Monthly Archives: March 2012

Vitamin D, the Common Cold, and Rhinitis

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I really had to chuckle when I read the news article from Family Practice News.  Headline: “Vitamin D Boost Fluticasone’s Allergic Rhinitis Effect”  First sentence reads: “ORLANDO – Daily oral treatment with a vitamin D supplement significantly improved the ability of fluticasone nasal spray to relieve the total, daytime symptoms of seasonal rhinitis in a pilot, placebo-controlled study of 35 patients.”  It is hard to describe how many levels of wrong that is made with this statement.  It would seem that just pure reasoning would get you to the point that rhinitis and colds are less in the summer than in the winter.  Warmth has been shown to not be the issue so really the only thing that is left is vitamin D.  Why such a surprise?  I guess that I am hedging somewhat here because pollen count that drives allergic rhinitis is higher in the spring and other allergens are higher in the fall.  But the thing that is even more wrong is to assume that the vitamin D is improving the performance of a drug when the vitamin D is doing all the ‘heavy lifting’ by itself.

The writer then goes on to explain that he would like to get the funding to do a larger study to show what is causing the primary effect.  He then explains that he most likely cannot get funding if the effect is just from the vitamin D.  He plans to solicit the NIH, but they would have no more interest in improving the health of the nation than pharma.  The truth of it is I personally know more than fifty people who have discovered that vitamin D has a significant impact on the symptoms of the common cold. What is even more interesting is that I suspect that total cold remedy sales are significantly down this year because more people are supplementing with vitamin D and spending more time in the sun.  This small shift in the total amount of vitamin D in the serum of the population affects the frequency of the common cold as a first result.

What the researcher should focus on is the combination of vitamin D and vitamin C to stop the rhinitis.  I have found that 500 mg of vitamin C every hour that I have a runny nose gives me relief in most cases.  However, the combination of vitamin C and vitamin D (about 20,000 IU for a couple of days) just makes all of the symptoms go away and the issue is totally resolved.  If the runny nose is from an allergy, add sulfur (as MSM) and magnesium and the results may surprise you.  Of course, this does nothing to boost sales of the pharmaceutical market or provided care to make a drug recommendation.  People would lose jobs and Obama would be blamed, so why would the NIH want to fund the study for people to lose jobs? I continue to chuckle as the merry-go-round plays its magic tunes.  – Pandemic Survivor

You Don’t Have to Shrink with Age

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As we age most of us start to shrink in height.  It is not unusual to shrink an inch or more by the time you have reached sixty years of age.  If you have not practiced good nutrition, this shrinkage could even be more severe.  This shrinkage will lead to nerves that are ‘crowded’ as they exit the spine causing an array of symptoms.  Aching and cramping muscles, numbness and tingling, and yes even physical appearance of rashes and dermal reactions.  If not treated with exercise and good nutrition, it could ultimately lead to failure severe compression of the spinal nerves and serious disease states.

A normal part of the experience of living means that during the day a six foot person could shrink as much as three quarters of an inch just from dehydration.  As we sleep at night and take the pressure off of the vertebral discs and hydrate the cartilage between the discs expands.  Then when you get up, most of the soreness of muscles has gone and some stretches makes you feel like a new person.

It has generally been accepted in the practice of medicine that shrinking with age just happens and there is nothing that you can do about.  Of course if you are a regular reader you know that I have overcome this shrinkage.  There is nothing in the medical science about how to heal the cartilage to keep it healthy.  This is largely due to the fact that most trial studies work only one nutritional factor at a time.  However, you can find what nutrients allow for cellular differentiation of chondracytes, cartilage stems cells and the building blocks of cartilage and joint lubricant.  It is a combination of vitamin D, vitamin A, sulfur, magnesium, vitamin C, and iodine.

Determining the exact amounts to use is an art that most be tailored to each individual depending on what they eat.  Of course there is not really much research on is sulfur.  However, the alternative medicine folks have promoted glucosamine sulfate, chondroitin sulfate, and MSM for joint pain.  I believe the body is used to getting its sulfur from sulfate that is found in water as calcium sulfate and magnesium sulfate.  However, with the complaints of the hardness of water affecting the way it cleans and the taste, a huge effort has been made to get the minerals out of water and has led to a significant deficiency.  I suspect the many diseases associated with vitamin D deficiency also have cofactors of the above named nutrients.

If you want to help stabilize your discs, then an adequate amount of these nutrients is an absolute.  You may start using the triple strength products that include chondroitin, glucosamine, and MSM.  Follow the directions on the box at two per day with most brands.  To assure that you are getting enough sulfur, you may want to eat eggs every day and a healthy amount of garlic and onions when appropriate.

