About the pig glands and why I haven't reported.
I hadn't mentioned that I took a fall on my studio steps just before Christmas. It was a very bad fall that had me shoot out about 4 feet, so, that I landed 6 feet down the stairs; pelvis and sacrum right on the tread edge. Oweee!
My back has been a mess since I blew a disc out in '86. Its now bone on bone at L5-S1 and the fall and the little fractures didn't help at all. But aside from having a really black bruise covering my butt and most of my back it wasn't all that bad. So, when the swelling and bruise subsided in January I went to take my trip to the doctor. Down the Alaska Highway and there I was.
Things went along swimmingly for quite awhile, even got back from Monterrey to Espanola and wrote the little piece about the trip. Then I decided to get some dental work done in Juarez.
Now Juarez is only about 360 miles from Espanola. Shouldn't matter much to someone who has driven 7500 miles in the last two weeks but....
I had the tooth pulled and a temporary bridge put in. Wonderful dentists. A whole team worked on me father, two daughters, and the periodontist. And, they scheduled appointments for two days next week to fit and install the permanent bridge.
I get back to Espanola for a couple of days. Now, nothing ever seems simple with me, including: why did my back go out? Was it the now more than 8000 miles? or?....
I was taking Dalacin C for the bone infection and B12 injections for the pig thing. Anyway, I take my last B12 and a few minutes later it seems every muscle in my body cramps and my joints ache like crazy. About an hour later I'm going down the steps and my pelvis tweaks about 1/2" down and forward on the left, at least thats what shows on the xray. What's ever left of the l5 disk goes crazy and the lowerback muscles go into spasm and within an hour both sciatic nerves are whacked out.
Its pretty late at night so I drive myself to the emergency room. The doctor sends me home with some percacets and valium. She says I need more but since I brought myself over too bad.
So I go back to J.D.'s. The medication doesn't do squat. At 3:00a I wake J.D. and ask him to take me to the hospital. Morphine and Flexerol injections and some peace for an hour or two. This is pretty much the last thing I remember from February 9 'till the 17th. Lucky me in a way, I was in hell.
I know we went back to Juarez and they finished my bridge and I remember a torture chamber and Mexican women with hot oil pounding and kneeding my muscles, I briefly remember seeing the sign for the hospital in Las Cruces. I don't recall Julie coming or the flight to Alaska or even the ride home from the airport.
Fentanyl, 80 times more powerful than morphine does that. It screws up the memory. Its a lipid binder and certainly works for pain but the price....
The thing to expose or mention about all this, despite the xrays, ct scans, 6 hospitals, and 6 doctors (7 if you count my doctor in Alaska), even the chiropractor in Espanola: the only real examination was done by the accupuncturist! That's right, he was the only one to actually look at the problem and diagnose correctly the situation and recommend I get home immediately for treatment. I wish I remembered it.
Back to the pigs.....
Well my blood pressure is stable at 125/80 without medication, not great, but not bad for a 55 year old guy still in pain. My glucose meter broke...but I'm on my way to the P.O. to get the new one...I'll let you know what it says.
So my glucose seems stable at 98...that is not diabetic! Guess them piggies are workin'!
Showing posts with label diabetes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diabetes. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Friday, February 02, 2007
My Trip to the Doctor: 6000 miles Give or Take
My Trip to the Doctor: 6000 miles Give or Take
It is a long sleep inducing trip from Espanola to Brownsville. Its a bit over a thousand miles of desert plains interrupted briefly by the hill country of San Antonio. Not too much to see; sage, scrub and oil wells, then, flat muddy fields stretching hundreds of miles. It is the cleansing purgatory leading to a Mexican salvation 6000 miles from home.
What I am after might be construed crazy, a “quack” procedure to cure my various endocrinological ills including a diagnoses of diabetes which I am convinced is a symptom and not the disease. So, I am off to a tiny village located near Jimenez, Tamaulipas with my good buddy J.D., where a doctor does this operation. I suspect it is not legal and certainly not approved by the medical association. The doctor was “run out” of Juarez.
It is evident that there is something fishy. I travel miles off the main road, then on to several turning mud streets each with a few hovels and pig pens, then to the “house” which doesn’t really fit the neighborhood, cracked pink stucco and with a second story, except that it appears abandoned. No one is there when we arrive. I feel like I have come to a 1950's abortionist. I’m not frightened but I’m not normal.
It turns out we are early. The doctor’s daughter is off getting the piglets (that is neo-natal pigs) that will be sacrificed for my health. She arrives about an hour later in a broke down Ford pickup with a friend who stays awhile because the truck won’t start up again. The doctor is elsewhere and sends a young assistant who also claims to be a doctor.
