Author Archives: Mark Pegram

How to Heal Sleep Apnea – Eliminate the CPAP

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As you have read from my recent post, sleep apnea is a very serious disease.  There seems to currently be an increase with sleep apnea like many other chronic diseases.  All of these diseases follow very closely the reduction of the amount of vitamin D that is produced in the population from sun avoidance as promoted by our medical professionals for the last fifty years.  In addition, air conditioning and electronic ‘toys’ keep us trapped when we would otherwise be outside soaking up the sun.

Symptoms of sleep apnea include:

Daytime sleepiness
Memory Issues
Headaches
Body pains
Tiredness
Obesity
High blood pressure
Stroke
Heart disease which includes arrhythmia and heat attack

Would you like to get rid of that CPAP?  There is hope.  It is possible!  It took me two years because my sleep apnea was so severe.  I had sixty events per hour or an AHI of 60.  That is I would hold my breath for thirty seconds; and then, breathe for thirty seconds for the full sixty minutes in an hour.  This would drive my blood oxygen saturation to extremely low levels to say nothing of the lost sleep.  My health was bad as I was nearing death.

After my polysomnagrapy, the neurologist described what he felt was nothing more than obstructive sleep apnea.  That is I was so fat at a BMI of 32 that my ‘fat was closing my airway when I slept.’  I suggested that perhaps some of it could be coming from all of the spinal cord issues that I had with degenerative disc disease.  He simply shook his head and said that he did not see anything to suggest that it was central sleep apnea or coming from my central nervous system.  On a later MRI by my neurosurgeon, it was discovered that I had severe stenosis at C3-C4 cervical disc.  This location is the origin for the nerve root that supports lung function.  This diagnosis also explained why I sometimes would just stop breathing during my awake time.  I had another professional tell me it was just stress.

The CPAP was a blessing because it cleared up a lot of the symptoms.  However, it is a real ‘evil’ device when you have to use it even to take naps.  I know that if you have used this device that you recognize the truth of what I have just said.  Enough oxygen and enough sleep is always a necessity to life.  A breathing mask on your face or a nasal cannula stuck up your nose, supported by a band wrapped around your head, and tied by a hose to a mechanical air pump is well, just ‘evil.’  This device belongs in the twentieth century and not the twenty-first.

There is now at least one neurologist that finally is practicing medicine and not the politically correct NIH guidelines.  Dr. Stasha Gominak, Tyler Texas, discovered vitamin D and its effects on sleep in 2009.  I first discovered her work through Henry LeHore at www.vitamindwiki.com.  She has now been treating patients for two years with vitamin D and magnesium with great success including the elimination of the CPAP device.  If you have sleep apnea, I would suggest that you review her website closely so that you will know how to talk with your neurologist about this treatment.  In a recent email I described all sleep apnea as being related to the central nervous system except for extreme obesity and her response was “You’re right, it’s all central, if you can breathe through your neck when you’re awake you can breathe through it while sleeping, until your paralysis in sleep kicks in.  — explanation of how the CNS works in sleep———- Be careful to follow your levels [25(OH)D], the sleep disorder comes right back when you go over 80. Keep it 60-80 and you’ll do great. Once you get the vitamin D connection the morbid obesity is explained by the D deficiency as well, so it’s not obesity causes sleep apnea, it’s that obesity and sleep disorders of many kinds both arise from D deficiency.”

We applaud your efforts Dr. Gominak and thank you for your work in helping the sufferers of the many chronic diseases that are a result of vitamin D deficiency!

Dr. Gominak’s info:

Vitamin D Hormone http://drgominak.com/vitamin-d ‘I have left the link visible to be sure you can connect.’

Video Lecture on Sleep and Vitamin D and Magnesium:  5 part series http://drgominak.com/lecture   First video is middle of left hand column.

