Attacking Antioxidants Yet Again

Posted on October 11, 2011 by ProfKeith

Trying to knock the value of vitamin and mineral supplements.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote carefully to you all, explain the distortions of studies which ignored the “sick user” effect. It seems like more people are dying of a therapy, whereas in fact they are taking the therapy because they already have a problem.

This latest study (Oct 10th 2011) ignored it royally and came to a disastrous conclusion. You might think they INTENDED to make vitamin and mineral substances look bad!

At the very least, it’s a childish conclusion. Continue reading →

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Why Don’t Sharks Get Viruses?

Posted on October 2, 2011 by ProfKeith

They should, in theory. Sharks have very primitive but, as it happens, highly effective immune systems.

There are no known shark viruses!

Now attention has focused on a possible reason: squalamine, a compound unique to sharks. It has proved to be a promising treatment for hepatitis and other viral diseases, researchers say.

Squalamine has not yet been tested as an antiviral agent in humans, but it has been given to hundreds of people in clinical trials designed to test its usefulness for other conditions.

Georgetown University Medical Center researcher Michael Zasloff, MD, PhD, and colleagues first discovered squalamine almost two decades ago while studying sharks in hopes of finding new, naturally occurring antibiotic agents.

Now squalamine is made synthetically, without needing to kill sharks.

New research by Zasloff has confirmed that it had “unambiguous” activity against viruses that attack cells in the liver and blood, including those that cause hepatitis B, C, and D, yellow fever and dengue fever.

The study appears online in the journal PNAS Early Edition.

How Does It Work?

Actually, it’s very interesting: squalamine does something no other compound can: it changes the electrical balance within cells, eliminating certain positively charged proteins that are bound to the negatively charged surface of the cells’ inner linings. That helps protect the cells that line the liver and blood vessels from infection, Zasloff says.

The result is that squalamine acts fast to stop viral replication by clearing the body of the invading virus within hours.

Because it works by making the host tissue less receptive to infection instead of directly targeting the virus, viral resistance may not be an issue.

Let’s hope this idea of the soil not the seed catches on elsewhere in medicine, eh?

Is Squalamine Safe?

Not necessarily. Reported side effects were few but electrical potential in cells is a vital part of life. Indeed, it is the definition of life: cells without electrical potential are dead. We are programmed at a basic level to maintain a gradient of electric charge over our cell membranes.

So it is very surprising that there wasn’t significant toxicity with this compound.

[REFERENCE: Zasloff, M. PNAS Early Edition, published online Sept. 19, 2011]

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Pick’s Neurodegenerative Disease Shy Drager Syndome

Posted on September 12, 2011 by ProfKeith

One of my subscribers, Joanne, asked me about Pick’s disease. She has a friend with this condition. Coconut oil is helping, she says, but they are both desperate for information and solutions on this dismal condition.

Pick’s disease, is a rare neurodegenerative disease that causes progressive destruction of nerve cells in the brain. Symptoms include loss of speech (aphasia), and dementia. The disease progresses and patients often die within two to ten years.

A defining characteristic of the disease is build up of tau proteins in neurons, accumulating into silver-staining, spherical aggregations known as “Pick bodies”, after named after Arnold Pick, a professor of psychiatry from the University of Prague who first discovered and described the disease in 1892.

The symptoms of Pick’s disease include difficulty in speech and thinking, behavioral changes, impaired regulation of social conduct (e.g. breaches of etiquette, tactlessness, dis-inhibition), passivity, inertia, over-activity, pacing and wandering. The changes in personality allow doctors to distinguish between Pick’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.

Nobody knows the real cause but inflammation accelerates degenerative change, for sure. I never had a case but I did have some Shy Drager’s, another kind of miserable neurodegenerative condition (but worse, because the whole body is involved).

What I suggest here is good for Alzheimer’s, motor neurone disease, ALS, Pick’s and Shy Drager.

The first two are crucial:

  1. IV glutathione (has to be IV). See David Perlmutter’s site on this: http://www.brainrecovery.com
  2. Hericium erinaceus mushroom. It has a powerful nerve growth factor (grows new neurones).

Also remove inflammatory foods of all kinds, as described in my book DIET WISE. (http://www.dietwisebook.com) This is essential and I have had more “miracle” turnarounds from this one thing than any other medical treatment I know—bar NONE.

