My protocol

PathogenKiller said...
Aguywithuc, coq10 ( preferably ubiquinol) is a powerful antioxidant and mito support.

Briggs, my doctors eyes popped out of his head at the suggestion of 15 grams l glutamine. He originally moved me from 1000mg to 200 mg. he didnt want me on any more then that, which is why I studied up on glutamine.

15 grams is really too much, too much.

See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22038507

They used .5 grams per kg of ideal body weight. So, if your ideal body weight is 70 kg (about 155 pounds), that would be 35 grams. I could point you to more studies if you want. I'd suggest showing that study to your doctor, and asking him why he thinks 200 mg is going to do squat for you.

An important lesson - the American Medical Association surveyed their members (practicing doctors), asking them if they read research journals in their own field. Well under 10% responded that they do. The reality is that most practicing doctors haven't kept up with research in their own field, and their knowledge in the field is based on what they learned in med school (20, 30, 40 years ago). Throw in the fact that most medical schools are not teaching based on the current state of research, and how accurate do you think your doctor's views are, given the research that has been done over the past decade or so?

My apologies if this sounds trite, but I've had to deal with plenty of doctors who are completely unaware of the research in their own field over the past 10-20 years.

My dr is a phd who researches more then you and I put together.

Still say that's way too much l glutamine to rec to folks. I had enough ammonia on 1 gram with my pathogens I dunno what feeding them that much fuel woud have done to me.

Are you really serious here? do you comprehend how much excitotoxins would be liberated from that 15 GRAMS of L-glutamine in a genetically susceptible person who took it daily not just for a couple days, or weeks during a surgical procedure?? Or how much excess ammonia that would create if you did happen to have an unidentified infection.

This is just the first link I could find
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2004/05/01/glutamine.aspx


Our bodies rarely need to be strong armed. Especially with amino acids. There's user here who did it with tyrosine + K. pneumonia and generated enough ROS, NOS, or HP to help feed so many polyps I my own eyes glazed over at the count.

You obviously have an opinion and I appreciate that you took the time to write it out, there is alot of good in it. I didnt want to pick it apart.. glad it worked for you. But I really advise any readers to use caution when megadosing these things. You have phosphytidal choline on there at 2 grams another piss poor idea if you have something like lyme or myco who will use that like golden bricks to build stronger cell walls and then produce antibodies in your blood that make you more prone to throw a clot.

Im glad this helped you. I think FMT was something you were also a very big fan of right, I thought I saw cure mentioned by you previously but it gets a byline at the end here.

This is why it is impossible to put a protocol online safely.

Post Edited (PathogenKiller) : 1/17/2014 9:29:28 AM (GMT-7)

The debate on glutamine was interesting, but what I want to know even more is how Indycat23 posted those tables >_>.

Re the protocol. Only one question, really: what happens if you can't induce remission quickly with anti-TNFs? Are you just sh-- out of luck then?

That's.... all you did?

Well, it's just lucky I didn't spend two hours trying to post a bloody table that didn't look like a dog's dinner on here then... >.>

Test:

Used for Amount Why
Gastritis
Refer to label instructions 1 star The amino acid glutamine is a main energy source for cells in the stomach and may increase blood flow to this region.
1 star Gastritis
Various amino acids have shown promise for people with gastritis. In a double-blind trial, taking 200 mg of cysteine four times daily provided significant benefit for people with bleeding gastritis caused by NSAIDs (such as aspirin).29 Cysteine is a sulfur-containing amino acid that stimulates healing of gastritis. In a preliminary trial, 1–4 grams per day of NAC (N-acetyl cysteine) given to people with atrophic gastritis for four weeks appeared to increase healing.30 Glutamine, another amino acid is a main energy source for cells in the stomach and supplementation may increase blood flow to this region.31 Patients in surgical intensive care units often develop gastrointestinal problems related to a glutamine deficiency.32 When burn victims were supplemented with glutamine, they did not develop stress ulcers, even after several operations.33 Nevertheless, it remains unclear to what extent glutamine supplementation might prevent or help existing gastritis. Preliminary evidence suggests the amino acid arginine may both protect the stomach and increase its blood flow,34 but research has yet to investigate the effects of arginine supplementation in people with gastritis.
Learn Mor
..............

Why, oh why, must you mock me, life? >_<

Re the glutamine debate: all i can say is i have tried it three different times and each time it gives stomach cramps whether i take it with food or on empty stomach. I end up with cramps. This was happening even at doses as low as 500mg/day.
It would start out ok then after about 2 weeks i would get the stomach cramps.

And again re turmeric: any one know why on earth it made me lose weight??!!! Even at dose as low as 500mg curcumin/day i was losing massive amounts of weight, like 1/2 kg per day!!!! And it didnt stop until i stopped it. It was nuts!

PathogenKiller said...
My dr is a phd who researches more then you and I put together.

