NeuroTalk Support Groups - Infection connection -- please research!

NeuroTalk Support Groups (https://www.neurotalk.org/)

- Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD and CRPS) (https://www.neurotalk.org/reflex-sympathetic-dystrophy-rsd-and-crps-/)

- - Infection connection -- please research! (https://www.neurotalk.org/reflex-sympathetic-dystrophy-rsd-and-crps-/79147-infection-connection-please-research.html)

Hyperbarics are amazing, and it breaks my heart that most are not aware of these treatments; and if they are, the logistics and cost of receiving them are often prohibitive. It is just very sad and wrong!

Jeanne

Marshall Protocol for Sarcoidosis

Quote:

Originally Posted by edj2001 (Post 472909)

Hi all,

I am a new member and have read some posts in this thread. I started my research 10 years ago when I was diagnosed with sarcoidosis. I understand the feeling of despair of chronically ill people and feel the pain of the very sick people on this site. .

I have been treating my sarc with the Marshall Protocol (MP) for three years and have had significant improvement. I expect a complete cure in the next year or two.

It is actually the reactivated innate immune system that kills the intracellular bacteria infection. The low dose pulsed antibiotics are bacteriostatic protein inhibitors that block the 70S bacterial ribosome from making the proteins that they use to protect themselves from the Host immune system.

The MP is not easy, requires discipline, and must be approached slowly to avoid the immunopathology associated with the toxins released with the die off of infected cells.

Marshall is not selling anything. You must work with you own doctor to prescribe the medications.

Members of the Autoimmune Research Foundation have presented the MP science at several international medical/science/genomic conferences in the past two years. Links to transcripts and videos can be found at the MP study site.

Two peer reviewed papers discussing the MP science have just been published. Three more will appear in an April publication. Here is a link (below) to the first two along with an article by Amy Proal who is recovering from CFS.

Gene

Sorry, My post was returned. I am not allowed to post links. Maybe you can search by description.

Two peer reviewed papers have just been published on Elsevier's website:

Albert PJ, Proal AD, Marshall TG. Vitamin D: The alternative hypothesis. Autoimmunity Reviews, in press.

dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.autrev.2009.02.016

A full-text preprint is available from:
AutoimmunityResearch.org/transcripts/AR-Albert-VitD.pdf

And:

Proal AD, Albert PJ, Marshall TG. Autoimmunity in the Era of the Metagenome. Autoimmunity Reviews, in press.

dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.autrev.2009.02.011

A full-text preprint is available from:
AutoimmunityResearch.org/transcripts/AR-Proal-Metagenome.pdf

There are still 3 papers "in press" at the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. They have been peer reviewed and accepted, but are awaiting publication in the special issue "Frontiers in Autoimmunity." There is also still a paper in gestation, which has not yet been submitted.

And:

Article about the MP by Amy Proal:
bacteriality.com/about-the-mp

Hi Gene,

Sorry, I almost missed your post up there. I am so happy for you that the Marshall Protocol is helping, and thanks for your further explanation. I actually took the protocol in to our family doctor many months back; but since my daughter has had RSD of the intestines for four years, he was concerned that it would be too hard on her system.

I really need to do more research into the protocol and Sarcoidosis. Ten years ago, after literally months of in-patient testing, my Mom was diagnosed with Sarcoidosis. She did not fit the profile, as she was 67 and had never had any prior problems. It was a very complicated illness, pretty much stumping the doctors at one of the country's best teaching hospitals. She initially presented with stroke symptoms, with an MRI "confirming" that thought; but as the weeks passed, it became apparent that was not the case. Once the Sarcoidosis was discovered, it was thought that what was going on in her brain was likely the same. They began treating her with very high doses of steroids. It turned out that they were mistaken. In actuality, it was a virus that she likely acquired because her immune system had been suppressed by the Sarcoidosis. Sadly, the steroids inflamed the virus and we ended up losing her.

I am so very happy for you and that there is an end in sight! Thanks so much for sharing.

