Month: September 2012

Glutathione – your body’s ‘Master Anti-oxidant’

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Glutathione has been a major part of my progress for the last 2.5 years. If I go more than 5-7 days without, I start going downhill. Fast. It is the reason I can walk again and communicate using words again.

I have learned a tremendous amount on the subject. My Neurologist, Dr. David Perlmutter, pioneered it’s use almost 20 years ago for many intense Neurological conditions. He has since taught and/or consulted with a great many physicians on the use and administration of Glutathione over the years.  
 There are many forms out there. From pills to suppositories, inhalers, etc. BUT… the ONLY way for your body to get and use additional Glutathione is through IV. Period.

I have heard a few people suggest they had a less than plesant experience with Glutathione. From personal experience I am certain incorrect handling and/or poor product is the cause. I have personally had bad experiences early on. I had begun to urinate blood (a LOT of blood) immediately following my first few Glutathione IV’s from a Dr in Chicago.

After several doctors and a hospital stay failed to figure it out, I went to the Dr’s office and inspected his Glutathione supply. It was from some obscure pharmacy and was not only oxidized but also expired. Glutathione is very sensitive to both light and heat. Proper handling is paramount.  That means from the time it leaves the pharmacy until it reaches your bloodstream. Moreover, there is ONE place and ONE place only that I feel should be a source of Glutathione.

Wellness Pharmacy is where Dr Perlmutter has his compounded. As you all can certainly understand, I was not interested in trying anything other than what has been proven to work. That meant for me, I would only get it from the pharmacy that patented it’s creation method.

Wellness has patented the method for creating 100% reduced L-Glutathione.  Once I switched to the pure form compounded there, not only have I had ZERO issues, it’s potency is dramatically higher than the others I’ve experienced.

The correct way to prepare and administer Glutathione is through an IV push (NOT injecting Glutathione into a 500ml bag of saline!). It is important to dilute with 10ml of Sodium Chloride into a syringe. My dosage generally is 3000IU of Glutathione, diluted with 10ml of Sodium Chloride.
Glutathione is your body’s “Master Anti-Oxidant”. It is a naturally occuring substance that is largely responsible for your overall health and function. Among the many things it does, one is it’s arguably the most effective scavenger of free-radicals. The little evil-doers that attack your body and brain continually.

A little over 2 years ago, I taught myself to do an IV push. I had no luck finding (or affording!) Dr’s locally who would be willing to help. And I sure as heck wasn’t going to go back to BoBo the Circus Chimp who had administered it the first time. He clearly was hardly competent. And Dr Perlmutter was 2000 miles away.

I want to share a video I made during today’s IV push for a number of reasons. But most importantly, I made it to show that you CAN do anything – even things you think impossible. Let us not forget: Your thoughts greatly affect your outcomes in life. Whether you think you can or think you cannot – you’re right. It’s up to you to decide which you choose. Personally, I believe I can.

You CAN and will get through this.

I will soon do another post with more in-depth information on Glutathione as well as other supplements soon. But for now, know that together we will all get through this.

Please, if you have questions or would just like to drop me a note with your thoughts, please use the contact me page.

 

A switch to Gluten-Free living

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Maybe Michael has always been gluten-intolerent. If he has, we hadn’t noticed in the past. You see we are from Chicago, so our diet used to consist of Pizza, Italian beef sandwiches, and Pizza.

Then in May 2012, his neurologist, Dr Perlmutter, recommended a test for gluten intolerence. It came back showing that, in fact, Michael was very intolerent to gluten and that it must be cut out of his diet immediately.

So I did what any normal mother would have done- open my kitchen pantry and cry at the stockpile of whole grain pasta, crackers, cereal, and the other many various kitchen staples that has built the American diet for the past couple decades, and that we could not eat anymore. Then I went online and to the library to research how to live gluten-free.

Michael has been gluten free for months now- every once and a while I’ll tap into the gluten stockpile and offer a different meal to Michael than I do for Aedan because I don’t want the other food to go to waste. And I have to say, only good things have come from this change.

