Question
NY2,
You seem to be our resident authority on alternative treatments and medications so I would like your input on this supplement.
I recently underwent extensive knee reconstruction. ACL graft and cartilage rebuild using donor sites from other parts of my leg. I'm doing well according to my orthopedic surgeon. He was so impressed with my upper leg strength and Range of Motion two weeks post-op that he is not sending me to Physical Therapy at this time. He probably will later when I have healed enough to get into the intensive stuff. My question is about these health supplements I am hearing about that supposedly help rebuild bone and cartilage in the knee and hip joints. Can you offer some info on this. I'd like to know what it is, how it works, and does it really work? I asked my orthopod and he kind of 'pooh poohed' it. I know that I will probably need a total knee replacement within the next 6-8 years even with this recent surgery, but if I can extend the life of the surgery already done I am ahead of the game. Your thoughts?
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Keeping you safe, healthy, and on the road.
Nurse Red
Visit us at www.Truck.net/abmsVisit us at
Answer
Let me look into this a bit more. The FDO approved a device to promote bone growth in fractures utilizing a small battery generating a magnetic field which surrounds the break. This unit is, I understand available by prescription. As you probably know alternative physicians have recommended magnets for centuries for this purpose. I cannot testify as to the safety of this procedure because clearly your would not desire excessive growth in improper areas, but I have never seen any loiterature suggesting problems. Certainly you want to avoid eating the skins of nightshades and the skins of potatoes, tomatoes, and egplants especially. Mother nature developed powerful toxins within the first seven cells of the skin to prevent insect penetration and these wreak holy havoc on joints and arthritic conditions when ingested. They are also mutagenic substances, and these are the last things you need in your system while cells are regenerating. There is also evidence potato skins have been linked to birth defects in test animals. Range of motion exercises are extremely important. There is some evidence that electric fields are generated by repetive motion that are responsible for the growth. I would avoid DSMO, although this has been promoted for use in situations such as yours by some in the field of alternative medicine. It is a powerful solvent and has many potentially serious side effects. Certainly human growth hormone, in small doses would be appropriate. They performed several studies demonstrating it's value, but this is not an approved use. Naturopathically I would suggest growth hormone precursers. I would recommend high dose vitamin C, for many reasons. It is also a mild diuretic and will help keep lympathic fluid drained, helping to avoid swelling. I would wash the area gently at least twice a day to keep the skin pores open. The mild masage by the fingers would also help. Let me think a while on this.
Answer
NY2,
The supplement I am referring to was advertised on TV and is a pill form that is supposedly available in most health stores.
Very interesting info on the potato skin topic. I was always led to beleive that most of the vitamins in potatoes was very close to the skin and it was considered healthier to eat the skins than to peel it away. HMMMM....
Thanks for the tip on Vitamin C and it's properties that help with swelling. I am taking anti-inflammatories which help somewhat but will add the Vitamin C and see if there is a difference. By the end of the day, my foot and ankle below the op site are twice their normal size. Of course I am not real compliant with staying off of it and elevating it during the day either. I am too much of a work-a-holic to stay put, I guess.
Thanks for your input.
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Keeping you safe, healthy, and on the road.
Nurse Red
Visit us at www.Truck.net/abmsVisit us at
Answer
I am still looking into your situation. I apologize for my poor spelling, reviewing my previous posts. I substitute "FDO" for "FDA". It's just that I'm working long hours and sometimes only have a minute to grab on a PC, which I borrow. This is the deal on skins. Mother nature devised a really neat way to protect fruits. This process involved the generation of natural pesticides, mostly neurotoxins, in the outer cell layers of the skin. Nightshades are classes of plants especially prone to this. The toxins are only generated in a layer from five to seven cells thick. These substances are both mutagenic and carcinogenic. They are toxic to human cells and produce inflammatory reactions, particuliarly harmful to people with arthritis. Thus, insects attempting to bore into the surface would perish. It has been considered desirous in modern agriculture to breed plants with lower levels of these toxins. The tradeoff is that farmers must use artificial pesticides to protect the crops. Nevertheless, there is varience in a crop and a certain percentage will have far higher levels of these substances. The fifteen century superstition about "poisonous" tomatoes was due to the toxic nature of the skin, and is the reason early recipes called for peeling the tomato skin for the sauce. A particular birth defect in sheep, called sheeps eye", a single eye on the forehead, has been linked to feeding the animals diets of skins. Certainly I cringe when I see pregnant ladies muching on "new age" snacks of fried potato skins.
