July 4th, 2009 | Posted in Autoimmunity
What happens, when some part of your car or computer etc. wears down?
Simply. You visit your car or computer etc. mechanic to get that part replaced.
Some time ago medical doctors (human body mechanics) came in with the idea of replacing some faulty body parts – heart, liver… Obviously, everything is far more complicated in a living body case. Body has own immune system – powerful versatile safeguards, that can destroy literally anything (organic) inside the host body.
Immune system is so widespread, that it seems to be much easier to name body parts that aren’t parts of immune system than conversely
That’s fine – researchers developed subsidiary idea – to weaken the safeguard. Present official synthetic pharmaceuticals, surgery and radiation based medicine has all powerful tools to demolish everything they want.
Again, nothing seems to be impossible nowadays – even living with weak immune system. But – pssst! – the patient must be silent – don’t even dare speaking about quality of life.
But what to do, when body’s own safeguard (immune system) for some reason becomes faulty?
A group of medical researchers suggested a new idea – replace the immune system! Researchers from the University – institution, once created to spread lucent humanistic ideas.
So, hmm – nice idea. But wait a moment – what about existing immune system? It’s faulty, but still – it guards the body against all environmental germs and performs lots of other highly important for body survival tasks.
More about problems and ways of immune system replacement (for some reason they call it reboot) – in articles 1. Immune System Reboot Could Treat Autoimmune Disease and 2. Stem cell transplant can grow new immune system in certain mice, Stanford researchers find.
Read, if you like. For me it’s a sort of terrible nightmare of a psychedelic person… OK, these are creations of present pharmaceutical – medical conglomerate.
But I still have some (not so) simple questions. Look:
- Our toxic reality – researchers noticed influence of industrial chemicals on spreading of all sorts of chronic degenerative disorders
- Welcome – Autoimmune Epidemic – key world researchers agree that global spreading of autoimmune disorders is mainly caused by environmental pollution
- Immunotoxins – Autoimmunity – MS – it’s clarified how man-made chemicals can trigger Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and any other autoimmune disorder
My main question remains:
Can it be that scientists are working in growing isolation? Or is it some special kind of “scientific” confusion – when one group knows nothing about results of others? Isn’t it similar to Health and wellness problems of information overload?
June 19th, 2009 | Posted in Basics
…as infectious childhood diseases like polio, smallpox, rheumatic fever, and diphtheria have largely been controlled, chronic conditions of less obvious origins have taken their place.
Asthma, autism, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders (ADD and ADHD), childhood brain cancer and acute lymphocytic leukemia have all increased over the past 30 years.
That’s introductory part of article Human health problems on the rise, published by Environmental Working Group (EWG), a non-profit organization, founded in 1993 to: 1. protect the most vulnerable segments of the human population – children, babies, and infants; and 2. replace federal policies, including government subsidies that damage the environment and natural resources, with policies that invest in conservation and sustainable development.
You’ll not find neither multiple sclerosis, nor any other autoimmune disorder included in this graph. Nevertheless, it’s safe to assume that no chronic degenerative disorder is an exception. Contrarily – such an assumption would be both unrealistic or even precarious.
Take a long hard look – you’ll definitely see the trend!
Conclusions follow:
Scientists cannot fully explain these increases, but early life exposure to environmental pollutants is a leading suspect (2005)
Fetal exposures lead to adult disease
Fetal exposures cause disease in future generations
Heaps of different already discovered aspects and separate facts about toxins and pollutants influence on health could be added, but the key message remains the same – for everybody:
Pollutants = Toxins = Poisons
June 15th, 2009 | Posted in Autoimmunity
What’s all this about? New flu pandemic? No, that’s autoimmune epidemic!