Jeanne

The Case of Dr. Barry Marshall and Dr. Robin Warren

Quote:

Originally Posted by fmichael (Post 472942)

Dear Jeanne -

This said, I suppose still I have a personal bias to disclose. My grandfather was an endocrinologist at the Mayo Clinic and was involved in a lot of the major public controversies in medicine of his day, from being perhaps the first high-profile doc in the country* to publicly support the concept of just pulling the plug on terminally ill patients in intractable pain - a radical idea for the Fifties on account of which he was actually barred from speaking at some medical schools - to writing against the food faddists of the late sixties, who claimed without any hard evidence that you could cure this condition or that with this sort of oil, etc. (Claims that were generally advanced without anything approaching a double-blind study, even in circumstances where putting together such a study wouldn't have been at all expensive.) In any event, after he retired he wrote a book he called "Americans Love Hogwash," and then through contacts secured the services of a top literary agent to peddle the book. Unfortunately, as funny and well supported as the manuscript was - or at least I thought so - the agent had to report his complete failure in securing a publisher after a couple of months of effort. Turned out that in the eyes of the publishing houses, general readers didn't want to shell out their time and money for a book only to be disabused of their hopes and dreams.

And as another aside, my wife and I are no longer seeing eye-to-eye on any number of things, that comes down to the same basic thing, whether or not it serves any purpose to believe in something just because everyone else does. (In the interest of keeping what friends I've got, I'll spare you the details.)

Now, as noted, there is a role for case reports in this world. Heck, my article on ECT consisted mostly in stringing maybe 50 of them together. But generally, you should expect to see them followed up with at least a small controlled study maybe three or four years later, unless where there's a reason why you can't do a double blind study: as in the case of ECT where I understand that everyone wakes up from the general anesthetic knowing whether or not they've been zapped. But I have seen over the last few years a good number of guys with proprietary interest in the positions they assert, having dozens of - generally unpublished - papers they've written on their websites, each of which just happens to circle back to the same tired old case report, if that. (True.)

Most good academic MDs that I know would have no problem, if the evidence changed, to abandon positions they had publicly exposed for years. (Reminds me of a couple of years ago, when a scientist at a symposia tried to trip up the Dalai Lama by asking him what he would do if science unequivocally disproved a major tenant of Buddhism, to which the monk responded, then Buddhism would have to be adjusted accordingly.) On the other hand, there are lots of folks out there who are so wedded to seeing their practice area as a series of marketing niches, not to be lightly disturbed. Some of the latter may practice out strip malls; others may be full boat professors at major private universities. (In the words of an old joke, we’ve already established what they are; now we’re just dickering over the price.) In any case, may we all be delivered from the hands of these learned men and women.

And may your daughter soon overcome the burden of this monster.

Mike

Dear Mike,

I appreciate your position on this and in consideration of your comments regarding your grandfathers book, of which I would be highly interested in reading, I draw you attention to an excerpt from a blog published on Dr. Russell Blaylock's website entitled "Regimentation in Medicine and the Death of Creativity" Dr. Blaylock is a neurosurgeon, author and lecturer, here he speaks directly about the state of modern medicine, a very interesting read. As much of the discussion on the forum has been focused on the possible link between viruses and RSD I thought this excerpt about the case of Dr. Barry Marshall and Dr. Robin Warren who discovered the virus that causes ulcers brings the point home.

Quote:

The Case of Dr. Barry Marshall and Dr. Robin Warren

While many examples abound in scientific and medical history, there is one contemporary example that is most instructive; that of Dr. Barry Marshall. Dr. Marshall, like all great discoverers, was a keen observer and listener. Another medical iconoclast, Dr. Robin Warren in the 1980s, in fact, suggested the link between an infectious organism and stomach ulcers. A pathologist, Dr. Warren observed that stomach specimens from patients with inflammatory stomach disorders, including ulcers, frequently contained a microbe, later identified as helicobacter pylori.

