Healthcare freedom?

What would you do if "they" came knocking on your door early in the morning because, "they" say, you are guilty of child neglect because you (and your son) refuse to put him through more cancer treatments of "their" preference after your son is found cancer-free?

Indeed, what would you do if this all happened because you disagreed with the doctor who had been treating your son when he demanded that you put your son under this kind of care:

treatments of Ifosfamide, Etoposide, Doxorubicin, Vincristine and Anorexialt. NONE of which have been FDA approved for use in children or even for the use of [your son's] diagnosed condition. [And some of which] have . . . been shown to cause other forms of cancers.

Some other side effects of these drugs are:
-Damage to the cranial motor nerves
-Serious infections
-Failure of boys to sexually mature
-The inability to father children

Yep. Real story. Real parents. Real 9- (now 10-) year-old boy. Real lawsuit. And real pain.

Jacob Stieler was diagnosed with cancer back in March of this year. After undergoing surgery and chemo treatments, he and his parents were dumfounded and thrilled to discover there were no signs of cancer in July. All his scans came back clear. His blood counts were good. . . .

July 1:

Thursday we have to head back to Grand Rapids for Jacob to get his counts checked and Friday, we have to go back to Grand Rapids again for Jacob’s MRI and Bone Scan. Very busy week! And lots of driving. Not my favorite thing to do, but it will be nice to get the tests done and see where Jacob’s at.

Please be praying for Jacob’s tests next week. Pray that his counts will be higher on Sunday so he won’t have to have another transfusion.

July 6:

Jacob had his counts checked Sunday morning. They were great! Praise God! That meant that he didn’t have to have his Neupogen shots for the rest of the week. He was so happy about that. He did really good all day, but around dinner time, he had a melt-down. I don’t know what happened, but he was not happy. He told me he wished he could fall asleep and never wake up. Boy, that is so hard to hear! I know he’s had those moments a few times already, and I can’t blame him, but it breaks my heart. I think he was just drained from a day at the beach. I’m always wiped out myself the day after too. Anyway, he woke up Monday morning and had done a 180. He was back to his old silly self.

July 7:

JACOB’S PET SCAN CAME BACK CLEAR!!!!!!!

And then July 11:

We’ll be leaving out of state for treatment for a month or so. It’ll be so nice to be back after that. Just that much sweeter! Please continue to pray for Jacob. Even though his test came back clear, I know that doesn’t mean he’s in the clear. This will mean a lifestyle change and we’re all willing to do it, especially if that means everyone is healthy in our home. :) We’re so thankful for all of your prayers. I know that helped tremendously!!!! :)

--Uh-oh!

Did you catch that?

"We’ll be leaving out of state for treatment for a month or so"? What's that all about? Oh. Not to mention her constant reference to prayers and God.

Obviously a weirdo. How dare she think she knows more than the doctors who are committed to cutting, burning and poisoning? Lifestyle changes? Is she crazy?

SO . . .

July 18:

Well, this has been the craziest week!

Wednesday [that would be July 13--JAH], I got a phone call from the social worker at the hospital where Jacob has been.

She informed me since we are refusing radiation for Jacob, they would be filing a petition for court. I was in shock! Well, not totally. In shock for the fact that my son [is] CANCER-FREE!!!

Anyway, Friday morning comes and I am woke up by the sound of Child Protective Services knocking on our door.

I was disgusted to find out that the hospital lied and said that he would have a 0% chance of survival if he didn’t follow through with it (that number was NEVER given to me). Second, they with-held the fact that his PET Scan came back clear and he is, in fact, cancer-free. I am disgusted by the fact that they were deceitful.

What happened to parent’s rights? We are not being foolish [in] not taking further action with Jacob. We are taking him to a place to build up his immune system, get some healthy weight back on his bones and he will have multiple therapies to heal his worn body.

The fact that they want to give him almost 2 months of radiation plus 6 months more of chemo – both of which cause cancer – when no cancer is present, is completely shocking!

