Category: pharmaceutical approaches

Proteolytic Enzymes

This post will look at proteolytic enzymes and ask what they can do for us.

The last post looked into a newly discovered, high cholesterol level. I didn’t ask for it but have been given a set of numbers to consider (I don’t do enough cardiovascular exercise). I think this is where I might see changes happen rather than dietary approaches. Proteolytic enzymes have the potential to help many different kinds of condition, it’s hard to know where to start!

Now is a good time to revisit a subject from a post written last year that mentions proteolytic enzymes very briefly. I’d just started them  on the recommendation of a practitioner I saw to help keep my body working as best as it could. They get referred to after the post’s last heading and before the photo at the bottom of the page.

Enzymes are amazing things, they seem to be able to do all things for all people (where needed) and they could be handy for most folk?
There are around 3000 different types of  enzymes in existence and those are just the ones that have names!

Have you heard of digestive enzymes to take with food? Proteolytic enzymes are similar things but work differently and best on an empty stomach.

We are born with some to start with as they help our body digest stuff. We make more in the pancreas as we go through life. Cooked food in particular requires more enzymes to digest it as we did a fair amount of evolving mostly before our skills with cooking came along!

If we make our own enzymes why do we need to take extra enzymes?

  • Because we don’t eat enough raw food/Eat too high a proportion of cooked food.
  • Enzymes are at the heart of almost all physiological processes in the body including digesting the food we choose to eat.  Mostly we ate more, raw veg than we do nowadays.
  • We can buy digestive enzymes to boost our own digestion allowing us to eat certain foods we may have been avoiding for the various ‘tummy troubles’ they cause.
  • Digestion starts as we chew, our saliva contains amylase which begins digestion even before we swallow.
  • We use a lot of energy to digest food so any help we can get in this process will give us more energy.

Have you ever had the feeling that a meal, once eaten, seemed to just sit in your belly? To digest the cooked food we eat uses up lots of our own enzymes. Often the processes that are needed for effective digestion work better with a little bit of warmth  but not too much heat as that can destroy them!

super digester

Proteolytic Enzymes are good for us outside of digestion.

  • Sports people use proteolytic enzymes when they have a sports injury that has caused inflammation.
  • people with high cholesterol levels (have tiny fragments of protein and/or fat which can thicken the blood and cause CVD later on).
  • Chronically ill people also have a greater amount of inflammation in their bodies (inflammation as part of the disease state).
  • to aim to look younger  by helping to reduce wear and tear on our bodies.

All these groups of people may take proteolytic enzymes to reduce mess in the body such as swelling from injury.

Enzymes are present in the food we eat. They help us get energy from food. Enzymes digest/dissolve stuff and when they have no food to digest they’re digesting no longer needed stuff in our blood and reducing our sticky blood (which can accumulate) if we’re not as active as we know we should be.

A certain amount of inflammation is good if it’s reducing the amount of movement an injured limb can go through but, after a point it’s damaging.

Enzymes a go go!

We can buy a range of enzymes which are more effective when taken with other types of enzymes. Serrapeptase is considered a good one at the moment (fashion seems to play a part in supplements?) Serrapeptase is collected from caterpillars that make silk and the protein they make is something special. Sometimes I wonder a bit about the type of life farmed silk worms have? Other enzymes available mop up different types of proteins but in a similar way:

I was going to list amylase, bromelain, papain, trypsin and other enzymes that process different carbs, fats or proteins in our food but there are more complete lists out there (that require a simple search) before finding the site that does it better than me!

All of these enzymes and more help our body do a range of things better.

This is belonging

This post looks at belonging incorporating the armed forces’ relatively recent advertising campaign.

There are lots of things that can give us that sense of belonging that don’t come along with the chance of becoming a killer or a casualty.

Becoming part of any relatively select club can also give a feeling of belonging?

My relatively select club, as most readers know is the MS Club.

We catch up with familiar faces on screen in various ms clubs and chat about the range of challenges we’ve most recently faced.