The procedure itself is quite simple. The two piglets are slaughtered and their skulls cracked open. Their pituitary and hypothalamus glands which resemble white and pink BB’s are removed and washed. The doctor makes about a half inch long incision and inserts the four “BB’s” sub-dermicly, just beneath the skin but above muscle, in the upper arm. Two stitches, five hundred-fifty dollars and it is done.
So you say it sounds weird; I thought so too. Certainly there was a lot of anecdotal evidence to the procedure being effective. Several folks swore that it had changed their lives, to me though that simply meant that the procedure hadn’t had any negative effects or rejection problems. After all, and I do believe the saying, ‘that there is no greater proponent for the quack than his patients’. So I researched what might be happening if it does work.
The first thing one comes up with is that the preferred medication for thyroid ailments is simply dried and ground, “desiccated”, neo-natal pig glands! And of course synthetic insulin is derived from pigs and several other hormonal treatments, like those for adrenal problems, as well. Could fresh be better?
Another thing one finds is that the procedure is not new, the Chinese have been doing it for sometime now and the Mexicans for about thirty years. There is also some evidence that the Mayo Clinic has also done some experiments with this but I couldn’t find any documentation.
Though, no one would tell me exactly what they thought was going on (and I wouldn’t have understood anyway, my Spanish is non-existent), this is what I think is going on:
The pituitary and hypothalamus are the “system masters” for the whole endocrine system and most hormone creation/secretion. Pig and human glands and hormones at this level are remarkably similar. I think that the inserted glands encapsulate like a cyst between the skin and the muscle and are stimulated by the same hormones that stimulate our own glands and similarly release minuscule quantities of hormones acting like a “booster” to our own endocrine system until they finally dissolve about 5 years later. This is no different than a super long term “patch” that might be administered for birth-control or some of the new insulin administration techniques. It just might work.
It has been a week and frankly I think its working. Actually, the first day I noticed that my eye sight seemed to have cleared. My blood sugars are also near normal though my energy levels (what I had hoped to cure) seem about the same. The doctor said it takes 90 days to become fully effective, maybe I’m rushing it. Though even now it looks like about 6000 dollars a year in medications won’t be needed anymore.
It is a long sleep inducing trip from Espanola to Brownsville. Its a bit over a thousand miles of desert plains interrupted briefly by the hill country of San Antonio. Not too much to see; sage, scrub and oil wells, then, flat muddy fields stretching hundreds of miles. It is the cleansing purgatory leading to a Mexican salvation 6000 miles from home.
What I am after might be construed crazy, a “quack” procedure to cure my various endocrinological ills including a diagnoses of diabetes which I am convinced is a symptom and not the disease. So, I am off to a tiny village located near Jimenez, Tamaulipas with my good buddy J.D., where a doctor does this operation. I suspect it is not legal and certainly not approved by the medical association. The doctor was “run out” of Juarez.
It is evident that there is something fishy. I travel miles off the main road, then on to several turning mud streets each with a few hovels and pig pens, then to the “house” which doesn’t really fit the neighborhood, cracked pink stucco and with a second story, except that it appears abandoned. No one is there when we arrive. I feel like I have come to a 1950's abortionist. I’m not frightened but I’m not normal.
It turns out we are early. The doctor’s daughter is off getting the piglets (that is neo-natal pigs) that will be sacrificed for my health. She arrives about an hour later in a broke down Ford pickup with a friend who stays awhile because the truck won’t start up again. The doctor is elsewhere and sends a young assistant who also claims to be a doctor.
The procedure itself is quite simple. The two piglets are slaughtered and their skulls cracked open. Their pituitary and hypothalamus glands which resemble white and pink BB’s are removed and washed. The doctor makes about a half inch long incision and inserts the four “BB’s” sub-dermicly, just beneath the skin but above muscle, in the upper arm. Two stitches, five hundred-fifty dollars and it is done.
So you say it sounds weird; I thought so too. Certainly there was a lot of anecdotal evidence to the procedure being effective. Several folks swore that it had changed their lives, to me though that simply meant that the procedure hadn’t had any negative effects or rejection problems. After all, and I do believe the saying, ‘that there is no greater proponent for the quack than his patients’. So I researched what might be happening if it does work.
The first thing one comes up with is that the preferred medication for thyroid ailments is simply dried and ground, “desiccated”, neo-natal pig glands! And of course synthetic insulin is derived from pigs and several other hormonal treatments, like those for adrenal problems, as well. Could fresh be better?
Another thing one finds is that the procedure is not new, the Chinese have been doing it for sometime now and the Mexicans for about thirty years. There is also some evidence that the Mayo Clinic has also done some experiments with this but I couldn’t find any documentation.
