Suffering With Joy

A Fairly Cheap Way to Feel Better – Iodine

January 20, 2010

Since the 1990s considerable research on the use and benefits of iodine has been going on among clinical practitioners who treat fibromyalgia, fibrocystic breast disease and thyroid deficiencies. Doctors Abraham, Brownstein, Flechas and Mercola (See my bloglist) are all M.D.s who are really on to something here.  They have all published books and papers on their research and have helped many patients correct thyroid deficiencies which has been fundamental in reducing pain levels, ending depression and anxiety, managing blood sugar levels and a host of other symptoms that afflict many Americans today.

The following presentation was a major eye-opener for me when I saw it last spring. Thanks to Karen Frandsen at the Fibromyalgia Recovery Group, everyone can see what the conference attendees saw.  She added some additional slides regarding her condition.

Since the Iodine Medical Conference in 2007, research has brought even more information to the fore which we should all know about.  First, the PDF presentation.  You will learn a lot and probably need to look at it more than once if you are not a medical professional (I’m not).  I have seen it more than 10 times and still learn from it.

The use of iodine in the treatment of my fibromyalgia has been a major factor in managing the disease.  I took the iodine loading test through my doctor in November of 2008 and reached my current dosage in March of 2009.  Iodoral is a little more expensive than other supplements I’ve talked about in this blog (vitamin D and niacinimide), but it is not out of reach and for what it does, worth the sacrifice, especially if it gets you off prescription drugs as it did me. Investigating iodine deficiency is to me one of the first places to start in a wellness program.

Lugol’s solution is less expensive but is in liquid form and not as convenient to take.  However, it can be very useful diluted as a swab for a sore throat.  Swanson’s Health Products catalogue labels Lugol’s as a “folk remedy.”  It’s been around and used effectively since some time in the 1800s and was used by medics treating veterans during and after World War II.

I will go into iodine in more depth in future posts.

Tags: fibromyalgia, iodine, wellness

Sunday Snippets

Sunday Snippets–a Catholic Carnival is a chance for Catholic bloggers to share their best posts with others. It doesn’t matter if you blog exclusively about things Catholic or not, you are welcome to join us.

I have four posts this week, most short, and if you want to look at all of them, go to http://www.sufferingwithjoy.com/blog.  The two I’m putting up for consideration this week are my post on how niacinimide helps with fibromyalgia brain fog, dementia, and Alzheimers and another post covering several short subjects.  Niacinimide does reverse dementia and Alzheimers according to recent research at the University of California, Irvine.  If you have relatives with dementia or want to prevent it in yourself and improve memory, see my post: Another really cheap way to feel better – Fibro-fog, niacinimide and me.

I have been posting articles to Helium, a sort of writer’s co-op.  The first post listing links to my articles and information about the patron saint of the internet – did you know there is one? – plus a link to my monthly newsletter about the Traditional Latin Mass and happenings are at New Items.  I will be posting links to all my articles on Helium when they are live so if the subject matter interests you, you can go there to read.  Most likely I will have a couple of posts a week with these links.

I am also working on my own Amazon store which I will be putting up at this site so you can see books, CDs, and DVDs I recommend and not have to leave this site to order them if you are interested.  This store will take awhile to get filled with all the things I want to share, but when it’s ready I hope you’ll do your on-line shopping at Amazon through this site so I can have help keeping it going.  In addition to items related to the Blessed Mother and saints, I’ll be listing books on wellness that have helped me, movies I like, and sacred music I love.  I have so much to share!

God bless everyone who reads the blog.  May he fill you with peace and joy.

Tags: Blessed Virgin, peace and joy

Another Really Cheap Way to Feel Better – Fibro-fog, Niacinamide, and Me

People with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue are constantly presented with sure-fire cures and magic bullets that are supposed to cure them.  I haven’t found a single one of them to work for me.  What has worked is a combination of approaches that has allowed me to manage life better.  Nearly all of it I figured out for myself by pursuing leads I got reading articles and books from holistic practitioners and from the first M.D. who treated me, getting me started on a low carb – high protein diet and thyroid. I owe them all.

As patients in an age where a pill is supposed to be the answer to everything and the government is moving towards serious denial of healthcare based on age and disability, I think we need to keep several things in mind:

1. Drug companies want to sell us their drugs.  That’s why they spend billions in advertising to the public, even though we can’t prescribe for ourselves.
2. Most drugs address symptoms, create unpleasant side effects, and don’t provide a cure.
3. Medical schools receive considerable funds from drug companies and most students are taught to treat symptoms with drugs rather than get down to the systemic issues that cause the condition in the first place.

I am not accusing doctors of bad will nor saying that there is no place for drugs.  I am deeply grateful to the surgeon who replaced my crippled hips and the painkillers I took at the time were necessary for recovery. Other situations call for the use of drugs to alleviate symptoms, too.