Book “The Autoimmune Epidemic: Bodies Gone Haywire in a World Out of Balance–and the Cutting-Edge Science that Promises Hope” (2008) by
Donna Jackson Nakazawa,
an autoimmune sufferer herself
Foreword to “The Autoimmune Epidemic”
by Douglas Kerr, M.D., Ph.D.:
- founder and director of the Johns Hopkins Transverse Myelitis (TM) Center, the only center in the world dedicated to developing new therapies for this paralyzing autoimmune disorder
- faculty neurologist and neuroscientist at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore Maryland, for the last decade evaluating and treating patients with autoimmune disorders of the nervous system
He explains:
- Increasingly, I see that more and more patients are being felled by this devastating disorder (Transverse Myelitis)
- Infants as young as five months old can get TM and some are left permanently paralyzed and dependent upon a ventilator to breathe. But this is supposed to be a rare disorder, reportedly affecting only one in a million people
- Prior to the 1950s, there were a grand total of four cases reported in the medical literature
- Currently, my colleagues at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and I hear about or treat hundreds of new cases every year
- In the multiple sclerosis clinic, where I also see patients, the number of cases likewise continues to climb
This really trustworthy expert is sharing his collected information:
- Autoimmune diseases have not always been this common. The prevalence of autoimmune diseases like systemic lupus erythematosus, or lupus, multiple sclerosis, and type 1 diabetes is on the rise
- In some cases, autoimmune diseases are three times more common now than they were several decades ago. These changes are not due to increased recognition of these disorders or altered diagnostic criteria
- Rather, more people are getting autoimmune disorders than ever before
Later he’s providing a short explanation about operation of immune system:
- The immune system … is charged with an amazingly complex task: to recognize and ignore all the cells and tissues within the body and – at the same time – to attack any and all “invaders”, foreign cells, viruses, bacteria, or fungi
- …wondrously complex immune system can successfully protect our bodies while recognizing and eliminating billions of distinct infections with which we come in contact. When functioning well, the immune system immediately recognizes a virus or bacteria that has gotten into our body and initiates a spirited and robust attack on the invader, allowing us to recover from a cold after only a few days
- But this precisely choreographed dance between the immune system and the tissues it is designed to protect goes badly awry in autoimmune diseases. In such diseases, the immune system mistakes friend for foe and begins to attack the very tissues it was designed to protect. The soldiers guarding the castle turn and attack it
He asks rhetoric questions and explains:
- But what triggers autoimmunity to occur? Throughout human history, our exposure to such myriad infectious agents has triggered an evolutionary arms race. Our immune system has evolved increasingly sophisticated countermeasures and recognition systems to combat the increasing diversity of the infectious agents with which we come in contact
- But this increasing sophistication comes with a cost: an increased chance of the system breaking down. We have evolved right to the edge of the immune system’s capacity…
- Now, over the last 40 years, something has been pushing that system over the edge. Something is causing the immune system to increasingly make mistakes in which the line becomes blurred, the immune system attacks the body itself, and autoimmune disease occurs
- In all likelihood, much of the reason for this often catastrophic mistake of the immune system comes from the countless environmental toxins to which we are currently exposed—toxins that interfere with the way the immune system communicates with the rest of the body
Some statistics (are you here?):
- The numbers are staggering: one in twelve Americans—and one in nine women—will develop an autoimmune disorder
- And since it is clear that not every patient with an autoimmune disease is correctly diagnosed, the prevalence is certainly higher than that…
…
Concerned about health in general or autoimmune disorder in particular? Lots of info in the book:
Final words:
- You will leave this book with no reservations about the veracity of the conclusions: put simply, there is no doubt that autoimmune diseases are on the rise and our increasing environmental exposure to toxins and chemicals is fueling this rise
- The research is sound
- The conclusions unassailable
Reading The Autoimmune Epidemic is a necessary first step Reading The Autoimmune Epidemic is a life-altering event
It needs to be
June 9th, 2009 | Posted in MS enigma
In one study, published June 2009, researchers from the University of Toronto tested the vitamin D blood levels of 125 children who had exhibited symptoms indicating some form of damage to the myelin sheath.
Children who develop multiple sclerosis have substantially lower levels of vitamin D than children who do not develop the disease, according to a series of studies presented at an international conference on multiple sclerosis in Montreal.
