April 10th, 2010 | Posted in Triggers
Today (April 10, 2010) I came across MS related news, published April 8, 2010. Being actively involved in everything MS-related, I started reading at once.
As an example, www.sciencedaily. com in article Does Smoking Compound Other Multiple Sclerosis Risk Factors? presented results of newest investigations:
“…study shows that smoking may increase the risk of multiple sclerosis (MS) in people who also have specific established risk factors for MS. The research is found in the April 7, 2010, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology…”
Later some details are presented: number of participants – MS sufferers and in control group, etc. Finally researchers explain influence of a specific gene… Leader of research group explains:
“The consistency of an association between MS, smoking and the body’s immune response… suggests this finding is not due to chance”, said study author Claire Simon, ScD, with Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. “This relationship may provide clues as to why certain individuals develop MS while others do not.”
Some more specifically scientific information has been included…
* * *
Earlier scientific discoveries are rather controversial:
So perhaps humanity arrived at a threshold of a giant discovery?
Or maybe not?
What’s in cigarette smoke?
Being neither a smoker, nor cigarette smoke researcher I had no idea, what makes this smoke so poisonous. Consequently I went to Google and typed a phrase: ” cigarette smoke pollutant ” – and I was provided with over 300,000 articles.
Immediately I entered an article Have You Ever Wondered What’s In a Cigarette? It provides plenty of required information.
Just look:
- Nicotine is highly addictive. Smoke containing nicotine is inhaled into the lungs, and the nicotine reaches brain in as little as 6 seconds
- Cigarette smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, including 43 known carcinogenic (cancer-causing) compounds and 400 other toxins -nicotine, tar, and carbon monoxide, and formaldehyde, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, arsenic, DDT etc
- Nicotine in small doses acts as a stimulant to the brain. In large doses, it’s a depressant, inhibiting the flow of signals between nerve cells. In even larger doses, it’s a lethal poison, affecting the heart, blood vessels, and hormones
- Most of the chemicals inhaled in cigarette smoke stay in the lungs. The more you inhale, the better it feels—and the greater the damage to lungs . . .
Cigarette Maker Now Lists Ingredients
For the first time, an American tobacco company has begun listing long-secret ingredients contained in its cigarettes directly on the label… List includes:
“…high fructose corn syrup, sugar, natural and artificial licorice flavor, menthol, artificial milk chocolate and natural chocolate flavor, valerian root extract, molasses and vanilla extracts, and cedarwood oil. Less familiar additives include glycerol, propylene glycol, isovaleric acid, hexanoic acid and 3-methylpentanoic acid…”
What researchers say
“…not all of the chemicals in your cigarettes are there for taste enhancement. For example, a chemical very similar to rocket fuel helps keep the tip of the cigarette burning at an extremely hot temperature. This allows the nicotine in tobacco to turn into a vapor so your lungs can absorb it more easily.”
“Toilet Bowl Cleaner? Most people prefer to use ammonia for things such as cleaning windows and toilet bowls. You may be surprised to learn that the tobacco industry has found some additional uses for this household product. By adding ammonia to your cigarettes, nicotine in its vapor form can be absorbed through your lungs more quickly. This, in turn, means your brain can get a higher dose of nicotine with each puff.”
The complete list of chemicals added to your cigarettes is too long to list here. Here are some examples that will surprise you:
- Fungicides and pesticides — Cause many types of cancers and birth defects
- Cadmium — Linked to lung and prostate cancer
- Benzene — Linked to leukemia
- Formaldehyde — Linked to lung cancer
- Nickel — Causes increased susceptibility to lung infections
If you are angry that so many things have been added to the cigarettes you enjoy so much, you should be. Many of these chemicals were added to make you better able to tolerate toxic amounts of cigarette smoke. They were added without regard to your health and with the intent to keep you addicted.
As the tobacco industry saying goes:
An addicted customer is a customer for life,
no matter how short that life is
More information – in article.
Smoking and MS – conclusions
I have started analysing possible triggers of MS in 2006 – just when I’ve started my website Beyond MS.
Key idea beyond all listed triggers is rather simple:
There are so many ways to worsen one’s health
and to deregulate immune system…
Just look at all these triggers – you’ll see regularities.
But why some so-called MS researchers refuse to see results of other researchers?
Why they exclude a common sense?
Or is it political correctness?
August 4th, 2009 | Posted in MS enigma
Good question, isn’t it?
