinamin and also known elsewhere as Fursultiamine. The best known of the non disulfides is Benfotiamine. Alinamin is capable of entering the brain whereas it has been shown by a researcher in Belgium that Benfotiamine does not cross the blood brain barrier. This barrier is a normal physiological mechanism.
I want now to concentrate on TTFD since I have been studying its benefits for 38 years and have written many papers in the medical literature. It is not approved by the FDA in the United States in spite of its enormous therapeutic value because it is considered to be a drug. For an American drug company to import it, it would involve the millions of dollars for testing. The present model of disease demands that the drug must be virtually unique in the cure of a specific disease to warrant the expenditure and its recuperation in profits. The trouble with that is that the model itself is outmoded as indicated in an earlier post and the therapeutic properties of TTFD have biochemical implications that do not fit the model. The reason is that it addresses energy metabolism that is the underlying root of many (if not all) diseases and particularly those involving the brain.
We know that depletion of thiamine is the equivalent of oxygen deficiency since they are both essential ingredients of cellular energy production. Published material has shown that thiamine is involved in many brain diseases and that its administration as TTFD has shown some benefit in autism and even in Alzheimer disease. Japanese investigators have shown that it improves muscle function (I have treated Duchenne muscular dystrophy with partial success) and that it shortens the recovery time from post surgical paralysis of bowel function known as “post operative paralytic ileus”. Animal studies have shown that it removes lead and mercury from body tissues and also has anti-inflammatory properties. Amazingly,pretreatment of mice with TTFD partially protects the animal from cyanide death and liver damage from carbon tetrachloride administrations. Beriberi is the prototype of dysautonomia in its early stages and this category of disease is very common in America because of the huge ingestion of sugar as already discussed. It is my view that TTFD could easily be introduced to the United States under GRAS rules (generally regarded as safe) but our bureaucracy is stiffer that the proverbial poker. If there is a substance available in this cruel world that helps so-called untreatable disease, should we not welcome it? Even a 10 percent improvement, achieved cheaply and without toxic risk, is better than the status quo and we should be trying hard to find its full value in medicine. If it has indeed rendered the medical model outmoded, there is nothing more constant than change!
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Monday, February 28, 2011
A TYPICAL CASE OF THE “CHOKED ENGINE SYNDROME
A choked engine in a car is achieved by an excess of gasoline with insufficient oxygen and/or an inefficient spark plug to ignite the gasoline. The result is loss of engine efficiency and decreased performance. Although the details are different and more complex in our bodies, the result of eating empty calories (“junk food”) is confusion in the brain/body dialogue, resulting in diverse symptoms. Hence the “The Choked Engine Syndrome” is caused by an excess of calories without the vitamins and minerals that enable the calories to be used as cellular fuel to produce energy. I want to describe a typical case and any reader might easily recognize his/her own symptoms.
A 14-year old boy had the major complaint of abdominal pain. It is natural to think that abdominal pain is caused by changes in abdominal organs and we shall see that this can sometimes be misleading. Generally speaking, a physician might focus his attention on the major symptom, thus dictating the investigations that are initiated. This is insufficient and other symptoms are only revealed by direct questioning. He had constipation alternating with diarrhea and the pain occurred after ingesting anything that tasted sweet. He had had suicidal thoughts, suffered frequent headaches and “panic attacks”. He complained of frequent nausea, sometimes accompanied by vomiting. He had been admitted to a hospital for three weeks for depression and seven different drugs had been prescribed. He had noted occasional dizziness, was regarded as emotionally unstable, suffered unusual fatigue and insomnia. He ground his teeth, talked in his sleep and suffered periodic attacks of “pins and needles” in his hands and feet, as well as leg pain while walking. He had noticed an occasional brief pain in the chest and, on questioning he reported that nasal congestion affected his right nostril only. Studies elsewhere reported that he suffered from fructose intolerance and all forms of fresh fruit had been withdrawn from his diet.
His facial appearance was typical of the many children and adolescents that I have seen over the years with this syndrome. There was a zone of pallor around his mouth, together with unusual flushing of the cheeks, producing a “clown-like” imitation. His tongue was badly coated a dirty brown with little red spots on its surface. He had the signs of mitral valve (a heart valve) prolapse by listening to his heart with a stethoscope. His blood pressures in the two arms, when measured at the same time, were widely different. Knee jerks were excessively reactive and a white stripe could be elicited by gently stroking the leg with a finger tip, a phenomenon known as dermographia or “skin writing”. There was a family history of one relative with diabetes.
One of the posts in this blog describes a “two-brain model” that emphasizes that the lower brain, known as the limbic system and brainstem, make up a very obvious computer, organizing our daily adaptation to environmental factors, sensed and data processed by the computer. If this part of the brain is poorly nourished by the ingestion of empty calories, its energy is affected and its loss of efficiency causes it to behave in exactly the same way as it would with a mild to moderate deficiency of oxygen.
The brain computer has a heavy oxygen requirement and a curious thing happens when energy production is mildly to moderately limited. It becomes hyper-reactive in its adaptive response to environmental stimuli, conveyed to it by sensory input. It is not the stomach that causes nausea, it is the brainstem. Vomiting occurs as a result of a signal sent to the stomach from the computer. This boy’s headaches, abdominal cramping and all his abnormal emotional reactions were produced by faulty and unnecessary executive action within the computer and its subsequent messages to body organs. It is the limbic system of the brain where our emotions are initiated. Emotions are reflex and although we are conscious of their action they are not developed from a thought process. Modifying the response to anger, for example, requires dialogue between the upper and lower brains. Road rage is an example of lack of this modifying effect. It was not fructose intolerance that was the defining issue. It was sensitivity to sugar that is extracted from the plant where it is naturally produced. To deny him fresh fruit was unnecessary because that is the natural way that sugar should be ingested. When we extract the active principle from a plant we turn it into a drug. Our taste mechanisms in the brain are programmed to receive permutations and combinations of six stimuli that provide flavor. By tasting sugar as a solitary stimulus it stimulates pleasure perception and it is the root cause of its addictive nature. The fiber in the fruit modifies the way that its sugar content is absorbed and processed and should remain the source of our sugar ingestion.