Michael still has bad days where he struggles to get enough energy to walk across the house, but overall, the removal of gluten has lessened some symptoms. It is hard to quantify because his symptoms inhabit so many body systems but I can say that relatively speaking many things have improved. On the pain scale from 1-10 Michael often existed at a 7. Now he can say that he’s down to a 5. While still too painful for me, any improvement is monumental. His brain fog that caused him to sometimes walk about the house at a zombie’s pace has been upgraded from “zombie” to “tired person”. Most importantly, his symptoms are more…predictable…He knows that if he does too much or skips out on his supplements, his body will react accordingly whereas before it was more random.

This new focus on proper nutrition is life changing for all involved. Pizza and Italian beef has been replaced by Kale and Roast Chicken. My scientific brain gets to enjoy the chemistry behind why the body needs certain vitamins and minerals. My inner child gets to be the “Swedish Chef” from the muppets as I make gluten-free bread from scratch.

Gluten-free white birthday cake for Michael’s 39th Bday was the best cake I’ve ever tasted!

In the end, I’m not surprised Michael’s body cannot tolerate gluten. For decades wheat starting being cultivated so that the strains containing the most gluten were in high demand because the American taste buds liked the gooey texture of high gluten wheat. It just doesn’t surprise me that the same culture that created these Frankenstein-like drugs also creates food that the body cannot process. Whatever turns a profit I guess.

New York Times Article

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Only after decades of killing, maiming, and complete destruction of innocent lives (assuming they SURVIVE these drugs) only now are we really getting some news coverage. Face it, we generally have NO clue what Doctors are prescribing. By that I mean that we rarely ever know what these drugs truly do and what their TRUE side-effects are. IF that information is even available, it’s buried in the package insert that you’ll never see.

What did we do to protect ourselves before the information age? Before being able to Google these things, we the people had NO way of knowing the side-effects of the drugs being prescribed.

WAKE UP everyone. Doctors often have absolutely NO clue what these Frankenstein drugs they regularly prescribe do to our bodies. Take it from me. I have so far barely survived modern medicine.

This is a link to original article by the NEW YORK TIMES. Below is the entire article.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/popular-antibiotics-may-carry-serious-side-effects/?emc=eta1

It’s about time the mainstream media shed light on the devastation these drugs are causing.

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Antibiotics are important drugs, often restoring health and even saving lives. But like all drugs, they can have unwanted and serious side effects, some of which may not become apparent until many thousands of patients have been treated.

Such is the case with an important class of antibiotics known as fluoroquinolones. The best known are Cipro (ciprofloxacin), Levaquin (levofloxacin) and Avelox (moxifloxacin). In 2010, Levaquin was the best-selling antibiotic in the United States.

But by last year it was also the subject of more than 2,000 lawsuits from patients who had suffered severe reactions after taking it.

Part of the problem is that fluoroquinolones are often inappropriately prescribed. Instead of being reserved for use against serious, perhaps life-threatening bacterial infections like hospital-acquired pneumonia, these antibiotics are frequently prescribed for sinusitis, bronchitis, earaches and other ailments that may resolve on their own or can be treated with less potent drugs or nondrug remedies — or are caused by viruses, which are not susceptible to antibiotics.

In an interview, Mahyar Etminan, a pharmacological epidemiologist at the University of British Columbia, said the drugs were overused “by lazy doctors who are trying to kill a fly with an automatic weapon.”

Dr. Etminan directed a study published in April in The Journal of the American Medical Association showing that the risk of suffering a potentially blinding retinal detachment was nearly fivefold higher among current users of fluoroquinolones, compared with nonusers. In another study submitted for publication, he documented a significantly increased risk of acute kidney failure among users of these drugs.

The conditions Dr. Etminan has studied are relatively easy to research because they result in hospitalizations with diagnoses that are computerized and tracked in databases. Far more challenging to study are the array of diffuse, confusing symptoms suffered by fluoroquinolone users like Lloyd Balch, a 33-year-old Manhattan resident and Web site manager for City College of New York.