The vitamin D along with vitamin A drives the cellular differentiation of the cartilage cells.  It is wise to get your serum level of vitamin D above 60 ng/ml, 25(OH)D.  After about three months at this level, your liver will start to clear of vitamin A.  It is then wise to take about 4000 IU of vitamin A from fish liver oil or eat a piece of liver about the size of your hand once per month.  By following this formula, I got back the inch that I had shrunk and then grew an additional two inches as my genes fully expressed themselves. This happened over a ten month period and was amazing as my eye line changed and my view of the world changed.

Exercise, exercise, exercise, and yoga and inverted decompression are best.  There is no blood flow to your cartilage and the accordion like action gets the nutrients into your joints.  To your healthy discs – Pandemic Survivor

 

Preventing, Treating, and Curing Disease

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Bill Sardi, a lifelong medical writer, has just written an article for Lew Rockwell about medical mischief by two Senators: “Senators Intervene To Halt Wellness Ambassadors Who Recommend Dietary Supplements Instead of Drugs at Rite-Aid Stores”   This article discusses how the US government is intimately involved in healthcare to maintain that industry’s profits under the guise of protecting your health.  The government does not protect your health.  It protects the profits of the companies that fund their re-election campaigns.

To maintain a health care system that cost twice as much per capita as the next closest industrial country is not an easy task.  The Government was on your side until just after WWII.  During the height of the war, the government went after a large number of companies that were up to no good in manipulating vitamin D.  These companies are ones that you can still recognize today:  Charles Bowman for General Mills Corporation, E. I. du Pont de Nemours, Quaker Oats, Standard Brands, Gelatin Products Corp., Borden Co., Carnation Co., Nestle Milk Products, Inc., Vitamins Inc., Abbott Laboratories, Meade Johnson & Co., William S. Merrill Co., Parke-Davis Co., R. Squibb & Sons, Winthrop Chemical Co.  “General Mills Corp. was named as a co-conspirator, but will not be a defendant in the action.”  This is from my article on vitamin D for profits.  

It seems that the government has crossed over and is now manipulating your health for profits.  Bill Sardi explicitly shows, vitamins are a much safer route to health than drugs.  All chronic disease is primarily nutritional deficiency.  It is amazing to me how our institutions have conspired to keep you in these deficiencies for profit.  The really bad actor is the medical insurance industry conspiring with US Congress for political contributions.  The reason our health care cost is so much higher than the rest of the world.  – Pandemic Survivor

The Vitamin D2 Debacle

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Modern medicine has long considered that vitamin D3, cholecalciferol, and vitamin D2, ergocalciferol, to be equal.  That is these two compounds will give you exactly the same clinical response.  This has been a huge mistake.  This extreme error in medicine has cost tens of millions of lives and an unbelievable amount of suffering.  It is true that in small amounts, vitamin D2 will cure rickets. In larger amounts it becomes extremely toxic at much-much lower levels than vitamin D3.  When the IOM’s Food and Nutrition Board set standards for vitamin D, they address this issue by saying that a serum level for 25(OH)D of twenty nanograms per milliliter made from vitamin D2 was adequate for bone health. They then warned that levels above fifty nanograms per milliliter could result in health issues.  This is absolutely correct when using vitamin D2 or the stuff that your doctor typically prescribes.  Until recently, vitamin D3 was not available for prescriptions.  Under US law, if a doctor prescribes a vitamin to prevent, cure, or treat a disease, it becomes a drug.  The medical profession has been extremely concerned of this issue of toxicity from either vitamin D2 or toxisterols that occur from over irradiation when making D2.

It gets even more complicated because vitamin D3 is not a vitamin but a prohormone.  It is the substance that our body produces when we are exposed to the UV rays from the sun or our natural connection to the sun that was forever altered with the introduction of sunscreen products.  Consider the importance of hormones.  Would you give a person estrogen if they had a testosterone deficiency?  They are very similar in molecular weight and only differ by the placement of oxygen and OH groups.  They are hormones and typically affect the expression of over one hundred fifty genes.  The mix up of these two hormones would cause a significant failure of biological functioning.  Vitamin D3 affects the expression of over two hundred genes and over twenty seven hundred genes have been found to have vitamin D pathways.  So would you want to mix up D2 with D3 that could cause your health to fail?