. Another clue to his sugar sensitivity was a relative with diabetes, a condition that is well known to be related to sugar metabolism. As the “Three Circles of Health” describe in a former post, there is always a genetic influence in the outcome of health and disease. It is the lower, primitive brain that organizes our adaptive mechanisms and panic attacks are nothing more than fragmented fight-or-flight reflexes that were being fired much too easily and unnecessarily. The autonomic nervous system, that is the two channel “telephone line” to all body organs, controls the two halves of the body separately, so this asymmetry is normal. When the brain controls become excitable in the way that I have described here, its asymmetric reflex mechanisms, including the blood pressures, become exaggerated. The nasal congestion confined to the right nostril only was an abnormal representation of this asymmetry, for there is a phenomenon known as the nasal cycle (Yogis have known this for centuries) when the nostrils receive signals from the autonomic nervous system asymmetrically. The periodic chest pain is like “a warning bell ringing in a complex system” and is a common symptom in this syndrome Out of great complexity, it is possible, with our present knowledge of how the human body functions, to distil out a simple solution that does not require seven drugs. All it does require is knowledge of the diet that God intended us to consume. After all, we could not have survived as a species if our food had not been present. All that this boy had to do to get well was to remove all forms of sugar from his diet except in the form of fresh fruit. He also required a few vitamin/mineral supplements to catch up with his normal metabolism.
A 14-year old boy had the major complaint of abdominal pain. It is natural to think that abdominal pain is caused by changes in abdominal organs and we shall see that this can sometimes be misleading. Generally speaking, a physician might focus his attention on the major symptom, thus dictating the investigations that are initiated. This is insufficient and other symptoms are only revealed by direct questioning. He had constipation alternating with diarrhea and the pain occurred after ingesting anything that tasted sweet. He had had suicidal thoughts, suffered frequent headaches and “panic attacks”. He complained of frequent nausea, sometimes accompanied by vomiting. He had been admitted to a hospital for three weeks for depression and seven different drugs had been prescribed. He had noted occasional dizziness, was regarded as emotionally unstable, suffered unusual fatigue and insomnia. He ground his teeth, talked in his sleep and suffered periodic attacks of “pins and needles” in his hands and feet, as well as leg pain while walking. He had noticed an occasional brief pain in the chest and, on questioning he reported that nasal congestion affected his right nostril only. Studies elsewhere reported that he suffered from fructose intolerance and all forms of fresh fruit had been withdrawn from his diet.
His facial appearance was typical of the many children and adolescents that I have seen over the years with this syndrome. There was a zone of pallor around his mouth, together with unusual flushing of the cheeks, producing a “clown-like” imitation. His tongue was badly coated a dirty brown with little red spots on its surface. He had the signs of mitral valve (a heart valve) prolapse by listening to his heart with a stethoscope. His blood pressures in the two arms, when measured at the same time, were widely different. Knee jerks were excessively reactive and a white stripe could be elicited by gently stroking the leg with a finger tip, a phenomenon known as dermographia or “skin writing”. There was a family history of one relative with diabetes.
One of the posts in this blog describes a “two-brain model” that emphasizes that the lower brain, known as the limbic system and brainstem, make up a very obvious computer, organizing our daily adaptation to environmental factors, sensed and data processed by the computer. If this part of the brain is poorly nourished by the ingestion of empty calories, its energy is affected and its loss of efficiency causes it to behave in exactly the same way as it would with a mild to moderate deficiency of oxygen.
The brain computer has a heavy oxygen requirement and a curious thing happens when energy production is mildly to moderately limited. It becomes hyper-reactive in its adaptive response to environmental stimuli, conveyed to it by sensory input. It is not the stomach that causes nausea, it is the brainstem. Vomiting occurs as a result of a signal sent to the stomach from the computer. This boy’s headaches, abdominal cramping and all his abnormal emotional reactions were produced by faulty and unnecessary executive action within the computer and its subsequent messages to body organs. It is the limbic system of the brain where our emotions are initiated. Emotions are reflex and although we are conscious of their action they are not developed from a thought process. Modifying the response to anger, for example, requires dialogue between the upper and lower brains. Road rage is an example of lack of this modifying effect. It was not fructose intolerance that was the defining issue. It was sensitivity to sugar that is extracted from the plant where it is naturally produced. To deny him fresh fruit was unnecessary because that is the natural way that sugar should be ingested. When we extract the active principle from a plant we turn it into a drug. Our taste mechanisms in the brain are programmed to receive permutations and combinations of six stimuli that provide flavor. By tasting sugar as a solitary stimulus it stimulates pleasure perception and it is the root cause of its addictive nature. The fiber in the fruit modifies the way that its sugar content is absorbed and processed and should remain the source of our sugar ingestion.
