In honor of Barry Baker – friend, relative, husband, father, and just a good guy – 1948 to 2012
Death Knows No Discrimination
2
Author Archives: Mark Pegram
You Don’t Have to Shrink with Age
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
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
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
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
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
Vitamin D and the Itch Response
I know some of you are confused by the last couple of post. It is not straight forward when dealing with pain. One thing that you should be aware of is that itching is pain. This is a medical fact as I was reminded by my sister-in-law a retired nurse anesthetist. It may be only the beginning of pain but pain none the less. The human body is a system that requires biological action like taking in food and oxygen and elimination of waste products. Also health is determined by the spirit or mood or emotional response or whatever you want to call it. In modern medicine, it is called the placebo effect. A person responds to the care he is given in either a positive or negative manner. This includes the person’s care for their own well being. Failure of any of the system requirements can lead to illness.
Perhaps you have never considered what happens on a neuron as the signal passes along from the central nervous system, CNS, to various parts of the body. It is a chemical/electrical action. First stimulus causes the neuron to fire. When this happens, gates in the neuron’s axon open and allow sodium to flow into the axon and potassium to flow out. The gates open by a voltage response that is above minus 50 millivolts. The voltage as the gates open goes positive along the length of the axon as the signal travels along to about positive 30 millivolts. After the signal has passed, sodium/potassium pumps take the sodium out of the neuron and the potassium back into the neuron until a resting voltage of about minus 70 millivolts is achieved. When this signal hits the synapse, a voltage gated calcium channel opens and allows calcium to flow in and trigger the release of a neurotransmitter, most commonly acetyl choline. This stimulates the next neuron and the signal continues along the nerve length. If this is confusing for you, I would suggest that you watch this flash animation that is produce by Harvard. It shows the nerve action signaling in the body and how the action potential works.
As an aside, this small electrical requirement to operate the sodium/potassium gates for your cells is the reason that it only takes ten millivolts from an outside source to stop your heart when the path of current flow is directly across your heart.
It has been estimated that fifty percent of the energy that is produced by your body is used to keep ions on the correct side of cell walls. Without a balance of the calcium, magnesium, sodium, and potassium, failure of your CNS and cell function is inevitable. All of your brain and nerves are made of these types of cells. This includes the heart. The heart is made of over sixty-five percent neurons. Thinking with the heart is most likely a reality, because these cells are the same thing that is in the brain. Not mentioned in my description of the nerve signal above is magnesium. The function of magnesium is extensive, but it is the ion of choice for ATP to ADP, or the cellular energy chemicals. The balance of calcium and magnesium in the mitochondrial bodies where energy is converted is crucial. This required balance of magnesium with calcium in the heart is primarily responsible for heart rhythms. Obviously, the balance of sodium and potassium is also crucial. Any imbalance will result in muscle cramps and pain.
So how does vitamin D come into play with this chemical/electrical dance that is occurring in your cellular signaling pathways? The vitamin D acts to increase the activity of biological systems as it is one of the primary hormones in your body. It increases the immune response to pathogens as well as stimulating other cellular activities. If you are mineral deficient as your body gears up for health, it lets you know in the form of either a tired feeling or perhaps even a rash. I remember growing up; I was so vitamin D deficient that anytime that I went in the sun in the early spring, I would break out in a bright red raised rash. My mom would be frightened that something was seriously wrong and encouraged me to stay out of the sun. This was a mistake. The solution was to spend more time in the sun or not to become deficient in the winter.
The other action that occurs with vitamin D in combination with other nutrients is cartilage enlarges as it fills with fluid, primarily water. Vitamin D does not act alone on cartilage. The other nutrients must be available in sufficient amounts. This increases the cushioning effect by the cartilage for all of your joints. Now imagine in your back where you have thirty three vertebrae with nerves coming out at every junction, going to various parts of the body. As the cartilage gets thicker, it will cause a pulling and stretching of the nerves. I like to think this is the nerves finding their new ‘home state.’ In my case, each cartilage increased about a tenth of an inch over a ten month period. With the thirty plus disc, this caused me to increase in physical height by three inches. As the nerves found their new home state, there was considerable pain including a significant amount of itching. Now that my spine has healed all of that pain has disappeared. It did not happen quickly. I estimate that there was healing of the bone and cartilage that went on for five years. The only issue that I have now is where the operation occurred on L4-L5. The cartilage was so damaged, that it was not able to repair. It is just gone. When the nerve gets pinched at this location, then I can have some pain in my left leg, itching, rashes, and even lesions.