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Inducing natural production of growth hormones, of which there are several, involves stimulation of the pituitary gland. The hormones themselves are peptides, generally polypeptides, and are the "signaling substances" of the human body. First you must insure there is an adequate supply of raw material. Precursers. There are many in the health food stores. Secondarily you want to induce normal hormonal production. In other words you want to tell the pituitary to start producing. Curiously, we have learned an easy way to do this by making use of the circadian cycles. Drink eight glasses of water each and every day, take vitamin cupplements. FAST four to five hours before bedtime, sleep regular hours, keep the lights completely off at night, and during the daytime never work only under flourescent lamps. The circadian cycles are light-mediated. Incidentally the best desk light is the "Luxor" which has a flourescent ring and an incandescent bulb in the center. One of the most interesting studies I came across involved the resistance to radiation damage of cells depending upon the time of day (and point in the cicardian cycle) published by the Department of Defense. The idea is to structure conditions so as to have a "normal" circardian rhythym. Regular hours and rest is the key. Not very helpful for a truckdriver, I'm afraid. DHEA has been promoted for healing purposes and as an anti-aging drug. Many females are very sensitive to this substance. It promotes chest hair growth in males and has also been linked to liver damage. Nevertheless, in small carefully managed doseages there is a place for this substance in individuals over forty who require tissue regeneration.
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There is a wonderful book out about this topic on osteoarthritis called "THE ARTHRITIS CURE" by Jason Theodosakis, M.D.M.S.MPH on this very topic. He is an orthopedic surgeon from, I think Arizona, who explores the alternative medicine use of glucosamine and chondritin. At first these supplements were found only in health-food stores but are now found even in Wall-Mart. Long used by physicians in Europe, this effective therapy has been overlooked by most of the American medical community. They are substances we already consume and produce in small quantities in our bodies,and have no known significant side effects. And there is an extensive body of clinical research proving they work in both humans and animals. But this doctor also talks about a balanced diet and a balanced life-style, much of what NY2 has said. Vitamin C and the mineral manganese for example increase the effectiveness of glucosamine and chondroitin. These two supplements (glucosamine and chrondroitn) are the heart of the program however and are usually figured according to body weight. It is an excellent book and one worth reading. This doctor was looking for alternative ways to helping his patients, because he realized that surgery alone was not helping many of his patients. I think he has written another book recently too.
[This message has been edited by RunningSoLate (edited October 19, 1999).]
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Here is an interesting story on DSMO. Do you remember several years ago a story about a woman they brought to the emergency room in LA,who was a terminal cancer patient. When the nurse drew her blood it immediately made everyone in the vicinity very ill, some were on ventilators for awhile. Some had long-term side-effects from it. The ER was cleared immediately and the HAZMAT team was brought in. Tissue and blood samples were sent to the state lab. The woman's blood sample had immediately turned green. She also had shiny skin and a "garlic smell" about her. The state lab could find nothing and so the state of California ruled blew it off to hysteria of the moment; that the ER staff became so hysterical because the woman was so young. Well, there was a seasoned veteran nurse there in the ER who knew she didn't become hysterical because the woman was young--she had been an ER nurse too long for that. This nurse waited about 2 years however, after the incident and collected everyone's medical files--co-workers who had become ill and remained with health problems from the incident and had continued on their own to see various doctors. She took all this information back to the state lab and asked them to PLEASE relook at all the data and see if there was something they overlooked. They gave the project, in turn, to the chief chemist. And this is what he eventually came up with. This woman, on her own, was taking DSMO in large quantities to kill her pain. She also was a terminal cancer patient and on dialysis as her kidneys were no longer functioning. So DSMO was really built up in her bloodstream. Now, she gets very ill and is being transported to that ER via ambulance. And as any self-respecting ambulance crew does, they applied oxygen--6 liters (high dose). This converted the DSMO in her bloodstream immediately to DSMO2, non-toxic but gave the woman's skin a shiny appearance and the distinctive garlic odor everyone smelled in the ER. But this alone would not have made anyone ill. He was aware that there was a third ingredient DSMO3 which in nanagrams is a potent neurotoxin. But how could that occur? In experimenting he discovered that when you cool DSMO2 down, you can produce the very lethal DSMO3. And that is exactly what happened. When the nurse drew this woman's blood,the blood with all the DSMO2 in it and was at 98.4 degrees, into a syringe that was ER room temperature of 68 degrees, the DSMO2 immediately converted into DSMO3 a very very potent neurotoxin!