Please be praying for all of us! Jacob is scared and worried! He already told me that if they make him do chemo and radiation, that he will kill himself!

So, suddenly, the Stielers are no longer looking at a "mere" medical problem; now they must deal with legal problems as well? Because they have come to the conclusion that there may be better means of dealing with cancer (like "lifestyle changes") than the treatments that the allopaths prefer?

On October 14, Mrs. Stieler wrote,

Yesterday we went to court again. . . . There is now an actual trial set for the first week of December. There will be a jury. This trial is for two things.

First, they are still pushing to have Jacob have 6 more months of chemotherapy and 2 months of radiation. Two of the chemotherapy drugs that he was on and would be on are mustard gas – yes, chemical warfare.

Another one is nicknamed “red death” and can potentially cause major heart damage.

Another has chloroform in it and the other two are just as capable of causing cancer.

Yes, it’s all POISON! And I’m sure most of you know how horrible radiation is.

Oh, and did I forget to mention again that Jacob is CANCER-FREE!!!! Yes, he had another PET Scan a few weeks ago and still NO CANCER! They truly believe that poisoning my child is the best thing for his health.

It doesn’t matter that we have doctors currently keeping an eye on him.

It doesn’t matter that he’s had a lifestyle change and we’re doing multiple things to keep him healthy.

It doesn’t matter that we’re going to keep getting PET Scans done every 3 months.

It doesn’t matter that we would certainly get him into treatment the moment one of those scans came up showing cancer. They’re not happy with that answer.

And in the very next sentence she begins speculating about why her [former?] doctors and/or the hospital . . . and definitely the state are coming after them: "Is it because they’re not getting their $60,000 a month? And that’s not counting radiation."
And then . . .

Another reason for this whole trial is the fact that they’re trying to set an example with us – to not question the doctors or the state, for that matter. We’re all just basically “foster-parents” to our children. The state actually owns them and they have a right to decide what’s best for our kids. We, as parents, do not! I hope you are all as outraged at this as we are!!!

What happened to our rights?? . . . Doesn’t the 14th amendment mean anything?? . . . We need to stand up for our rights as parents . . . that we should ultimately have the right to decide what’s best. Not some strangers who don’t know a thing about our children or us for that matter.

And so, I wondered, what has happened? We're well past the first week of December. . . .

Oh.

November 29:

Our trial date has been changed to January 10-13, 2012. It’s a long story and frankly quite ridiculous, but I probably shouldn’t get into that here. Let’s just say, the other side asked for it. [Not sure what the "it" is to which she is referring--the original trial? The postponement? Perhaps both. --JAH] I know that there is good and bad that comes with it, but we really just wanted to be done with it for Christmas. Not to mention that people, including my husband, took time off of work to be there or to testify. It’s really quite maddening!

And Mrs. Stieler's latest update (12/10/11):

I never got back to you all after the motions hearing on November 30th. I guess I didn’t take the time because there was nothing to report. They were supposed to go over some of the motions that were filed, but the “other side” wasn’t prepared.

It's getting quite ridiculous! They’ve been investigating us since July. Filed the petition in September and THEY’RE not ready?

Oh, and I forgot to mention that one of the reasons that the trial was asked to be moved to January is because “it’s not fair” that it was 2 against 1. As in Ken and I having 2 lawyers to their one.

Pathetic!

Someone has initiated a petition drive to ask the governor of Michigan to drop the lawsuit against the Stielers. You can find that here.



. . . And I am left wondering once more about how "free" we are, yet, here in the "land of the free." . . .

Something you need to be aware of concerning cancer . . .

How do you get good information about health care?

If you've been following me at all for the last year or two, you've probably noticed my growing disillusionment with a lot of medical practitioners. My experience tells me they are too focused on treatment of symptoms and nowhere near enough focused on causes. And so, while eliminating one symptom (and ignoring its cause), they create additional problems somewhere else in the body.

Well, this story, from an interview by Dr. Joseph Mercola with Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez (both MDs, by the way!), takes the cake: The Cancer Treatment So Successful - Traditional Doctors SHUT it Down.