Oil is good, as Joanne found with the coconut oil. Omega-3s quell inflammation and you must stop inflammation in this person’s body as far as you can. Read Udo Erasmus’s book; it’s as good as any, even though he’s not an MD.

Wobenzym is good for quenching inflammation too. Wobenzym, as its name suggests, is an enzyme formula, brilliant at killing inflammation and digesting and mopping up the metabolites of that. It has uses, even in cancer.

If ever I start to fall apart (God forbid!), this page contains what I want done on me, whether it’s Alzheimer’s, Pick’s, Shy Drager etc.!

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Flu Vaccines A Dangerous Waste of Time

Posted on September 2, 2011 by ProfKeith

At least in children. Not only did it not prevent flu, it resulted in TRIPLE the risk of ending up in hospital.

That’s DANGEROUS in my book (hospitals are the last place you want to be).

So they’ve withdrawn flu vaccine recommendations for kids, right?

Not likely: there’s money in them thar hills! You think out of your crazy mind that they would let go of a cash cow, just because it hurts kids and does not fulfill it’s commercial claims? No way.

Enough sarcasm. What’s the calm, scientific position?

In a paper at the at the 105th International Conference of the American Thoracic Society in San Diego (May 19, 2009), research following 263 children over eight consecutive flu seasons was presented, testing whether flu vaccine was effective in reducing the number of hospitalizations. The children were evaluated at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. Each child was from six months to 18 years of age and each had had laboratory-confirmed influenza, between 1996 to 2006.

The investigators determined who had and had not received the flu vaccine and who did and did not require hospitalization. Records were reviewed for each subject with influenza-related illness for flu vaccination preceding the illness and hospitalization during that illness. There was especial interest in the status of children with asthma.

They found that children who had received the flu vaccine had three times the risk of hospitalization, as compared to children who had not received the vaccine.

Moreover, in asthmatic children, there was a significantly higher risk of hospitalization in subjects who received the TIV, as compared to those who did not (p= 0.006). TIV vaccine (trivalent inactivated flu vaccine) has unknown effects on asthmatics.

But all’s well in the accounting department; we can ignore these inconvenient facts, according to Avni Joshi, M.D., of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. “This study was aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of the TIV in children overall, as well as the children with asthma, to prevent influenza-related hospitalization.”

“While these findings do raise questions about the efficacy of the vaccine, they do not in fact implicate it as a cause of hospitalizations,” said Dr. Joshi. “More studies are needed to assess not only the immunogenicity, but also the efficacy of different influenza vaccines in asthmatic subjects.”

So, the usual cant of “more studies needed”, giving the manufacturers years more of profits.

Meantime, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) continue to recommend that you put your child at TRIPLE THE RISK by stupid and worthless flu vaccines. The National Asthma Education and Prevention Program (3rd revision) is right up there with the clowns and criminals, recommending annual flu vaccination of asthmatic children older than six months.

Ooops, back to the sarcasm again… Sorry!

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The Pretense Of Science Dies Hard

Posted on August 21, 2011 by ProfKeith

You probably saw my recent piece taking down the pretense that salt is bad for us (Why Do Animals Need Salt Licks And We Don’t?) The myth has been going around for years, despite the fact that those on a low salt diet die like flies in the desert heat of summer.

Well, predictably, that set off a cascade of pseudo-science, clinging to the old beliefs. There was no counter-science; just opinions from die-hards. But I’m sharing this with you, just to show how hard and furious these fights are, with truth being the first casualty of war, as the old saying goes.

What is so wrong is the PRETENSE of science that is used to jack up one person or another’s opinion. In this case a couple of toadies came forward with the necessary hatchet-job. In a Comment published in the July 30, 2011 issue of the Lancet and the press release that accompanied it, Dr Feng J He (Queen Mary University, London, UK) and Dr Graham A MacGregor (Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, Barts, London, UK) claim that the pro-salt study “reflect poorly on the reputation of the Cochrane Library and the authors.”

You kidding me? The science must be wrong and the facts withdrawn because it would reflect badly on someone else’s reputation? What kind of science is that?

It’s not science. And notice that, this is how these things work: they did NOT reply to the journal that published the Belgian study (JAMA). Instead they went to the press and another rival journal to stick in their blow for ignorance. Continue reading →

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