Chronic Disease – Page 2

Some Things to Know About Rheumatoid Arthritis

rheumatoid-arthritis-522x357 I have a bit of a personal interest in Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). I never knew my grandfather on my mother’s side. In fact, my mother never knew her father (my grandfather). He died from Rheumatoid Arthritis when she was not yet two. He was only 29 and left my grandmother as a single mom to look after three girls, just as the Great Depression began. She managed to get a job and, with the help of close family members, they survived. I respect my grandmother’s achievements as a strong willed independent woman at a time when women generally were not in the workforce. But I know she would have preferred to play the role of housewife and mother with her husband by her side.

My grandfather Ben died a slow and excruciatingly painful death over several years. Toward the end he was curled up in a ball because all of his muscles were perpetually contracted. His hands were described as curled into the shape of claws. Every part of his body was experiencing the pain of torture non-stop. The doctors had no understanding of the disease and no way to treat it other than prescribing strong pain killers. I believe narcotic drugs were the only thing that dulled the pain somewhat.

In my opinion his occupation probably led to his death. My grandfather was a projectionist at the local motion picture theatre. The projection booth, where he spent many hours a day six days a week, was small and not well ventilated. The film of the time was celluloid based, composed of nitrocellulose and camphor. Camphor is a poison that can undergo sublimation at room temperature. The nitrocellulose is extremely flammable and with exposure to heat the nitrate groups can break off and expose nitrogen gases, such as nitrous oxide and nitric oxide. The movie projectors at the time used high temperature light sources. So in the contained environment of the projection booth, with relatively high temperatures, there was likely a high concentration of various toxins.

Based on my understanding of the pathology of RA, oxidative stress (high levels of free radicals without adequate levels of antioxidants to neutralize them) is associated with Rheumatoid Arthritis. Given that he worked in a highly toxic environment, the body’s master antioxidant glutathione would have been depleted while trying to remove the toxins from his body. The remaining high levels of free radicals would then go about damaging cells in various parts of the body. In addition, the lack of glutathione would weaken the body’s immune system.

Rheumatoid Arthritis is fairly common in industrialized societies. More women get RA than men. A 2005 study in the United States found that the incidence of RA was about 9.8 women per 1,000; and for men the number was about 4.4 per 1,000. Overall in North America, about 0.6% of the adult population over 18 years of age has Rheumatoid Arthritis. Unfortunately statistics show an increasing trend.

What It Is Not

Despite its name, Rheumatoid Arthritis is NOT your grandmother’s Arthritis. When she said her arthritis was acting up, she was most likely referring to the joint pain associated with osteoarthritis.

Rheumatoid Arthritis is a chronic inflammatory disorder that can affect more than just your joints. In some people, the condition also can damage a wide variety of body systems, including the skin, eyes, lungs, heart and blood vessels.

arthritis-comparison-diagram-mayo-clinic RA is believed to be an autoimmune disorder. It occurs when your immune system mistakenly attacks your own body’s tissues. That would put in in the same class as Lupus, which is also an autoimmune disorder.

Unlike the wear-and-tear damage of osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis affects the lining of your joints, causing a painful swelling that can eventually result in bone erosion and joint deformity.

The reason that RA has “arthritis” in its name is that this term is applied to almost any chronic condition that presents as joint pain.

Possible Causes

When it comes down to it, the medical community says it does not know what causes Rheumatoid Arthritis.

There seems to be some consensus, but no definitive proof, that Rheumatoid Arthritis has as its root certain genetic factors. However, when looking at people with RA and those who do not have the disease, there is no solid linkage. There is simply some statistical correlation between those with RA and those with certain gene markers. The CDC identifies some of the correlations on its web site. This means that there is no solid cause-effect relationship proven. The most that can be said is that certain genetic markers may make a person more prone to developing RA should the triggering mechanism present itself.

Several organizations identify a set of risk factors for RA. The Arthritis Foundation is representative in identifying things like smoking, female hormones, physical or emotional trauma, air pollution, insecticides, and others. It is interesting to note that all of these tend to result in increased levels of free radicals in the body.

Accepted Treatments

Since there is no consensus on the actual cause of RA, the medical community is left with only treating symptoms in an attempt to alleviate pain and slow the progress of the disease.

According to the U.S. Centres for Disease Control (CDC), the contemporary recommended approach to treating RA is very aggressive. Non-biologic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs), which reduce disease activity and prevent joint deformity, are prescribed within three months of diagnosis. In 2012, the American College of Rheumatology updated RA medical management guidelines. These guidelines describe which biologic DMARDs to use for specific RA disease profiles (e.g., features such as disease activity, signs and symptoms, and prognosis).