Official medicine is speaking about MS everyday. But still – what are they speaking about?
I went to Google and asked for definition of Multiple Sclerosis. You can see the result of my inquiry in article On MS definition. All 26 definitions are more or less incorrect. In reality it’s a completely useless mess. Yeah.
I’ve written another article MS – name ambiguity on the subject. It starts with MS description by National Multiple Sclerosis Society (USA). I analyzed it carefully and find it to be completely misleading.
One more MS definition can be found in article of Wikipedia.org:
Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease in which the body’s immune response attacks a person’s central nervous system (brain and spinal cord), leading to demyelination… The name multiple sclerosis refers to scars (scleroses—better known as plaques or lesions) in the white matter of the brain and spinal cord, which is mainly composed of myelin.
Almost any neurological symptom can appear with the disease…
Although much is known about the mechanisms involved in the disease process, the cause remains unknown. Theories include genetics or infections. Different environmental risk factors have also been found.
That’s better – MS really is an autoimmune disorder. Unfortunately, I still have no idea, what is a key difference between ‘immune response’ and ‘immune system’. Isn’t this explanation perfect: “Almost any neurological symptom can appear with the disease”. Please remember – we are speaking about CNS damage! MS triggers have been mentioned only, without ANY further explanation. However, you can find some information in a chapter Triggers of my website.
* * *
According to National MS Society (USA) description , in order to make a diagnosis of MS, the physician must:
- Find evidence of damage in at least two separate areas of the central nervous system (CNS), which includes the brain, spinal cord and optic nerves AND
- Find evidence that the damage occurred at least one month apart AND
- Rule out all other possible diagnoses
According to the Criteria all a neurologist has to do to diagnose MS is to determine position and level of CNS damage according to strict regulations. Regretfully, they have chosen to keep silent about possible triggers etc.
* * *
Looking closely, it’s easy to see the complexity of the degenerative process.
Obviously, before MS can be diagnosed, a succession of the body damaging events must happen:
- The body is heavily polluted so one’s immune system gets detuned – that way autoimmunity starts
- Over-activated immune system starts the crusade against a new enemy – own body CNS, especially myelin
- To get to the brain, the blood brain barrier – brain safeguard – has to be damaged
- Significant damage to nerve covering (myelin) in many CNS positions has to be done
- Accumulated CNS damages lead to significant neurological symptoms
- CNS damages (lesions or scars) are clearly visible via MRI scanning etc
Hopefully, knowledge of these underlying degenerative processes could clarify some activities towards body stabilizing and healing. Obviously, these should involve mainly detoxification and immune system strengthening.
That’s my answer to a question What really Multiple Sclerosis is?
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 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
May 5th, 2008 | Posted in MS enigma
There are various, sometimes contrary, opinions concerning the type of food that should be consumed by MS patients
MS and Food Allergies
Very good scientific research based review is presented in a Life Extension Foundation website:
Allergies to certain foods may also play a role in the development or exacerbation of MS. MS is most prevalent in areas where consumption of wheat gluten and milk are also high… This relationship has not been proven conclusively, but allergies may play some role in the onset or severity of MS.