I urge you to download the transcript of the interview.

It wouldn't surprise me if the FDA were to come swooping in on Mercola for this kind of commentary.

Mercola introduces his article and interview with these comments:

[Dr. Gonzalez] didn't set out to treat cancer at first . . . let alone treat patients. His original plan was to be a basic science researcher at Sloan-Kettering; a teaching hospital for Cornell Medical College. He had a chance meeting with William Kelley, a controversial dentist who was one of the founders of nutritional typing. Dr. Kelley had been practicing alternative- and nutritional approaches for over two decades at the time, led him to begin a student project investigation of Kelley's work, in the summer of 1981.

"I started going through his records and even though I was just a second year medical student, I could see right away there were cases that were extraordinary," he says. "Patients with appropriately diagnosed pancreatic cancer, metastatic breast cancer in the bone, metastatic colorectal cancer… who were alive 5, 10, 15 years later under Kelley's care with a nutritional approach."

This preliminary review led to a formal research study, which Dr. Gonzalez completed while doing his fellowship in cancer, immunology and bone marrow transplantation.

The "Impossible" Recoveries of Dr. Kelley's Cancer Patients

After going through thousands of Kelley's records, Dr. Gonzalez put together a monograph, divided into three sections:

1. Kelley’s theory
2. 50 cases of appropriately-diagnosed lethal cancer patients still alive five to 15 years after diagnosis, whose long-term survival was attributed to Kelley’s program
3. Patients Kelley had treated with pancreatic cancer between the years 1974 and 1982

According to Dr. Good, the president of Sloan-Kettering who had become Gonzalez' mentor, if Kelley could produce even one patient with appropriately diagnosed pancreatic cancer who was alive 5-10 years later, it would be remarkable. They ultimately tracked down 22 of Kelley's cases. Ten of them met him once and didn't do the program after being dissuaded by family members or doctors who thought Kelley was a quack.

The average survival for that group was about 60 days.

A second group of seven patients who did the therapy partially and incompletely (again, dissuaded by well-intentioned but misguided family members or doctors), had an average survival of 300 days.

The third group consisting of five patients, who were appropriately diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer and who completed the full program, had an average survival of eight and a half years! In Dr. Gonzalez' words, this was "just unheard of in medicine."

One of those patients included a woman diagnosed by the Mayo Clinic with stage four pancreatic cancer who had been given six months to live. She'd learned about Kelley's program through a local health food store. She completed his treatment and is still alive today, 29 years later.

The Truth about Medical Journals: Why Gonzalez's Book Was Never Published

However, despite—or rather because of—the remarkable success of the treatment, Gonzalez couldn't get his findings published.

"We tried to publish case reports in the medical journals; the whole book, parts of the book, individual case reports—with no success," he says.

This is an important point that many fail to realize.

Those of us who practice natural medicine are frequently criticized for not publishing our findings. My justification for that is that it's not going to be published anyway, and Dr. Gonzalez' anecdotal story confirms this view.

His mentor and supporter, Dr. Good, was one of the most published authors in the scientific literature at that point, with over 2,000 scientific articles to his name. He'd been nominated for the Nobel Prize three times, and yet he was refused because the findings were "too controversial," and flew in the face of conventional medical doctrine.

If the cream of the crop is refused, how does a general primary care physician get an article published?

He doesn't…

"Robert Good was at the top of his profession: President of Sloan-Kettering, father of modern immunology, and did the first bone marrow transplant in history. Yet, he couldn't get it published," Gonzalez says. "He couldn't even get a single case report published.

In fact, I have a letter from one of the editors, dated 1987, who wrote a blistering letter to Good saying "You've been boondoggled by a crazy quack guy. Don't you see this is all a fraud?"

It was just the most extraordinary, irrational letter... [Because] the patients' names were there, the copies of their pertinent medical records were there… Any of them could have called these patients, like Arlene Van Straten who, 29 years later, will talk to anyone… But no one cared. They wouldn't do it; they didn't believe it.