. Another clue to his sugar sensitivity was a relative with diabetes, a condition that is well known to be related to sugar metabolism. As the “Three Circles of Health” describe in a former post, there is always a genetic influence in the outcome of health and disease. It is the lower, primitive brain that organizes our adaptive mechanisms and panic attacks are nothing more than fragmented fight-or-flight reflexes that were being fired much too easily and unnecessarily. The autonomic nervous system, that is the two channel “telephone line” to all body organs, controls the two halves of the body separately, so this asymmetry is normal. When the brain controls become excitable in the way that I have described here, its asymmetric reflex mechanisms, including the blood pressures, become exaggerated. The nasal congestion confined to the right nostril only was an abnormal representation of this asymmetry, for there is a phenomenon known as the nasal cycle (Yogis have known this for centuries) when the nostrils receive signals from the autonomic nervous system asymmetrically. The periodic chest pain is like “a warning bell ringing in a complex system” and is a common symptom in this syndrome Out of great complexity, it is possible, with our present knowledge of how the human body functions, to distil out a simple solution that does not require seven drugs. All it does require is knowledge of the diet that God intended us to consume. After all, we could not have survived as a species if our food had not been present. All that this boy had to do to get well was to remove all forms of sugar from his diet except in the form of fresh fruit. He also required a few vitamin/mineral supplements to catch up with his normal metabolism.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Chronic Fatigue
Fatigue is one of the most common symptoms in patients that consult me. It is usually the presenting symptom but is invariably associated with many other symptoms, many of which are not volunteered by the patient. Modern clinical visits are usually quite short and focus on the presenting symptom without due consideration of the importance of the whole picture. Thus, it is mindful of the parable of the “blind men and the elephant”. A group of blind men were asked to describe an elephant. One found the ear, another the trunk and so on. Each described the elephant in terms of the small area examined and was certain that he had described the elephant. It led, of course, to accusations of inaccuracy of observation between them. Each was guilty of missing the “big picture”. Diagnosing disease is sometimes like that.
For this reason, when a person seeks an appointment with me through my office, a questionnaire is automatically sent to the ‘would be” patient, who is asked to fill it in and bring it for the office visit. The most important part of the consultation is the history and I begin by asking the patient the main reason for coming. Then, I ask “When were you last quite well”? It is often surprisingly difficult to pinpoint this and I frequently find that the very first symptom experienced goes back many years and even back to childhood.
So let me describe a typical hypothetical case of a person reporting with the major symptom of fatigue. The patient is a 35-year old married woman with two children. On questioning, she states that she cannot remember when her very first symptom appeared but she had a lot of colds and “flu-like” episodes in childhood and received many antibiotic treatments. She had some academic problems through school and missed a lot of school days because of illness. Her fatigue began in high school and became an added problem through college. As the years passed, she gradually accumulated other symptoms and her questionnaire reveals many more.
She has difficulty in getting to sleep and keeps awakening through the night and does not feel rested in the morning. She grinds her teeth, has some nightmares and her husband reports that she talks in her sleep and snores. Occasionally she stops breathing and starts again with a gasp. Her hands and feet are cold and she gets “pins and needles” in them. When getting out of bed or standing up from a chair she becomes “dizzy” and has even blacked out once or twice. She has sensitivity to changes in ambient temperature and barometric pressure and develops a headache with an approaching thunderstorm. She consumes two cups of coffee on awakening and takes one with her in the car on her way to work. She claims that she is so fatigued that she could not get to work without it. She has nasal congestion in the morning and, on questioning, notices nasal congestion in the left nostril when lying on her left side. When she turns over in bed the left nostril clears but the congestion shifts to the right nostril. She also claims that she is allergic to many things, each of which causes her to develop nasal congestion and asthmatic wheezing.
Her menstrual periods are irregular and are associated with emotional instability. She has severe cramps and develops a craving for chocolate and salty food snacks. She also notices abdominal pain on the left side at mid cycle that alternates with the same kind of pain on the right side with the next period. She has what is so often thought of as a disease for the gynecologist, premenstrual syndrome (PMS) that is believed to affect as many as 30 million women in the U.S. alone. In fact, it is so common that many women accept it as normal. The causative factors are always multiple, involving genetic risk and the stresses and strains of contemporary lifestyles. By far the most important aspect is diet. Americans do not damage their physiology with breakfast, lunch and dinner. It is what they do between meals and at social gatherings where their intense desire for sweet tasting substances is assuaged. It goes without saying that smoking is the most dangerous of all. I have also noted that coffee comes into this, perhaps in genetically susceptible people, because of its caffeine content and in spite of its content of antioxidants that has been promoted widely. Previous posts on this blog have tried to outline the danger of sugar. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome, PMS, and Fibromyalgia Syndrome are related in their causative factors and the present medical approach to them is only symptomatically helpful but does not address the underlying cause. I have two sayings that I give to my patients. Eat only “God-made food” and get rid of “the hair from the dog that is biting you”. That refers to the popular things that give us a jolt of pleasure such as sweet and salty things. I once saw a woman that developed her symptoms from just two cups of coffee a day. She thought that I was crazy to suggest that she remove coffee and I told her that she would never know whether I was right unless she tried it. She suffered an agonizing headache that kept her in bed for 48 hours. Then the headache disappeared and her health rapidly improved.
This blog is called “Oxygen, the Spark of Life” and I must again emphasize that the oxygen is useless unless it is consumed in the complex process of oxidation. Yes, it is indeed complex but the human body/brain physiology has evolved and the species has survived as a result of food that was provided by Mother Nature. All we have to do is to obey the rules. Since we know those rules, we are each responsible for our own health unless there is an underlying genetically determined weakness. Even then, the new science of epigenetics tells us that we can indeed manipulate our genes, at least partially, by dietary means and the addition of vital nutritional supplements.
For this reason, when a person seeks an appointment with me through my office, a questionnaire is automatically sent to the ‘would be” patient, who is asked to fill it in and bring it for the office visit. The most important part of the consultation is the history and I begin by asking the patient the main reason for coming. Then, I ask “When were you last quite well”? It is often surprisingly difficult to pinpoint this and I frequently find that the very first symptom experienced goes back many years and even back to childhood.
So let me describe a typical hypothetical case of a person reporting with the major symptom of fatigue. The patient is a 35-year old married woman with two children. On questioning, she states that she cannot remember when her very first symptom appeared but she had a lot of colds and “flu-like” episodes in childhood and received many antibiotic treatments. She had some academic problems through school and missed a lot of school days because of illness. Her fatigue began in high school and became an added problem through college. As the years passed, she gradually accumulated other symptoms and her questionnaire reveals many more.
