This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Knowledge & Support Community

that reminds me, *did* jeff ever get any zinc testing done, cheer????

personally i had 'normal' liver enzymes all along, took milk thistle early on in my learning curve to no effect whatsoever, but was zinc deficient the whole time, only figuring it out years later with great associated improvements.

maybe one day ms patients will be divided up into subcategories based on type of liver disorder :S lol

jimmylegs wrote:that reminds me, *did* jeff ever get any zinc testing done, cheer????

personally i had 'normal' liver enzymes all along, took milk thistle early on in my learning curve to no effect whatsoever, but was zinc deficient the whole time, only figuring it out years later with great associated improvements.

maybe one day ms patients will be divided up into subcategories based on type of liver disorder :S lol

Yeah...he had his zinc levels, D3, B12 all done at the same time about 2 years ago.
He was good at 20 umol/L. He still takes a zinc/mg/calcium supplement with his D, and it seems to keep everything in balance.

You're right...maybe someday the liver enzyme connection may point to a specific type of MS....we can hope!!!
cheer

ah that's a good serum zinc level. i wonder what the numbers were back in the early days (as in spring of 08 or even earlier...)

This would also tie into Leonard's current line of thinking on things outside of my comfort zone...long chain fatty acids, etc. Maybe he will grace this thread with his opinion.

Being the hopeless optimist I am, I'm thinking maybe...just maybe...we can bring together a bit of an experiment/study of our own with willing participants. I think spmsers are likely the group who would see greatest benefit from a fatty liver program. I've read high dose ALA, LDN, and milk thistle bring livers w hepatitis c into normal ranges (could this be what ldn does? And for those it didn't help in rrms, might it help in spms?). There are other options out there (like ZINC! ). Sorry jimmy but I totally unqualifiedly think maybe the choline/omega 3s or milk thistle might be slightly more effective...aren't those the most frequently studied for fatty liver reversal? And if zinc were the ticket, wouldn't PN be having better luck with the b12 and everything? (<- I do love making massive assumptions. Lol)

Just an idea...

@moose

My recent liver test was normal. I had similar suspicion. Not that I really understand all this hokum

PointsNorth wrote:@moose
My recent liver test was normal. I had similar suspicion. Not that I really understand all this hokum

Dangit, PN! Why ya gotta be so complicated?

Ya know...Jimmy says her doctor says the liver tests won't necessarily be indicative of the condition of your liver or something like that.

exactly.

and, i need to see a lot more info from pn before i can draw any conclusions about what has happened. possibly there is a copper iron deficit from zinc excess. so impossible without good lab data.

this is why i have a problem with blanket dietary and supplement regimens. monitoring is where it's at. my 2c.

as for zinc vs choline vs omega 3 vs milk thistle, we already have the study where 7 days of zinc depletion resulted in fatty liver in the rat subjects. you're quite free to decide which item is best suited to redress the issue. perhaps essentiality would be an important criteria.. and considering occam's razor.. what is any given person more likely to be deficient in? zinc, or milk thistle? i suggest that it is actually far easier to get lab testing to assess serum zinc levels as opposed to serum milk thistle levels.

i have seen studies where antidepressant drugs were used effectively to cure magnesium-depletion induced depression. why wouldn't you fix the mag depletion?

anyone who wants to can feel free to use milk thistle to cure zinc-depletion induced fatty liver, but the logic is faulty imho. i'll have to hunt down more studies on zinc status in fatty liver.

that's not to say that i haven't seen the odd assertion positioning an herb as an essential nutrient. can't remember the name of the book but at one point i was researching nutritional links to depression and actually had found a book that listed depression as 'st john's wort deficiency'. if the test for serum hypericum perforatum exists, i haven't seen that one either. not yet anyway!

Jimmy,
Part of my reasoning (maybe most of it) is that pn already did the zinc thing and it stopped working for what it was helping and never did seem to help with his b12.

You hit the b (I'm assuming w choline) and e vitamins before you got to zinc. Maybe there is an order to rebuilding levels?? Do b and e affect zinc absorption? Can zinc exhaust b and e stores???

i'd need to see pn's bloodwork in detail over time to see what really might have been going on, to assess the info, and to decide if zinc excess may have ended up causing a mineral imbalance, etc.

vit e has been shown to be protective against a specific consequence of zinc deficiency, but i can't remember that specific consequence, not off the the top of my head at least.

my b12 levels went higher than i've ever seen them after zinc therapy, and there is research to show improved b12 absorption after zinc therapy. i have bloodwork to show much much much better d3 absorption after zinc repletion. not to mention my uric acid levels FINALLY came up after years of trying with diet. so whatever my liver needed to result in optimal uric acid levels, b12 and vit e weren't doing it.

also, after i used the klenner therapy which was so high in b12 and vit e (the wrong vit e form by the way, but you have to give it some slack since it's so old, doesn't even include d3) i had no problem getting my b12 and d3 levels up.. i just happened to notice after zinc repletion that my levels of b12 and d3 jumped way up and with d3 especially, i had to be much more careful not to take too much.

Fascinating -- thanks for the information.

Wow, this whole liver business is really interesting. Glad it got bumped up, a lot of good info here. Just thought I'd chime in with a little anecdote from Chinese Medicine.

I see an accupuncturist regularly. The last time I had a full-blown relapse, my accupuncturist gave me a very thorough treatment, and I distinctly remember him mentioning to his assistant that my "liver meridian" had "severe blockage" issues. I thought that was interesting at the time, and I looked it up only to find some stuff about Edgar Cayce and a liver-MS connection (also mentioned in this thread). Seems like a strange coincidence that Edgar Cayce and Chinese Medicine would agree on this, no? And also the info at the beginning of this thread about liver transplant patients showing improvement w/their MS.

....The plot thickens....

B

Asking my dr for very low dose tacrolimus.
Got to be careful though for all my other drugs and interactions.
Tacrolimus and the other drug I am on amiloride both raise potassium.
Will let u know once I'm on this drug.

Looking thru the ebv glass, I wonder if the liver isn't ebv central...or at least takes the brunt of ebv. That might explain low vitamin d levels. Pediatric liver transplant patients often have ebv related complications (ebv naive before transplant). Also, milk thistle has helped some here. It inhibits ebv as well as cleanses the liver. News to me! http://www.encognitive.com/files/Cancer ... histle.pdf

Maybe the transplant recipient got a clean liver or a liver that could cope with ebv? That would be a stroke of luck!

Maybe we should all start drinking heavily...

just a quick fyi.. I added a little more info to a post on p3 of this topic. to provide some context, to a post where I had previously linked out to 4 pages of prior chats about the liver and ms http://www.thisisms.com/forum/general-d ... ml#p206544

Thanks jimmy
@anon I had 2 types of ebv infection not just the same virus twice (as confirned by top specialist) the second ebv infection caused severe hepatitis which I had to be hospitalised for and I have had liver issues (enzymes raise very quickly even on mild drugs) so there is def a liver connection I agree