I know that you may be restless and tired, but get excited, go to this website or have your neurologist go there and then do the treatment.  Dr. Gominak does a great job in an entertaining lecture on how we got to where we are in the treatment of sleep disorders and what to do about it as well as her journey of discovery.

I have been without a CPAP and healed of sleep apnea since 2008.  Be well, sleep well, and go into the sun!  Pandemic Survivor

Sleep Apnea Survival

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Healing is wonderful, in particular when the disease is trying to kill you.  Some of you that read this blog regularly know that one my illness was defined by my doctors as obstructive sleep apnea, OSA.  I had a very severe form of sleep apnea in which the prognosis without treatment would have meant that I would die in less than two years.

Severe sleep apnea is a really nasty disease.  You live constantly in a state of confusion from lack of sleep and worse from oxygen deprivation.  You may be doing almost anything and desire to sleep which sometimes is unavoidable.  The apnea drives up your blood pressure, puts a severe burden on your heart that is racing trying to get oxygen to your body, and causes gastrointestinal reflux which in a deprived state of sleep trauma can cause you to aspirate. Heart attack, stroke, brain death, drowning in your sputum, are all waiting there just to take you out.  If those do not get you then you may just fall asleep while driving a car and you are then putting other people at risk.  I do not mean to scare you, but if you have sleep apnea then you should act quickly.  Of course most people’s apnea is not nearly as bad as what I described above.

The symptoms of apnea are daytime sleepiness, headaches, high blood pressure, waking with a racing heart, nasty taste in your mouth at night from gastrointestinal reflux, loud snoring, and confusion.  The way you determine if you have apnea is whether you are breathing when you sleep.  Holding your breath for about ten seconds is not unusual in a healthy person and you may do this up to five times per hour.  However, anything more than this is sleep apnea.  Severe is when you hold your breath for more than ten seconds more than thirty times per hour.  There are two types of apnea as defined by the medical community, OSA that is caused by your throat tissues collapsing and closing your airway and central sleep apnea, CSA, that is caused by a problem with you central nervous system.

My wife bothered by my loud snoring monitored my breathing one night and told me that I was not.  I laughed at her because the issues with the pain in my back was so devastating that a few snoring episodes was no big deal.  I went to the doctor anyway because of other issues and after the note of the symptoms that my wife observed; it was off for a polysomnography otherwise known as a sleep study.  I was wired up from head to toe and told to sleep.  After what was only an hour, I was awaken from a disturbed sleep and was told that I needed an air flow device to keep me breathing and that it was going to be titrated during the rest of the night.  So how severe was the apnea?  It was like they did not want to tell me.  It took me two years of pestering my doctor before he finally gave up the results.  The tech at the sleep test told me that I was breathing for thirty seconds and then not for thirty seconds for the entire hour that she tested or an AHI (measure of sleep events per hour longer than ten seconds) of 60. What this means is that my blood oxygen saturation was dropping.  The info that my doctor finally told me was that I had dropped into the sixty percent range of oxygen saturation before the tech stopped the test.  What I now understand is that hypoxia and brain death starts to occur at below seventy percent.  Typically during your awake time you have a saturation of above ninety eight percent.  When you sleep the oxygen saturation will typically drop into the low nineties.  My level was obviously a ticket for death.

Now this really nasty disease has completely gone.  There is no more treatment necessary.  The treatment was a continuous positive air pressure, CPAP, device that forced air into my lungs.  The National Institute of Health says there is no cure for this disease.  They are wrong.  I really believe there is no such thing as obstructive sleep apnea.  It is all related to failure of the nervous system.  The good nutrition that I practice brought this disease to an end.  We will explore this more in other post, while you wait, go into the sun or get your vitamin D otherwise – Pandemic Survivor

Ruby Red and the Spider Neurotoxin

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It was a bright warm morning on the Monday after Thanksgiving, but the forecast was for cold weather.  There on our side porch was a large delightful ruby-red begonia.  What a beautiful plant and just right to set in the window beside my desk during the winter.  I knew that if I did not bring it in the frost would bring the beautiful plant to a woeful end.  On my way to work I put the begonia in my car and took it into the office.  It really looked great in the window beside my desk except for the spider webs and dead leaves.