We find out that, quite a few other people are going through a similar thing.

As owners of a chronic condition we can, like highly trained soldiers also feel a sense of belonging.

Part of the reason I’ve been away from the keyboard are some things I’m aiming to help reduce some of my MS symptoms:

  • I’m trying out the new Stasis sock from Voxx thanks to my US cousin (Voxx don’t post outside the US and Canada)
  • I started Tavegil (Newsweek article shown to  me by my US auntie originally in 2014 except this time using a meaningful dose.
  • following more meaningfully the SWANK way of eating (very low saturated fat diet, basically.
  • Taking steps to follow Dr Coimbra’s protocol which involves taking in (what the NHS might consider a toxic amount) of vitD using supplementation). The UK recommend taking in 400 possibly up to 2000iu
  • I’m not even going to start on EMFs!

It can feel quite tiring to seek out various methods of healing when it feels like there are very few people that have ‘got our back’?

Really , I guess we’re all suffering from a chronic condition – it’s called being alive!

We can choose from a number of ways to distract us from the trudge that is life some of which work better than others.

The Toolwall I hope illustrates our need to approach life and be able to adapt to whatever situation arises.

Histamine apparently functions as a neurotransmitter. Candace Pert mentioning the work of her PHd tutor’s early continuation of HIS tutor’s work investigating the role of the histamine in human physiology (p.41 of Molecules of Emotion) probably has nothing to do with an OTC antihistamine functioning to help remyelinate the brain. Her talk of basic chemistry pointed out how little I know about the body we are housed in.

I just focus on the body being an amazing thing that WANTS to work.

I’d like to take this opportunity to apologise for unsearchability of previous posts. Doesn’t look like it’s going to change anytime soon?

tools

 

 

Avenues of MS research everywhere!

My own research into increasing variety of movement.

New news, apparently… not the same old news!

Quite often there’s not much to report in MS research or what there is to report is all the same shape – either ineffective or carries the potential of life threatening side effects but… there appear to be a handful of avenues opening up!

A family friend from the US sent me this link last week the way concerned friends do. It’s nice to know that folk care and are thinking about you which can give as much of a lift as anything from a blister pack or bottle.

This article was referenced in the Newsweek article and it prompted me to buy some

  • Tavegil/Clemastine, an OTC (over the counter, no prescription required) antihistamine. It was the only molecule tested (out of a 1000 in their lab) that had any effect on the growing of a myelin like substance on little glass pyramids or something like that (yes, science is strange) but perhaps it will help my body regrow some myelin?
  • I’ve been using phospholipid complex since December (mentioned here) and enjoying a poached egg yolk every day to try and support my brain by giving it building blocks for the last few months.

Interestingly, to an utter non-scientist like myself this page describes part of the reason as to whether there might be a useful effect.

I’ve been signed up to be contacted and perhaps get enrolled in the SMART trial. It will be trialling three existing treatments that were developed for other conditions and, I believe are now out of patent so there is little money to be made from them in their original setting (it could be argued).

  • Ibudilast was one of the three therapies to be tested on secondary progressive MS patients when I showed interest last summer. It has been used in Japan (mostly) for the past 20 years as an asthma therapy. It’s a very good anti-inflammatory, apparently.
  • Riluzole has been used to treat The Ice Bucket Challenge disease or more properly Motor Neurone Disease once also known as ALS or Lou Gehrigs disease, I think?
  • Amiloride which is used to treat heart disease – got no punchlines or interesting facts about that treatment or condition.
  • Fluoxetine (better known as Prozac and usually used to treat depression) is taking the place of Ibudilast.

To a layman, I see the mention of having an effect from the antihistamine on asthma and see that the Japanese asthma treatment has been taken out of the MS trial (being funded by Edinburgh University) and I wonder whether perhaps the drug’s creator might be able to change a molecule or two and get another lease of life out of the out of patent drug by repackaging it as an MS treatment?