Dr. Warren tried to inform his colleagues about this connection, but they instead made him the butt of their jokes. After all, I am sure they concluded, how could some obscure, local pathologist from Perth, Australia solve the riddle of stomach ulcers when the best experts in the world concluded otherwise.

Dr. Barry Marshall didn’t laugh, instead he listened and conducted carefully controlled experiments to see if Dr. Warren was correct. His evidence should have convinced anyone, but the power of the preconceived notion, especially one that emanates from the elite members of the medical establishment, is a very difficult thing to overcome.

As occurs so commonly in our modern world, he had great difficulty overcoming the reticence of the medical establishment to at least give him a respectful audience. His articles were rejected by the major gastroenterology journals and he was refused an audience at respected gastroenterology meetings. Except for his dogged determination, as admitted by his friend Dr. Warren, the theory would never have seen the light of day, which even then took 10 years.

It was only through one influential doctor’s assistance that he was given the audience he sought; the rest, as they say, is history. Yet, that is not the end of the story. In the year 2005, Dr. Marshall and Dr. Warren shared the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine for their discovery. Today, there are thousands of articles confirming their findings and we now know that this same organism is linked to cancer of the stomach and possibly atherosclerosis.

There are several lessons to learn from this sordid episode other than the obvious one- the medical elite’s resistance to ideas outside its control. First, Dr. Marshall himself admitted that his training in medical school left him with the impression that “ everything had already been discovered in medicine”. Most of us who attended medical training were given this same impression, that we were just ordinary “doctors” and that only the elite of the medical centers held sufficient intellect to formulate meaningful discoveries, and then only from the “chosen medical centers”.

One of the other lessons is that in most areas of medicine today there are powerful, most often financial, forces that have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. One of these forces is the entrenched elite of the medical world, usually subdivided among each of the specialties of medicine. In the case of Dr. Marshall and Warren, it was the gastroenterologists.

To have spent one’s life in the study of a particular problem and arrived at no new discoveries is painful enough, but to have some young upstart suddenly appear on the scene proclaiming to have the “answer” is especially disconcerting to those holding prestigious positions.

A second, less obvious force to the casual observer, is the financial influence on rigidity in medicine. The pharmaceutical companies were making a fortune in selling antacid medications for the treatment of ulcers. Cimetidine (Tagamet) and ranitidine (Zantac) were the leading ulcer medications at the time and to the CEO makers of these medications, they were the dream drugs of the industry-primarily because they did not cure ulcers and therefore, required a lifetime of the medication.

The largest pharmaceutical companies are major funding institutions of research in the medical centers, especially the more influential medical centers. Consequently, the leaders of specialty societies are often financially connected to the pharmaceutical manufacturers, which affect their decision-making, both consciously and subconsciously. Even the ethically centered physician will come under this influence. It took me a long time to admit this myself when I was practicing neurosurgery.

When pharmaceutical detail men and women are giving you abundant supplies of free medications for your office, treating you and your staff to lunches and office parties, and offering free trips to meetings in exotic places, one has a propensity to, even subconsciously, yield to their influence. Why else would pharmaceutical companies spend billions on such programs to influence doctors prescribing habits?

Drug detail personnel used to be mostly men. Yet, over time they found it very difficult to get appointments to see the doctor. Quickly catching on, the pharmaceutical companies began to hire women, mostly young, very attractive women. It worked like a charm; suddenly doctors made time to see the pretty drug detail lady. More than a few left their wives and married the drug rep.

Medical history is littered with such episodes, yet we learn nothing. I like to say that the medical profession’s learning curve is a flat line. As Arthur Schopenhauer has stated, “Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first, it is ridiculed, in the second it is opposed, in the third it is regarded as self-evident.”

Here is a link to the article in it's entirety for those interested in reading further. http://www.russellblaylockmd.com/

On a personal note I'm very happy to see the tone and nature of this thread is providing a respectful platform for open discussion and learning. Thank you all for your thought provoking contributions.

MsL

Dear Mike,

We are mates, never ever forget because I never ever will. I just want you to be out of the pain that is beyond any charts. You know I really care, we go back to many years. YOU ARE VERY DEAR TO ME.

