 |
| Author | Post |
|---|
Meg Mangin R.N.
Research Team (on leave)
|
Posted: Sat Aug 27th, 2005 00:12 |
|
The Importance of Avoiding Vitamin D
"Ingested Vitamin D (a secosteroid hormone) is an immune-suppressant, with a function similar to that which prednisone performs.
Ingested Vitamin D (food and supplements) suppresses the action of the Vitamin D Receptor (VDR) and thus turns-off the immune system's response so it cannot fight the intra-phagocytic bacteria that cause chronic inflammatory diseases.
People feel better in the short-term because bacteria are not being killed which often causes temporary symptoms due to increased toxins, but they will succumb to the chronic diseases caused by intracellular infection more rapidly in the long-run.
The mechanism by which Vitamin D causes this suppression of the immune system is quite simple. They inhibit the action of the VDR so there is not an issue of acute bacterial toxicity beyond the point at which the immune system is shut down.
While the active hormone (1,25-D) is competing with 25-D and cholecalciferol for control of the immune system the patient suffers badly, because the body's endocrine and thyroid hormones wander all over the place. But once the ingested Vitamin D has won, and put a blockade of VDR activity in place, the Th1 immune response is shut down well and truly, and nothing fluctuates any more. So once you get above a 25-D level of 30ng/ml, or so, higher levels of 25-D don't make you any sicker. In fact they make you feel better (in the short run).
And the level of excess immune-generated 1,25-D is reduced as the Th1 response is shut down by ingested Vitamin D. That is one of the reasons it is such an art to interpret the clinical D-metabolite data. So very sick people who are taking Vitamin D will not show excessive levels of 1,25-D until they become very ill indeed.
There are long-term problems with VDR blockade, like upset calcium homeostasis and bone loss, but medicine hasn't figured out a very good way of tracking these until they become catastrophic. So it will be a few more years (the skeleton regenerates in 10 year cycles) before these adverse affects of VDR blockade become obvious."
Dr. Trevor Marshall, PhD
Sources of vitamin D must be avoided while treating the inflammatory diseases caused by Cell Wall Deficient bacteria.
25-D levels are elevated by the foods we eat that contain vitamin D. Eating too much vitamin D is like adding fuel to a fire, the fire of inflammation. Once the body’s 25-D levels are elevated it will take a long time to lower them because the body stores vitamin D in fatty tissues in order to survive long, dark winters.
Only 1-3 percent of the population ends up with serious immune disease. These folks would normally die off or drop out of society (due to their disease) and never be noticed in any census. That is why Doctors can claim that vitamin D doesn't hurt anybody - because the small percentage it does hurt are regarded as "insignificant" and are not reported in "controlled studies".
The Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) is the average daily dietary intake level that is sufficient to meet the nutrient requirements of nearly all (97-98%) healthy individuals in each life-stage and gender group. Unlike many nutrients, the Institute of Medicine determined there was insufficient scientific information to establish a RDA for vitamin D. Instead, the recommended intake is listed as an Adequate Intake (AI), which represents the daily vitamin D intake that should maintain bone health and normal calcium metabolism in healthy people.
The 1998 AI for vitamin D for adults are the same in males and females, but increase with age. (Remember, this is for healthy individuals, and based on their absence of adequate exposure to sunlight, not patients, who abnormally produce the active form of vitamin D.)