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I think that newyork2 has probably touched on a subject that is beginning to have quite alot of interest and impact in the medical community and that is the subject of our hormones and how we age. While alot of the research has been done by biochemists, the medical community is beginning to see that this is probably the cue to why we develop degenerative diseases in the first place.And how we get well from very serious illnesses I might add. In the last several years I have had the opportunity to go to two very interesting conferences among the many we have to go to to keep up our CEU's. One of these was on Aging and the Human Brain given by Northwestern U. The whole key it looks like to them in their research at this time, is the prevention of free radicals from building up in the brain. I have the whole lecture verbatim, as the lecturer person gave us his talk word for word on paper and would be glad to send it to anyone who is interested, just e-mail me. Free radicals are highly charged chemical substances made in our bodies as the result of normally occurring chemical reactions. They are molecules with one electron (instead of the stable two)and they are on the hunt to swipe a balancing electron from another molecule. This thievary is called oxidation. Much has been said about how bad free radicals are, but you actually need free radicals to sustain life because the effect of oxygen is only possible if oxygen is converted to free radicals. And they are part of our immune system, helping to fight disease-causing bacteria. It is only when free radicals hang around too long, or your body produces too many that they began to cause trouble. They are like my mother-in-law who came for a six week visit and stayed a year--they wear out their welcome fast.That is because when free radicals are made in the body, the high energy is transferred to our body tissues and can cause extreme damage to them. If not counteracted this can lead to development of tissue breakdown, even cancer over the long-term. Another interesting conference I went too was given by Georgetown U on multisystem organ failure after a major trauma. Oddly enough the case study was a truck driver who had a breakdown of his truck outside Washington D.C. He parked on the shoulder of the road and then attempted to cross 6 lanes of traffic to call for help (he could see a gas station/phone just across from him) Bad move. He got hit by an 18-wheeler and came to Georgetown U hospital with multi-trauma. The point of this lecture is, and working in critical care I can agree, is that you can get someone over their initial trauma but how do you prevent multisystem organ failure afterward? And here again, that within 4-6 weeks of the initial trauma, death usually occurs because as their research is showing, multisystem organ failure occurs because of the free radical build-up in the tissues. Their research is also showing that having antioxidants aboard before any major trauma or surgery goes a long way to preventing problems afterwards. One of our heart surgeons actually gives his patients high doses of antioxidants before they go into heart surgery. One word of caution however, Vitamin E can cause bleeding to occur after surgery so it is advisable if you take it, to consult with your doctor to see if you need to stop it prior to surgery.So many people are taking nutritional supplements now, that the PDR (Physicians Desk Reference, available to the general public) actually has published a book on herbal and vitamin supplements. Our pharmacy where I work, which is one of the ten leading heart hospitals in the nation, publishes a monthly newsletter on the interactions of herbs,and other nutritional supplements with the standard meds that people take and also what these herbal and nutritional supplements do in our bodies. For example, if your doctor wants you keep your blood on the thin side there are certain foods and nutritional supplements you will need to avoid and conversly others that will enhance the thinning process. So, in summary, one of the keys towards helping your tissues stay young and healthy and repaired is taking antioxidants.
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And there is still more: If you are talking about hormones, you have to consider the only eicosanoids--the so-called super- hormones of our body talked about so much in the book THE ZONE by Dr.Barry Sears. They control every hormone system in our body. They work at the cellular level, hence you don't see them circulating in the bloodstream. While extremely complex, they work in low concentrations and their lifespan is measured in seconds. While found even in the lowest forms in life, they were not actually discovered until 1936. Because the first ones were isolated from the prostate gland,they were called prostaglandins, and we are only beginning to understand what an effect they have on the body! It was only in the 70's when we were able to develop better scientific equipment that the eicosanoids could be studied more closely that research into the role eicosanods play in our bodies began in earnest.In 1982 eicosanoid research won the Nobel Prize for Medicine. In late 70's two other prostaglandins were discovered--prostacyclins and thromboxanes--which play a key role in heart disease. In the 1980's two other groups of eicosanoids were found--lipoxins and hydroxylated fatty acids, important in controlling our response to inflammation and regulating our immune system.The bottom line is that what grew out of the 1982 Nobel Prize is that virtually every disease state, whether it be heart disease or arthritis or an autoimmune disease or whatever can be viewed on the molecular level by what happens to our eicosanoids.