Love, Roz xoxo

Lyme Disease and Under our Skin Documentarty

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mslday (Post 473075)

MsL,

Thanks for sharing Dr Baylock's comments. There is a huge controversy in the Lyme Disease community and it is well presented in the documentary "UNDER OUR SKIN" It is a must see.

One of the researchers mentioned is Dr. McDonald. I can't post links but check out some of his posts at these addresses (below). He has identified the Lyme bacteria in 7 out of the 10 Alzheimers brains he has tested. He has also observed Lyme biofilns in what he says provides proof of concept for chronic Lyme.
Gene

**

**

**

**

Also, great article by Amy on biofilms

**

http://www.snagfilms.com/films/watch/under_our_skin/

Dear ED,

My blood work is low on Vitamin D and B, how in the world could the M/P HELP ME????

The M/P is not for everyone.

Roz

Dear MsL,

I am going through Dr. Blylock's website, and under the Blylock Wellness Report," came to a page entitled "Why Haven't You Been Told About
the REAL Cause of Heart Attacks?" at http://w3.newsmax.com/blaylock/22a.cfm and it's scarry stuff: basically you have a guy trained as a neurosurgeon, issueing histerical polemics against statins, and dismissing the thousands of papers that have found them to be of service, because "corrrelation does not equal causality." (Yes, but that's what advanced statistical theory is all about, something that I suspect have been applied to many of the studies he simply dismisses out of hand.)

But the big point I wanted to make is that the guy is apparently using his site to market a proprietary "Wellness Report":

Find out even more of the surprising truth about Coronary Disease, Strokes and Cholesterol — and many other issues affecting your health . . .

Go Here Now For Instant Access

Each month, you can count on The Blaylock Wellness Report to give you:

"Spin-Free" Affordable Health News
In each issue, The Blaylock Wellness Report reports on the "real story" behind today's major health issues. Just like the truth about heart disease and cholesterol.

It gives you the honest "inside scoop" on diseases and health-related issues affecting you and your family (as well as your family's financial security): cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's, autism, Parkinson's disease, obesity and many other threats to your well-being, even your very life.

Usually, The Blaylock Wellness Report goes for $96 a year, an extremely reasonable $8 per month. And even at that price, it's seriously under-priced.

But as a special offer, we've lowered the cost by a full 50%. You have the risk-free opportunity to try out The Blaylock Wellness Report for a paltry $4 a month — $48 for the entire year!

Who wouldn't jump at this? After all, what else can you get for $4 these days? You can't even get lunch for that anymore . . .

PLUS, if you subscribe for two years right now, you'll get an even greater deal: $79 for 24 monthly issues — two full years of health-saving advice.

In addition to that, you sure can't beat the convenience. The Blaylock Wellness Report will be e-mailed to your inbox as a convenient PDF attachment, or you can access it easily via hyperlink. (You can also have the print edition mailed directly to you for only 50 cents additional per month, if you prefer — or even less, with your 2-year subscription.)

So don't wait. Grab your own Blaylock Wellness Report in less than 5 minutes.

Go Here Right Now for Better Health!

There's no risk to you whatsoever. If you do not agree with me 100% that you are getting much more in value than your small monetary investment from this cutting-edge unbiased health information, you may cancel at any time — with no future obligation — and keep ALL the reports you've received.

But that's just the start, because now you also get:

Your Special Archive Bonus Worth Over $600.00
Suppose you discovered only one thing this year from reading The Blaylock Wellness Report — but that one thing helped you prevent, minimize or eliminate a hazardous health problem. . . Then consider how many hundreds of health tips and strategies you'll be privy to over the course of a year with your super-affordable membership.

Are you starting to see just how far four dollars a month will go with The Blaylock Wellness Report?

Moreover, if you sign up today for this unbeatable no-risk offer, we'll sweeten the deal even more with a FREE Special Archive Bonus:

You'll get free access to ALL previously-published Blaylock Wellness Reports on a multitude of different health topics. This $600+ value includes dozens of reports on hundreds of subjects you need to know about. . . .