She has difficulty in getting to sleep and keeps awakening through the night and does not feel rested in the morning. She grinds her teeth, has some nightmares and her husband reports that she talks in her sleep and snores. Occasionally she stops breathing and starts again with a gasp. Her hands and feet are cold and she gets “pins and needles” in them. When getting out of bed or standing up from a chair she becomes “dizzy” and has even blacked out once or twice. She has sensitivity to changes in ambient temperature and barometric pressure and develops a headache with an approaching thunderstorm. She consumes two cups of coffee on awakening and takes one with her in the car on her way to work. She claims that she is so fatigued that she could not get to work without it. She has nasal congestion in the morning and, on questioning, notices nasal congestion in the left nostril when lying on her left side. When she turns over in bed the left nostril clears but the congestion shifts to the right nostril. She also claims that she is allergic to many things, each of which causes her to develop nasal congestion and asthmatic wheezing.
Her menstrual periods are irregular and are associated with emotional instability. She has severe cramps and develops a craving for chocolate and salty food snacks. She also notices abdominal pain on the left side at mid cycle that alternates with the same kind of pain on the right side with the next period. She has what is so often thought of as a disease for the gynecologist, premenstrual syndrome (PMS) that is believed to affect as many as 30 million women in the U.S. alone. In fact, it is so common that many women accept it as normal. The causative factors are always multiple, involving genetic risk and the stresses and strains of contemporary lifestyles. By far the most important aspect is diet. Americans do not damage their physiology with breakfast, lunch and dinner. It is what they do between meals and at social gatherings where their intense desire for sweet tasting substances is assuaged. It goes without saying that smoking is the most dangerous of all. I have also noted that coffee comes into this, perhaps in genetically susceptible people, because of its caffeine content and in spite of its content of antioxidants that has been promoted widely. Previous posts on this blog have tried to outline the danger of sugar. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome, PMS, and Fibromyalgia Syndrome are related in their causative factors and the present medical approach to them is only symptomatically helpful but does not address the underlying cause. I have two sayings that I give to my patients. Eat only “God-made food” and get rid of “the hair from the dog that is biting you”. That refers to the popular things that give us a jolt of pleasure such as sweet and salty things. I once saw a woman that developed her symptoms from just two cups of coffee a day. She thought that I was crazy to suggest that she remove coffee and I told her that she would never know whether I was right unless she tried it. She suffered an agonizing headache that kept her in bed for 48 hours. Then the headache disappeared and her health rapidly improved.
This blog is called “Oxygen, the Spark of Life” and I must again emphasize that the oxygen is useless unless it is consumed in the complex process of oxidation. Yes, it is indeed complex but the human body/brain physiology has evolved and the species has survived as a result of food that was provided by Mother Nature. All we have to do is to obey the rules. Since we know those rules, we are each responsible for our own health unless there is an underlying genetically determined weakness. Even then, the new science of epigenetics tells us that we can indeed manipulate our genes, at least partially, by dietary means and the addition of vital nutritional supplements.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Premenstrual Syndrome
It is estimated that about half of the women in the U.S. capable of giving birth suffer from the scourge of PMS. It is regarded usually as a gynecological disorder and most sufferers wind up with the birth control pill. I want to explain why this condition fits the disease model that I have already described in a previous blog post.
Those that have read it know that the bunch of glands that come under the heading of the endocrine system are activated by the LS (limbic system) that is described as a computer. The LS has within it at least two time clocks. One rotates on a 24-hour basis and is called circadian rhythm. Circadian means “about 24 hours” and it is interesting to note that this rhythm without time cues is actually a 25-hour rhythm. It was proved by shutting a volunteer subject in a room without any clock and depriving him of the day/night cycle. Thus he had no clues as to whether it was night or day. I simply asked myself the question “why”? The intuitive answer is that we were programmed with a 25-hour rhythm and born into a 24-hour world. It strongly suggests that we have to compress that rhythm by adapting to the day/night cycle, an evolutionary phenomenon, perhaps of great importance as we live in this 24-hour world. It is as though Mother Nature has created a system to which we must continuously adapt throughout life. If not, then it gets out of sync and our body systems receive inappropriate signals.
The other known cycle is the menstrual cycle and it is an extremely important one since it is the “procreative mechanism” that prepares a woman for conception. Then, by hormonal control, it presides over the ensuing pregnancy. Its normal rhythm is 28 days, counting from the first day of the “period”. As everyone knows, the first sign of pregnancy is “missing a period”. This cycle has some curious features. For example, it is known that if women are living together in a dormitory, they begin to have their periods at the same time. I have often wondered, as I am sure others have, whether the 28-day moon cycle and the menstrual cycle are the same by coincidence or whether there is actually a cause and effect relationship. It would be curious if men do not have a 28-day cycle but they have nothing to show for it. Perhaps in some men it is responsible for emotional cycles that are considered usually to be “the reason that Dad gets grumpy periodically for no obvious cause”!
This cycle, governed by the LS, controls the release of hormones from the appropriate glands in the endocrine system. During the first half of the cycle estrogen increases and is withdraw at the 14th day when ovulation occurs. In the second half progesterone increases and is withdrawn when the period occurs. Thus, in the week before the period occurs, the LS is “working like a one-armed paper hanger”.
It is compromised function of the LS computer that is the cause of PMS and if a person reading this has become aware of the previous posts it will begin to make sense. The birth control pill shuts off the biofeedback system that is required for the LS to recognize and control the various hormonal changes over which it presides. It does work but is inappropriate to relieving the basic cause. It is as though the hormone is telling the LS that it is “no longer in charge” and it silences its controlling influences.
We can now begin to see that chocolate, sweet and salt craving are very much part of the whole picture because they are causing the problem and MUST be controlled. Why are they causing it? Because they provide inappropriate input signals to the computer as well as producing changes in oxygen use in the cells that are collectively responsible for the computerized program of the cycle.