Options to Consider

Research paper after research paper confirms that Rheumatoid Arthritis is associated with oxidative stress. There is a 100% correlation. To confirm this, go to PubMed and search for ‘rheumatoid arthritis glutathione’ and you will be presented with a list of hundreds of published papers. Each one will identify low levels of glutathione, which correlates to high levels of oxidative stress. Oxidative stress means that the body has more free radicals than it has antioxidants to neutralize them. Free radicals cause harm to the body and produce cellular inflammation.

It is disturbing to note that with all of this research showing that RA patients have high levels of free radicals, no research is being done to determine the effect of dramatically increasing antioxidant levels in the body – particularly levels of the body’s master antioxidant.

I have said before what I believe the reason to be. There is no money in it. Most medical research is funded in some way by the pharmaceutical industry. Research proposals will only be funded if there is some prospect of a patentable medicine being developed as a result. Antioxidants don’t fall into that category. Since disease related charities are highly influenced by medical and pharmaceutical interests, it is unlikely that funding for such research would come from those sources either.

So if you have RA, what can you do in addition to following your doctor’s recommendations? There are a couple of suggestions I would offer.

These suggestions are based on a few facts. If you have Rheumatoid Arthritis your body is experiencing oxidative stress. Prolonged periods of oxidative stress result in your health deteriorating. You could develop a variety of chronic ailments from heart disease to glaucoma to cancer. The only open question is the rate at which your health will deteriorate. If you want to change this reality you need to address the oxidative stress.

First, pay attention to your diet and lifestyle to look for changes you can make that will reduce the volume of free radicals produced in your body (e.g., quit smoking, eliminate processed meat from your diet, reduce your exposure to environmental toxins).
Second, increase the levels of antioxidants in your body to deal with the free radical load. Increasing the antioxidants you ingest is a good start; but the most effective way is to increase your body’s production of glutathione in the cells. (Refer to the article Get Rid of the Radicals!)

The medical advances in treating Rheumatoid Arthritis were 80 years too late for my grandfather. Perhaps in the near future we will understand the actual cause of the disease and develop ways to prevent it.

#healthscience #rheumatoidarthritis #glutathione

Why Does Your Health Depend on Glutathione?

image of healthy woman Glutathione (rhymes with ‘glue-da-tie-on’) is a molecule that is produced by every living cell in your body. It is necessary for life in every mammal, including humans. If all of the glutathione were to leave your body, you would not survive two seconds. If you don’t have enough glutathione bad things happen, including disease.

Glutathione (chemical designation GSH) is a protein, specifically a tripeptide. It is composed of three amino acids – glutamic acid, cysteine, and glycine. The cysteine amino acid contains a sulphur group which is responsible for many of the beneficial chemical properties of the whole glutathione protein.

With some exceptions, glutathione is in adequate supply in children. However, from about age 20 onward the natural production of glutathione tends to drop at an average rate of about 10-15 percent per decade. What this means is that when you are in your 40s, 50s, and 60s your natural glutathione production may be about half of what it was when you were a healthy 18 year old. This is a concern because the glutathione molecule is involved in many necessary processes in your body. Only some of them are outlined here.

The Cells of Your Body

It is difficult to get an accurate count. However, there seems to be some consensus that the human body has somewhere between 35 trillion and 70 trillion cells (excluding bacteria), depending on the size of the body and other factors.

Each cell has a role or mission. That mission is programmed by its DNA. The cells have different lifespans. For example red blood cells have a lifespan of about 120 days; whereas the lifespan of a white blood cell is much shorter. The average is about 90 days. What this means is that about every three months your body has completely replaced itself. Before a cell dies, it initiates the creation of its successor. And that successor is an exact duplicate of itself, including any damage or faults it may have. The body produces about 40 billion new cells every day!

Generating Energy in the Cell

In order for a cell to fulfill its mission and do its work it needs motion. The motion is provided by the cell’s mitochondria. You can think of the mitochondria as a tiny motor. Cells have many mitochondria. The number depends on the cell’s mission or type. For example, a fat cell typically has only a couple of mitochondria; whereas a heart cell has about 2,500 mitochondria.

The mitochondria need fuel. That fuel is Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP). Glutathione is part of the process of generating ATP. When glutathione levels are down, the production of ATP slows and a person experiences low energy levels. ATP is needed for muscle contraction, so athletes are particularly concerned about their levels of ATP. Raising glutathione levels can enhance athletic performance.