If you are totally deficient in vitamin D, then a small amount of D2 may be acceptable medical practice until you can get an adequate amount of D3 from either supplementation or spending time in the sun.  To show you how the medical schools have taught physicians, my doctor told me that if I took five thousand IU’s per day of vitamin D that my organs would turn to stone.  Of course this was before I encouraged him to read the research.  The calcification of organs and soft tissue has long been an issue with vitamin D2 and rightly so.  However, this has lead to a huge problem with vitamin D3 deficiency where the importance of this vitamin or if you prefer hormone, is not just about bone health.  To think that our venerated institutions that we depend on to give us scientific direction for health stated that they only considered bone health when reviewing vitamin D is outrageous.  One of the most important hormones in our body and our health institutions give it a ‘one note’ function.  It is time that the medical profession gets on with orchestrating the symphony.

I recently had a friend tell me his doctor had just prescribed D2 because his 25(OH)D was 15 ng/ml.  I tried to explain the difference between D2 and D3 but it seemed to fall on deaf ears.  He kept asking the medical difference and he did not seem to believe the answer.  Do not allow yourself to fall into this trap.  If your doctor tells you to take fifty thousand IUs of vitamin D2 per week, ask if you can use the natural substance your body makes, vitamin D3.  If he says no, then find a new doctor because the one you have does not know what he is doing.   – Pandemic Survivor

For the best explanation, The Vitamin D Problem, by Moon and Reich from 1975 that includes the history.  A PDF file.

Flu Vaccine versus Innate Immunity from Vitamin D

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The question:  Is the flu a seasonal disease brought on by lack of exposure to sunshine during the winter or more specifically a reduction in vitamin D?  As I have discussed in previous posts, the incidence of the flu has been down this year, although, just in the past week or so there has been an increase of flu complaints.  However, the outpatient visits for influenza-like illness is still below baseline which is very unusual for this time of year.  I have marked the CDC graph with a red x showing week 8.  Last year week 8 was a peak at just below five percent.  According to my trend lines, we should be at a peak for this year.  The CDC will say it is most likely because of their efforts in getting people to take the vaccine. However, I believe there is a vitamin D component that is creating immunity during the winter months.  It has been more than a year or sixty weeks since we were above the baseline of 2.5 percent.  Consider the increase in usage of supplemental vitamin D as shown by the survey results from ConsumerLab.com.

Increase in Vitamin D Supplementation

I have marked with a red x the projected usage of supplemental vitamin D for 2011.  We should see this curve flatten over the next several years, as increase in use starts to saturate the population.  This means that more than sixty percent of the population is now supplementing with vitamin D.  I suspect the manufacturers of cold remedies can tell you a lot more about how during the winter of 2011-2012, the use of otc cold medicines was off significantly.  With increase use of vitamin D, the drop off of the flu is one of the first things you would expect to see as the serum levels of vitamin D increases in the population.  Small amounts of vitamin D have a significant impact on immunity toward viruses.  I have reported before in this blog that I had not had a cold since 2004 when I started taking vitamin D.  I would like to report that I had my first runny nose since 2004 two weeks ago and it lasted about thirty-six hours.  I did increase my intake of vitamin D and vitamin C.

How effective is the vaccine for the flu.  We have seen in past years that it is not very effective at all.  If you think about vaccines that are effective, you do not have to repeat the vaccine every year.  Think about polio and small pox, both viruses.  You were vaccinated once and that was it.  The vaccine for the flu is encouraged to be taken every year even if the composition of viruses has not been changed in the vaccine.  IF vaccines are effective, there is no need to repeat EVERY YEAR.  I think the better solution is to make your innate immune system believe that it is summertime all year round.

My hat is off to Dr. John Cannell, Vitamin D Council, for his efforts in publishing about vitamin D and the flu.  Dr. Cannell, I believe your work has been effective.  The above is not a scientific approach, but just a look at the trends.  I may be wrong, but only several years of below baseline will tell.  – Pandemic Survivor

Managing Pain with Nutrients

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Pain management for the central nervous system, CNS, (also generalized musculoskeletal pain) has implications that are much further reaching than just making you feel better.  Of course making you fell better and getting you to relax is really all that most care about when their day is so consumed with excruciating pain.  Pain that reaches right through the center line of your body, grabs your heart in its hands, and squeezes until your eye balls pop out.  Too descriptive for you, then maybe you should realize there are pain levels beyond what you are currently suffering.  When pain becomes too great, your body just starts to shut down in what is commonly known as shock.  The action of an upset in the CNS can cause many types of issues as the general signaling for body functions are interrupted.  The long term effects of chronic severe pain can cause the brain to shrink.  The rate of shrinkage has been estimated for one year of chronic severe pain to be equivalent to fifteen to twenty years of aging.  An upset in the CNS can do great harm to you, so the course of action is to slow the immediate pain response and then address the cause.  You body’s natural response to slow pain to keep you from doing damage to yourself is shock, which has its own implications.