A few minutes of work with my bare hands in and around the base of the plant and the plant was ready to show.  In thirty minutes, the side of my little finger on my left hand where it joins the palm began to burn and string.  Two other places just up the forearm were also turning red and stinging like crazy.  I could not imagine what the problem was unless I was allergic to the plant.  It then hit me that maybe where there are spider webs there is also the possibility of spiders.  I have been bitten by spiders before but nothing with this kind of stinging.  It was apparent after twenty-four hours that the spider was most likely of the widow family, either the black widow or the newly established brown widow that both inject neurotoxin with their bite.

The ulna nerve was a bright red pathway that was traced perfectly on my arm almost to my arm pit.  I had treated the bites with topical antibiotic.  Since my heart had not stopped from the neurotoxin, I figured that was the end of it.  After forty-eight hours the left hand was fifty percent bigger than the right hand so to the doctor for a round of doxycycline.  The doctor thought that it would be good if I did not exert to keep the toxin and bacterial infection localized.  This past Saturday was three weeks since the bite and I went back to the gym for the first time.  The next morning my feet were cramping so that I could hardly walk.  It was obvious that the neurotoxin was still active in my body.  I did not think this was possible because of the length of time, but I never have this type of cramping where both feet were cramped closed into balls.

After several days at the gym and the cramping and pain is finally starting to go away.  I know that I would have been in much worse shape if not for the better nutrition, but the last three weeks have been truly miserable.  I guess the moral of this story is where there are webs there are spiders.

Up next for post are sleep apnea (all sleep apnea is central) and Alzheimer disease treated with sulfur.   Merry Christmas! – Pandemic Survivor

Mineral Healing for the Eyes and Heart

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I had a friend recently that was having issues with his heart.  It seems that he has had a life-long problem with heart arrhythmias.  He recently had an episode with his heart and had a device implanted (pace maker).  I had heard that he was about to have a cardioversion, where the heart is electrically ‘shocked’ back into rhythm. He is in his late seventies or about eighty years old.

I asked him about the minerals from his diet and of course he had not given it any consideration.

“It is just one of those things with getting older,” he said.  This is of course is the attitude of people about any disease when it comes to nutrition because of the structure of our government and the medical profession.  If it treats a disease, by definition as declared by Congress, it is then a drug and can only be dispensed by a medical professional.

I suggested to him that perhaps he was magnesium and potassium deficient and suggested that he may take some supplements.  He decided to take a magnesium glycinate supplement and drink low sodium V-8 juice to improve his available potassium.  He started the Sunday before his cardioversion that was on Wednesday.

I happened to be at the hospital when he checked in and met him at the check-in desk.  He pulled me aside and described the most amazing thing that had happened to him.  It seems that about four months back he had developed a blind spot in his vision.  He assumed that it was just from old age and perhaps the meds he was taking for his heart.  He got up to read the paper on Monday morning and to his surprise there was no blind spot.  We can speculate as to why, but the mineral pathways are both electrical and biological enzymatic.

There was just one bump during the cardioversion necessary to get his heart back into rhythm.  I can just imagine that during the thirty years that he has suffered if all that time it was a mineral deficiency issue.  Our medical profession needs to ‘wake up’ to the requirements of nutrition and stop acting just in the cause of profit.  My friend, well, he is one happy guy – Pandemic Survivor

Nutrition – And Then There is Water!

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If you are reading this to find out how much water is needed per day, then about one half ounce per pound of body weight per day from all sources is adequate.  If you are a rigid scientist, do not bother to read this article.  If you want to learn something new about water and perhaps energy then forge ahead.  This is the stuff that is on the edge that nobody wants to admit reading, but we are really fascinated by the unknown.  To get the full benefit of this information, I would like to suggest that you watch both videos referenced below.  That is a two and one half hour commitment, but that is the nature of trying to understand a new paradigm.