Neutralizing Free Radicals

When the fuel (ATP) is used to generate energy for the mitochondria to initiate the work of the cell, it produces waste products (that you can think of as exhaust from the motor) called free radicals. Free radicals are dangerous because, with their unbalanced electrical charge, they initiate a chemical reaction with almost any molecule in the cell that they come in contact with. This causes damage to the cell.

In addition, when the cell encounters toxic substances and tries to deal with the toxins, free radicals are produced in alarming numbers.
Glutathione neutralizes the harmful free radical by neutralizing the unbalanced charge on the radical molecule. In fact, glutathione is the body’s primary antioxidant. Adequate levels of glutathione protect the cell by neutralizing the free radicals. However, if there are inadequate amounts of glutathione, the remaining free radicals will do more and more damage.

Oxidative stress is defined as a state where the free radical load on the body exceeds the antioxidant capacity of the body. Prolonged periods of oxidative stress can be shown to result in chronic diseases of various sorts. (Refer to Diseases and Conditions Associated with Oxidative Stress.) There is good reason to want to maintain adequate glutathione levels.

Recycling Antioxidants

Glutathione (GSH) as an antioxidant is able to recycle itself. After neutralizing the free radical by dealing with its negative charge, it combines with another glutathione molecule to form an electrically neutral GSSH molecule that is subsequently transformed back into a GSH molecule.

There are only a few antioxidants that can be recycled (e.g., Vitamin E, Vitamin C, alpha lipoic acid (ALA) and Glutathione). Vitamin E, Vitamin C and ALA are recycled by GSH. So low glutathione levels limit the ability of these other antioxidants to do their job. GSH on the other hand can recycle itself many thousands of times.

Therefore the effectiveness of certain of the antioxidants you ingest and the overall antioxidant capacity of your body is limited by the availability of glutathione.

Synthesizing Antioxidants and Proteins

Each antioxidant must be synthesized into a useable state before it can be used by the cells. The primary synthesizing agent for antioxidants is glutathione.

Proteins must also be synthesized before they can be used by the cells. Glutathione is not the sole synthesizing agent for proteins – but it is a principal agent. So the level of glutathione in the cell is a major factor in the degree to which ingested proteins can be used by the body.

Reducing Cellular Inflammation

For several decades there has been a mounting belief in the medical research community that cellular inflammation is the root cause of virtually all chronic disease. However, in my research I have been unable to unearth the direct cause-effect relationship between inflammation and disease.

What I do know is that cellular inflammation seems to go hand in hand with oxidative stress. It would appear that when the huge volume of free radicals do damage to the cells during periods of oxidative stress, the reaction of the cell to this insult is to become inflamed. If this is the case, the cause of chronic disease is prolonged periods of oxidative stress – and cellular inflammation is just a resulting symptom.

Regardless of the exact mechanism, what we do know with some certainty is that in the presence of abundant glutathione the level of cellular inflammation goes down.

Detoxifying Heavy Metals and Environmental Toxins

Many heavy metals like lead and mercury are toxic to the body and can cause devastating damage. For over a hundred years these substances have been used in a variety industrial processes. Lead was used in oil based paint and in gasoline. It was only after significant portions of the population started to have obvious disease symptoms that laws were passed to reduce or eliminate such use.

Regardless, these substances are still working their way through the environment. For example, mercury has found its way into the food chain and has been detected in disconcerting concentrations in fish like tuna. That is why there are warnings about limiting the amount of tuna you include in your diet.

Sometimes heavy metal molecules get sequestered in fat cells where they do little harm. But when you lose weight they are released to circulate and possibly find a home in other cells where they can do damage. At other times the heavy metals you ingest go directly to cells where they could do harm.

If you have adequate levels of glutathione, the GSH molecule will interact with the heavy metal molecule and escort it out of your system. This is where the sulphur group on the cysteine part of GSH comes into play. Sulphur is ‘sticky’ and this is how the GHS molecule attaches to the heavy metal molecule. The combined compound then gets flushed out of your system. (Drink lots of water to facilitate this detoxification process.) This process is called chelation.

In addition, there are innumerable environmental toxins that are not metals that our bodies encounter. The list includes petroleum byproducts, pesticides, prescription drugs, cleaning compounds, alcohol, and on and on. The glutathione molecule is instrumental in removing these various toxins from the cell and facilitates their removal from the body. It does so by breaking down the fat soluble toxin, attaching itself to the toxin fragments thus making them water soluble, and then as a water soluble compound it can be flushed out of the system through the kidneys.

In fact there is an organ that has as its primary function toxic chemical detoxification. The liver has been referred to as the body’s “washing machine” because it extracts toxins from the blood flow and removes them to be eliminated through excretion. Glutathione is critical to this chemical process. It is not surprising, therefore, that the liver has the highest concentration of glutathione in the body. Adequate levels of glutathione in the liver are essential to ongoing good health.