In an interview, Mr. Balch said he was healthy until April 20, when a fever and cough prompted him to see a doctor. Nothing was heard through a stethoscope, but a chest X-ray indicated a mild case of pneumonia, and he was given Levaquin. Although he had heard of problems with Levaquin and asked the doctor if he might take a different antibiotic, he was told Levaquin was the drug he needed.

After just one dose, he developed widespread pain and weakness. He called to report this reaction, but was told to take the next dose. But the next pill, he said, “eviscerated” him, causing pain in all his joints and vision problems.

Debilitating Side Effects

In addition to being unable to walk uphill, climb stairs or see clearly, his symptoms included dry eyes, mouth and skin; ringing in his ears; delayed urination; uncontrollable shaking; burning pain in his eyes and feet; occasional tingling in his hands and feet; heart palpitations; and muscle spasms in his back and around his eyes. Though Mr. Balch’s reaction is unusual, doctors who have studied the side effects of fluoroquinolones say others have suffered similar symptoms.

Three and a half months after he took that second pill, these symptoms persist, and none of the many doctors of different specialties he has consulted has been able to help. Mr. Balch is now working with a physical therapist, but in a phone consultation with Dr. David Flockhart, an expert in fluoroquinolone side effects at the Indiana University School of Medicine, he was told it could take a year for his symptoms to resolve, if they ever do disappear completely.

Guidelines by the American Thoracic Society state that fluoroquinolones should not be used as a first-line treatment for community-acquired pneumonia; it recommends that doxycycline or a macrolide be tried first. Mr. Balch didn’t know this, or he might have fought harder to get a different antibiotic.
Adverse reactions to fluoroquinolones may occur almost anywhere in the body.

In addition to occasional unwanted effects on the musculoskeletal, visual and renal systems, the drugs in rare cases can seriously injure the central nervous system (causing “brain fog,” depression, hallucinations and psychotic reactions), the heart, liver, skin (painful, disfiguring rashes and phototoxicity), the gastrointestinal system (nausea and diarrhea), hearing and blood sugar metabolism.

The rising use of these potent drugs has also been blamed for increases in two very serious, hard-to-treat infections: antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (known as MRSA) and severe diarrhea caused by Clostridium difficile. One study found that fluoroquinolones were responsible for 55 percent of C. difficile infections at one hospital in Quebec.

Fluoroquinolones carry a “black box” warning mandated by the Food and Drug Administration that tells doctors of the link to tendinitis and tendon rupture and, more recently, about the drugs’ ability to block neuromuscular activity. But consumers don’t see these highlighted alerts, and patients are rarely informed of the risks by prescribing doctors. Mr. Balch said he was never told about the black-box warnings.

Lack of Long-Term Studies
No one knows how often serious adverse reactions occur. The F.D.A.’s reporting system for adverse effects is believed to capture only about 10 percent of them. Complicating the problem is that, unlike retinal detachments that were linked only to current or very recent use of a fluoroquinolone, the drugs’ adverse effects on other systems can show up weeks or months after the treatment ends; in such cases, patients’ symptoms may never be associated with prior fluoroquinolone therapy.

No long-term studies have been done among former users of these antibiotics. Fibromyalgia-like symptoms have been associated with fluoroquinolones, and some experts suggest that some cases of fibromyalgia may result from treatment with a fluoroquinolone.

A half-dozen fluoroquinolones have been taken off the market because of unjustifiable risks of adverse effects. Those that remain are undeniably important drugs, when used appropriately. But doctors at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have expressed concern that too often fluoroquinolones are prescribed unnecessarily as a “one size fits all” remedy without considering their suitability for different patients.

Experts caution against giving these drugs to certain patients who face higher than average risks of bad reactions — children under age 18, adults over 60, and pregnant and nursing women — unless there is no effective alternative. The risk of adverse effects is also higher among people with liver disease and those taking corticosteroids or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.

When an antibiotic is prescribed, it is wise to ask what the drug is and whether it is necessary, what side effects to be alert for, whether there are effective alternatives, when to expect the diagnosed condition to resolve, and when to call if something unexpected happens or recovery seems delayed.

At the same time, when an antibiotic is appropriately prescribed, it is extremely important to take the full prescription as directed and not to stop treatment when the patient simply begins to feel better.