They couldn't believe it.

It was very disturbing to me because I say, "It is what it is." I come out of a very conventional research orientation, and it was astonishing to me—I had assistance; I had the president of Sloane-Kettering who couldn't get this thing published because it disagreed with the philosophy that was being promoted in medicine; that only chemotherapy, radiation, or immunotherapy can successfully treat cancer, even though the success rate was abysmal.

The idea that medical journals are these objective and unbiased repositories of the truths about science is total nonsense. Most of them are owned by the drug companies. They won't publish anything that disagrees with their philosophy."

The story only gets better from here. Names. Dates. Specific numbers. Even phone numbers and book titles. Who's telling the truth? Who's lying? I'll let you read the details for yourself.

Yipes!

Follow-up to DCA post

You may recall my post on a potential semi-universal cure for cancer.

One of my readers contacted a professional cancer researcher, a friend-of-a-friend, who offered the following input:

• A quick literature search indicates that there have been promising in vitro studies (using cells grown on plates) which show cancer cells dying after treatment. However,
   
• In vivo there has only been one animal study using rats to show a decrease in tumor size (one lab did it with Michelakis as first author on the paper).
   
• Keep in mind that nothing is really believable until it can be replicated in other labs.
   
• Many other papers indicate that ingestion of DCA in mice caused liver cancer and another showed damage to peripheral nerves.
   
• Basically, there are no human or even monkey studies to support the claims of DCA being a safe and effective drug for cancer treatment.

The same researcher then forwarded original versions of two articles:

1. A popular article from Nature magazine, written in March 2007 (almost three years ago, and just a month after the DCA story first came out in the scientific press: Cancer patients opt for unapproved drug

and,

2. An academic (but relatively readable) article by Dr. Michelakis, the researcher who first brought DCA to the attention of cancer researchers: Dichloroacetate (DCA) as a potential metabolic-targeting therapy for cancer. (This article was published in September 2008, but was first received for publication in December 2007.)

The first article takes a generally antagonistic stance toward patients who would ingest "unapproved" drugs:

Jim Tassano, who owns a pest-control and marketing company in Sonora, California, came across DCA when researching alternative cancer therapies to help his dying ballroom-dance instructor. He wanted something that was effective, safe and that he could lay his hands on: DCA fit the bill. He ordered some from chemical supply companies, teamed up with a chemist friend and they worked out a way to synthesize the compound themselves. “I couldn’t walk away from it,” Tassano says. “It could do so much good for so many people.”

Tassano set up two websites. The first of these (thedcasite.com) hosts information on DCA and a patient chatroom. On the second (buydca.com) Tassano is selling his homemade DCA. . . . Many patients taking DCA — acquired from Tassano, chemical companies or other sources — are reporting their progress on thedcasite.com.

And the problem with this, according to Dr. Michelakis and others?

Although DCA seems safe overall, they point to a clinical trial that was stopped early because those taking the drug developed damage to their peripheral nerves (P. Kaufmann et al. Neurology 66, 324–330; 2006). Without a control group, they point out, it will be impossible to tell whether any improvement in the patients’ condition is caused by the drug. Patients could also be taking DCA that is not of pharmaceutical grade and might contain harmful impurities.

Michelakis says the patients could end up undermining efforts to do a controlled clinical trial if, for example, some develop harmful side effects and the drug earns a bad reputation. “It’s destroying efforts to do this right,” he says. “Any way you look at this, it’s a negative development.”

"Any way you look at it," it's a negative development? From the perspective of the patients who have, otherwise, been given no hope?

The article's author continues:

The battle between dying patients who want immediate access to unapproved drugs and doctors who urge trials and caution is a perennial one. Some patients argue that they cannot wait for trials and should have the right to take unapproved drugs, regardless of the risks.

But there are arguments against this. An estimated 95% of cancer drugs that enter clinical trials do not get approval, many because they are ineffective or unsafe, so patients risk shortening their life or making their last days more uncomfortable.