In a recent post, I listed the things that I have found that are deficient in our diets.  The prime targets are vitamin D, vitamin C, magnesium, iodine, potassium, and sulfur.  But for health, the type of water and the amount is apparently very important.  I have been amazed at some of the recent research regarding water.  Just maybe the health benefit of going into the sun has to do with what happens to water from the exposure to light or other electromagnetic radiation.  It appears that water takes on structure.  Not only do significant boundaries develop, the pH of the water also changes (to become alkaline at a pH of about 7.4 or the desired pH of blood – fascinating!) as this modification occurs.

I first became aware of this from the work of Masaru Emoto.   He determined that water changed its shape if presented with classical music, prayer, and other warm and friendly environments.  Upon freezing, the water would form crystals like you see with snowflakes.  If the water was played rap, hard rock, or cursed at, it would not form crystals.  Emoto says that we only understand about three percent of what “is”.  Amazingly, this agrees with the statement of the National Academy of Science (yes the same NAS that houses the Institute of Medicine) when they describe dark(dark meaning we cannot see, feel, or touch it but know that it exists based on the acceleration of the universe) energy at seventy three percent and dark matter at twenty three percent leaving only four percent as everything that we can perceive exists.

Then Dr. Gerald Pollack, University of Washington bioengineering professor, discovered that water forms structured boundaries when exposed to infrared light (benefit of exposing our bodies to the sun?).  There is a sixty minute you tube video where he presents his findings – “Water, Energy, and Life: Fresh Views from the Water’s Edge”.   This is one amazing lecture about water and how it forms structure.  There is a shot of two beakers with the water bridging in between which I did not believe was possible.  Is water in this state a liquid?  I wonder if you followed Emoto’s method of freezing if it would form crystals.

In the first century, the Didache – The Lord’s teaching through the Twelve Apostles, was used as a manual for methods of practice for Christians.  The original translation says to use living water for baptism.  Is this the original holy water?  Later translations have changed this to running water.  However, if Emoto is correct (water taken from clear running springs forms crystals) and the practice of Christians in the use of Holy water, then just maybe the meaning of ‘living water’ is ‘structured water.’

Then in watching the US Open tennis tournament, one of the sponsors was selling ‘structured’ water and touting its benefits.  Is this structured water?  Does it remain structured after being shipped in plastics bottles?  A search of the web and you will find many devices that claim will change the structure of water.

If you really want to stretch your thinking then watch this one and half hour video: “Water- The Great Mystery”.   Researchers, theologians, scientists, and philosophers struggle with the understanding of the properties of water.

And then there is energy conversion by BlackLight Power, Inc.  The claims of this company are that they can release the latent energy of hydrogen from a newly discovered form of hydrogen based on the hydrino physics of Dr. Randell Mills.  I do not know if there is anything to this, but the observation is that we know a lot less about water than we think.  There are also other methods of energy conversion from water that are being claimed like water arc discharges, turbulent cavitation excitation of water, and carbon arc discharges in water.  For much more information on New Energy Science and Technology please see FAQ at Infinite-Energy Magazine founded by the late Dr. Eugene Mallove.

Yes, I know there is nothing that seems to approach logic in the above array of “what is water?”  However, there are links and connections that should not be ignored.  For your health, it is important to treat your body with respect and maintain it in a warm friendly light filled environment.  Spend some time in the sun, pray constantly, maintain a positive attitude, listen to classical music, and love others as yourself – after all your body is about two thirds water.  – Pandemic Survivor

Two Eyes, Ten Fingers, and Ten Toes

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November 4, 2011 was an anniversary for me.  The date represents seven years since I started taking vitamin D3.  I remember well what my doctor said when I told him I was going to start taking 10,000 IU per day of vitamin D3.  “Your organs will turn to stone, or at least that is what they taught me in med school.”  His practice now is the leading practice in the area for helping resolve issues around vitamin D and disease.   Thank you Dr. Perini.  I have not grown any new fingers, eyes, or toes.  My organs have not turned to stones.  My body continues to heal confirming a report from the UK from the 1930’s that said: “If you take 5,000 to 10,000 IU of D3 per day, it will take four to eight years for your body to heal.”

