I give a lot of credit to doctors who are identifying this early and treating it effectively with drugs, but we don't pay attention to the fundamentals here, figure out why it is some people are at risk. Vitamin D deficiency is rampant and needs to be replaced aggressively.
Another issue is why might you get this at a young age? You might have problems with absorption due to gluten sensitivity. Gluten related digestive problems really interfere with absorption and sometimes are the reason why we see young women with severe osteoporosis.
So get this checked out, and that's the kind of workup I would do in someone who comes to me with unexplained severe osteoporosis.
CALLER: I am calling to find out whether or not glucosamine has anything to do with causing blood pressure to elevate?
DR. HOFFMAN: That might be a possibility from the standpoint of the sodium that is sometimes present in these products, but there's not that much sodium in these things.
Is that something you've noticed?
CALLER: My husband, actually. He never had high blood pressure and all of a sudden his blood pressure elevated and having gone to the doctor he said, "Oh, well, you're taking glucosamine and that has a tendency to elevate your blood pressure."
DR. HOFFMAN: How does this doctor know?
CALLER: I haven't the foggiest idea.
DR. HOFFMAN: Well I haven't the foggiest idea either because I know all the literature related to glucosamine and there's not a single study that suggests that glucosamine raises blood pressure. There is some information, however, that suggests that glucosamine when given intravenously in high doses to experimental animals that it might cause blood sugar to rise. But then it's been tested with people with pills, not intravenous drips, and it was found that glucosamine didn't really do much to affect blood pressure or to affect blood sugar.
More likely, it might affect blood sugar. I don't know. Anything's possible. I think you have to do it on an individual basis. Supplements react strangely from person to person. And if, reliably, your husband goes off the glucosamine his blood pressure is good and he goes back on the glucosamine, the blood pressure goes up then something is going on there. But that's really an idiosyncratic reaction that applies to him and is not a general tendency.
Doctors are all too quick to say, "It must be that supplement you're taking." They're not keen on supplements anyway and they're kind of negative. Have them conduct a real clean experiment. Go off see if your blood pressure goes down then go back on check your blood pressure carefully.
CALLER: I have whooping cough.
DR. HOFFMAN: How old are you?
CALLER: I'm 12.
DR. HOFFMAN: Tell me about your whooping cough.
CALLER: It's the worse at night because I wake up because I can't really control how much I cough when I'm asleep. So I wake up and then I cough a lot and then I'm not able to breathe for like 30 seconds to a minute or so.
DR. HOFFMAN: Now let me mention this -- is that whooping cough is kind of the vernacular term for diphtheria or pertussis. Actually, pertussis is the vaccine that we use when we use the DPT vaccine. It's the P in the DPT vaccine.
So you don't actually have the extreme form of this, is that correct? You just have a cough that's like a nasty barking cough, isn't that the case?
CALLER: Pretty much, except for later on when I'm trying to catch my breath and I make a wheezing sound.
DR. HOFFMAN: All right. Did you get to your pediatrician, and did your pediatrician listen to your lungs and check your breathing?
CALLER: Yes, he listened to my lungs. And I went to the doctor like four times and at first they thought it was croup. And they said it would go away after a day or so but it kept happening and so I went back.
DR. HOFFMAN: It sounds like you have a touch of asthma with that kind of pattern and the difficulty of breathing.
The suggestion is maybe see a pulmonary doctor or breathing specialist just to be sure. But some things you can do naturally are: Increase your intake of vitamin C; check to see if you're allergic to any kind of materials in your house or in your room; consider a modification of your diet getting rid of wheat and dairy for a couple of weeks because food allergies play a role in perpetuating this; consider taking some zinc and some selenium. Selenium is great for the immune system.
There are lots of things you can do, one on one, with a nutritionally-oriented physician but I don't want to go overboard with recommendations here. See if you can trace the cause.
CALLER: About four years ago I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and I'm on Synthroid now, once a day and --
DR. HOFFMAN: You had part of your thyroid removed?
CALLER: Half of it. And they would like my TSH to remain under 1 and so far it has been. My question is about antioxidants and I remember a couple of weeks ago you mentioned modified citrus pectin, MCP.
DR. HOFFMAN: That's not an antioxidant. Modified citrus pectin, or MCP, is a natural anticancer compound that's derived from citrus fruit. You eat tons and tons of citrus fruit, drink a lot of orange juice, you're not going to get modified citrus pectin because it's been chemically modified.
So it's naturally based but it's artificial in the sense that you're not going to get it by eating lots and lots of grapefruit for example. It has really powerful anticancer effects in a preventive sense and in a treatment sense. So for someone who has had cancer and who wants to safeguard themselves from recurrence, I think that MCP is ideal. Generally, the preventive dose is anywhere from one tablespoon to three tablespoons per day. It comes as sort of a powder or alternatively you can get it in capsules. I think it's very helpful. You're considering taking it, right?
DR. HOFFMAN: Yes. I'm going to start taking it. I want to be sure I have the right one.
DR. HOFFMAN: I think it's an exciting anticancer nutrient but don't short change yourself, there are anticancer nutrients. You may want to take selenium, vitamin C and vitamin E; all the antioxidants seem to be helpful. Zinc as well. You want to take some of the plant based cancer fighting nutrients such as curcumin and resveratrolfrom red wine grapes and things like -- from tomato, you can get lycopene. These are some of the important anticancer compounds.
Kyolic aged garlic has anticancer effects and there are numerous anticancer nutrients that you can use as part of your arsenal to protect you from cancer recurrence. I put some of the nutrients together in a product called Phytoguard, which I think is a great general cancer preventive, heart disease preventive and can be taken along with your multiple.
CALLER: I suffer from multiple sclerosis, I'm 51, my problem is from the waist down only. I was first diagnosed as relapsing, remitting. I am now on secondary progressives but my problem is spastic legs and multiple spasms in my leg.
DR. HOFFMAN: Are you taking baclofen?
CALLER: Yes, I am. Actually, it's not the baclofen, it's a new product called Zanaflex -- about four times a day.
I also want to mention that I am taking the alpha lipoic acid that my mother called in to you about two weeks ago.
DR. HOFFMAN: It's going to take a while for that to kick in, number one. lipoic acid is great for nerves, it's part of my program for multiple sclerosis and I think that patients with MS can benefit from certain supplements. The supplements that are helpful to slow the progression of the disease include borage oil and fish oil, high doses of vitamin E and alpha lipoic acids and other antioxidants.
For cramps, probably the best single thing I can suggest is magnesium although oral magnesium may not entirely do the trick. You may require intravenous shots of magnesium from time to time and one the new therapies that I'm excited about in relation to MS is something called phosphatidyl choline or PC. If that name sounds familiar it's because it's an ultra potent extract of lecithin.
And PC is one of the components that coats the nerve sheaths and we know that demyelination is a major issue in MS so putting back some of the choline and phosphatidyl choline into the nerves is helpful with the disease and we use oral phosphatidyl choline as well as intravenous PC.
This is new but not new in Europe, especially throughout Eastern Europe and Russia where intravenous PC has been used for cardiovascular and liver disease with no adverse complications for at least 50 years. And there's not a doctor in Russia who is not familiar with this type of therapy. There is also extensive research for using PC for cardiovascular and liver disease but also for neurological conditions like muscular dystrophy and ALS and MS and even in autism, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Disease.
So we're using this for some of our neurological patients with good results and we alternate it with intravenous Glutathione that is an ultra potent way of achieving the benefits of lipoic acid because alpha lipoic acid is a Glutathione builder and it's going to do -- giving the Glutathione intravenously is going to get into the brain more quickly.
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