Okay. But shouldn't it be up to the patients themselves to determine whether they are willing to take the risks? On what grounds should that decision be left to the government or the "powers that be" who get to "approve" drugs for trial?

Oh. And then there's another argument "against" permitting patients to make their own decisions about whether to use "unapproved" drugs:

[I]f patients can access DCA — or other unapproved drugs — there is no incentive for them to enter a clinical trial. So in terms of public health, ethicists argue, more people will be helped if access to unapproved drugs is restricted and proper trials performed.

So, apparently, selflessness is to be mandated by law. You must, by law, sacrifice yourself for the potential of helping others--"one day, maybe, long after you're dead, if we can just get the funding."

Peter Jacobsen, an expert in ethics, health and law at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, doubts whether any good can come of the patients’ efforts. They are so desperate to see results, he says, that there is no way they can report unbiased results and no mechanism to ensure the reports are accurate. “I don’t trust the data,” he says. “It’s hard enough to rely on them in clinical trials, let alone this.”

Okay. I'll buy that. I'll buy the need for caution and the need for skepticism. But . . .

Then I read Michelakis' article.

Remember that clinical trial that was "stopped early because those taking the drug developed damage to their peripheral nerves"? Michelakis notes,

[T]he first two randomised control trials of chronic oral therapy with DCA in congenital mitochondrial diseases were reported in 2006. In the first, a blinded placebo-controlled study was performed with oral DCA administered at 25 mg kg^-1 day^-1 in 30 patients with MELAS syndrome (mitochondrial myopathy, encephalopathy, lactic acidosis and stroke-like episodes) (Kaufmann et al, 2006). Most patients enrolled in the DCA arm developed symptomatic peripheral neuropathy, compared with 4 out of 15 in the placebo arm, leading to the termination of the study.

Whoa! Sounds bad!

But he continues:

Seventeen out of 19 patients had at least partial resolution of peripheral neurological symptoms by 9 months after discontinuation of DCA. . . . No other toxicities were reported.

Beyond this,

It is important to note that peripheral neuropathy often complicates MELAS because of primary or secondary effects on peripheral nerves; for example these patients also have diabetes and diabetes-related peripheral neuropathy.

And then,

In contrast [to the negative results of this one study that was terminated], another randomised placebo-controlled double-blinded study failed to show any significant toxicity of DCA, including peripheral neuropathy. In this study only one of 21 children with congenital lactic acidosis treated with DCA orally at 25 mg kg^-1 day^-1 for 6 months demonstrated mild peripheral neuropathy. Serial nerve conduction studies failed to demonstrate any difference in incidence of neuropathy in the 2 arms (placebo vs DCA). Sleepiness and lethargy, muscular rigidity of the upper extremity and hand tremor were reported in one patient in each group (Stacpoole et al, 2006).

So what is Michelakis' view of the divergent results with respect to neuropathy?

The higher incidence of peripheral neuropathy in adult MELAS patients may represent an intrinsic predisposition to this complication in MELAS or its associated conditions, that is, diabetes mellitus; this toxicity might also be age-dependent. . . . [Moreover, a]s peripheral neuropathy is a frequent complication of taxane, platinum and vinca-alkaloid chemotherapies, the risk for DCA-associated peripheral neuropathy may depend on whether cancer patients have prior or concurrent neurotoxic therapy. . . . [But i]n summary, peripheral neuropathy is a potential side effect of DCA that appears to be largely reversible.

I want to quote one more section from Michelakis' article. Before I do, however, I would like to add some weight to what he said in the section I have just quoted. One of the moderators on thedcasite.com, Jay C, comments,

Researchers at the University of Alberta have reported that DCA is relatively non-toxic, since it has already been used as a medicine on adults and children to treat metabolic disease, and for hypertension. It has been known to have some mild side effects in a minority of patients and they include a change in gait [and] some nerve problems, but both of these symptoms appear to be reversible upon cessation of DCA. This is certainly in positive contract to most of the poisons being administered today as "chemo", including IL-2 (requires on[e] week in ICU), Interferon, and DTIC.