My body continues to heal.  I have overcome a failed back surgery and avoided three additional back surgeries that would have been required.  I have maintained a low blood pressure even though it has spiked many times in the past.  I have not had any more trouble with heart arrhythmias.  My vision has improved.  My skin tone has improved.  I have no more “brain fog.” (which I am sure was from the sleep apnea and oxygen deprivation)  The most important thing is that I have not died from severe sleep apnea.  By the way, I also have not had a cold or the flu in the last seven years.  Typical for me was three to four colds per year and the flu every two years.

Even though I grew three inches taller in one year as the spacing in my vertebral disc increased from healing, this is not the most amazing healing that happened to me.  The most amazing thing is that I was able to rid myself of my CPAP for sleep apnea.  For those that do not know, a CPAP is an air flow device that holds your airways open while you sleep.  During my sleep test (nocturnal polysomnagraphy), I would breath for thirty seconds and then stop for thirty seconds.  Of course the tech stopped the test after an hour because my blood oxygen saturation had dropped below seventy percent.  I was close to death.  The neurologist described my condition as severe obstructive sleep apnea.  He was wrong; it was severe central sleep apnea from the nerves in my neck being compressed between C3-C4 from vitamin D deficiency.  I was even finding myself not breathing during the day when I was wide awake.  All of those issues have been resolved.  I did not die from oxygen deprivation.

I like to answer the question; ‘Have there been any side effects or toxicity from taking that much vitamin D for seven years?’  Yes – Health!  I also like to answer the question; ’Who was the physician that guided you through the healing process?’ – God!

I declare November 4 a vitamin D holiday.  November 4, 2004 will forever be remembered as a glad day.  – Pandemic Survivor

Looking Good, Feeling Better

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James F. Fries of Stanford University proposed a hypothesis in 2000 called ‘compression of morbidity.’  He suggested that the change in life style had occurred in the twentieth century where the burden of healthcare had shifted from treating infectious disease in the early 1900’s to more than eighty percent of illness, morbidity, mortality, and cost is after age 65 from chronic disease.  “Compression of Morbidity in the Elderly”  – PDF file.  Fries suggests that by better nutrition, exercise, and medical treatment that the curve representing decline has become more rectangular.  That is more of the population lives longer with a longer period of morbidity.

Mortality Curve

Fries then says that there can be compression of the time in morbidity and disability by reducing ‘lifestyle health risk.’  Justification of this shortening of time in decline has been used to make many changes in how preventative medicine is performed.  The ideal then would be to have just a short period in which we are disabled just before death.

Shorten Period of Morbidity

Dr. Robert Heaney in his presentation  ‘What is a Vitamin D Deficiency’  makes the point that vitamin D is the ideal candidate to achieve the shorten period of decline.  So being sure that you are replete in vitamin D does not only extend your life by approximately ten years, it also gives you a better quality of life.  Dr. John Cannell, Vitamin D Council, goes on describe comorbidity or having more than one chronic disease as vitamin D deficiency syndrome.

So what happens to a society that makes this decision and chooses to look better and feel better for a longer period in their life?  This could mean a significant reduction in health care cost.  A reduction in healthcare cost would mean the health related economic segment could shrink drastically.  So the longer period that people are sick and the more people are sick means this is a booming economic segment.