I first looked at the prostaglandins in the mid-70's as a personal issue. I was working in the ER in Orlando, Florida at the time and raising a child that had LD, autoimmune problems and hyperactivity brought on, so they say, by the fact that his dad had been sprayed by dioxin, or AGENT ORANGE in Vietnam. One of the doctors I worked with had been working with the National Institutes of Health in Washington and he gave me several articles on prostaglandins (there is an A and B prostaglandin) They affect, among other things, the tiny area between each nerve where the electrical message of each nerve is converted to a chemical message, crosses over this space to the next nerve where it is again converted to an electical impulse. A lack of prostaglandin B affects this nerve transmission, much like a short circuit in a frayed electrical cord. And diet has a definite affect. Salicylates, the compound found in aspirin, foods like tomatoes,and red dyes you find so much of in our foods (look at your labels) will actually cause a decrease in the amount of prostaglandin B found in our bodies. The off-shoot of that knowledge was to cut out any food with red dye in it, and tomato products of any kind--and while it didn't cure my son's problem--it certainly lessened his learning problems dramatically.(He is just finishing his master's in economics) Prostaglandin production also affects clotting. Taking an aspirin a day has been shown to reduce clotting in our blood for that same very reason.
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I think that everything newyork2 said is true. They have been using magnetic fields to enhance bone growth for some time and if you want to know more about the human growth hormone (HGH) read GROW YOUNG WITH HGH by Dr.Ronald Klatz. Excellent book. My neighbor had a pituitary tumor removed followed by radiation to the area when the tumor recurred. Because this is our master gland, it affected all her other hormones, glands and target organs. She was plagued with huge medical problems because of it. Finally her doctor started her on the HGH and it straigtened everything out.But this is expensive. A more cost effective way is to take the precursors and let your own pituitary produce what you need.
Along these same lines let me tell you two stories. When my mother-in-law was staying with us after her open-heart surgery, she began to have trouble with her feet, being a diabetic. In particular she was having trouble with her big toe and had a huge sore on it. I took her to the doctor who referred us to the wound care clinic at Carraway in Birmingham. There they had a process that took several hours where they extracted her growth hormone from her platelets (all she did was give a blood sample) and then placed the growth hormone in small tubes suspended in saline. I would pack her wound each day soaked with her own HGH. What a difference! In fact they were having such success with it at Carraway, that Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Alabama has approved it as a payable treatment. Also right now at Emory in Atlanta, they are soaking fibrin gauze in a person's own extracted HGH and by tiny incisions placing them on top of the heart to stimulate growth of new arteries. This is being looked at as an alternative to open-heart surgery at the moment and is still in an experimental stage so to speak
[This message has been edited by RunningSoLate (edited October 20, 1999).]
[This message has been edited by RunningSoLate (edited October 20, 1999).]
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Help!
I'm finding these articles VERY imformative.
But could you PLEASE hit a couple of line feeds every now and then!
It's hard for an old man's eyes to try staying on the same line, or not reading the same one over and over again.
Monty
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Ah!Monty, the vision thing. Yes, I know the feeling. I told people I knew I had turned 40 when I had to throw the newspaper on the floor to read it.If we could edit these posts, I would have used point 14, where is where I have set my normal e-mail. Time for HGH,I suppose.
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WOW! Who would have thought we had all this medical knowledge among our group! Thanks for all of the responses to my questions. I learned a lot from both NY2 and RunningSoLate (sounds like an indian name, doesn't it?) I always wondered what that noise about free radicals was about, now I know. I must admit that since leaving the ER and critical care type of nursing, my learning curve has slowed way down. But then so has my blood pressure.