Then I assume that he has you fully cured and off all meds.

PathogenKiller said...
Still say that's way too much l glutamine to rec to folks. I had enough ammonia on 1 gram with my pathogens I dunno what feeding them that much fuel woud have done to me.

Are you saying that pathogens feed on ammonia or on glutamine? For the most part, bacteria feed on carbohydrates.

PathogenKiller said...
Are you really serious here? do you comprehend how much excitotoxins would be liberated from that 15 GRAMS of L-glutamine in a genetically susceptible person who took it daily not just for a couple days, or weeks during a surgical procedure?? Or how much excess ammonia that would create if you did happen to have an unidentified infection.

This is just the first link I could find
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2004/05/01/glutamine.aspx

Did you read the article? Most Drs do not agree with that theory. Dr. Crayhon claims that dietary glutamine results in a significant increase in glutamate levels in the brain, but that is not what research shows. See
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/130/4/1016S.full.pdf

BTW, our bodies convert other amino acids into glutamate to serve as a reserve source of glutamine.

PathogenKiller said...
You obviously have an opinion and I appreciate that you took the time to write it out, there is alot of good in it. I didnt want to pick it apart.. glad it worked for you. But I really advise any readers to use caution when megadosing these things. You have phosphytidal choline on there at 2 grams another piss poor idea if you have something like lyme or myco who will use that like golden bricks to build stronger cell walls and then produce antibodies in your blood that make you more prone to throw a clot.

1. I have neither the time nor desire to get into arguments about this.

2. I advise people to not listen to me OR you - instead read the articles I reference in my paper, and read anything you reference, and make up their own minds. People should not blindly do something because somebody tells them - read the research, and educate themselves.

3. I did not write a protocol aimed at treating Lyme disease. I summarized the research done on IBD, and made a protocol based off of that research for treating IBD. If people have other conditions, it is their responsibility to learn about them.

3. There is ample research on the benefits of phosphatidylcholine supplementation. I have not seen any research supporting what you are claiming above. Google for "Lyme" and "phosphatidylcholine", and you will in fact see many Lyme protocols that include supplementation with phosphatidylcholine.

PathogenKiller said...
Im glad this helped you. I think FMT was something you were also a very big fan of right, I thought I saw cure mentioned by you previously but it gets a byline at the end here.

It gets a byline because I learned that it is only a piece of the puzzle.

PathogenKiller said...
This is why it is impossible to put a protocol online safely.

That is why I put the references in there, so people can read the articles for themselves, and decide for themselves. I am not telling anyone to do anything.

Post Edited (Dr Briggs) : 1/23/2014 12:37:29 PM (GMT-7)

Hmm. It's just that Remicade is the strongest anti-TNF that I know of, and it didn't do anything for me - not even when we tried doubling the dose. I'm not sure throwing wellbutrin, curcumin, etc. on top of Remicade would have helped :-/

So, TNF-alpha is involved all IBD? (This would presumably include Crohn's colitis, which is what I had.) Hmm. I remember wondering about that at some point, wondering if my disease had a different mechanism which somehow bypassed the production of TNF-alpha. Apparently not. I was in a bad way when I finally started Remicade, so it's more likely that I was producing too much TNF for the body to deal with. If I could have started it a few years earlier... :-/

That's also interesting about TNF inhibitors vs. TNF binders; I wonder if there will be any mileage in TNF inhibitors as a future medical treatment.

Anyway, it's all too late for me now, but your approach at least seems to be based in sound science, unlike the average health blogger's 'avoid all teh bad foodz and cure all diseases!' one.

I have a lot of glutamine tubs around in my pantry. Never seems to workout for me BUT I believe I need it just in a more bioavailable form. The more meat I eat the better I do. Now I do take Intestinew and a major ingredient is glutamine but its a small scoop. What is really working is back on the grass fed beef chili with olive oil, spinach and RS diet Navy beans. Any Olympic weight lifting coach recommends mega-dose glutamine for athletes not putting on weight despite weight training. He recommends this for a few weeks to heal the gut.

I did not start Lexapro over the holidays since I was interviewing. I ended up switching jobs without any downtime preserving the stay bonus and vaca cashout. So this week I started Lexpapro at the new job. Big mistake seemed to cause anxiety and mind fog. Thinking much better since halting it and happier despite stress of having jumped from the frying pan into the fire here. I am already relatively happy but it was supposed to have a constipating side effect, seemed to do the opposite there too.

I will show my Doctor the protocol and references and see if he will write me a script for Wellbutrin.

Thank you very much for making it available I intend to read it again this weekend.

2nd order of Qing Dai from China disappeared enroute, got the same exact thing cheaper and faster from the Chiropractic clinic listed here by someone. Metamucil multi-grain wafers work great despite the sugar involved. RS navy beans, Asacol HD, Intestinew, Wheat Grass and Psyllium Seed Powder all seem to manage my UC well.