Though, no one would tell me exactly what they thought was going on (and I wouldn’t have understood anyway, my Spanish is non-existent), this is what I think is going on:
The pituitary and hypothalamus are the “system masters” for the whole endocrine system and most hormone creation/secretion. Pig and human glands and hormones at this level are remarkably similar. I think that the inserted glands encapsulate like a cyst between the skin and the muscle and are stimulated by the same hormones that stimulate our own glands and similarly release minuscule quantities of hormones acting like a “booster” to our own endocrine system until they finally dissolve about 5 years later. This is no different than a super long term “patch” that might be administered for birth-control or some of the new insulin administration techniques. It just might work.
It has been a week and frankly I think its working. Actually, the first day I noticed that my eye sight seemed to have cleared. My blood sugars are also near normal though my energy levels (what I had hoped to cure) seem about the same. The doctor said it takes 90 days to become fully effective, maybe I’m rushing it. Though even now it looks like about 6000 dollars a year in medications won’t be needed anymore.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Hypothetical 4 -Aspartame Sweet Death?
I’ve never met a person who drank “diet” soda who was loosing weight: in fact, the opposite. Not only does obesity seem to be on a rampage but diabetes as well. The commonality might be aspartame. Anyway, this is the basis for my hypothetical and it would be ironic if proven in that aspartame is considered an element in the treatment of diabetes.
Aspartame has three basic components, phenylalanine, aspartic acid and methanol all three are neurotoxins and appear to cross the brain/blood barrier. This “excitotoxin” concern and resulting cancers and Alzheimer’s is the basis of most study. All three can pass directly through the stomach into the blood stream as well. Phenylalanine is an essential amino acid one of its uses is in the production of peptides in the pancreas. It is similar to and metabolizes to tyrosine with the addition of a hydroxyl tail. Aspartic acid is also one of the 20 essential amino acids and is used by the body in glucose production during gluconeogenesis primarily in the liver, though mitochondrial gluconeogenesis occurs in certain cases including diabetics. Methanol is an indirect toxin which breaks down into formic acid and formaldehyde. In addition to the toxicity, formaldehyde causes proteins to irreversibly bind to and adulterate DNA, a probable cause of cancer in the US and a known cause of cancer to the rest of the world. All three are “natural” ingredients found in most food sources, though methanol is not found naturally without mitigating ethanol present.
Curiously, aspartame, being a series of amino acids and methyl alcohol that are relatively common and of known toxicity (especially toxic overtime), studies are extremely rare and secretive. We do know that the FDA originally did not wish this product approved and much has been written about the flawed process that brought it to market (Talk about conspiracies! You’d almost think Don Rumsfeld pushed it to destroy Cuba’s economy??). The studies that exist appear to concentrate on cancer and brain chemistry. I believe that more studies need to concentrate on gastrointestinal, specifically, pancreas/duodenal effects of aspartame and its by-products. It is this chemical relationship that maybe the issue with the current epidemics.
In general manufacturers of these sweeteners say the quantities and concentrations used are so small as to be inconsequential. To this I would say, first, the sweeteners work, that is you actually think you are consuming six tablespoons of sugar in your sixteen ounce soda, second, when dealing with amino acids and proteins a little goes a long way. New exenatide drugs used to combat diabetes use injections of .02 ml or 1/3 of the .06 ml of aspartame claimed to be in a serving of diet soda. So I would presume the quantity arguments are simply romantic interpretations for the uneducated.
Another issue of safety is the “naturalness” and therefore obvious safety of the products. Most poisons are natural, radiation is natural, nature is far from harmless, though it is totally unaffected. Phenylalanine is an essential amino acid and found in proteins produced by plants. Phenylalanine is not produced by animals but is acquired by ingestion. An argument for the safety of aspartame is that eating any protein food would have a person ingesting hundreds of times the phenylalanine found in the artificially sweetener. I think this is a poor argument; it does not take into account what is required to isolate the phenylalanine from the protein if indeed the protein is metabolized to that degree nor where in the digestive process that isolation occurs, the safe guards present at that point, and the body’s purpose for that isolation. Conversely, we do know that radioactive iodine l-phenylalanine is used in cancer treatment of the pancreas because it enters the blood stream directly and is absorbed immediately by the pancreas. Phenylalanine absorption by the pancreas appears to be part of the glucose cycle, in that, from what I have read phenylalanine enters the blood stream after proteins in the duodenum are broken down. The phenylalanine is then picked up by the pancreas where it is quantified resulting in more or less insulin and prephenate enzymes as the digestive process continues. However, in the case of aspartame the amino acids are already “digested” and bypass the digestive system. In electricity this would be called a short circuit.
While phenylalanine is disrupting the pancreas, in this hypothesis, aspartic acid maybe rampaging at the liver and possibly at the cellular level in the mitochondria. I would propose that the quantities of free aspartic acid may signal starvation, flooding the system with glucose and disregarding normal gastro-intestinal signals, another short-circuit.