As far as my discussion of Morgellons syndrome, I was horrified at the lack of competence by the doctors involved as well as the CDC. There was no pathogen found, so as far as the CDC was concerned, it was all from the persons mental condition. I believe this syndrome is an effect of spinal degeneration or other locations that are the origins of the nerve pathways. This mechanical pinching will result in various symptoms including itching. I was horrified as one patient was described as having the lesions spreading up his arm with no known cause. Eventually his arms became paralyzed and he died. It is my belief that this person had spinal stenosis in his cervical disc and the nerves were so compressed he was having multiple symptoms. I suspect he died because the cervical discs are also the origin for vital functions like breathing. It is sad to think of the diagnosis delivered to persons that are suffering from a mechanical failure of the nerves. I now wonder at how many cases of misdiagnosis are made for shingles. As it usually occurs in people over fifty, I suspect many of these cases are ‘trapped’ nerves and not a reoccurrence of the chicken pox virus. If your doctor says shingles, asked him to run a test for the presence of the virus. If there is no virus, then you most likely have a pinched nerve.
Your take from this? Exercise, eat lots of greens for potassium, supplement with magnesium because our soils are deplete, eat enough garlic, onions, and egg yellows to get an adequate amount of sulfur, go into the sun on a regular basis in the summer and supplement with vitamin D in the winter, and pray every day to sustain your spirit. At all cost protect your ‘heart’ as it is the well spring of life. – Pandemic Survivor
Nerve Impingement in Back Results in Dermal Lesion on Toe
Last post, I described how nerve impingement in my back lead to dermal stress that included numbness, uncontrollable itching, crawling sensation in the skin, lesions, and a disturbed mental state from not knowing the cause. If I had addressed the symptoms with a physician, he most likely would have passed it off as a mental illness. I can hear the words now, “if you would just stop scratching the skin, it will stop itching and heal.” Most physicians have not been exposed to this type of trauma, and as the deficiency in vitamin D becomes worse in the general population, I would expect to see more of this type of dermal stress. I remember well the last time I addressed the rash on my leg with my neurosurgeon and suggested that it was caused by the nerve impingement in my back. He just looked at me in disbelief.
As many of you know who are regular readers, my spine healed except for the disc between L4-L5. I had two surgeries performed at this location. The disc has all but dissolved or disappeared according to the MRI’s that I had done. Even though there is no disc, the vitamin D and other nutrients and exercises that I do control the pain well enough that I do not need a spinal fusion at this point. I do not have pain in my back and I am willing to put up with some numbness that moves about on the left leg and foot. The nerve impingement on L4-L5 left changes as the two vertebrae move trapping the nerve. Depending where on the left nerve root the impingement occurs, results in different locations of numbness on my leg and foot. Because there is no support at this location, sometimes the nerve on L5-S1 becomes involved as well. This happened this past week. If you will observe the foot on this dermatome, you can see the dermal nerve pathway between L5 continues through the fourth toe of the foot.
This past week there was an uncontrollable itching in this area of my left foot and numbness that was felt through the center of my foot between the toes and the ball of my foot. It also felt like there was something crawling under my skin on this foot. The fourth toe was particularly irritated. After two days the lesion showed here appeared on my fourth toe. Please note the angular position of the small toe is a result of a stress fracture that I received in college that was not properly set. Upon closer examination, you can see the dermal nerve fiber that is in stress that caused the wild sensations in my toe and the lesion. I have drawn arrows pointing out the dermal nerve.
Location of Lesion
Dermal Nerve Fiber
Dermal nerves are not normally this easy to see. They typically ‘hide’ under the dermal layers. Because the nerve was stressed it is easier to see. These photos were taken two days after the initial irritation began. I was traveling and not able to decompress the lumbar region in my back to relieve the nerve stress. After two more days I was able to decompress on my inversion table and the lesion looked as shown here. The itching, numbness, and crawling skin stopped shortly after the first decompression attempt. You can see from the photograph the lesion has turned into a normal looking wound that is in the process of scabbing over to heal. Also please note that the dermal nerve has disappeared as it is no longer in stress.
Wound After Spinal Decompression
I do believe that this is exactly the same thing that has been described as Morgellons Disease or Syndrome. It amazes me that the neurologists have not been able to make the connection between the nerve involvement in the back or point of nerve origin and the dermal eruptions along mapped nerve pathways. The thing that has stumped the physicians that were examining the dermal lesions in Morgellons Syndrome, are the fibers that appeared. The fibers have been tested and were found to not be of any known fabric. It should be easy to test the fibers to see if they are consistent with a myelinated nerve fiber. The stressed nerves fibers that I have seen in the past will become black as they die. It has been reported in Morgellons that the fibers had other appearances and may be the result of the degree of myelination of the fiber.