What gives me the right to discuss pain as an expert?  I have suffered pain since 1978 or before many of you were born.  After realizing that my doctor was just trying to patronize me because he thought that I was a whiner, I begin to research the causes and results of pain.  Know that on my pain scale of zero to ten, that the debilitating pain of a ruptured appendix is a four.  My spinal cord being seventy-five percent compressed in the lumbar area is now a ten.  My research and the use of many different types of pain amelioraters has lead me to come to the conclusion that pain meds can be worse for your body than the pain when used long term.  When used short term to stop your body from ‘seizing’ then they are a blessing.  Notice that I used the word seizure because that’s what happens when the action potential along the CNS becomes out of control.

As an aside, in a discussion with a retired pharmaceutical researcher, he said that the way that they caused rats to seize so that they could test seizure meds was to withhold vitamin D.

I will forgo the long discussion of prescription pain meds and otc pain meds to talk about natural pain nutrients that were designed by nature to affect the way you respond to pain.  Know that there are certain things in your body that become deplete that cause the pain response to be worse.  When I say pain response, I am talking about not only the initiating pain, but also the ‘electrical disturbance’ that occurs along your nerve pathways after the fact.  Imagine a series of electrical circuits that lost their insulation or the controls have failed and exactly the same thing happens in your CNS.  Prescription meds either slow the response of release of neurotransmitters at the nerve junction to interrupt communication or cause a different type of neurotransmitter to be released to create euphoria like the endorphin mimics, opioids.  A word of caution should be given here about pain meds that are used for reducing the action of voltage gated calcium channels.  This includes calcium channel blockers that are used to treat high blood pressure as well as heart disease.  The side effects of these drugs can be very damaging and for that reason you should only used these drugs short term until you determine which nutrient deficiency is making you ill.  This includes the seizure meds gabalin and pregabalin, that are now being used for pain control.  They are nothing more than amino acids that affect the voltage calcium gate.

All of these calcium channel blockers are really just mimics of the vital amino acid, l-arginine.  L-arginine works by releasing nitric oxide which allows the blood vessels to relax and reduce blood pressure and give you a healthy heart.  High blood pressure and heart disease; be sure you are getting enough l-arginine.

In a previous post, we discussed action potential or how signals travel along neural cells that compose the nervous system. The last action in the action potential is the opening of the calcium channel to cause the neurotransmitter to be released at the junction of the synapse. The calcium channel is in essence the key to cellular biological functions.  I remember reading this in Scientific American in the late seventies and thought the author had lost his mind.  He was in fact saying that calcium acts more like a hormone for cellular action than it does a mineral to maintain electrical stability. A natural calcium channel blocker is magnesium.  I believe this works by how the energy is supplied to operate the protein that comprises the calcium gate through ATP.  So my question to you; why are you taking a calcium channel blocker when most likely all you have is a huge magnesium deficiency.  There is no clinical test to determine if your cells are replete in the vital nutrient.  It takes six months to a year to become replete with magnesium when your intake is 3.5 to 4.5 milligrams per pound of body weight per day.  This is about three times what we find in our normal diet.  Magnesium works on the calcium channel of cells that make sure there is enough stored calcium in the cell. http://www.umm.edu/news/releases/calcium_blockers.htm   In pain, high blood pressure, or heart disease, take adequate amounts of magnesium per day.

As you need energy, there is a need to be sure the ‘engines’ that generate energy requirements of the cells are healthy.  Mitochondrial bodies are these engines that carry on the ATP/ADP cycle for energy transfer.  This is the energy that operates all of the ion gates in cells and along neural cell axons for the sodium/potassium gates.  Magnesium and vitamin D3 are the things that keep the mitochondrial functions adequate.  There is also the need for elimination of waste as in any process there is intake/action/product and waste removal.  Sulfur is the body’s natural compound for removing waste.  Organic compounds that need to be removed from cells forms an ester with sulfur.  This is water soluble so the waste moves out of the cell and out of your body. In pain, itching, low energy, and have general malaise, then be sure you are getting an adequate amount of vitamin D3, magnesium, potassium, and sulfur.

I will relate this story by my daughter a pharmacist at a local university hospital.  She had a patient that required so much pain medicine to control the pain that the patient was not lucid. After giving the patient significant amounts of vitamin D, she was able to reduce the patient’s pain meds to less than half.  The patient was then able to function normally. Here is a great review of vitamin D3 and pain for the clinician.  Vitamin D for Pain  http://pain-topics.org/clinical_concepts/vitamind.php   CAUTION USE D3 ONLY!  NO D2!

Drugs are nothing more than mimics of natural substances or replacements for nutritional deficiencies.  Natural substances can be used much more safely because there are fewer side effects.  But the root cause of pain, disease, and death is nutritional and spiritual deficiency.  – Pandemic Survivor