So why the apparently special concern over possible complications from DCA? Is it really scientific objectivity at work here? Or, possibly, something else? [Fear of losing power on the part of gatekeepers like the FDA? Fear of lost profits on the part of major pharmaceutical companies? "The preclinical work on DCA (showing effectiveness in a variety of tumours and relatively low toxicity) (Bonnet et al, 2007), its structure (a very small molecule), [and] the low price (it is a generic drug) . . ., provide a strong rationale for rapid clinical translation," Michelakis says early in his article. Oh. I should probably include the last comment that I elided from the immediately preceding quote. One other factor that ought to provide a rationale for rapid clinical translatioin? " . . . and the fact that DCA has already been used in humans for more than 30 years" (presumably without notable safety concerns).]
The concluding paragraph in Michelakis' article adds another note of interest to this reader:

[E]ven if DCA does not prove to be the ‘dawn of a new era’ (Pan and Mak, 2007), initiation and completion of clinical trials with a generic compound will be a task of tremendous symbolic and practical significance. At this point the ‘dogma’ that trials of systemic anticancer therapy cannot happen without industry support, suppresses the potential of many promising drugs that might not be financially attractive for pharmaceutical manufacturers. In that sense, the clinical evaluation of DCA . . . will be . . . [a] paradigm shift.

While I'm at it, I ought to include one last note. A "Note to Proof" appended by the editors of the British Journal of Cancer at the end of Michelakis' article:

Since the acceptance of this review two important papers have confirmed the novel anticancer effects of DCA in prostate and endometrial cancers: Wong JY et al, Dichloroacetate induces apoptosis in endometrial cancer cells. Gynecol Oncol June 2008; 109(3): 394–402 and Gao et al, Dichloroacetate (DCA) sensitizes both wild-type and over expressing Bcl-2 prostate cancer cells in vitro to radiation. Prostate 1 August 2008; 68 (11):1223–1231.

[NOTE: If you are reading this article on Facebook, it originally appeared on my personal blog.]

Semi-universal cancer cure?

I've been sitting on this one for several weeks now. I don't remember how it first came across my radar, but Dr. Evangelos Michelakis, a professor at the University of Alberta Department of Medicine, has shown that sodium dichloroacetate (DCA) causes regression in several cancers, including lung, breast, and brain tumors.

Apparently, the story has been out for well over a year (actually, according to the U of A website, since March of 2007), but it still seems to be a "back page" and "small print" story.

The problem: "The DCA compound is not patented and not owned by any pharmaceutical company, and, therefore, . . . difficult to find funding . . . to test . . . in clinical trials" and, of course, to promote.

For a popularized presentation of what this is all about, here's a Glen Beck TV spot:



For a summary webpage that includes links to almost anything you might be interested in finding, check out "The DCA Site."

Want to buy DCA? Here's your source.

And, finally, a full academic paper published in the British Journal of Cancer.

Michelakis is a quiet and understated man. You can see and hear him on the Glen Beck segment. But how is this for an understated summary (from the BJC article)?

The preclinical work on DCA (showing effectiveness in a variety of tumours and relatively low toxicity) (Bonnet et al, 2007), its structure (a very small molecule), the low price (it is a generic drug) and the fact that DCA has already been used in humans for more than 30 years, provide a strong rationale for rapid clinical translation.

(LDN) Low-Dose Naltrexone and other health-related comments

Following Linda's comment, as I noted, I decided to pursue the low-dose naltrexone (LDN) option.

I wrote my rheumatologist. He turned me down.

Meanwhile, while my "vitality and longevity" doctor was the one who first suggested I may be dealing with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), he repeatedly stated he wants nothing to do with treating my RA. "It's not my area."