Unfortunately this activity depletes glutathione levels, leaving less glutathione to generate energy for the cell to do its work and less glutathione to neutralize free radicals. Furthermore, the load of environmental toxins is increasing every year.

Protecting Mitochondrial DNA

It is believed that the effects of aging are a result of repeated minor damage to cellular mitochondrial DNA over time. When a cell with damaged DNA reproduces, the resulting cell may not function as well as the original cell prior to the damage. After a while the effect accumulates and you start to notice the typical characteristics of aging. Furthermore, some DNA damage is not minor and instead of gradual aging we see a specific disease condition become apparent. (One example of this is the DNA damage that causes tumorous growth.)

There are three primary causes of DNA damage:

heavy metals
chemical toxins
radiation

In the case of heavy metals, we have seen that abundant glutathione can chelate the metal, removing these molecules from the cell and from your body. This removes the opportunity to damage the DNA.

Likewise in the case of chemical toxins, abundant glutathione facilitates the removal of these harmful molecules from the cell and from the body, primarily through the liver.

High levels of glutathione also protect mitochondrial DNA from radiation damage.

We are exposed to radiation in a variety of ways. There is diagnostic imaging (think x-rays), radiation therapy (a standard cancer treatment), background radiation (think UV radiation that causes sun tans), cosmic radiation and other types.

I don’t know what the exact number is, but I have been given to understand that the level of damaging radiation is at least 1,000 times greater at a height of 30,000 metres than at sea level. This is of concern to commercial air crew who typically fly many hours a day at more than 10,000 metres, and to astronauts who operate much higher than 30 kilometres above the earth.

A study published in 2000 and funded jointly by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Department of Energy found that significantly increasing glutathione levels would be very beneficial for “reducing the load of mutations created by high LET radiation in astronauts or other exposed individuals.” Of interest is the fact that cancer radiation therapy also uses high LET radiation.

So astronauts, commercial air crew members, and anyone undergoing radiation therapy should have a particular interest in increasing their body’s glutathione levels.

Facilitating Hemoglobin Function

Hemoglobin is the active component of red blood cells that carries oxygen from the lungs to the cells throughout the body. Glutathione reduces hemoglobin to a +2 state so it can accept oxygen and carry it to the cells. Low glutathione levels could reduce the level of oxygen that gets to the cells, which in turn could lead to a wide range of adverse consequences.

Abundant glutathione levels tend to bring hemoglobin counts into the normal range.

Optimizing the Immune System

The immune system is complex. A couple of primary components are the white blood cells (leukocytes) which are key to tackling bacterial and viral infections, and the natural killer cells (like the Killer T cells) that destroy compromised host cells, such as tumor cells or virus-infected cells.

With low glutathione levels, the immune system will respond sluggishly. There is considerable evidence that glutathione plays a key role in the regulation and control mechanisms of the immune response to a threat.

Abundant levels of glutathione allow the immune system to respond explosively to a bacterial or viral insult. High GSH levels result in an optimized immune system.

Enhancing Wound Healing

Have you ever noticed that when children get a minor cut or scrape they heal very quickly as compared with their parents or grandparents? And their scarring is much less as well.

It looks like glutathione is responsible.

A study was completed in 2014 and the peer reviewed result was published in 2015. It clearly showed that raising glutathione levels before surgery (a surgical incision is considered a wound in medicine) and keeping them elevated after surgery dramatically reduced the healing time, increased the strength of the healed wound, and significantly reduced any resulting scar.

The belief is that these results are brought on by a substantial reduction of inflammation around the site of the wound.

So if you are facing surgery, increase your glutathione levels substantially at least for the period two or more weeks before the surgery and two to four weeks (or more) afterward.

Reducing “Bad Cholesterol”

Low density lipoproteins (LDL) are considered to be the “bad cholesterol.” According to the American Heart Association:

LDL cholesterol is considered the “bad” cholesterol because it contributes to plaque, a thick, hard deposit that can clog arteries and make them less flexible. This condition is known as atherosclerosis. If a clot forms and blocks a narrowed artery, heart attack or stroke can result. Another condition called peripheral artery disease can develop when plaque buildup narrows an artery supplying blood to the legs.

For years there has been widespread anecdotal evidence that high glutathione levels were associated with reduced blood serum LDL.

A study to look at this was completed in late 2014 and the peer reviewed result was published in 2016. It concluded that elevated glutathione levels resulted in “significant decreases in LDL.” It lowers LDL, Lp(a) and oxidised lipid concentrations.