To better understand how economic forces have prevented us from looking and feeling better, consider that presently the health segment of the economy is about twenty percent.  Instead of talking about dollars, let’s talk about people being sustained.  With three hundred million people in the US about twenty percent would be sustained by the health economy or sixty million as a first guess.  This would be true whether your wife is a doctor or you husband owns a cleaning business that specializes in cleaning medical facilities.

If some new magic understanding like vitamin D, as Oliver Gillie described it a ‘magic shotgun,’ would suddenly improve health eliminating chronic disease, this segment of the economy could shrink by seventy percent.  The government completely understands.  Former secretary of Health and Human Services, Michael Leavitt, under George W. Bush even stated it in his priorities.  Of his nine principles, number four is, ‘markets before mandates’, and number nine is to ‘value life.’  “It’s the economy stupid” and the government considers it more important than your life and you can forget about looking and feeling better.  The reason, what would happen if you eliminated the source of income for forty million people in the US?  Of course we did it to the tobacco and manufacturing segments of the economy, why not shrink healthcare?  I think their campaign contributions are larger.  If the population in general understood that there could be half a million less death in the US every year but forty million less people being sustained economically, which would they choose?

I have written about this early in how the governments understanding of economics is what is keeping us from health.  October, 2009 ‘Major Newspaper Gets It’.   What a two edge sword – the income of forty million people versus your health.

So we have been disconnected from ‘mother earth’ in ways I am not sure that we understand.  To think that we have moved from infectious disease to chronic disease as our concern in one hundred years seems alarming.  Which is better, to live a short healthy life and die from an infectious disease or live a long life with a very long period of morbidity?  I would like to think it is possible to live a long healthy life with a short period of morbidity, but that does not fit our present economic paradigm.  As I write this I am watching over a thousand pink gloved medical workers in West Columbia dance for breast cancer awareness.  What a great marketing campaign to raise money for the medical industry and it looks like fun and they have jobs.  Will that do anything to prevent breast cancer?  Forty years of trying by our institutions has made it worse.  How could it be – just maybe you are on your own when it comes to looking better and feeling good.

Here is something to consider if you are over sixty five and taking your average of seventeen prescription meds.  Wendell Berry, a writer and farmer from Henry County(reminds me of my father, a farmer), Kentucky concerned about our connection with the earth and sustainable agriculture, writes in his ‘Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front’

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

–Pandemic Survivor

All Chronic Disease is Nutritional Deficiency?

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When I first heard this is in the early nineties, I thought that they were a nut.  It was more drastic than the title of this article stated.  The speaker had actually said that all death from disease was caused by nutritional deficiency.  How could all disease be caused by nutritional deficiency?  The speaker went on to describe chronic disease as being responsible for death at a rate of over seventy percent.  That seemed more reasonable but was it realistic. However, I knew that our great medical research institutions were spending billions of dollars every year in researching methods to treat disease, especially the Big Three Killers, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.  How could a society as sophisticated as American allow nutritional deficiency to be an issue.  Surely our science understood the necessities of proper eating and would direct change in our diet.

As my back started to fail to the point that I could no longer enjoy life, I started looking for anything that would give me some relief.  At that point in my life I had already been suffering debilitating pain for over fifteen years.  I thought that it was something that had just happened and nothing was wrong with the way that I ate or exposed my body to the sun – just aging.  After all our major companies were assuring me if I ate their products, I would get all of the nutrition that I would need.  They were required to put it right there on the label as directed by our great government.  It was fifteen more years before I discovered that my back was failing because I was vitamin D3 deficient.  I wrestled with how our institutions could be so wrong for over two years until I realized it was just about maintaining jobs and income in the health industries.  The work of these industries is not about our health, but about the health of the institutions.  Today, the thing that still aggravates me is the specialty groups that raise funds for research for this disease or that disease like a “walk” for breast cancer.  “Hanger on groups” playing us for the emotions of loss of a center piece of our culture – breast.