As I bore down on a year under his care--a year in which I made significant progress in my blood lipids and other markers of general health (HDL from 44 to 70; LDL from 134 to 64; number of LDL particles ("more important than total quantity of LDL") went from 1942 to below 1000; LDL particle size went from 20.0 ("too small; too compact") to a "bigger, fluffier" 21.6; insulin went from 6.0 and higher down to less than 2.0; total testosterone went from a low of 441 to a healthier 758; total body fat went from 24.9% to 15.8% . . . and so on and so forth)--Sarita and I were not particularly happy that he has been charging us $200 a month basically just to "be there," ready to answer any questions I may have about the issues he does deal with.

I decided to see if I could find a doctor who would deal with all my issues--not only my lipids and testosterone and cancer risks, but my autoimmune problems as well.

And as I looked for a doctor who might prescribe and have experience with LDN, I found such a doctor in our area.

When I visited Dr. C--an MD but/and with a strong naturopathic orientation--I discovered he had been a rheumatologist.

"You're not a rheumatologist anymore?" I asked. "You mean you don't keep up on the field?"

"Right. I wouldn't want to pretend I was still qualified in the area."

Still, he obviously had experience with people just like me. That was a nice "bonus"!

Several things came out of my appointment with Dr. C:

• "LDN is a great therapy, but it won't cure your arthritis."
   
• "Your greatest threat from rheumatoid arthritis is not the pain and the potential damage to your joints--the things that you're worried about. The greatest threat is heart disease. It dramatically increases your risk of heart attack."
   
• "RA is a forest fire. You need to throw everything at it you can."

As a result of that last piece of good news:

• "Though I am no fan of statin drugs, and normally I would try to have one of my patients use another modality to attack the blood lipid issues, in your case, because of your RA, I would strongly advise you to continue on the statins." 
• "I know you are afraid of the plaquenil [hydrochloroquine], and I am not going to demand that you get back on; but I would like to appeal to you, in the strongest terms, that you try it again."

So, with his encouragement . . . I am taking my LDN, back on my statin, and, yes, taking plaquenil/hydrochloroquine . . . with no significant side-effects besides much looser bowels than I have had in the past.

I pray the combination of medicines might actually stop the advance of the RA. It has been very painful recently.

*****
While I'm on the subject, I should encourage you to take a look at a report that just came out from leaders in the field of LDN therapy. It's called The Faces of Low-Dose Naltrexone (PDF; 1.5MB). It was produced for the First International Low Dose Naltrexone Awareness Week coming up October 19-25th, 2009.

Amazing results for people with MS (multiple sclerosis), various forms of cancer, and much else.

--If you're seeing this post on Facebook, it is a reprint from my personal blog.

Synsepalum dulcificum - the "miracle fruit"

Hope for seniors and chemotherapy patients who find their taste has so shifted that they find food unpleasant to eat.

People who have tried it say that, after chewing the fruit and rubbing the pulp against the tongue, "for about 15 to 30 minutes, everything sour is sweet." "Lemons . . . taste like candy. Oranges become sickeningly sweet. Hot sauce that usually burns the tongue tastes like honey barbecue sauce."

The miracle fruit contains a natural protein, called miraculin, which has sugar molecules that bind to the tongue, . . . said [Linda Bartoshuk, a professor at the University of Florida's Center for Smell and Taste]. When acid enters the mouth, the sugar molecules press into the sweet receptors.

Some of her colleagues are looking into how the berries could help people with diabetes and obesity, because they sweeten the taste of food. Unlike sugar, the miracle fruit has very few calories and unlike artificial sweeteners, the berries are natural.

Bartoshuk said she hasn't seen any reports of dangers from eating the berries, but warned against premature health benefit claims.

"Everyone's immediate response is it's an artificial sweetener, it'll help you lose weight," she said. "But the bad side is artificial sweeteners don't help you lose weight. Any real claims for health benefits are going to have to be supported by good research."

Go to CNN Health for more.

On the medical front . . .

I had some follow-up blood work done in early January and spoke with my "vitality and longevity" doctor about the results.

Good news: my cholesterol numbers are great. The standard LDL/HDL ratio put me at half the normal risk for cardiac disease--about an eighth of what it was last August.