What I want to make clear is that we must be in charge of our own health because the things I am discovering are not presented in the average doctor’s office.  The pharmaceutical lobby is much bigger than most people realize and it is to their benefit to keep holistic approaches from the public which they do at every opportunity, especially in the area of supplements.   At the same time, every approach to fibromyalgia that has helped me I learned from reading books by medical doctors who practice holistic or alternative medicine.

The most recent discovery I made is what I call the wonders of niacinamide, a form of B-3.  Anyone who has fibro or knows someone with it knows that the brain fog is really awful.  Added to that is the anxiety and depression that accompany a chronic pain condition.  One thing I set out to do after my second hip replacement in January of 2009 was to get the use of my brain back.  After much improvement using thyroid, vitamin D, and iodine, a couple of months ago I started on niacinamide after reading about it in Dr. David William’s newsletter.  Continuing research convinces me that many others can benefit by taking this supplement.

Niacanamide and niacin are two different forms of vitamin B-3 and are slightly different chemically. Niacinamide does not cause the uncomfortable niacin flush. B-3 is an essential member of the B-vitamin family.  What interested me was a report from Dr. Williams about a study done at the University of California, Irvine, on reversing Alzheimer’s using niacinamide.  After reading how it worked in the brain, I decided to try it myself.  Here is part of the report covered at Orthomolecular.org:

Kim Green, Ph. D. neuroscientist, University of California, Irvine

Researchers at the University of California at Irvine gave the human dose equivalent of 2,000 to 3,000 mg of vitamin B3 to mice with Alzheimer’s. (2) It worked. Kim Green, one of the researchers, is quoted as saying, “Cognitively, they were cured. They performed as if they’d never developed the disease.”

(2) Green KN, Steffan JS, Martinez-Coria H, Sun X, Schreiber SS, Thompson LM, LaFerla FM. Nicotinamide restores cognition in Alzheimer’s disease transgenic mice via a mechanism involving sirtuin inhibition and selective reduction of Thr231-phosphotau. J Neurosci. 2008 Nov 5;28(45):11500-10.

Specifically, the study employed large amounts of nicotinamide, the vitamin B3 widely found in foods such as meat, poultry, fish, nuts and seeds. Nicotinamide is also the form of niacin found, in far greater quantity, in dietary supplements. It is more commonly known as niacinamide. It is inexpensive and its safety is long established. The most common side effect of niacinamide in very high doses is nausea. This can be eliminated by taking less, by using regular niacin instead, which may cause a warm flush, or choosing inositol hexaniacinate, which does not. They are all vitamin B3.

B3 and nerves go together. New research confirms that niacinamide (the same form of B3 used in the Alzheimer’s research) “profoundly prevents the degeneration of demyelinated axons and improves the behavioral deficits” in animals with an illness very similar to multiple sclerosis. (11)

(11) Kaneko S, Wang J, Kaneko M, Yiu G, Hurrell JM, Chitnis T, Khoury SJ, He Z. Protecting axonal degeneration by increasing nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide levels in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis models. J Neurosci. 2006 Sep 20;26(38):9794-804. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD=search&DB=pubmed See also: Vitamins fight multiple sclerosis. Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, October 4, 2006.

This website is very interesting.  They say: “Orthomolecular medicine describes the practice of preventing and treating disease by providing the body with optimal amounts of substances which are natural to the body.”  The site has the niacin molecule on the front page.

I chased down information on William Kaufman, M.D. and his over 60 year work on niacanamide and arthritis treatment as well, and discovered yet more information on the benefits of this supplement.  After reading articles by Dr. Kaufman and Dr. A. Hoffer relating over 60 years of successful clinical applications each, I determined I had nothing to lose by trying several doses a day.

My experiment resulted in a clearer brain, increased mental energy, and increased calmness.  The SADS disappeared, too.  All this occurred in about a month.  The fibro fog seems to have completely departed and there are no side effects.  Niacinamide disappears from the body in a matter of a few hours which is why several doses throughout the day are necessary to achieve an optimum benefit.

According to articles at Doctor Yourself, Niacinamide has also proven effective in treating the following conditions:

• High cholesterol
• Atherosclerosis
• Diabetes
• Osteoarthritis
• Cataracts
• Burns
• AMD
• Cancer
• Alcoholism
• Juvenile Diabetes
• Behavioral disorders

I strongly recommend reading Dr. Hoffer’s article as well as Dr. Kaufmann’s.  Doctor Yourself is a really interesting and informative web site that I have bookmarked for myself.  What worked for me may not work for others, but trying niacinamide in careful doses has no downside that I could find.  Each person’s chemistry is different, but once again, I have found a really cheap way to feel better.

Tags: chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, wellness