Full article: Vitamin D Deficiency Causes Multiple Sclerosis in Children
- “Three-quarters of our subjects were below the optimal levels for vitamin D,” lead researcher Heather Hanwell said
- “Seventeen of 19 children who had been diagnosed with MS had vitamin D levels below the target level,” researcher Brenda Banwell said
- “There is a very consistent pattern of latitude and multiple sclerosis,” said epidemiologist and multiple sclerosis researcher Cedric Garland of the University of California-San Diego
- “In Canada for six months of the year the sun is not intense enough for us to manufacture vitamin D in our skin”…
- “People have been looking for things in the environment that might account for why Canada has such a high MS risk, and this is one of those factors”…
Further explanation:
- It remains unclear exactly how vitamin D might influence multiple sclerosis risk, but researchers believe it may have to do with the immune system. New research continues to illuminate the role that vitamin D plays in the immune system, providing protection against cancer, tuberculosis and autoimmune diseases
And:
- Vitamin D acts as an immune modulator… On our immune cells there are what are known as receptors, a docking mechanism, for vitamin D. In MS, there are many lines of evidence that immune cells are not regulated properly
- Researchers called vitamin D research one of the most promising areas of research into causes and potential cures for multiple sclerosis
Final words:
- To prove that vitamin D is effective as a multiple sclerosis treatment or preventive – as well as to figure out what dose would be needed – researchers would first have to conduct large-scale clinical trials
* * *
So we got it:
Vitamin D Deficiency Causes Multiple Sclerosis in Children
But why:
- only vitamin D deficiency?
- only in children?
I realize – this was the area of the research – the researchers performed a so-called scientific investigation.
What I really can’t understand (and agree with) – they didn’t perform any exploration into area of other possible multiple sclerosis (MS) causes. OK, they don’t mention it.
All the authors of this article are trying to do is to treat a set of symptoms, officially called Multiple Sclerosis, presupposing the only cause (lack of vitamin D), without even guessing any other.
I described some most probable causes of multiple sclerosis and all other autoimmune disorders in a chapter MS Triggers.
It’s really so simple: if there is other MS trigger – not vitamin D deficiency, increasing amount of this particular vitamin will not reduce MS symptoms and can even complicate a situation.
* * *
Importance of vitamin D is well documented in important medical researches:
- A meta-analysis of 18 randomized controlled trials has found that supplemental vitamin D significantly reduces mortality from all causes
- Vitamin D’s final metabolic product targets more than 200 human genes in a wide variety of tissues
- Not only are such deficiencies common, but vitamin D deficiency is implicated in most of the diseases of civilization
- Since vitamin D deficiency is both endemic and is associated with numerous diseases, it is one of the most important medical problems in modern society
- Steps should be taken to keep patients with chronic diseases associated with vitamin D deficiency
Get your vitamin D
June 7th, 2009 | Posted in Autoimmunity
The other day, searching for health-related news, I came across such an article:
Pollution Can Change Your DNA in 3 Days, Study Suggests
As source was quite reliable – National Geographic News and I am interested in the subject (multiple sclerosis is autoimmune disorder), I started reading the article carefully:
- Breathing in polluted air may wreak havoc on our DNA, reprogramming genes in as few as three days and causing increased rates of cancer and other diseases
- The same damage may occur in city dwellers exposed to normal air, the researchers say
- …exposed workers’ DNA was damaged…
- Reduced-size gene groups … have also been found in the blood DNA of lung cancer patients
- You might not have to be a steelworker to sustain this kind of genetic damage…
- …the same damage can occur in city dwellers—the effects, however, take weeks or months to show up
- For instance, … previous research shows elderly people … had DNA damage…
What I am missing is consistency. Some aspects are well documented:
- almost all manufactured chemicals act as pollutants, showing up as xenobiotics, immunotoxins, neurotoxins etc.
- the only mentioned result from exposure to pollutants is lung cancer. They don’t mention autoimmune disorders and other pollution-related health problems at all – they mention only “other diseases”
- there is no explanation what happens when DNA has been changed
To my knowledge, the immune system is a full time body guard, recognizing and distinguishing between self and non-self. Next step is to destroy non-self. But what changed DNA really is – self or non-self?
It seems to me, immune system in such situations must be ‘confused’ – sometimes gets suppressed, sometimes overactive… And as degree of DNA change most probably depends on pollutant (pollutants cocktail), dose and exposure, result is rather unpredictable.
So number of autoimmune disorders (different ways of overactive immune system acting) is already approaching 100. And definitely multiple sclerosis (MS) is among many others.
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