Ages 19-50: 200 International Units (IU)
Ages 51-69: 400 IU
Age 70 and older: 600 IU
Medline notes that too much vitamin D can have the “effect of taking calcium from the bones and depositing it in the heart or lungs, reducing their function.” http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/imagepages/18110.htm
Symptoms of too much vitamin D (hypervitaminosis-D) in inflammatory disease
· Calcium deposits in the kidneys, lungs, blood vessels, heart and other soft tissues
· High blood calcium levels
· Irregular heartbeat
· Seizures
· Nausea
· Vomiting
· Anorexia
· High blood pressure
· High cholesterol
· Magnesium deficiency
Hypervitaminosis-D symptoms
A Review - Vitamin D and Calcium in Sarcoidosis
http://www.sarcinfo.com/calcium.htm
In “A Review – Vitamin D and Calcium in Sarcoidosis” Dr. Trevor Marshall tells us, “The active hormone of Vitamin D (1,25-dihydroxyvitamin-D) (1,25-D) performs a vital function in immune diseases,…” It is important to “totally eliminate all sources of vitamin D intake from food and all sources of exposure to bright light, until the Sarcoidosis patient is no longer producing the 1,25-D hormone beyond the Merck maximum. (45 pg/ml)” As 1,25-D levels are reduced symptoms such as “…fatigue, irritability, panic, depression, and sleep disturbance” will begin to clear.
See also:
Diet and Disease: Eating for Health
The Truth About Vitamin D
You do not need to ingest Vitamin D to be healthy
The Importance of Reducing 25-D
____________________
Nothing contained in this site is or should be considered, or used as a substitute for, medical advice, diagnosis or treatment by your physician.
|
Meg Mangin R.N.
Research Team (on leave)
|
Posted: Sat Aug 27th, 2005 00:16 |
|
link
The Importance of Avoiding Supplemental Folic Acid
"Your body needs Folic Acid to manufacture DHFR, which allows your own body to produce the nucleic acids essential for life. The problem is that if you get too much DHFR it seems to become useful to the bacteria as well.
...You get enough Folic Acid out of a healthy diet. Stay away from supplements, including white flour, white bread and baked goods, until you conquer this disease.”
Folic Acid is turned by the body into DHFR (DiHydro-Folate Reductase) which can be used by parasitic bacteria to form the Nucleic Acids which are at the basis of their survival and reproductive cycles.
Although the literature is equivocal on the issue of whether Folic Acid is harmful in these Th1 diseases, we found with the Sarcoidosis cohort that Folic Acid makes them more ill."
"Folic acid is contraindicated for patients with Th1 inflammation. Here is why. Th1 inflammatory diseases are caused by bacteria. Folic acid in your bloodstream makes it easier for the bacteria to replicate and create new DNA.
Our understanding of the effects of folic acid was clarified by our understanding of a conventional treatment for sarcoidosis, one of the most aggressive Th1 inflammatory diseases. Methotrexate (MTX) is supposed to slow down the progression of sarcoidosis. MTX works by blocking the activity of folic acid. Methotrexate stops the enzyme dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) from catalyzing the reduction of 5,6-dihydrofolate to 5,6,7,8-tetrahydrofolate. A movie depicting conformational changes of DHFR during one turnover of substrate has been constructed using six isomorphous crystallographic structures. "DHFR - The Movie' is a webpage which illustrates how MTX works.
At the dosages used in sarcoidosis MTX acts on the enzyme dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) exactly the same way as the antibiotic Trimethoprim (which is half of Bactrim,Sulfa/Trimeth) does.
Folic Acid supplements are often given to ease the ‘side effects’ of MTX. However, Folic Acid directly reduces the antibiotic action of both Trimethoprim and MTX. Biochemically it makes no sense to take Folic Acid with MTX (or Bactrim). Although this may reduce pain from the Herxheimer reaction (‘side effects'), a lower dose of MTX would be a better proposition, and far less damaging to the liver.
Surprisingly, very few researchers (or physicians) have realized that if sarcoidosis patients seem to get better by blocking the action of folic acid, then it stands to reason that a sarc patient should not be given folic acid supplements.
It is commonly accepted that bacteria synthesize all their DiHydroFolate directly, and do not require folic acid in order to generate the nucleic acids (for DNA and RNA and protein transcription).
Empirically, we have observed that sarcoidosis patients tend to be able to tolerate the Folic Acid in thir diet, but that their serum folates remain low even when high dose supplementation is used. Clearly something unexpected is going on, and we have no good handle on it right now. It could be the host, or it could be a host-pathogen interaction.
Since it is common for immune patients to have low serum folates, and therefore to be recommended folic acid supplements, we place folic acid on the list of "medications requiring care" so that folks would not gobble it up willynilly, without thinking carefully first.