Seeing this article about the possible role of a psychedelic drug in the treatment of asthma (well, it worked on mice in the lab) leads me to think the creators of pharmaceutical interventions employ  what seems to be a scattergun approach to the therapies they push on us the patients and it really is worth not holding one’s breath for miracles. I’m an entire human being – my body and brain can’t easily get by without the other!

“What we have demonstrated for the first time is that they are also effective in treating physiological diseases outside of the brain, a completely new and exciting role for this class of drug” says study author Dr. Charles Nichols.

a line of wild animal toys

Whilst keeping an eye on various pharmaceutical offering in the pipeline I think I’ll keep up with my personalised integrative approach. My most recent exercise addition is ‘walking like an animal’ using hands and feet not on hands and knees. I can’t manage the half an hour a day that was recommended to me but after a few goes each day for the last couple of weeks I’m an awful lot better at it than I was!

This physiotherapist in Scotland was reported in New Pathways magazine last year and has now received funding to investigate his results from Edinburgh Napier University. I don’t know how or even whether it is allied to the Edinburgh University conducting the MS SMART trial at the top of this post but I think I’ll continue looking at healing my body from a number of different angles.

challenge, perhaps?

a challenge to let the right ones in

in this post I’d like to add a supplement that I’d left off my previous two yeast posts. You could argue it was one of the most important additions during an effective dismantling of an overgrowth of candida.

  • Permavite powder; I didn’t use it for the first two months of my candida clearout which I mention here and here while I focused on reducing the invasive parasite which itself, I’ve been told was causing holes in my gut. Intestinal permeability can be caused by many things including a bedded in overgrowth of the yeast candida. When the parasite has been allowed to multiply unchallenged its form changes and it turns into a fungus, creating a thread like structure called hypha which can burrow beyond the gut and set up home all over the body.
  • HCL supplements; as we age we naturally produce less hydrochloric acid in our stomachs. When all is working well this is our first line of defense against bacteria that comes into the digestive tract in and on the food we eat. If we eat a low salt diet this can also impact how much acid we produce as sodium is needed in the creation of this essential acid.

There’s a whole other post on the finer details of our salt consumption (table salt=bad, rock or sea salt=good) but here is someone else’s version for the moment. Processed (ie table salt) versions of sodium have been stripped don’t hold the minerals that our bodies were developed to ingest at the same time as the electrolyte sodium.

If you’re getting heartburn or recurrent UTIs consider looking into the benefits of taking an HCL supplement with every meal. It may be responsible for reducing tiredness/fatigue after eating. This tiredness could also be down to eating foods your system has an intolerance to or a disordered bloodsugar response which I talk about briefly here.

A number of naturopathic approaches say these holes, which are sometimes referred to as Leaky Gut Syndrome can lead to undigested food particles entering the bloodstream. When this happens the immune system sees stuff that is not ‘self’ and mounts an immune response.

‘Leaky gut’s’ very existence is hotly debated in certain circles but some of the people questioning the theory’s existence (in my experience) talk of mysterious triggering of auto-immune conditions but so far have offered no better alternative.

  • Gluten
  • Legumes
  • Nightshade family of vegetables
  • Long term use of antibiotics, ibuprofen and any number of other medications.

Having the troops on high alert, facing a challenge with every forkful and behaving in a twitchy, trigger happy manner, attacking anything that looks a little bit different to self (a little like some members of the US police force) is not a long term strategy for any body.

As I started to see signs the overgrowth was lessening including waking with a clearer head, not feeling so… puffy and swollen and the size of my potbelly reducing aswell as losing 7 pounds and counting (whilst not even trying to) I started to use Permavite with each meal to build up my gut lining.

Slippery Elm, Aloe Vera and Marshmallow root supplements, okra green foodstuff and chia and flaxseed all have mucilaginous properties (they go gooey with water) and soothe the GI tract by creating another barrier to protect the gut lining from bacteria in the belly.

 

I listened to a presentation by Suzy Cohen the author of Drug Muggers, a pharmacist and functional medicine practitioner in the US, recently. In the book she talks about the various interactions prescription drugs can have with each other and the food we eat (fruit juice and cholesterol lowering drugs don’t mix, apparently) and the side effects they can have on our bodies.