As I have indicated previously, the computer becomes much more irritable and since the LS is responsible for our emotions, it is not surprising that one of the major symptoms of PMS is emotional lability. Husbands sometimes arrange their golf games during this week because they know that their wives are “difficult” at this time. The ensuing cramps are because of abnormal control signals to the uterus and there is often inflammation of the egg releasing mechanism at mid cycle. So left/right monthly alternating abdominal pain is experienced as the egg pops out of the ovary. This has been called “mittelschmertz”, a German word meaning “middle pain”. The release of an egg is from the left ovary alternating with the right with each successive period. Sometimes the inflammation affects only one side and the patient describes the fact that she gets this pain on that side only and with every other period cycle.
Because the autonomic nervous system is also controlled by the LS there may be associated heart palpitations, or diarrhea because of an irritable bowel. Sometimes there is excessive sweating or major changes in appetite from being voracious or diminished and the sweet craving is very hard to control in some individuals. It is important to understand that ALL the symptoms come from the faulty signals that go to the body organs.
What then is the treatment? The first one that I advise, always with extreme emphasis, is to stop taking the sweets, particularly when the craving occurs. That is often easier said than done but it is entirely useless to take vitamin supplements unless this is done “cold turkey”
Sometimes, just this effort and a hard look at appropriate diet is sufficient but nutrient supplements are usually required and should be chosen by a physician who understands the causative factors. It is well to remember that what I call “God-made” food is the only food that should be ingested. If there had been no naturally occurring food when we arrived on Earth, we could not have survived as a species. It is still the same today and the avoidance of “man-made” food is a necessity, particularly those that are sweet or salty. I always ask a salt-craving PMS patient how she solves it and the answer usually is pretzels. Coffee is also another cause and the number of cups ingested is irrelevant in those that are sensitive to caffeine. It has been suggested (erroneously) that we should all be taking 7 or 8 cups of coffee a day “because of the antioxidants that it contains”. Although this fact is true, it is far outweighed by the undesirable effects of caffeine. Caffeine stimulates brain cells to work and it may cause consumption of energy that the individual can ill afford. It gives us the false impression that it is providing energy because of the sense of stimulation. The reason that so many people drink coffee in the morning is because they are extremely fatigued. They are unfortunately adding to the problem because their fatigue is due to loss of efficiency in the energy required to make their brain cells function properly. They are being misled by the temporary disappearance of their fatigue. Just like any “recreational” drug, stopping it causes withdrawal headache that is assuaged by taking more coffee. It often contributes to the symptoms associated with PMS
Those that have read it know that the bunch of glands that come under the heading of the endocrine system are activated by the LS (limbic system) that is described as a computer. The LS has within it at least two time clocks. One rotates on a 24-hour basis and is called circadian rhythm. Circadian means “about 24 hours” and it is interesting to note that this rhythm without time cues is actually a 25-hour rhythm. It was proved by shutting a volunteer subject in a room without any clock and depriving him of the day/night cycle. Thus he had no clues as to whether it was night or day. I simply asked myself the question “why”? The intuitive answer is that we were programmed with a 25-hour rhythm and born into a 24-hour world. It strongly suggests that we have to compress that rhythm by adapting to the day/night cycle, an evolutionary phenomenon, perhaps of great importance as we live in this 24-hour world. It is as though Mother Nature has created a system to which we must continuously adapt throughout life. If not, then it gets out of sync and our body systems receive inappropriate signals.
The other known cycle is the menstrual cycle and it is an extremely important one since it is the “procreative mechanism” that prepares a woman for conception. Then, by hormonal control, it presides over the ensuing pregnancy. Its normal rhythm is 28 days, counting from the first day of the “period”. As everyone knows, the first sign of pregnancy is “missing a period”. This cycle has some curious features. For example, it is known that if women are living together in a dormitory, they begin to have their periods at the same time. I have often wondered, as I am sure others have, whether the 28-day moon cycle and the menstrual cycle are the same by coincidence or whether there is actually a cause and effect relationship. It would be curious if men do not have a 28-day cycle but they have nothing to show for it. Perhaps in some men it is responsible for emotional cycles that are considered usually to be “the reason that Dad gets grumpy periodically for no obvious cause”!
This cycle, governed by the LS, controls the release of hormones from the appropriate glands in the endocrine system. During the first half of the cycle estrogen increases and is withdraw at the 14th day when ovulation occurs. In the second half progesterone increases and is withdrawn when the period occurs. Thus, in the week before the period occurs, the LS is “working like a one-armed paper hanger”.
It is compromised function of the LS computer that is the cause of PMS and if a person reading this has become aware of the previous posts it will begin to make sense. The birth control pill shuts off the biofeedback system that is required for the LS to recognize and control the various hormonal changes over which it presides. It does work but is inappropriate to relieving the basic cause. It is as though the hormone is telling the LS that it is “no longer in charge” and it silences its controlling influences.
We can now begin to see that chocolate, sweet and salt craving are very much part of the whole picture because they are causing the problem and MUST be controlled. Why are they causing it? Because they provide inappropriate input signals to the computer as well as producing changes in oxygen use in the cells that are collectively responsible for the computerized program of the cycle.
As I have indicated previously, the computer becomes much more irritable and since the LS is responsible for our emotions, it is not surprising that one of the major symptoms of PMS is emotional lability. Husbands sometimes arrange their golf games during this week because they know that their wives are “difficult” at this time. The ensuing cramps are because of abnormal control signals to the uterus and there is often inflammation of the egg releasing mechanism at mid cycle. So left/right monthly alternating abdominal pain is experienced as the egg pops out of the ovary. This has been called “mittelschmertz”, a German word meaning “middle pain”. The release of an egg is from the left ovary alternating with the right with each successive period. Sometimes the inflammation affects only one side and the patient describes the fact that she gets this pain on that side only and with every other period cycle.
Because the autonomic nervous system is also controlled by the LS there may be associated heart palpitations, or diarrhea because of an irritable bowel. Sometimes there is excessive sweating or major changes in appetite from being voracious or diminished and the sweet craving is very hard to control in some individuals. It is important to understand that ALL the symptoms come from the faulty signals that go to the body organs.