You know, about 3% of the population is being given regular methotrexate, a DiHydroFolateReductase antagonist, to help their arthritis. Isn't it strange that while we give these folks medicines which block their folic acid metabolism, we pour folic acid down everybody's throats by supplementing all refined flour, and flour products, with folates. We then have the gall to call it "enriched flour". I am not a natural foods zealot (far from it), but you know, some of the things that Government nutritionists are advising us are just plain stupid."
Trevor Marshall, PhD.
For more information, search for 'methotrexate' and 'dihydrofolate reductase' in these course notes from the University of South Carolina http://www.med.sc.edu:85/mayer/antibiot.htm
Dr. Trevor Marshall, PhD
Related info:
Folic acid fortification warning (Fortifying flour with folic acid to cut birth defects may lead to a range of health problems, warn scientists.)
Folic Acid Linked To Increased Cancer Rate, Historical Review Suggests
ScienceDaily (Nov. 5, 2007) — Two recent commentaries appearing in Nutrition Reviews find that the introduction of flour fortified with folic acid into common foods was followed by an increase in colon cancer diagnoses in the U.S. and Canada.
____________________
Nothing contained in this site is or should be considered, or used as a substitute for, medical advice, diagnosis or treatment by your physician.
|
Meg Mangin R.N.
Research Team (on leave)
|
Posted: Sat Aug 27th, 2005 00:36 |
|
THE IMPORTANCE OF AVOIDINGlink
The Importance of Avoiding Refined Sugar and Excess Carbohydrates
"The problem is sugars. Kids eat far too many processed sugary foods. There is no doubt that sugars profoundly affect the immune system - there is a sugar molecule at the heart of every immunoglobulin. By advocating a low carb diet we are helping kids move away from sugars. There is plenty of precedent in medicine for doing this.
I would urge you to look carefully at the children of vegan and vegetarian parents. There have been many attempts to show that their radically restricted diet causes growth problems but they have failed (in law, at least). We are not advocating that level of dietary control, just carbohydrate restriction.
I would urge you not to take a low-carb recommendation as something unusual. It is not unusual.
I don't know of anything to replace a good, fresh food, low-carb (and no-sugar) diet."
The bacteria don't really care whether the sugar is processed or not, as your gut has turned it into all the same powerhouse of energy by the time they get to 'see' it. So a high-carb-diet is as bad as a high-refined-sugar-diet. Except that usually those two things are one and the same.
"N-Linked Glycosylation of large proteins is very common. I was looking at a paper recently which said that up to 30% of the weight of extracted in-vivo proteins was due to glycosylation. However, the sugar in immunoglobulins is more tightly bound.
The important thing is for all food groups to be ingested in moderation, and not to allow sugars to overhwelm other sources of nutrition.
As a matter of interest, some energy is distributed in eukaryotes (people) using the NADPH pathway. Borrelia, Treponema, and possibly other bacteria, do not have the proteins in their genomes to use NADPH as an energy source, and scavenge sugars in lieu. They also scavenge amino acids and lipids from the host. This makes for a more efficient bacterial genome, one that exists in symbiosis with the host. Which is yet another reason not to rely on in-vitro studies when we try to understand bacterial life-cycles.
..Trevor..
==========================================================
"Heartburn'
According to Dana Carpender, who has written several books on lowcarb eating:
"Proteins digest in the stomach, in an acid medium, while carbohydrates digest in the small intestine, in an alkaline medium. This means that eating the two together can trap undigested carbohydrates in your stomach, waiting for proteins to digest - and those carbohydrates can start to ferment in your stomach, leading to indigestion and heartburn. No fun. This is one of the reasons that many people find that reflux clears up on a low carb diet."Last edited on Sat Mar 4th, 2006 04:24 by Meg Mangin R.N.
____________________
Nothing contained in this site is or should be considered, or used as a substitute for, medical advice, diagnosis or treatment by your physician.
|
Current time is 23:49 | |
|
|
|
|