Summary

Glutathione is a key participant in a wide variety of the body’s processes. It is absolutely essential to good health. Diminished glutathione levels can have adverse effects that may manifest in many different ways, sometimes displaying several such manifestations at the same time.

Increasing glutathione to optimum levels in the body is vital to maintaining good health over time.

p.s. To find out what I use personally to elevate glutathione levels, go to the Contact John menu item and send me a message.

#glutathione #healthscience #chronicdisease

Get Rid of the Radicals!

radicals In this day and age there are far too many of them. They are responsible for the deaths of untold numbers of people. Left unchecked they will continue to maim and kill. And you can do something about it. They must be neutralized and eliminated!

I’m not talking about those religious extremist nut-cases that figure they have the god-given right to violate the basic principles of human rights and their own religious teachings to impose their warped views on the rest of the world. What I am talking about are the radicals that are appearing in ever increasing numbers in the cells of your body. They are the cause of most chronic disease in the world. And it is possible to do something about it.

In order to undertake effective action, however, it would be useful to understand the general mechanics of how they get created and how they can be dealt with.

How are Free Radicals Created?

Let’s start with something we all understand. In order to live you need to breathe. The reason for that is that you need oxygen to survive; and breathing allows you to extract oxygen from the air and pass it to the red blood cells in your body. Flowing through your blood vessels, your red blood cells deliver oxygen to all of the living cells throughout your body.

There is an on-demand system in operation here. The more work a cell has to do, the more oxygen it will try to extract from the blood as it flows past. Each of your cells uses oxygen as a key element of the process of doing work. You can verify this yourself. Get on an exercise bike, set a reasonable resistance and peddle as fast as you can. What happens to your heart rate and respiration rate? They both go up as your body tries to increase the transfer of oxygen from the air and deliver it more quickly to the muscle cells that are demanding it to fuel the work they are doing.

In chemistry, a free radical is an atom, molecule, or ion that has unpaired valence electrons – it has a negative charge. With some exceptions, these unpaired electrons make free radicals highly chemically reactive towards other substances. Some important oxygen-centered free radicals include peroxide, the superoxide radical and the hydroxyl radical. They are produced from molecular oxygen under reducing conditions.

So, molecular oxygen is delivered to the cell by the bloodstream. The chemical reaction that uses (reduces) the oxygen to do its work results in a negatively charged oxygen-based free radical (like a hydroxyl radical).

Normal cell activity produces free radicals.

Unfortunately, we live in a world that has huge amounts of environmental toxins – in the air we breathe, in the food we eat and in the water we drink. The cells try to deal with these foreign toxins when they enter the cell. Dealing with toxins represents quite a lot of work for the cell, with the cell producing extensive amounts of free radicals. This is not good a good thing.

How do Free Radicals Cause Damage?

Because they are highly reactive (due to the unbalanced number of electrons), these same free radicals can participate in unwanted side reactions with various other molecules that are part of the cell, resulting in cell damage. They do this by stealing an electron from a nearby molecule in the cell, disabling that molecule’s function.

This is not good. Excessive amounts of these free radicals can lead to cell injury and death, which may contribute to many diseases. (Refer to Wikipedia article on Radical chemistry.) Fortunately, that is not the end of the story.

How do Antioxidants Neutralize Free Radicals?

According to an article by the American HealthCare Foundation:

Antioxidants are stable molecules that have electrons to spare. When antioxidants come in contact with free-radical molecules – they hand over their electrons and stop the degenerative chain reaction of free-radical oxidation.

Antioxidant molecules are able to give up an electron and subsequently become electrically stable.

Some antioxidants are produced naturally in our cells. Other antioxidants can be be found in the food we eat. The body’s primary antioxidant is Glutathione (GSH) which is produced internally by the cells. Some foods high in antioxidants are those containing Vitamin C, Vitamin E, and beta-carotene (which converts to Vitamin A in the body).

However, most people don’t have enough antioxidants to deal with the volume of free radicals being produced.

How can you Avoid Free Radical Damage?

The key to maintaining good cellular health is to ensure that the cell has within it an adequate supply of antioxidants to deal with the free radicals produced as the cell creates energy to do its work.

In part you can achieve this by ingesting foods that are high in dietary antioxidants. However, perhaps the most effective approach is to increase your body’s intracellular glutathione levels (glutathione produced in the cell, by the cell). (Refer to The Body’s Miracle Molecule.)