What then is the treatment? The first one that I advise, always with extreme emphasis, is to stop taking the sweets, particularly when the craving occurs. That is often easier said than done but it is entirely useless to take vitamin supplements unless this is done “cold turkey”
Sometimes, just this effort and a hard look at appropriate diet is sufficient but nutrient supplements are usually required and should be chosen by a physician who understands the causative factors. It is well to remember that what I call “God-made” food is the only food that should be ingested. If there had been no naturally occurring food when we arrived on Earth, we could not have survived as a species. It is still the same today and the avoidance of “man-made” food is a necessity, particularly those that are sweet or salty. I always ask a salt-craving PMS patient how she solves it and the answer usually is pretzels. Coffee is also another cause and the number of cups ingested is irrelevant in those that are sensitive to caffeine. It has been suggested (erroneously) that we should all be taking 7 or 8 cups of coffee a day “because of the antioxidants that it contains”. Although this fact is true, it is far outweighed by the undesirable effects of caffeine. Caffeine stimulates brain cells to work and it may cause consumption of energy that the individual can ill afford. It gives us the false impression that it is providing energy because of the sense of stimulation. The reason that so many people drink coffee in the morning is because they are extremely fatigued. They are unfortunately adding to the problem because their fatigue is due to loss of efficiency in the energy required to make their brain cells function properly. They are being misled by the temporary disappearance of their fatigue. Just like any “recreational” drug, stopping it causes withdrawal headache that is assuaged by taking more coffee. It often contributes to the symptoms associated with PMS
Saturday, December 11, 2010
HIGH CALORIE MALNTRION AND THE DISEASES OF MALADAPTATION
:I have discussed the principles of high calorie malnutrition in reference to oxidation and I want now to put it into practical use. The future of medicine lies in knowing and understanding body chemistry and its relationship with electricity, already referred to as “energy medicine”. Children are my favorite patients and I have seen thousands. I was a pediatric oncologist for about 6 years and many people are not aware of the fact that children get malignant disease. I have long questioned whether poor diet has anything to do with such tragedy. However, much more commonly, I found myself confronted many years ago with children who were brought for emotional and behavioral disease. The accepted cause was “bad parenting” so I would try to discuss the approach of the parents in viewing the cause. I found little or no evidence of it in nearly every case. Some may remember that autism was once considered to be a psychological problem induced by “cold parenting” and that has now been properly debunked. Of course there is bad parenting and I have also had considerable experience with child abuse, but behavioral issues are so common that they could be seen as an epidemic, for which it was very hard to see as poor parenting. I have talked to teachers that have told me that when they first went into teaching there were very few, if any, children in the class that were disruptive, inattentive or exhibited bad behavior. In their recent experience they complained that there were many such children in their class. In some cases the children were lining up to receive their medication. Some may remember that the country actually ran out of the drug Ritalin, commonly used to “slow down” this kind of bad behavior. It has been suggested that it is due to “over-diagnosing what is really normal childhood behavior”. However, many of the children that I have seen are quite impossible to examine in the usual way. In fact, I have often told parents that my examination of their child is measured by how quickly he/she wrecks the consulting room.
There was very little to go on but I started looking at the diet of children and it became more than obvious that it contained a huge amount of tasty things that are now referred to as “junk”. Early in this experience I can distinctly remember several cases that stand out. I told the mother of a little hyperactive girl to stop giving her all forms of “sweet junk” and she quickly became normal. She was so impressed that she did the same for the girl’s sister with the same result. The trouble is that we allow children ad lib access to many kinds of sweet tasting “junk” and when a physician tells a parent that it is the basic cause of the child’s behavior, it is inevitable that credibility is stretched.
Way back in the middle of the last century Dr Yudkin, a professor at one of the big London hospitals in England had written a book entitled “Sugar is dangerous” and a few brave souls had suggested that sugar was the culprit in producing increased cholesterol in the blood. Of course, they were generally considered to be “crazy” and the development of research had already gone deeply into cholesterol as the “bad guy” related to fat intake. Anyway, I found that a sugar free diet in these hyperactive, attention deficit kids produced normal health and a return of “old fashioned” good behavior. Because of the relation of sugar with vitamin B1, I also found that nearly all of these children were vitamin B1 deficient. A supplement of this vitamin became a necessity, although never administered alone since vitamins all work together in a complex team association. One adolescent boy who was ingesting huge amounts of cola had dived through a plate glass window after he had been reprimanded by a parent. That he had cut himself badly in the process was an added complication. Massive temper tantrums in children that should long have grown out of such infantile behavior were common as were school complaints of class disruption. Another boy was “passing out” when urinating, a phenomenon known as bladder syncope.
A young athlete was a mile runner. He would get half way around the track and peel off to vomit, before resuming the remaining part of the run. A “vomiting center” in the lower part of the brain is the mechanism that controls this reflex. The exercise stress imposed an energy deficit in the “brain computer” that stimulated this reflex. Compromised oxidative metabolism in the boy’s brain, brought on entirely by the nature of his diet, had stimulated a reflex that is always associated in our collective minds with the stomach.
Later he started basket ball practice but found that he was too fatigued to continue.