I have noticed that some relief can be obtained from the itching by increasing the amount of potassium intake. After more potassium, the feeling in the concerned areas is more like numbness and pain than the itching crawling sensations. I suspect his is due to the firing along the nerve axons with the potassium and sodium gates and pumps and the availability of potassium.
Ah, the difficulty of being a physician in an insurance and government controlled health paradigm. If it is not written in the medical literature, then physicians will not make the leap necessary to make a correct diagnosis to prevent personal attacks on their credibility and liability exposure. I have often wondered if it was just incompetence. I now believe this failure to diagnose is more about personal safety and protection of the doctor and the fact that most are over worked.
Stress will kill you. Whether it is caused by nerve compression or mental anguish – find relief! – Pandemic Survivor
Itchy Legs and Feet – Vitamin D Cause or Solution?
One of the things that I discovered during my years of pain was the cause of itchy legs. The itchy legs would drive me crazy to say the least. The first episode of this was a year before my first back surgery in the winter of 1997. I was on a long road trip into the Shenandoah Valley and it was very cold and snowing. I ran the heat on high most of the way to the valley which took me approximately four hours. My right leg started itching and it was close to the heater discharge, so I assumed that the heat was irritating the skin. The irritation on my leg persisted into the late spring. My doctor thought as I that it was just itchy dermatitis. We treated it with topical steroids and it seemed somewhat to respond but not heal.
In the spring of 2003 before my second back surgery, my legs became inflamed and erupted with little red bumps that broke open after twenty four hours. This was kind of scary because the steroids did not seem to help it that much. I had the problem on both legs from the tops of my feet to above my knees. What was really frightening was that it started around my ankles and took about six weeks to go all the way up my legs. I remember my oldest brother coming to see me and he said that it looked like infections on diabetic’s legs that would not heal. The legs continued to be inflamed until I had back surgery and it just went away. I assumed that it had something to do with all the antibiotics that I took after the surgery.
After my vertebral disc healed, I told everyone that I knew about how I had grown three inches taller in less than a year. It was shocking and amazing to see the expressions on their faces as they were used to looking me in the eyes, but my eye level had changed. The first response was always, how much did I take and what type of vitamin D. Then later on I would see them and they would respond about how much their legs were itching and they had cut back on their vitamin D and it stopped. I also continued to have the problem off and on until two years ago when they started to itch and I correlated the itch to a compressed nerve in my back. I did a round on my inversion table and it was like magic. The itching stopped. What was even more amazing was one of the bumps was as large as half a golf ball. After hanging, it completely returned to normal in about thirty minutes.
I came to the conclusion that nerves that are compressed will give you a severe case of dermal inflammation that has many symptoms. I recently found a disease that has not been identified as a disease because the CDC can find no pathogens that are the cause – Morgellons Disease. It seems the foundation no longer exist out of frustration I suspect. I know exactly how they feel. The funds were donated to Oklahoma State University. http://www.healthsciences.okstate.edu/morgellons/index.cfm
Symptoms:
- Physical
- Sponanteously Erupting Skin lesions
- Sensation of crawling, biting on and under the skin
- Appearance of blue, black or red fibers and granules beneath and/or extruding from the skin
- Fatigue
- Mental
- Short-term memory loss
- Attention Deficit, Bipolar or Obsessive-Compulsive disorders
- Impaired thought processing (brain fog)
- Depression and feelings of isolation
Yes, I had all of those including what I thought were fibers that I had rubbed into the openings from fabrics. The fibers I observed were black. I now believe these to be nerves that have died. It is no wonder they could find no pathogens.
Have you had itchy legs that could be associated with nerve compression or that you thought happened because you were taking vitamin D? – Pandemic Survivor
Winter – Relieving Back Pain Without the Sun
It is that time of year when viral infections ravage the populations in the form of colds and the flu. Disease states worsen and are manifest as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. More pharmaceuticals are prescribed to relieve illness and the side effects are extremely destructive as this is the third leading cause of death. Young and old people alike die at higher rates from the reduction in the total state of health. Winter, an evil time of year, calls for renewal and the hope of spring. And the effects of reduced health are the pain alarms going off all over the body, in particular the central nervous system as characterized by back spasms. Longing for the warmth of the sun, a state of blue sadness envelops us.