We live in an ever increasingly toxic world. Our cells have to work overtime to try to deal with the toxins they are exposed to. So we need even more antioxidants than our ancestors needed just to maintain a reasonable balance. You would have to consume huge amounts of antioxidant rich foods to deal with your body’s demand. In today’s toxic environment, that is not enough.

High quality dietary supplements may be the only effective way to maintain adequately high antioxidant levels. And one of the best approaches is a dietary supplement that promotes the body’s own production of glutathione. Intracellular glutathione is many times more effective as an antioxidant than all of the other antioxidants you may ingest.

Get rid of the radicals! If all the cells of your body are healthy, you will be healthy.

Reference: “Role of Oxidative Stress,” American HealthCare Foundation

#freeradical #antioxidant #glutathione

Cancer is Not a Disease

Time Cover 2004-02-23 There are probably more years behind me than in front of me. My analytical approach over that time caused me to observe random things and store them. Then later I would try to make sense of them – how did they fit together? Was there a pattern? One of the things I noticed, and I think epidemiologists would confirm it, is that there seems to have been an increase in the incidence of a variety of physical conditions that did not have as a root cause either bacterial infection or a virus. The pattern seems to have started shortly after World War II, but may have originated earlier. You may have noticed the same trend.

The Pattern

When I was growing up in the 50s and 60s, asthma was rare and now it is common among young people. Autism was virtually unheard of and now the incidence seems to be higher than 1 in 100 male births in Western society. Cancer was not as rare, probably because smoking was a standard pastime, cigarettes were unfiltered at the time, and people were dying from lung cancer. But the rate of all different kinds of cancers has climbed dramatically over the past 50 years. The same holds true, to varying degrees, for things like Parkinson’s, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Fibromyalgia, Multiple Sclerosis and most other chronic diseases. What was going on? All of these conditions are quite different from each other; but they were all displaying a similar incidence pattern.

The ‘ah-ha’ Moment

Occasionally I like to do a bit of personal research in the area of science and health. Recently I came across an online article entitled What Is Cancer? And in the body of the article was the heading “Cancer is a symptom not a disease.” That brought me up short. And to be honest, I didn’t finish reading the article. My mind went off in a totally different direction.

Cancer is a symptom, not a disease. If that is true, of what is it a symptom? And could it also be true for those other conditions that were displaying this common incidence trend that I found intellectually irritating? I know that there are over 70 diseases and conditions associated with low glutathione. And all of the conditions displaying the trend are on the list. That commonality could not be a fluke.

Sometimes research involves serendipity. A few days later I saw that Time magazine, on the cover of its February 23, 2004 issue, had proclaimed “The surprising link between INFLAMMATION and HEART ATTACKS, CANCER, ALZHEIMER’S and other diseases.” The article inside said:

“What does a stubbed toe or a splinter in a finger have to do with your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, suffering a heart attack or succumbing to colon cancer? More than you might think. As scientists delve deeper into the fundamental causes of those and other illnesses, they are starting to see links to an age-old immunological defense mechanism called inflammation…”

The Mechanism

There seems to be increasing agreement in the medical research community that cellular inflammation is a common cause of most chronic disease in the world. Here’s where things get interesting.

Most cellular inflammation results from oxidative stress.
Oxidative stress is caused by an over abundance of free radicals in the cell. In fact it is defined as the condition that occurs when the sum of free radicals in a cell exceeds the antioxidant capacity of the cell.
Free radicals are produced when the cell does some work. Work can include normal things like breathing, moving, and thinking (depending on the type of cell). The ‘work’ uses oxygen and the result of that process (the exhaust of the oxygen burn if you will) is the production of free radicals. But where things start to go wrong is when the work involved is the cell trying to deal with toxins and other substances that don’t belong in the cell. This activity represents a lot of work and produces huge amounts of free radicals.
Antioxidants are the compounds that rid the cell of free radicals. If there is an adequate supply of antioxidants in the cell, the level of free radicals can be maintained at a manageable level. However, if the level of free radical production is excessive (e.g. from the work of trying to deal with a buildup of toxins) the cell’s antioxidants are unable maintain a reasonable balance. The level of antioxidants decreases as they are used to get rid of the free radicals. In this situation, the cell works less and less efficiently, oxidative stress increases and, if left unchecked for a significant period of time, disease results.

Glutathione is the body’s master antioxidant. In addition to being an antioxidant in its own right it also facilitates the work of other antioxidants. For example, in the absence of glutathione Vitamin C would be unable to perform as an antioxidant. Glutathione is produced on demand in every living cell in the body. It is also a key component needed for many of the cell’s base functions to work. So if there is not an adequate supply of glutathione in the cell, not only is the cell unable to deal with free radicals but it is also unable to perform its main cellular functions at an optimal level.

