Monthly Archives: November 2012

Unknown's avatar lassesen 12:00 am on November 25, 2012  

Honestly! Chocolate!!!

By chocolate I means dark/bitter chocolate (85%). The dosages need to be at least 50-100 g per day (~ 2 oz) to replicate studies where they resulted in improvement and some patients being able to return to work. Note 85% chocolate has as much sugar in it as an apple, so the sugar hit is low. You may find that after a day or two, it is no longer a “treat” but something that you have to work on consuming the required dosage.

What does chocolate do? According to pub med studies:

  • changes metabolism at 40g/day
  • after 2 weeks, microfloras(gut bacteria is changed
  • reduce inflammation cytokines such as TNF, IL-10, as well as IgE
  • improves blood flow in the brain
  • reduces coagulation
  • reduces nitric oxide(NO) release – which various researchers deem very important (Martin Pall and others)
  • alters lactate, citrate, succinate, trans-aconitate, urea, proline, adrenaline, DOPA, 3-methoxy-tyrosine, methylamines, p-cresol sulfate, hippurate, etc .

And last, in terms of it’s impact on CFS patients, it improves symptoms with 20% of the patients in the study being able to return to work! Read the study yourself:

Thozhukat Sathyapalan, Stephen Beckett, Alan S Rigby, Duane D Mellor, Stephen L Atkin High cocoa polyphenol rich chocolate may reduce the burden of the symptoms in chronic fatigue syndrome Nutrition Journal

Sources:

  • One source is Trader Joe’s grocery stores — they have their own brand selling at < $2 for 75 grams.
  • Or online: (I’ve identified single (cheapest) orders that is just right for a single course)
Unknown's avatar lassesen 12:00 am on November 25, 2012  

CoQ 10

Coenzyme Q10, also known as ubiquinone, ubidecarenone, coenzyme Q, and abbreviated at times to CoQ10. It has many usages in the bodies from ATP to impacting the transfer of electrons in the body.

Studies found that ~70% of CFS patients improved with taking this supplement, especially with a reduction in the number of headaches. This rate of improvement is interesting because studies found that only 45% of CFS patients have low levels of CoQ10 (so you would expect only 45% to improve). Low levels are seen in various fibromyalgia. There have been no studies with Lyme or Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

The low levels of CoQ10 measured in the body are associated with worst headaches.

The mechanism of action is unclear, it improves mitochondrial function (the usual attempt to explain its impact) but it also reduces blood clotting. In other words, it may be used as part of the body anti-coagulation mechanism. Coagulation and headaches are associated — so how it helps is actually fuzzy for CFS/FM patients.

Marketing Versions?

There are many versions of CoQ10 sold as being “better”. Unfortunately, there is no evidence to support this marketing claim (Check PubMed yourself!). Without evidence, it is hard to recommend premium versions that will impact your supplement budget negatively. Often the cost of these “designer” supplements is 2 to 5 times more per mg.

The following items were selected for the lowest cost per mg of CoQ10.

The pricing is often contra-intuitative: For example on the Amazon.UK site, the same brand (and description) CoQ10 are:

So they charge more if they have to make less capsules!  This also illustrates that a supplement budget can be stretched a lot further by careful shopping.

Unknown's avatar lassesen 12:00 am on November 24, 2012  

Changing Microflora by Rotating Antibiotics

In 1999, I can down with sudden onset CFS. Once the diagnosis was made the challenge of treatment arose. My family practice MD did not know how to treat beyond trying to give symptom relief. The MD challenge me to find a way to treat… I still had periods of reasonable intelligence on some days. I also had done a Masters in statistical analysis of medical treatments…

After researching everything that was published, I ended up saying that no-one knows what causes this condition — tons of theories. I ended up with two protocols that had a high rate of remission being reported:

  • David Berg’s  use of Heparin to address hyper-coagulation of CFS patients (this has been confirmed to apply to Lyme patients also in 2009).
  • Use of long term antibiotics.

Both had a remission rate of 70+%. So if I did both, then my odds would be 91% for remission. I liked those odds. There were many protocols being proposed so the question became one of which one to pick. I opted for the protocol with the shortest time to remission and the highest incidence of remission: Cecil Jadin’s protocol.

Her protocol was very appealing because it was a grandfathered protocol. It had been used long before CFS or Lyme became medical conditions. This means that the risk of unexpected side-effects was much less than a newly created protocol.

It worked!  By 2001, I was in full remission and stayed there for eleven years. I went out of remission as a result of flu (that sent me to hospital) while under stress.

Re-Evaluating Jadin’s Protocol in light of Microflora

Jadin’s protocol does work for a considerable percentage of patients. The typical medical reaction when doing something that cures or improves a condition is to try to explain why it worked. For the use of antibiotics, the logical first-pass explanation is that it is impacting an infection in the body or the blood. There is a problem here…

The problem is that short term antibiotics should be sufficient. There are a few infections like TB that require long term antibiotics — but with those infections, the infection can continue to be detected. This was not always the case with CFS. Conclusion: long term antibiotics are not warranted.