The number of cholesterol-carrying molecules is down to almost half of what it was last August. But last August I was at very nearly double what my doctor told me was high acceptable. . . . So though I'm close to being at the high acceptable range, I'm not "even" quite there. Wonderful progress, but he wants the number of molecules per deciliter of blood reduced still further.

Most worrying: my fasting blood sugar level has risen even higher than it was (and it was already at the upper edge of acceptable). . . . I'm not sure if my numbers (blood glucose and HgbA1c--glycosylated hemoglobin) place me in the range of pre-diabetic, but they are certainly not optimal.

But my doctor told me he believes part of the reason my blood sugar is off is because of some of the things he is having me take for my cholesterol: specifically, the large quantity of Niacin and, if I recall accurately, Vitamin D as well.

So to drive my cholesterol down even further, he has upped my dose of Simvastatin to 30mg a day (50% more than I was taking), and he's pushing me to cut back on my carbs even more.

I was pleased, two weeks ago, to read in our local paper what Dr. Andrew Weil had to say about cholesterol. He confirmed much of what my "vitality and longevity" doctor was saying about the size and number of cholestorol-carrying particles:

You may not know that LDL ("bad") cholesterol comes in two main forms -- small, dense particles and large, fluffy ones. [Stephen R.] Devries[, director of the Integrative Program for Heart Disease Prevention at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Cholesterol,] explains that the small [cholesterol particles] are the dangerous ones: Because of their size, they're much more likely to get stuck in coronary arteries while the big, fluffy ones roll on through. The size of your LDL particles has a strong genetic basis.

This all sounds right. It accords with what my "vitality and longevity" doctor was telling me (though it is totally outside the knowledge of my regular, insurance-covered doctor).

However, Weil goes on to say,

If your LDL particles are small, Devries says you can change their size and number with simple lifestyle changes including weight control, a low-glycemic-index diet (www.glycemicindex.com), fish oil supplements and regular exercise.

I find that harder to believe . . . primarily because, while the number of particles in my blood has decreased dramatically under the regimen my doctor has given me--a regimen that, I would say, is not "simple" and includes far more than mere "lifestyle changes" (i.e., it includes statins)--the size of my cholesterol particles has hardly budged. And I have made the lifestyle changes . . . plus taken the additional steps. . . .

To top it all off, I get reports like this one I just read this morning (from Dr. Russell Blaylock's The Blaylock Wellness Report:

Statins Found to Increase Cancer Risk

A new 41,000-patient study reported in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology
found that taking statins to lower LDL-cholesterol was associated with a significant increase in cancer risk. Researchers were not certain if the increase was due to the dramatic lowering of the LDL-cholesterol or to taking statins.

My studies indicate both may be at fault. We know that statins significantly impair the immune system and that immune surveillance, a system whereby the body’s immune system continuously scans the body for newly appearing nests of cancer cells, is also impaired.

Great!

And my mom didn't die at 55 from heart disease; she died from cancer. Of course, her brother died at a relatively young age (not as young as she was, but still relatively young) from heart disease. But she didn't. And my dad is still alive. And heart disease hardly looks as if it's going to be the problem that "does him in."

. . . So I begin to wonder: What should I do?

Kind of the "same old" questions I keep running into with respect to theology: Whom does one believe? Everyone seems to focus on a different issue. . . .

Oh. And then this last note that our paper printed last week:

Vitamins don't prevent disease, new study says

. . . The eight-year study of 161,808 postmenopausal women echoes recent disappointing vitamin studies in men.

Millions of Americans spend billions of dollars on vitamins to boost their health. Research has focused on cancer and heart disease in particular because of evidence that diets full of vitamin-rich foods might protect against those illnesses. But that evidence doesn't necessarily mean pills are a good substitute. . . .

The study appeared in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine. Co-author Dr. JoAnn Manson said that despite the disappointing results, the research doesn't mean multivitamins are useless. The data is observational, not the most rigorous scientific research. And it's not clear if taking vitamins might help prevent cancers that take years to develop, said Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Harvard's Brigham & Women's Hospital.

You can find a few more scraps of data on the subject in the original article.