Components of some foods may act as triggers to the immune system, causing it to begin an inappropriate autoimmune response similar to the body’s autoimmune response to bacteria and viruses…
Apart from specific cross-reactions to food proteins, a majority of patients who have MS reportedly have a variety of digestive system deficits, including poor digestive enzyme production, poor digestion of fats and proteins, and suboptimal absorption of various nutrients, including vitamin B12…
…some patients who have MS who were treated for yeast infections—and who subsequently had their gut microflora recolonized with friendly probiotic organisms (such as those present in active yogurt cultures)—experienced significant improvement in their MS symptoms…
All other MS and nutrition related versions are mainly personal:
- lots of different opinions are collected and presented in a PaleoDiet.com website special page Multiple Sclerosis and Dietary Intervention. No doubt, such a diet could be very helpful to some (gluten and/or casein sensitive) multiple sclerosis sufferers. However, other MS-ers (me including) can worsen their situation on such a diet. Additionally, it is necessary to consider that this website is created by a paleo diet advocate
- “In 1995 my son received the devastating diagnosis of MS. Having been a research scientist for 30 years, I decided to plunge into the scientific literature for MS to determine the most likely factors which cause MS and to use this information to develop an effective therapy for my son…
“I discovered abundant scientific evidence that indicates that various nutritional factors potentially play major roles in the onset and progression of MS. Strangely, this information was not being made available to persons with MS by doctors nor by established MS charities…”
That’s the introduction to the nice and very informative website direct-ms.org, created by Canadian geologist, who’s son got MS and successfully recovered using paleo diet
- DAIRY PRODUCTS. All dairy products must be non-fat or contain no more than 1 gram of saturated fat per serving. The recommended daily amount is two (2) servings… The following foods are permissible in any amount: non-fat milk or skimmed milk, powdered skimmed milk, non-fat or dry curd cottage cheese, fat-free cheese…
These are basics of a well known Swank low-fat MS diet, developed and widely used for decades by a MD Roy L Swank. This diet is mainly a kind of paleo diet
- Dr. Kwasniewski claims to have major success, treating M.S. using the Homo Optimus diet. The Homo Optimus diet is a diet with a strict ratio of 1:3 protein/fat and only allows a maximum amount of 50 grams of carbohydrates each day. Fats are all animal fats (including butter, cream, etc) and proteins are all animal proteins…
Dr. Kwasniewski says to use 150 grams or pork brain and pork spinal tissue per week. This diet will, according to Kwasniewski, immediately upon starting, stop the degeneration, i.e. it will halt the disease. Depending on how long the disease existed, it will also start healing the damage already done, up to a certain extent.
These are basics of MS diet ‘Homo Optimus’, developed by a Polish MD Kwasniewski. It is definitely opposite to paleo diet and based on animal fat.
All above described diets are similar in few aspects:
- processed foods completely prohibited
- diet applied to all MS sufferers same way
However, some crucial to my opinion aspects are missing:
- diet is not targeted to eliminate or at least reduce possible MS causes
- personal peculiarities are completely ignored
All above information should only be considered as helpful suggestions. Each person is an individual and reacts differently to the various food substances. It is substantial that all individuals should observe their reactions precisely and then choose what is good for them
April 30th, 2008 | Posted in Triggers
Our bodies have become virtual dumping grounds for the hundreds of thousands of toxic compounds that invade our air, water, and even the soil that nurtures our food
More than 77,000 chemicals are in active production in North America. More than 3,000 chemicals are added to our food supply; and more than 10,000 chemicals in the form of solvents, emulsifiers, and preservatives are used in food processing, packaging, wrapping, and storage.
Every day, all of us ingest tiny amounts of these chemicals. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA, USA) estimates there are more than 20,000 chemicals that our bodies cannot metabolize. Chemicals not metabolized are stored in the fat cells throughout our bodies where they continue to accumulate. As these chemicals build up, they alter our metabolism, cause enzyme dysfunction and nutritional deficiencies, create hormonal imbalances, damage brain chemistry, and cause cancer. Because the chemicals accumulate in different parts of the body and at different rates and in different combinations, there is a disturbingly large variety of different chronic illnesses that can result.
Today, our environment is toxic and the foods we eat, even the air we breathe and the water we drink is laden with chemicals foreign to our system.
Our body is designed to utilize natural substances, which includes foods, herbs and phytochemicals. Any foreign substance will serve as a stimulus to our immune system, which has the function of removing these substances.
Man has neglected one fundamental biological rule; to check and see if the organism is adapting to its new environment. We obviously are the first generation to be exposed to such an unprecedented number of chemicals. The work of detoxifying these causes serious deficiencies. This maladaptation in turn has resulted in chronic disease. But disease is not a drug deficiency.
Dr. Sherry Rogers, a fellow of the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology and a diplomat of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, says in her book Detoxify or Die that …
bio-accumulated toxic load in the human body is responsible for all disease not attributable to bacteria or virus
Probably the most accurate and up-to-date description of modern life realities has been presented in the article “Blood tests show chemical toxins“:
A number of toxic man-made chemicals were found in the blood of every person tested during a survey by an environmental pressure group.
Environmental pressure group WWF said long-banned substances such as DDT, which has been associated with cancers and nervous and immune system disorders, were still being found.
There is very little information available about the safety and health risks posed by the vast majority of chemicals in use
“We just don’t know what might be considered a safe level of exposure to these chemicals, especially when they persist in the body for long periods and react together inside the body in a potentially dangerous cocktail.”
WWF’s survey shows that our bodies are being used as toxic chemical dumps
Our contaminated blood is proof that it’s time for the government and chemical companies to phase out the production and use of these chemicals and develop new safe alternatives
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