I would love to get your opinion on Neutrophils. I followed an anti-TNF protocol and flared, I think it was that cherry juice craze or something similar.

In Japan they can stop a flare for about 2 years merely by filtering out Neutrophils an immune component. It is expensive and GI doctors here only know about and talk about medication. The Neutrophils are quickly replaced by the body within a few hours but the NEW ones are not programmed to attack the colon. This is a key element of the inflammation.

I had blood tests weekly for 8 weeks. 4 is the upper limit for Neutrophils and I was 14. I was using a couple things to bring it down slowly THEN I took ASACOL HD and everything I was monitoring plunged by 70% including Neutrophils. I presented the graphs to my GP who has taken over for my 2nd GI. He let me direct my own care and determine my pred taper.

Winning the Neutrophils battle is key from what I have read and what I have experienced.

Also Qing Dai has been shown to help people get off prednisone who are 'intractable' or cannot taper off without recurrence of the flare.

There's lots of cytokines involved (or show up in various research) because of their many roles - Cytokines generally speaking can be thought of as soluble molecules that bind to their respective cellular receptors. The difference found in most cases between Crohn's and Ulcerative Colitis is generally the adaptive vs. innate response respectively.

The commonality arises from the fact that TNFa is part of the TNF-TNF receptor family. TNFa can function either as a pro-inflammatory cytokine in some cases, yet in others it can actually trigger cell death (apoptosis). In our case with IBD, both TNFa and Histamine together stimulate the breakdown of tight junctions between epithelial cells - this is what causes the characteristic swelling of acute inflammation in our affected areas or throughout our colon in some people's cases like mine and NCOT's or Levi's with Crohn's-Colitis.

TNFa can do a lot of things as well - if TNFa is produced in large enough amounts it can signal to the bone marrow to increase the output of neutrophils (@AguywithUC) - which are found in very high levels in IBD and I believe (but am not 100% sure) but more so in Ulcerative Coltis than in Crohn's. Which also goes back to the difference between the two innate and adaptive immune responses between the two conditions:

TNFa is largely dependent on the NF-kB pathway, which I think we've all read about or heard the term from time to time on here. Opposite to the above, when at low concentrations TNFa acts locally (or in the immediate area) to increase the expression of adhesion molecules on leukocytes AND to stimulate other cells to produce pro inflammatory molecules. When at high concentration as mentioned above, it actually stimulates epithelial cells to synthesize nitric oxide - hence the increase seen in IBD.

Now - what I find of utmost curiosity is that one of the main agents that induce TNF secretion is LPS (Lipopolysaccharides) from gram negative bacteria. - But I'm a bacteria guy.. and don't by into the auto-immune thing.

Interestingly as well - this is why before we take a drug such as Remicde we are tested for tuberculosis, because when this pathway is blocked it can lead to the re-emergence of active tuberculosis.

So in a nutshell we take Remicade more so as a means to reduce damage to our epithelial cells or the "swelling" so to speak and restore the tight junctions. This is why we have colonoscopies - to verify that these tight junctions have been restored and if so we are deemed in clinical remission. Though far from a cure lol.. But hey, we can get our lives back for a bit at least or well, at least for a period of time when it works, which it does not in some cases.

Inflammasomes, such as IFNy (Interferon Gamma) are pretty darn complicated (more so because no one knows a whole heck of a lot about them). They can be activated by cell damage, by say sensing abnormal levels of potassium present inside our cells, as well as Reactive Oxygen Species. In our case IFNy is generally assumed to be involved in macrophage activation. Hence the Type 2 Inflammasome.

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So generally it's the activation of macrophages and other immune cells that is very characteristic of IBD, hence why TNFa is mentioned often in research for both diseases (UC and Crohns), same with neutrophils and IFNy and NF-kB etc etc.

These can be either interpreted as an immune "disfunction" where our body is attacking something "self"... or our bodies ARE actually attacking something... and herein lies the whole mystery of IBD.

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The flip side to this is that some bacteria can hide out in our macrophages where they replicate - more so, once inside or engulfed or eaten lol, they induce the expression of TNFa as a food source really is the easiest way to explain it. So they use TNFa for their reproductive benefit.

In any case, the above is why TNFa is common to both. Also, quickly in regards to the 50+ times more thing - This is more so that cells are already primed or "tuned" depending on how they are sampled like say for example they were sampled directly form the patients... leading more suspicion to bacterial nature of IBD versus autoimmune. There's a term for this "tuning" that escapes me at the moment, but I'll pop into my head tonight at some point lol. At has to do partly with Inflammasomes actually. Its sort of an "on high alert" for inter-cellular bacteria.

Post Edited (Canada Mark) : 1/24/2014 3:45:01 PM (GMT-7)