If we do a second-pass on why Jadin’s protocol worked better than other protocols, we may conclude that it worked better because it’s rotation through different families of antibiotics resulted in different gut-flora species being reduced progressively until a healthy balance is re-established. Any single antibiotic will not do this. It also explains why the length of CFS and the length of treatment required have no relationship.

To recover means destroying the dysfunctional microflora which have settled into a steady state within 6 months of onset. Experience now makes sense.

Example of Antibiotics against one Microflora Species

My favorite probiotic is Mutaflor (E. Coli Nissle 1917) because CFS patients often have only 25% of the normal level of E.Coli. Worst still, E.Coli is usually reduced by lactobacillus species found in many common probiotics. The mutaflor people have identified which antibiotics it is sensitive to (and which it is not).

Anti-biotics Guidance for Mutaflor
May be taken with Efficiency reduced by
  • Clindamycin
  • Erythromycin
  • Metronidazole
  • Penicillin G
  • Quinupristin / Dalfopristin
  • Rifampin
  • Teicoplanin
  • Vancomycin
  • Cefsulodin
  • Amikacin
  • Amoxicillin / clavulanic acid
  • Ampicillin
  • Azlocillin
  • Cefaclor
  • Cefazolin
  • Cefoperazone
  • Cefotaxime
  • Ceftriaxone
  • Cephalothin
  • Chloramphenicol
  • Ciprofloxacin
  • Doxycycline
  • Gentamicin
  • Imipenem
  • Latamoxef
  • Mezlocillin
  • Nitrofuratoin
  • Norfloxacin
  • Pipemidic
  • Piperacillin
  • Tetracycline
  • Ticarcillin
  • Tobramycin
  • Trimethoprim / sulfamethoxazole

Antibiotics do not kill ALL of your gut flora. They reduce some species (but within each species there are species that may be resistant).

Summary

If you are a patient or a MD and wish to alter microflora via probiotics then consider Cecile Jadin’s protocol. It is typically 7-10 days on antibiotics followed by 2-3 weeks off. The weeks off should include aggressive use of non-lactobacillus probiotics and pre-biotics.

Unknown's avatar lassesen 12:00 am on November 22, 2012  

A chat with former child in Dr. Bell’s Lyndonville Outbreak

I had lunch with one of the kids touched by the Lyndonville outbreak. She still has CFS but it is less then when it was most severe. During the conversation she mentioned that Dr.Bell was using antibiotics long term with his patients until he was threatened with his medical license being pulled if he did not stop.

The person also mentioned the best year of her life, she was being treated for a sinus infection. The sinus infection did not clear, so she ended up spending a year trying different antibiotics every few weeks. The sinus infection did not respond to any of them — but she really felt a lot better…

She related a very interesting story on a temporary cure for CFS symptoms. Lyndonville is a rural area with many farmers — many of which came down with CFS. When it came to harvest time, the harvest had to come in and they had to do it.  Someone discovered that rolling in poison oak caused the CFS symptoms to clear for a while and this became a regular practice for some of the farmers. The pain of poison oak or poison ivy was much less than the financial pain of loosing the harvest.

The chemical in this plant is Urushiol. Looking at this compound I found that it impacts cytokines in some interesting ways [Technical articles: 1988, 1989, 1996]. One of the ways was that the production of IL-2 and gamma-interferon was much lower. Dr. Bell recorded his observations in this article. He laments that there have been no followup on these observations by others.

 

Unknown's avatar lassesen 12:00 am on November 22, 2012  

A chat with former child in Dr. Bell's Lyndonville Outbreak

I had lunch with one of the kids touched by the Lyndonville outbreak. She still has CFS but it is less then when it was most severe. During the conversation she mentioned that Dr.Bell was using antibiotics long term with his patients until he was threatened with his medical license being pulled if he did not stop.

The person also mentioned the best year of her life, she was being treated for a sinus infection. The sinus infection did not clear, so she ended up spending a year trying different antibiotics every few weeks. The sinus infection did not respond to any of them — but she really felt a lot better…

She related a very interesting story on a temporary cure for CFS symptoms. Lyndonville is a rural area with many farmers — many of which came down with CFS. When it came to harvest time, the harvest had to come in and they had to do it.  Someone discovered that rolling in poison oak caused the CFS symptoms to clear for a while and this became a regular practice for some of the farmers. The pain of poison oak or poison ivy was much less than the financial pain of loosing the harvest.

The chemical in this plant is Urushiol. Looking at this compound I found that it impacts cytokines in some interesting ways [Technical articles: 1988, 1989, 1996]. One of the ways was that the production of IL-2 and gamma-interferon was much lower. Dr. Bell recorded his observations in this article. He laments that there have been no followup on these observations by others.