In each of these cases the diet was appalling and its correction, together with a few supplements was followed by successful return of mental and physical health. Usually, good students are also good athletes for the body/mind connection is all important. Perhaps the saddest one was a girl who was training for competitive swimming. One day, she reached the end of the pool and stopped there. She was found to be dead. Her brother, also a food “junkie” was climbing down from a rope in the gym and collapsed. He was rushed into a hospital where he received glucose saline intravenously. He had 11 blood stained bowel movements and expired. I could explain the mechanism but it would take too much space. The message is that sweet junk food is dangerous. That is indeed the point! I now know with certainty that the “bottom line” in all of these cases is compromised oxidative metabolism affecting adaptive reflexes that normally are initiated for protective, sometimes life saving, purposes. The fight-or-flight reflex that almost everyone understands as a normal life-saver is being initiated as panic attacks in huge numbers of adults and it represents exactly the same mechanism. Mild hypoxia (too little oxygen) and vitamin B1 deficiency produce the same effects in the LS computer. It makes the reflex adaptive mechanisms much more active and grossly exaggerated. The affected individual develops a disease of adaptation, just as the animals that formed the experiments done by Hans Selye who gave us the General Adaptation Syndrome that I have mentioned in a previous post. The only correction that I would like to have made is to call it “The Diseases of Maladaptation”. It is well to remember that activating adaptive reflexes like this is never a good thing. It is an abnormal state and sometimes, depending on the severity of the body/brain chemistry, it can kill and autopsy examination is always negative so the nature of the death remains unknown.
There was very little to go on but I started looking at the diet of children and it became more than obvious that it contained a huge amount of tasty things that are now referred to as “junk”. Early in this experience I can distinctly remember several cases that stand out. I told the mother of a little hyperactive girl to stop giving her all forms of “sweet junk” and she quickly became normal. She was so impressed that she did the same for the girl’s sister with the same result. The trouble is that we allow children ad lib access to many kinds of sweet tasting “junk” and when a physician tells a parent that it is the basic cause of the child’s behavior, it is inevitable that credibility is stretched.
Way back in the middle of the last century Dr Yudkin, a professor at one of the big London hospitals in England had written a book entitled “Sugar is dangerous” and a few brave souls had suggested that sugar was the culprit in producing increased cholesterol in the blood. Of course, they were generally considered to be “crazy” and the development of research had already gone deeply into cholesterol as the “bad guy” related to fat intake. Anyway, I found that a sugar free diet in these hyperactive, attention deficit kids produced normal health and a return of “old fashioned” good behavior. Because of the relation of sugar with vitamin B1, I also found that nearly all of these children were vitamin B1 deficient. A supplement of this vitamin became a necessity, although never administered alone since vitamins all work together in a complex team association. One adolescent boy who was ingesting huge amounts of cola had dived through a plate glass window after he had been reprimanded by a parent. That he had cut himself badly in the process was an added complication. Massive temper tantrums in children that should long have grown out of such infantile behavior were common as were school complaints of class disruption. Another boy was “passing out” when urinating, a phenomenon known as bladder syncope.
A young athlete was a mile runner. He would get half way around the track and peel off to vomit, before resuming the remaining part of the run. A “vomiting center” in the lower part of the brain is the mechanism that controls this reflex. The exercise stress imposed an energy deficit in the “brain computer” that stimulated this reflex. Compromised oxidative metabolism in the boy’s brain, brought on entirely by the nature of his diet, had stimulated a reflex that is always associated in our collective minds with the stomach.
Later he started basket ball practice but found that he was too fatigued to continue.
In each of these cases the diet was appalling and its correction, together with a few supplements was followed by successful return of mental and physical health. Usually, good students are also good athletes for the body/mind connection is all important. Perhaps the saddest one was a girl who was training for competitive swimming. One day, she reached the end of the pool and stopped there. She was found to be dead. Her brother, also a food “junkie” was climbing down from a rope in the gym and collapsed. He was rushed into a hospital where he received glucose saline intravenously. He had 11 blood stained bowel movements and expired. I could explain the mechanism but it would take too much space. The message is that sweet junk food is dangerous. That is indeed the point! I now know with certainty that the “bottom line” in all of these cases is compromised oxidative metabolism affecting adaptive reflexes that normally are initiated for protective, sometimes life saving, purposes. The fight-or-flight reflex that almost everyone understands as a normal life-saver is being initiated as panic attacks in huge numbers of adults and it represents exactly the same mechanism. Mild hypoxia (too little oxygen) and vitamin B1 deficiency produce the same effects in the LS computer. It makes the reflex adaptive mechanisms much more active and grossly exaggerated. The affected individual develops a disease of adaptation, just as the animals that formed the experiments done by Hans Selye who gave us the General Adaptation Syndrome that I have mentioned in a previous post. The only correction that I would like to have made is to call it “The Diseases of Maladaptation”. It is well to remember that activating adaptive reflexes like this is never a good thing. It is an abnormal state and sometimes, depending on the severity of the body/brain chemistry, it can kill and autopsy examination is always negative so the nature of the death remains unknown.
Monday, November 8, 2010
WHAT HAS OXIDATIVE METABOLISM TO DO WITH BEHAVIOR?
In previous posts we have discussed the role of oxygen in oxidative metabolism and in the last post we pointed out that the lower, more primitive and evolutionally early brain is an obvious computer. The upper brain appears to provide “advice and consent” and can modify or even suppress activity in the lower brain, the limbic system (LS).
I have stressed the fact that the LS works 24 hours a day throughout life and has the greatest consumption of oxygen in the whole body. That means that any depreciation in that oxygen consumption will change the way that the LS functions as perhaps the earliest manifestation of inefficient energy synthesis.
If this is so, the obvious conclusion would occur to most people that the LS would react more slowly. Well it has been found through animal studies that with mild oxygen lack the LS actually becomes much more sensitive to any kind of sensory input and fires an adaptive reflex such as fight-or-flight much more quickly. Furthermore, the reflex mechanism is exaggerated.
Dr. Hans Selye studied “stress” in animal experiments and in 1946 he wrote up his work in the Journal of Endocrinology. He called human diseases “The diseases of adaptation” and formulated what he called “the General Adaptation Syndrome”, emphasizing the enormous consumption of energy involved. Selye called the reaction described above “the alarm reaction” and it is perfectly logical on an evolutionary basis if we take a moment to ask why this should happen.