As I ‘grew’ out of my pain with vitamin D3 supplementation, I discover there were many life sustaining nutrients in which I was deficient. Here is the list:

  • Eating too many carbohydrates and not getting enough protein.
  • Eating too many carbohydrates and not getting enough fat.  These first two were promoted by our large grain industry.
  • There is simply not enough vitamin C in our diets as we are one of the mammals that does not make this substance in our bodies.
  • Exercise is necessary to move fluids through our bodies.
  • Not spending enough time in the sun in the summer and not supplementing with vitamin D3 in the winter when the rays of the sun were inadequate to covert vitamin D3 in my skin.  To grow three inches in one year as the thirty plus vertebral disc healed was a startling reality!
  • Our soils are so poor that there is not enough magnesium in our diets.
  • Not eating enough uncooked greens and vegetables so that I was potassium deficient.
  • Our government and health institutions are just wrong about the amount of iodine that we require.
  • The modern food processing techniques and how we treat our water to reduce hardness was removing the necessary sulfur required for health.
  • A balance in the correct amount and type of vitamins A, B, and E are also necessary.

There it was, the speaker that I had heard in the early nineties had been correct.  Health is really simple when there is a balance of nutrients and exercise.  Correct balance of macro nutrients, the ABC’s of vitamins, assuring the necessary minerals are consumed (potassium, magnesium, iodine, and sulfur), and exercise for at least three hundred minutes per week.  The only reason for the medical industry is for surgery to stitch us up when we are injured and for antibiotics when we get a ‘bug’.  Of course the other reason for its existence is to maintain a lot of high paying jobs including medical insurance jobs so that our economy stays healthy.  Someone has to be sick in order for this industry to stay large.  You are doing your friends that are employed by this industry a great service as long as you remain ill.  – Pandemic Survivor

A Health Miracle in Sulfur

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A new theory as to why vitamin D production on the skin is more beneficial than supplemental vitamin D.

It seems that when we discuss the benefits of nutrients, it is all about the cations: calcium, magnesium, sodium, and potassium and the balance required.  Very seldom do we talk about the anions like carbonate, chloride, sulfate, and phosphate and the necessary negative charge balance.  It is believed in general that our food is rich enough in these mineral constituents that we get more than enough of these items.  Certainly we get enough phosphate, with the abundance in our food and soft drinks and chloride because it is used to treat our water supply and it is the negative ion in salt.

I ask you, do the things that we consider extremely beneficial to health have anything in common: garlic, onions, turmeric (curcumin), cumin, cabbage, hot spring baths, mud baths, soaks in Epson salts, and mineral water.  Typically they are all great sources for sulfur.  With garlic being especially high in sulfur, we find in garlic more than thirty compounds that contain sulfur.  During WWII, garlic was referred to as Russian penicillin.  The Russians did not have penicillin at the time and they used garlic to prevent infections in wounds.  Garlic when crushed allows two of the sulfur compounds to combine and form a new compound that is called allicin, a very useful antibiotic.

Dr. Stephannie Seneff, a senior scientist at MIT, has proposed several novel ideas about how important sulfur is to our health.  Interview with Dr. Mercola: one and one half  hours video with transcript available: “Could THIS be the hidden factor Behind Obesity, Heart Disease, and Chronic Fatigue” http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/09/17/stephanie-seneff-on-sulfur.aspx

Article from Weston Price: “Sulfur Deficiency – A Possible Contributing Factor in Obesity Heart Disease, and Chronic Fatigue”  http://www.westonaprice.org/vitamins-and-minerals/sulfur-deficiency  Dr. Seneff is to present at Weston Price in November.