When you were relating the story about the cancer patient with the garlic odor and shiny skin, the first thing that came to my mind was 'uremic frost' from renal failure. Just goes to show you how rapidly things change in the medical field. I do remember hearing about that case in the papers, but never learned what had been the final outcome.
I also learned a lot from your discussion of major trauma patients who experience multi-system failure during recovery. It was once thought that this was triggered by a severe drop in BP which would cause the kidneys to shut down. Sometimes renal function would return with a rise in the BP and sometimes not, which would then trigger a chain reaction of other organ failures. Thanks for the update. BTW RunningSoLate, where do you work now? I have a feeling you worked with a friend of mine in Orlando.
Please feel free to check in often and offer your knowledge on the various subjects here.
I really appreciate everyone's input.
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Keeping you safe, healthy, and on the road.
Nurse Red
Visit us at www.Truck.net/abmsVisit us at
Answer
Nurse Red, to answer your question: I worked in the ER at WinterPark Memorial, then the spinal cord unit/ICU at Lucerne. After that I was recruited by Orlando Regional to work in the head injury unit they were starting. Worked there for 7 years, even when it moved down to their SAND LAKE facility. After nursing started 12 hour shift work, I went back to Lucerne and worked in the ER. In all, I worked about 13 years in Orlando. So, who was your friend that I may have worked with? Since I moved up here to Alabama I have strictly worked critical care. I am currently working at St.Joseph's Hospital in Atlanta. It was the first hospital in Atlanta, started by a group of nuns from Savannah after the Civil War. They came to Atlanta with only 50 cents in their pockets. St.Jo's has been voted one of the top heart hospitals in the nation and we are the only hospital in Georgia to have been awarded the prestigious Magnet Award for excellence of nursing care. I work in the open-heart/cardiac transplant unit there. This move came after the kids graduated from college and hubby finally realized his lifetime dream of being his own O/O. I just got sick of working for managed health care (rampant in Alabama as in other places) and the nightmare they have wrought on the health care system. Morally I could not line myself up with their health practices of taking financial advantage of someone's (the patient's) misfortune of being sick, even if it meant a hike to work to Atlanta to work someplace I could be proud of what I did in my practice. I have been a nurse for 30 years and I could not reconcile or justify changing my way of caring for patients without it making myself also physically sick as I fought a moral dilemma/war inside of myself. I guess I am too old to change or compromise my principles for the sake of working closer to home. It's not that we are not managed at St.Jo's; the difference is that the nuns who run the show, have not sacrificed quality of care, products, etc etc.and we have a shared governance program which means the nurses get to make decisions for their patient care at point of delivery. I guess that is why we got our big Magnet Award we can brag about! Enough said.
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Very interesting facts concerning the DSM03 Runningsolate. Here's a note on spinal injury. About twenty years ago nalaxone hydrochloride (narcan) was found to prevent spinal cord damage in cats when their backs were broken in controlled studys. (Yes, I know this was not so good for the cats). The substance was tested experimentaly in hospitals, then prematurely abandoned. This was unfortunate because the narcan actually worked. The problem was the mechanism of action was misunderstood by the physicians running the study. Narcon is a heroin antagonist and fills the receptor sites for endorphins. When a person is in a serious accident the body dumps endorphins. This ancient mechanbism is how we got away from the Tyrannasauris Rex after he bit our hand off (Maybe I have the wrong time era here, but you get the idea).
Thus you have the situation where someone who is seriously injured FEELS NO PAIN. You have a fractured verterba but no cord transection. The patient moves around and eventually bone cuts nerve. When the nalazone is administered, the pain sites are located and those endorphins bumped out. The patient suddenly FEELS PAIN and lots of it. Then, feeling the pain the patient SELF SPLINTS and does not move the head a bit. You don't need a collar. That fella just doesn't want to move. The narcan in the tests was administered way too late in the game. That's why the results were bad. It should have been aproved by use by paramedics for immediate administration in all cases where there is a mechanism of injury suggesting a broken neck. That's why the cats in the test study recovered. They SELF SPLINTED.
Narcon is also of use in diagnosing in an emergency room. Unfortunately, it is never used for this purpose. You administer an ampule of narcan and suddenly the person can specifically identify the aches and pains and bruised areas. Before the narcon the dumped endorphins have blocked all the pain.
[This message has been edited by newyorktwo (edited October 22, 1999).]