For some who have genetic dietary requirements this over excitement of the pancreas and liver might result in Type II diabetes. It may not be so much flawed genetics that presupposes certain flavors of diabetes but simply that the genes can’t stand up to the punishment. Type II diabetes covers a number of ailments but in general it is not insulin production but insulin tolerance that is the problem with glucose levels. The possibility of aspartame poisoning contributing to diabetic conditions certainly seems logical within my very limited understanding of chemistry and experience with pre-diabetes and diet soda.
Aspartame has three basic components, phenylalanine, aspartic acid and methanol all three are neurotoxins and appear to cross the brain/blood barrier. This “excitotoxin” concern and resulting cancers and Alzheimer’s is the basis of most study. All three can pass directly through the stomach into the blood stream as well. Phenylalanine is an essential amino acid one of its uses is in the production of peptides in the pancreas. It is similar to and metabolizes to tyrosine with the addition of a hydroxyl tail. Aspartic acid is also one of the 20 essential amino acids and is used by the body in glucose production during gluconeogenesis primarily in the liver, though mitochondrial gluconeogenesis occurs in certain cases including diabetics. Methanol is an indirect toxin which breaks down into formic acid and formaldehyde. In addition to the toxicity, formaldehyde causes proteins to irreversibly bind to and adulterate DNA, a probable cause of cancer in the US and a known cause of cancer to the rest of the world. All three are “natural” ingredients found in most food sources, though methanol is not found naturally without mitigating ethanol present.
Curiously, aspartame, being a series of amino acids and methyl alcohol that are relatively common and of known toxicity (especially toxic overtime), studies are extremely rare and secretive. We do know that the FDA originally did not wish this product approved and much has been written about the flawed process that brought it to market (Talk about conspiracies! You’d almost think Don Rumsfeld pushed it to destroy Cuba’s economy??). The studies that exist appear to concentrate on cancer and brain chemistry. I believe that more studies need to concentrate on gastrointestinal, specifically, pancreas/duodenal effects of aspartame and its by-products. It is this chemical relationship that maybe the issue with the current epidemics.
In general manufacturers of these sweeteners say the quantities and concentrations used are so small as to be inconsequential. To this I would say, first, the sweeteners work, that is you actually think you are consuming six tablespoons of sugar in your sixteen ounce soda, second, when dealing with amino acids and proteins a little goes a long way. New exenatide drugs used to combat diabetes use injections of .02 ml or 1/3 of the .06 ml of aspartame claimed to be in a serving of diet soda. So I would presume the quantity arguments are simply romantic interpretations for the uneducated.
Another issue of safety is the “naturalness” and therefore obvious safety of the products. Most poisons are natural, radiation is natural, nature is far from harmless, though it is totally unaffected. Phenylalanine is an essential amino acid and found in proteins produced by plants. Phenylalanine is not produced by animals but is acquired by ingestion. An argument for the safety of aspartame is that eating any protein food would have a person ingesting hundreds of times the phenylalanine found in the artificially sweetener. I think this is a poor argument; it does not take into account what is required to isolate the phenylalanine from the protein if indeed the protein is metabolized to that degree nor where in the digestive process that isolation occurs, the safe guards present at that point, and the body’s purpose for that isolation. Conversely, we do know that radioactive iodine l-phenylalanine is used in cancer treatment of the pancreas because it enters the blood stream directly and is absorbed immediately by the pancreas. Phenylalanine absorption by the pancreas appears to be part of the glucose cycle, in that, from what I have read phenylalanine enters the blood stream after proteins in the duodenum are broken down. The phenylalanine is then picked up by the pancreas where it is quantified resulting in more or less insulin and prephenate enzymes as the digestive process continues. However, in the case of aspartame the amino acids are already “digested” and bypass the digestive system. In electricity this would be called a short circuit.
While phenylalanine is disrupting the pancreas, in this hypothesis, aspartic acid maybe rampaging at the liver and possibly at the cellular level in the mitochondria. I would propose that the quantities of free aspartic acid may signal starvation, flooding the system with glucose and disregarding normal gastro-intestinal signals, another short-circuit.
For some who have genetic dietary requirements this over excitement of the pancreas and liver might result in Type II diabetes. It may not be so much flawed genetics that presupposes certain flavors of diabetes but simply that the genes can’t stand up to the punishment. Type II diabetes covers a number of ailments but in general it is not insulin production but insulin tolerance that is the problem with glucose levels. The possibility of aspartame poisoning contributing to diabetic conditions certainly seems logical within my very limited understanding of chemistry and experience with pre-diabetes and diet soda.
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