Since glutathione is key to ridding the cell of free radicals, most researchers use the level of glutathione in the body as the primary measure of oxidative stress. Low levels of glutathione equals high levels of oxidative stress.

The Key Component

Glutathione is a tripeptide composed of three amino acids. These are glutamic acid, cysteine, and glycine. The cysteine amino acid contains a sulphur group responsible for many of the chemical properties of the whole glutathione protein.

Glutathione is produced on demand in the cell. The level of glutathione produced by the body is normally high during childhood and is at its natural peak at about age 20. The level then diminishes at an average rate of about 1% to 1.5% per year. Production is dependent on the availability of the raw materials – the glutamic acid, cysteine, and glycine. In most people there is an adequate supply of glutamic acid and glycine. The limiting factor is the availability of cysteine with an intact sulphur group. This compound is not normally found in abundant quantities in our diet.

The natural result of all of this is that by the time people reach their 40s and 50s they are starting to feel their age and the incidence of chronic disease increases dramatically. This is not surprising since their glutathione levels are half of what they were at 20. The level of exposure in our modern society to untold numbers of environmental toxins and other stressors makes the situation worse than it might be otherwise. So in recent decades we see the incidence of chronic diseases, that used to be associated with old age, occurring when people are younger and younger.

The Theory

It would seem that increasing intracellular glutathione (glutathione inside the cell, produced by the cell) would go a long way to reducing a variety of chronic diseases.

There are many ways to increase glutathione levels. Some have minimal effect while others increase intracellular glutathione considerably. I take a glutathione enhancing supplement that study results show increases intracellular glutathione levels several times more effectively than the next best method.

So if there is evolving consensus that cellular inflammation is the root cause of cancer and a variety of other chronic conditions, why have there not been studies done on treatment and prevention of these conditions with large amounts of antioxidants, including increasing glutathione levels within the cells?

The Black Hats

Such clinical studies can be expensive. Most of the money for treatment studies has traditionally come, in one form or another, from the pharmaceutical industry. But the pharmaceutical industry is big business, apparently in the Trillion Dollar range. In May of 2015, Forbes published an article with a headline that read “The Cancer Drug Market Just Hit $100 Billion And Could Jump 50% In Four Years”.

Mom, why isn't there a cure for cancer? Because Jimmy, there is far more money to be made treating a disease for a lifetime rather than curing it in a day. This means that a full 10% of big pharma revenue comes from cancer alone. It is not in the best interests of these companies to fund studies that could result in identification of effective cancer treatments that involve inexpensive natural antioxidants. In fact, it is in their interests to actively prevent that happening. And the committees that make funding decisions in the various disease-focused charities are heavily influenced by the medical and pharmaceutical industries.

It is interesting to note that, because most pharmaceutical drugs are toxic poisons, treatments for diseases like chemo for cancer end up making the cellular inflammation worse – for all the cells in the body, not just the lumps and bumps that they are trying to target. Does anybody wonder why when the doctors manage to kill a tumor, some time later in some formerly unaffected part of the body, a “new” cancer pops up? (But the doctor doesn’t tell you that. He says that the cancer spread.)

The Conclusion

There are many documented cases of non-traditional treatments being successful. The common thread that ties most of them together is each has elements that increase the body’s antioxidant levels significantly. These successes should be applauded and explored for broader adoption – not attacked.

Was the information in the Time article followed up at all with further research? Not that I can see. And it would appear that further articles on the same topic in other major publications were actively discouraged. I find the situation frustrating in the extreme! And if my suppositions are true, what is happening is criminal.

Cancer is not a disease. It is a symptom. First and foremost it is a symptom of prolonged periods of oxidative stress in the body. But it is also a symptom of unnaturally high levels of toxins in our environment, a symptom of a pattern that applies to many other diseases, and a symptom of a powerful segment of the business community putting profits ahead of human life.

What is your view? I urge you to leave a comment.

Fact vs. Hypothesis vs. Opinion

It is a fact that all forms of cancer and most other chronic diseases have cellular inflammation as a fundamental characteristic.

To verify this for yourself, you can use Pubmed. Pubmed is the U.S. government site, operated by the National Institutes of Health, that is a global library of published papers on medical science. Go to pubmed.gov and enter the search terms ‘glutathione’ and the name of any disease of interest (e.g., cancer, melanoma, asthma). You will get a (potentially long) list of published papers. Randomly look at the studies and you will see that all of them show low glutathione levels for those subjects with the condition. Virtually any researcher in the field will tell you that this indicates high levels of oxidative stress and consequently high levels of cellular inflammation.