You'll forgive me. The man come across as a scientist. More like someone you would find peddling snake oil. Ever here that great Tom Wait's song, Step Right Up?

Mike

Quote:

Originally Posted by fmichael (Post 473338)

Find out even more of the surprising truth about Coronary Disease, Strokes and Cholesterol — and many other issues affecting your health . . .

Go Here Now For Instant Access

Each month, you can count on The Blaylock Wellness Report to give you:

"Spin-Free" Affordable Health News
In each issue, The Blaylock Wellness Report reports on the "real story" behind today's major health issues. Just like the truth about heart disease and cholesterol.

It gives you the honest "inside scoop" on diseases and health-related issues affecting you and your family (as well as your family's financial security): cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's, autism, Parkinson's disease, obesity and many other threats to your well-being, even your very life.

Usually, The Blaylock Wellness Report goes for $96 a year, an extremely reasonable $8 per month. And even at that price, it's seriously under-priced.

But as a special offer, we've lowered the cost by a full 50%. You have the risk-free opportunity to try out The Blaylock Wellness Report for a paltry $4 a month — $48 for the entire year!

Who wouldn't jump at this? After all, what else can you get for $4 these days? You can't even get lunch for that anymore . . .

PLUS, if you subscribe for two years right now, you'll get an even greater deal: $79 for 24 monthly issues — two full years of health-saving advice.

In addition to that, you sure can't beat the convenience. The Blaylock Wellness Report will be e-mailed to your inbox as a convenient PDF attachment, or you can access it easily via hyperlink. (You can also have the print edition mailed directly to you for only 50 cents additional per month, if you prefer — or even less, with your 2-year subscription.)

So don't wait. Grab your own Blaylock Wellness Report in less than 5 minutes.

Go Here Right Now for Better Health!

There's no risk to you whatsoever. If you do not agree with me 100% that you are getting much more in value than your small monetary investment from this cutting-edge unbiased health information, you may cancel at any time — with no future obligation — and keep ALL the reports you've received.

But that's just the start, because now you also get:

Your Special Archive Bonus Worth Over $600.00
Suppose you discovered only one thing this year from reading The Blaylock Wellness Report — but that one thing helped you prevent, minimize or eliminate a hazardous health problem. . . Then consider how many hundreds of health tips and strategies you'll be privy to over the course of a year with your super-affordable membership.

Are you starting to see just how far four dollars a month will go with The Blaylock Wellness Report?

Moreover, if you sign up today for this unbeatable no-risk offer, we'll sweeten the deal even more with a FREE Special Archive Bonus:

You'll get free access to ALL previously-published Blaylock Wellness Reports on a multitude of different health topics. This $600+ value includes dozens of reports on hundreds of subjects you need to know about. . . .

You'll forgive me. The man come across as a scientist. More like someone you would find peddling snake oil. Ever here that great Tom Wait's song, Step Right Up?

Mike

http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache...lnk&cd=8&gl=us

Vitamin D is a seco-steroid not a vitamin

Dear ED,

My blood work is low on Vitamin D and B, how in the world could the M/P HELP ME????

The M/P is not for everyone.

Roz

Hi Roz,

The CDC recently reported that 90,000,000 people in the US suffer from chronic disease. MEDCO the nation’s largest prescription supplier reported that in 2007 for the first time over half of its subscribed customers were taking a prescription drug. The biggest increases, they report, are in children under 19 years old.

For over 50 years we have been supplementing vitamin D in food and vitamins. Where is the benefit!!! The vitamin D council say we just aren’t taking enough and must take more!!! Maybe it is time to ask them to prove it and explain the metabolic pathways that show the claimed benefits and don’t fall back on subjective epidemiological correlations ripe with confounding factors. .

Vitamin D is not a vitamin. By definition a vitamin is a required nutrient that can’t be made by the body. This is not the case for vitamin D. Vitamin D is actually a seco-steroid with the active hormone being 1,25-D made in the kidneys and passed to the blood to the cellular vitamin D nuclear receptor (VDR). The VDR is responsible for transcribing over 900 genes many of which are important to the innate immune system such as the antimicrobial peptides.