Ah, but then the sun rises higher in the sky and we once again reach a state of hope as renewal is just around the corner. What are we to do as we wait? Celebrate life and enjoy the understanding that this sadness of winter is not necessary. It truly is a matter of nutrition and getting the essentials from the sun that are available in abundance in the summertime. So two things happen that impact the quality of life. First at latitudes further away from the equator, we lose the exposure to ultraviolet light as the angle of the sun declines during winter. Second, we do not have access to a large of abundance of fresh unprocessed foods. Not enough ultraviolet light and we do not make enough vitamin D, the hormone that is the master of our biological systems through the connection with the sun. Processing foods for food safety destroy the enzymes necessary for biological thriving. All of the minerals necessary for the body electric normally consumed in fresh foods are lost in the water of the cook pot. And worse, potable water safety has driven us to systems that take all of the minerals out of our drinking water.
As you know if you read this blog regularly, I have recovered from a number of very serious diseases that were stealing my life. This by the consumption of supplements because we are not getting the require essentials for life through our modern systems of living. So here is what I personally take to sustain my biological systems. But before I state those, I would like to say that the less pharmaceutical products that you take, the better chance of survival you have. When you take more pharmaceuticals to offset the side effects of what you have already been prescribed, be extremely careful as you heading done a path of complexity that our medical professionals struggle to solve. There have not been any double blind placebo controlled studies that describes what happens when you are taking more than two things in combination. The more pharmaceuticals you take the more complex it gets. The average number of prescriptions for people over sixty five that are on Medicare/Medicaid has sky rocketed to fifteen. The complexity of this many things combined is beyond the scope of most physicians. Nutrition is just the opposite of this as variety is critical to obtain the essentials for life.
Consider that I weigh two hundred thirty pounds and am now six feet two inches in height – adjust according to your weight:
Vitamin D3 -10,000 IU per day from all sources. As this hormone is added to many different products and you make it from the sun, it is necessary adjust what you require as a supplement of just vitamin D3. It is not how much you take that is important, it is what level of 25(OH)D3 is in your system. This is the amount of vitamin D to keep my results between 60 ng/ml – 80 ng/ml. Brand type is important because all brands do not replenish your systems the same. The only way that you know is through testing.
Vitamin A – 5,000 IU per day – Vitamin A from fish liver oil.
Vitamin C – 4000 mg per day
Vitamin B – whatever is in my multiple vitamins plus a 100 B-complex per day.
Multiple Vitamin – Here I make sure that it has the trace elements that are necessary. This includes the essentials of manganese, molybdenum, and silicon. I depend on this tablet to contain my required vitamin E.
Magnesium – 800 mg per day as a chelate, ie. – malate, glycinate, etc.
Calcium – 800 mg per day
Sulfur – Triple strength glucosamine, chondrotin, and MSM – like Osteo – Biflex or Schiff’s brand. Here I want to be sure that it has hyaluronic acid. This is usually two caplets per day.
Or – 4000 mg MSM Methalsufonylmethane
Or – One fourth to one half teaspoon of Epson Salt (magnesium sulfate, pharmaceutical quality) in my morning beverage.
If you do not want to practice variety in your sulfur consumptions, then stick to the triple strength products. I also eat a lot of garlic, onions, and eggs – all very rich in sulfur.
Iodine – 12.5mg Iodine/Iodide
Potassium – I try to use as much potassium salt as a substitute for sodium salt as possible. If I feel any cramping – I will drink twelve ounces of low sodium V-8 juice which gives you about 1000 mg of potassium. In general, your salt consumption should be about five grams of potassium and five grams of sodium each day. If one is higher than the other, then try to make the potassium consumption higher than the sodium through diet choices. Typical American diet is about 1.5 grams of potassium and 7 grams of sodium.
Fish Oil for omega-3 fat
Five hours per week of exercise at the gym. This is essential for nutrient flow along with spinal decompression using an inversion table.
I take no prescription pharmaceuticals. The medical professionals say that you cannot grow new cartilage. I disagree. The above nutrients and lots of exercise that allows the flow of replenishing fluids to cartilage have given healthy cartilage. Spacing in my spine has increased enough to clear all of the nerve roots to relieve pain. The one place that the cartilage had completely disappeared has not grown new cartilage. All other joints are now healthy. None of the above supplementation would be necessary if I ate lots of raw foods and drink natural mineral rich water and lived in the sun.
Faith and Hope brings the very spark of life – Love! – Pandemic Survivor
Vitamin D Deficiency Survivor 