Summary

  • Because of the multiple valence numbers of sulfur, -2 to +6, it is very versatile in supporting aerobic metabolism.
  • Sulfate and carbonate in the blood maintain the negative charge requirements to provide an effective colloid for delivering oxygen and nutrients.
  • Two mysterious molecules are discussed: cholesterol sulfate and vitamin D3 sulfate.  It is theorized that the benefit of production of vitamin D in the skin versus supplementation is in making vitamin D3 sulfate.  Muscle metabolism can become significantly jeopardized when cholesterol sulfate is low.
  • Sulfur is key in protecting proteins in neurons and muscle cells from oxidative damage.
  • Thin people with deficiency in cholesterol and sulfur are subject to a wide range of health problems.
  • Modern practice in health and our food and water supply has conspired to reduce both cholesterol and sulfate.
  • Throw away the sunscreen and eat more egg yellows.

My question to you is: Will the new markers for health be the ratio of cholesterol to cholesterol sulfate and 25(OH)D3 to 25(OH)D sulfate.  Given how long it takes for science to transfer into the art of the practice of medicine – in fifty years, maybe.   – Pandemic Survivor

Wisdom in Healing with Nutrition

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Anticipation of Christmas hung heavily in the air.  The crops had been profuse that year with an abundant harvest of grains, tobacco, and beef, but winter had come early to the piedmont of North Carolina.  It had been cold enough in late October to kill hogs which was unusual.  The cold allowed the hams and shoulders to chill properly before being placed in the smoke house. There had even been snow and freezing rain the week of Thanksgiving.  Now in mid-December, everyone in the house was sick with some type of cold or maybe even the flu.

“I am not putting up with everyone being sick as a dog for Christmas,” my dad muttered on Saturday morning.  “I am going to do something about this,” and he left in a rush out the door in our two-tone ’58 Chevy Impala.  Our chore that morning was to load up the truck with corn and oats from the storage and take them to the mill to be ground into feed for the cows, mules, and horses.  When my brother and I arrived at the mill, a real treat to go with big brother, dad was there ‘chewing the fat’ with some other farmers.  He had a three gallon bucket of feed additive from the mill which turned out to be sulfured black strap molasses.

We returned home and dad had made it back as well.  He had added a gallon of cod liver oil to his collection of items necessary to save Christmas.  Every day from then until Christmas, we would line up for our dose of cod liver oil and a fresh home-made biscuit slathered with sulfured black strap molasses. What a waste of a hot biscuit-sulfured molasses-yuk!  By Christmas, everyone had become well and as best as I remember, no one was sick the rest of the winter.  This was my first introduction to healing through nutrition.

Black strap molasses or the syrup remaining after crystallization of the sugar from sugar cane is loaded with minerals that include: iron, potassium, magnesium, calcium, and trace minerals manganese, copper, and selenium.  The sulfur in the molasses comes from the addition of sulfur dioxide to young cane molasses as a preservative.  Because of the large amounts of concentrated minerals, it is commonly added to ground feed for cattle.  Cod liver oil is a very good source of vitamin D3 and vitamin A complexes that some researchers now say may not be the proper balance of vitamin D to vitamin A.  However, when you are deficient in both, it works like magic to boast a slumbering immune system.

How did we get to the point where claims cannot be made that nutrition will heal you from disease?  If we went to the doctor with a cold, he would not dare suggest that the reason for the cold was poor nutrition.  Only drugs can be defined as healing a disease.  Under American law, when we say that something will heal a disease, it automatically becomes a drug.  Are sulfured molasses and cod liver oil drugs?  I guess it depends on what ‘the meaning of is is.”

We have previously explored most of the nutrients listed, but not sulfur.  I was surprised to find that there is not a DRI for sulfur even though it is one of the most abundant elements in our bodies and represents about one half percent of our total weight.  It is sulfur in combination with magnesium and vitamin C that is responsible for collagen production and it is sulfur that holds our synovial fluid together for lubrication of our joints.

I did not mention that dad also brought home a large bag of Indian River oranges from Florida and I am sure that was for the vitamin C.  Somehow, even with the abundance of foods that were farm-to-table, we did not have the right combination of nutrients needed for our health.  Ah the wisdom in the treatment of disease that has been lost so that medical institutions can profit under the guise of protecting our health.  – Pandemic Survivor