Ability to edit myself has slipped (you may have noticed) while dealing with a dying cat at home.

She’s no longer in pain so I’m hoping to get back to doing the things I do every day to feel a little bit better.

disenchanted forest

disenchanted

Sometimes it feels as if my very determined cat has as much chance of getting to the bottom of MS as the current crop of researchers.

What does Russell Brand (famous in the UK for being a non-voter, comedian, actor, past drug user and ex husband of Katy Perry) have to do with the current state of MS research?

Much more than my cat, it turns out.

A number of us with this particular chronic disease are disenchanted by what the medical establishment are offering us.

We may not be debating such lofty subjects as the future of democracy but the stranglehold the MS establishment (neurologists) have over our care is every bit as important in our lives.

A number of us have chosen not to participate in auto-immune theories (and treatments developed from them) and as such we could be considered to be disenfranchised.

disenfranchise
ˌdɪsɪnˈfran(t)ʃʌɪz,ˌdɪsɛn-/
verb
past tense: disenfranchised; past participle: disenfranchised
  1. deprive (someone) of the right to vote.
    “the law disenfranchised some 3,000 voters on the basis of a residence qualification”
    deprive (someone) of a right or privilege.
    “we strongly oppose any measure which would disenfranchise people from access to legal advice”

We, as owners of an as yet impossible to cure disease have been deprived of the right to a second opinion in the research field. MS is many things to many people. Prof, Giovannoni has been receptive as have many others, to the idea that MS is multifactorial meaning it has a number of possible causes including exposure to the Epstein Barr virus, lack of appropriate sun exposure/vitamin D deficiency whilst our bodies develop, a trauma to the head prior to symptom appearance and exposure to emotional trauma to name just a few likely suspects.

So, we believe there isn’t just one story to explore in the process of finding a cure and would rather not be given chemotherapy drugs before the experts entirely know what they’re dealing with

I can’t speak for anyone else but I’ve become pretty disenchanted with the status quo. I have reached a similar conclusion to Russell Brand – it’s best not to hold one’s breath while expecting change.

Another piece of news caught my eye this morning which is sort of related Sir Nicholas Winton. Here is a man who coudn’t stand by and let things carry on as they seemed to be destined to. I’m not comparing a contemporary cenlebrity’s actions to those of a one hundred and five year old’s action on the eve of the 2nd WW but the fact I can mention them in the same paragraph only serves to highlight how few folk there are who are willing to put their heads above the parapet.

 

 

The MS treatment I want to explore

deflated scull and crossbones balloon

In the news today (20 October) the UK was given the proposition that dying folk should be given experimental drugs before they get through the full trial process. Let’s ignore for the moment that the full trial process hasn’t delivered much for MS patients. So what sort of shenanigans are pharmaceutical companies looking for? Extensive testing hasn’t worked in MSers favour so what sort of dark hell might be unleashed without the double blind placebo controlled ‘gold standard’ in place?

Colorado have reported on this idea in May which a bit puts paid to my theory that it was a fine piece of distraction from the venal behaviour of drug companies not investigating an African disease until it starts threatening the monied, developed world.

My first thought was that it was a bit of damage limitation from the pharmaCos to distract us from the fact that curing a killer like ebola just isn’t financially worth them even starting (do they have a union that does pr for ALL their questionable/commercially sound behaviour?).

Bloomberg Businessweek reported on the plan in August.

Why does the treatment of the disease Ebola have any relevance to MS?

Don’t worry, I’m not connecting the two in a  symptom sort of way but I believe both conditions have been poorly served by pharmaceutical companies.

I really feel quite uneasy about the treatment that pharmacos have meted out on MS patients throughout my 20 year ‘MS career’. When I couldn’t get hold of DMDs, before they were available in the UK I wanted them very badly, then NICE was born (especially to avoid the ‘postcode lottery’ surrounding MS prescriptions) and they became available so I read up the trial results as I’ve mentioned more than once.