If you were sleeping in a room that was gradually filling with carbon dioxide, an alarm reaction in the brain would awaken you and enable you to escape from the room. Thus, the alarm reaction is an important part of potentially life saving adaptive reflexes. This is what would happen in a healthy brain with normal oxidative function. The same thing could be expected to happen if oxygen is either in insufficient supply or is not being used efficiently in the process of oxidation, an unhealthy brain. It would happen spontaneously without there being a reason for an alarm. It is precisely what happens in the brain when an excess of carbohydrate is consumed since it overwhelms the ability of vitamin B1 to “ignite” the “fuel”.
Vitamin B1 deficiency is equivalent to mild to moderate lack of oxygen and the adaptive reflexes activated by the LS become exaggerated and “fired off” too easily and without any emergency life saving necessity. Thus the very common phenomenon of panic attacks are nothing more than fragmented fight-or-flight reflexes engendered too easily and without a true emergency situation being encountered. Panic attack disorder has been reproduced experimentally in people inhaling air with an increased fraction of carbon dioxide artificially added to it, thus affecting the required concentration of oxygen.
Since the LS initiates our emotional reflexes, the common loss of oxidative efficiency induced by high calorie malnutrition (empty calories) will make these reflexes activated too easily and with exaggerated fury. The persistence of temper tantrums, normal in a very young child, is related to this as is a delay in what is regarded as “toilet training”. Toilet training is a misnomer. It is an “arrival point” in maturation, governed by the gradual hard wiring of the brain during infancy, when the LS and “thinking brain” are in communication. Hard wiring is an electrochemical process and requires a lot of energy.
This concept presents a very good explanation for the otherwise inexplicable school shootings, vandalism and other manifestations of juvenile crime. Have you ever seen a reference on TV to diet as a potential reason for modern mayhem, so disturbing to a supposedly advanced civilization? Perhaps a nursed grievance explodes in violence.
At first sight such a suggestion seems to be completely absurd. I can assure you, however, that getting youngsters to have their diet corrected by withdrawal from ugly and unnatural dietary components really does straighten them out. A probation officer in Cuyahoga Falls in Ohio, got a judge to bind over to her a string of adolescent criminals for her to supervise their appropriate diet. The recidivism was cut back to zero. Her work has never been made public.
When Governor Voinovich called together a group of lawyers to discuss the causes of juvenile crime in Ohio, I wrote to him asking that high calorie malnutrition be considered in their discussion. He passed my letter on to the lawyers and I never knew whether it was discussed for I never received any response. In my next post I will consider this in the wider context of disease.
I have stressed the fact that the LS works 24 hours a day throughout life and has the greatest consumption of oxygen in the whole body. That means that any depreciation in that oxygen consumption will change the way that the LS functions as perhaps the earliest manifestation of inefficient energy synthesis.
If this is so, the obvious conclusion would occur to most people that the LS would react more slowly. Well it has been found through animal studies that with mild oxygen lack the LS actually becomes much more sensitive to any kind of sensory input and fires an adaptive reflex such as fight-or-flight much more quickly. Furthermore, the reflex mechanism is exaggerated.
Dr. Hans Selye studied “stress” in animal experiments and in 1946 he wrote up his work in the Journal of Endocrinology. He called human diseases “The diseases of adaptation” and formulated what he called “the General Adaptation Syndrome”, emphasizing the enormous consumption of energy involved. Selye called the reaction described above “the alarm reaction” and it is perfectly logical on an evolutionary basis if we take a moment to ask why this should happen.
If you were sleeping in a room that was gradually filling with carbon dioxide, an alarm reaction in the brain would awaken you and enable you to escape from the room. Thus, the alarm reaction is an important part of potentially life saving adaptive reflexes. This is what would happen in a healthy brain with normal oxidative function. The same thing could be expected to happen if oxygen is either in insufficient supply or is not being used efficiently in the process of oxidation, an unhealthy brain. It would happen spontaneously without there being a reason for an alarm. It is precisely what happens in the brain when an excess of carbohydrate is consumed since it overwhelms the ability of vitamin B1 to “ignite” the “fuel”.
Vitamin B1 deficiency is equivalent to mild to moderate lack of oxygen and the adaptive reflexes activated by the LS become exaggerated and “fired off” too easily and without any emergency life saving necessity. Thus the very common phenomenon of panic attacks are nothing more than fragmented fight-or-flight reflexes engendered too easily and without a true emergency situation being encountered. Panic attack disorder has been reproduced experimentally in people inhaling air with an increased fraction of carbon dioxide artificially added to it, thus affecting the required concentration of oxygen.
Since the LS initiates our emotional reflexes, the common loss of oxidative efficiency induced by high calorie malnutrition (empty calories) will make these reflexes activated too easily and with exaggerated fury. The persistence of temper tantrums, normal in a very young child, is related to this as is a delay in what is regarded as “toilet training”. Toilet training is a misnomer. It is an “arrival point” in maturation, governed by the gradual hard wiring of the brain during infancy, when the LS and “thinking brain” are in communication. Hard wiring is an electrochemical process and requires a lot of energy.
This concept presents a very good explanation for the otherwise inexplicable school shootings, vandalism and other manifestations of juvenile crime. Have you ever seen a reference on TV to diet as a potential reason for modern mayhem, so disturbing to a supposedly advanced civilization? Perhaps a nursed grievance explodes in violence.
At first sight such a suggestion seems to be completely absurd. I can assure you, however, that getting youngsters to have their diet corrected by withdrawal from ugly and unnatural dietary components really does straighten them out. A probation officer in Cuyahoga Falls in Ohio, got a judge to bind over to her a string of adolescent criminals for her to supervise their appropriate diet. The recidivism was cut back to zero. Her work has never been made public.
When Governor Voinovich called together a group of lawyers to discuss the causes of juvenile crime in Ohio, I wrote to him asking that high calorie malnutrition be considered in their discussion. He passed my letter on to the lawyers and I never knew whether it was discussed for I never received any response. In my next post I will consider this in the wider context of disease.
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