Marshall proposes that the current idea that low vitamin D is the cause for disease disregards the alternative hypothesis that it is the disease that is causing low vitamin D assay values.

The disease being, intracellular bacterial infection by cell wall deficient bacteria and their associated biofilms.

PLEASE check out the link that Dubious posted re the Marshall Protocol, which includes the following:

Dr. Trevor Marshall has two degrees, both in electrical engineering. Before I begin, I want to again remind you that I am a psychiatrist who works at a state mental hospital. In my duty to full disclosure, I must say that I have known a lot of psychiatrists in my life and a few electrical engineers. If I knew nothing else of a disagreement between two people but their professions, I would believe the electrical engineer, not the psychiatrist.

In reading his two articles, Dr. Marshall's main hypotheses are simple. (1) Vitamin D from sunlight is different than vitamin D from supplements. (2) Vitamin D is immunosuppressive and the low blood levels of vitamin D found in many chronic diseases are the result of the disease and not the cause. (3) Taking vitamin D will harm you, that is, vitamin D will make many diseases worse, not better. If you read his blog, you discover that the essence of the Marshall protocol is: "An angiotensin II receptor blocker medication, Benicar, is taken, and sunlight, bright lights and foods and supplements with vitamin D are diligently avoided. This enables the body's immune system, with the help of small doses of antibiotics, to destroy the intracellular bacteria. It can take approximately one to three years to destroy all the bacteria." That is, Dr. Marshall has his "patients" become very vitamin D deficient.

Again, Dr. Marshall conducted no experiment and published no study. He wrote an essay. He presented no evidence for his first hypothesis (sunlight's vitamin D is different than supplements). From all that we know, cholecalciferol is cholecalciferol, regardless if it is made in the skin or put in the mouth. His second hypothesis is certainly possible and that is why all scientists who do association studies warn readers that they don't know what is causing what. Certainly, when low levels of vitamin D are found in certain disease states, it is possible that the low levels are the result, and not the cause, of the disease. Take patients with severe dementia bedridden in a nursing home. At least some of their low 25(OH)D levels are likely the result of confinement and lack of outdoor activity. However, did dementia cause the low vitamin D levels or did low 25 (OH)D contribute to the dementia? One way to look at that question is to look at early dementia, before the patient is placed in a nursing home. On the first day an older patient walks into a neurology clinic, before being confined to a nursing home, what is the relationship between vitamin D levels and dementia? The answer is clear, the lower your 25(OH)D levels the worse your cognition.

Wilkins CH, Sheline YI, Roe CM, Birge SJ, Morris JC. Vitamin D deficiency is associated with low mood and worse cognitive performance in older adults. Am J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2006 Dec;14(12):1032-40.

Przybelski RJ, Binkley NC. Is vitamin D important for preserving cognition? A positive correlation of serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentration with cognitive function. Arch Biochem Biophys. 2007 Apr 15;460(2):202-5. Epub 2007 Jan 8.

These studies suggest that the low 25(OH)D levels are contributing to the dementia but do not prove it. Only a randomized controlled trial will definitively answer the question, a trial that has not been done. So you will have to decide if vitamin D is good for your brain or not. Dr. Marshall seems to be saying demented patients should lower their 25(OH)D levels. Keep in mind, an entire chapter in Feldman's textbook is devoted to the ill effects low vitamin D levels have on brain function.

Brachet P, et al. Vitamin D, a neuroactive hormone: from brain development to pathological disorders. In Feldman D., Pike JW, Glorieux FH, eds. Vitamin D. San Diego : Elsevier, 2005.

[Emphasis added.]

The point being, who needs evidence when you've got a compelling theory? Oh yeah, that and there's lots of evidence that Vit. D. deficiencies can be really bad for you.

Once more, the link is http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache...lnk&cd=8&gl=us

Mike