In my mid 20s with not many regular symptoms it didn’t make sense to me to take multiweekly injections for a less than 50/50 chance of benefit. Other than a couple of goes at steroids to get back my ability to walk again after fresher’s flu went bad in me I have stayed pharma free.

I think I’ve talked about a vascular aspect to MS having been spotted by Charcot in the 19th century. He gave this disease a name and yet this aspect of our condition is barely being investigated. I’ve certainly mentioned my own taste of this theory in Brooklyn a couple of years ago, where an ultrasound was taken of my jugular veins from the INside where a valve was seen to be blocked shut.

We have more and more appropriate imaging technology since noticing in 19thC postmortem brains that veins might be implicated. Why is this theory not investigated further with the full force of what we have at our disposal? It doesn’t help to get too stressed about it but, no matter how many times I stamp my feet, life STILL isn’t fair. My blood gently simmers at the injustice of our woefully inadequate treatment from the people we’re supposed to trust. I feel for those who live under the shadow of Ebola and the horrific injustice they face every day when they continue to see no effective science being done in their name.

I’m glad my father encouraged me to question everything (perhaps not consciously but he did). I think it’s stood me in good stead for identifying folk’s motives. Although I s’pose, with pharmaceutical companies you don’t have to dig too deep to see the profit motive.

Perhaps I’m very wrong though? See, that ‘question everything’ trait is shining through!

Improving Prognosis?

The image of ivy is from my back garden and illustrates one of the few things that truly thrive there.

NIHCE have issued guidelines to address which treatments might be worth the NHS providing for MS patients. Aside from the disease activity going on in our brains we have similar symptoms to many other chronic conditions. Some of those symptoms are brought on by our bodies becoming increasingly inactive due to deterioration in our brains. It’s even been cheerily suggested by a London research establishment MS could be rebranded as a form of dementia. With this in mind I thought I’d share a link I was sent that was made with seniors in mind but could be useful for anyone that doesn’t move as much as they used to.

  • NIHCE have suggested no longer financing injections of B12 to try and reduce fatigue (unfortunately, I’ve never been able to get hold of any through any number of GPs) but perhaps with more people asking for some basic maintenance strategies from their GP things might change?
  • Vitamin D supplementation is involved in many processes carried out in the body every day and helps regulate the body’s own immune activity. it might be wise to address both of these deficiencies in the general public aswell. A GP can carry out this test.
  • On the pharmaceutical side NIHCE would also prefer not to pay for Fampridine and Sativex. There wasn’t enough evidence to show statistically significant efficacy for all four supplementation approaches.

ivy up close

News of the Commonweath Fund’s conclusions about the brilliance of the NHS in a global league table of developed nation’s healthcare systems (as long as you don’t have a long term condition) I’ve mentioned in another post. The NIHCE use all sorts of equations and algorithms including weighing up loss of tax earnings for the country if these citizens can no longer earn and contribute. Perhaps  the measure for the wellbeing of patients with long term health conditions needs to be adjusted?

I’m conflicted about withdrawing a therapy that has worth for some people but then I remember that the NHS doesn’t have bottomless pockets and whilst some people are missing out on marginally increased walking speeds, baby units and end of life care could perhaps benefit from the spare cash? I’ll still be buying my own supplements even if it doesn’t clearly contribute to improving prognosis  on the NIHCE scale of improvement as I’m choosing to believe when their effects are all added up, these therapies are worth applying to help keep my body working as best it can. I think this outlook involving positive thinking may bring its own benefits.

A UK MS researcher agreed that good things appear to happen during O2 therapy after being asked for his opinion on a study on this website where Israeli long term stroke patients found new brain cell growth/synaptogenesis after receiving intensive O2 therapy in a decompression chamber. There are things we can do for ourselves that might help a little. I appreciate this isn’t a very rock and roll closing statement but it seems we, as owners of chronic conditions are in charge of improving our prognosis.