The corollary is also true. If glutathione levels are raised to optimum levels in the cells in the presence of supporting nutrients, free radicals will be eliminated, oxidative stress will be reduced and cellular inflammation will be reduced.

It is my hypothesis that increasing intracellular glutathione levels to nominal levels will reduce the symptoms of the condition in question and possibly prevent the condition from occurring in the first place. This assertion is based on the logic that the body’s natural functions will protect itself if the necessary ‘raw materials’ are available to do the job. Low glutathione levels represent one such lack of ‘raw materials’. By having an optimum level of glutathione and other supporting antioxidants available in the cells, free radical levels will stay in healthy balance, energy will be available to the mitochondria, and the immune system will be able to function as it was designed.

It is my opinion, based on the mountain of evidence found in the Pubmed studies which suggest my hypothesis holds true, that the pharmaceutical industry is actively preventing the conduct of suitable studies to validate the hypothesis. The evidence that links inflammation to disease has been building for decades. I can’t believe I am the only person to have seen the pattern. The 2004 article in Time verifies that I’m not.

Forensic accountants always tell you to “follow the money” to look for motive. Who benefits from this lack of action? Clearly it is the pharmaceutical industry. More than $100 Billion EACH YEAR can buy quite a few votes in various legislative bodies around the world, can buy modified research results, can buy doctors willing to toe the line on what constitutes acceptable medical practice. Thus my opinion. It is a nasty conclusion to reach; but one I think is justified by the available facts.

#cancer #glutathione #chronicdisease #healthscience

Taking a Breath

Asthma Puffer 234x234 Yesterday I was in the gym change room just getting ready to go home after a workout. A fellow came in after finishing his workout. There was a light clunk when he opened his locker, a few down from mine. On the floor between us was a small bottle, with a protrusion at right angles out the side of the bottle. I asked if that was his puffer.

It turns out he has had asthma from the time he was a small child. Given that he appeared to be in his mid-thirties, that meant he had been dealing with the condition for three decades or more. He told me he has not had any major episodes in recent years. But he said, “I always use my puffer when at the gym – so that I can breathe.”

According to the Mayo clinic:

Asthma is a condition in which your airways narrow and swell and produce extra mucus. This can make breathing difficult and trigger coughing, wheezing and shortness of breath.

For some people, asthma is a minor nuisance. For others, it can be a major problem that interferes with daily activities and may lead to a life-threatening asthma attack.

According to the Asthma Society of Canada, doctors generally prescribe inhaled corticosteroids over oral (tablet or liquid) corticosteroids, because the inhaled medication is more targeted. In other words, when it’s inhaled, medication goes directly into the lungs where it’s needed. The intent is to reduce the inflammation in the airways for a time.

However, this does not address the underlying issue of the inflammation itself. In the paper entitled Glutathione Redox Control of Asthma: From Molecular Mechanisms to Therapeutic Opportunities, the authors examined a range of studies that looked at the role of glutathione at the cellular level in people with asthma.

GSH and Reducing Free Radicals - 300x196 One of the conclusions seemed to be that if there is insufficient glutathione (GSH) available in the cell, the level of free radicals will increase. An imbalance represented by high levels of free radicals results in oxidative stress and cellular inflammation. This state of affairs diminishes normal cell function by interfering with internal cell signalling.

I mentioned before that glutathione is The Body’s Miracle Molecule. One of its functions is to act as the body’s master antioxidant, to maintain a proper balance of free radicals.

In addition to maintaining free radical balance, glutathione in the lungs is also instrumental in the transfer of oxygen from the airways to the bloodstream. A low level of available glutathione is likely to impede that function.

For most of us, breathing is so natural we don’t even think about it. But for someone with asthma, particularly children with smaller lungs, taking a breath is something they are always very aware of.

I was sorely tempted to dump all over this guy, whom I has just met, to tell him all about glutathione and the supplement I was taking that dramatically increased intracellular glutathione and how it might help with his asthma. But I resisted the temptation and bit my tongue. I can just imagine his reaction if I had done that. “Who is this nut case? How quickly can I get away from him?”

But you can bet that if I see him at the gym again I will try to get into conversation. At some point it might be possible to get to a state where he would be receptive to information that might help.

What I find difficult to understand is that our medical community does not seem to want to explore natural compounds as effective, and in many cases superior, alternatives to man-made chemicals. But that is a topic for another time.

Anne M. Fitzpatrick, Dean P. Jones, and Lou Ann S. Brown. Antioxidants & Redox Signaling. May 2012, 17(2): 375-408. doi:10.1089/ars.2011.4198.

#asthma #healthscience #glutathione