corydl wrote:Hi NHE,
I appreciate your concerns and comments. We have spent the last 6 years immersed in natural healing and I always find it interesting when individuals dismiss it.
I did not dismiss natural healing by any means. From my own experience, I believe that I had been nutritionally deficient with respect to omega-3 essential fatty acids for much of my life. Empirical evidence from my own life has demonstrated their importance to me. Early in the development of my supplement regimen shortly after my MS diagnosis I would occasionally forget to take my fish oil supplements for a couple of days and I found myself extraordinarily tired. Restarting my supplement regimen restored my energy levels within a day or so. Clearly, I'm not against natural healing.
You were very quick to totally dismiss that anything we did actually helped, which really surprises me.
Unfortunately, this is incorrect. I did not "totally dismiss anything" you did. I understand research and I understand statistics. With a relapse remitting disease such as MS it is impossible to prove that anything one does actually benefits the long term outcome of the disease with a sample size of just one person. This is why clinical trials for new drug candidates typically include hundreds of patients.
The above statement might sound as though it contradicts my earlier statement regarding my experience with fish oil but it does not. With having a science background, I'm really a "show me the data" type of person. I did not begin my fish oil regimen until after careful research of peer reviewed published research in respected journals enlightened me to the fact that it was indeed helpful and was not just one persons anecdotal experience or, in my case, where I kept reading in multiple books unrefferenced claims that fish oil was beneficial.
As far as the peroxide goes, I read the article you suggested.
Great. I also hope you read my comments on it where I provided evidence for why it is counter intuitive for anyone with an understanding of biochemistry. For clarity, I reiterate those comments here.
I wrote:Hydrogen peroxide is so counter intuitive for anyone who knows anything about biochemistry that it's inconceivable that someone could recommend this type of treatment to anyone. Hydrogen peroxide is a strong oxidant. When it breaks down it forms free radicals. These free radicals will indiscriminately attack other molecules in the body, everything from DNA to lipids. It's the very thing that biology has evolved antioxidants to get rid of. For example, catalase is a naturally occurring antioxidant enzyme found in liver. It has the highest turnover number of any known enzyme. This means that it reduces dangerous hydrogen peroxide to harmless substances faster than any other known enzyme reaction in the body. This fact exemplifies the importance of getting rid of hydrogen peroxide. Moreover, a quick search through PubMed will yield many articles which report the involvement of various oxidants in MS. Several antioxidants actually have anti-inflammatory activity. These include curcumin, EGCG from green tea, r-lipoic acid and others. Clearly, oxidizing your body isn't a great idea especially for someone with MS.
By the way, if you want to see the fastest known enzymatic reaction in action, then the next time you cook a chicken, save some of the liver, grind it up, and then add some hydrogen peroxide. It'll bubble and foam so put it in a container with adequate room.
We actually helped run the clinic for about a year and half that my wife was treated at.
Essentially, you are telling us that you personally profited from selling hydrogen peroxide treatments?
I personally have seen hundreds of individuals treated with the same therapies my wife received without any ill effects. I do have to say that the clinic is staffed with multiple doctors that have spent years learning the do's and dont's of IV therapy.
Some Ph.D.s and some medical degrees aren't worth the paper they are printed on. I have personally encountered people who should have never been granted a Ph.D.
I can't speak for the article, but I can tell you that I wouldn't be the least bit afraid of anyone in my family being treated with peroxide if our doctor suggested it.
Let's discuss a bit of chemistry. Hydrogen peroxide is a strong oxidizing agent. The H-O-O-H breaks down to the free radicals H-O• and H-O-O• which are the hydroxyl and peroxyl free radicals respectively. The single dot indicates that these molecules have a single unpaired electron. It is this unpaired electron which makes them free radicals. Free radicals are inherently unstable and they will attack other molecules stealing an electron and thereby turning that molecule into a free radical which goes on to attack other molecules. In contrast, antioxidants are molecules and enzymes that have the ability to donate an electron without becoming a free radical themselves. One of the examples that I used in my prior post was lipoic acid. This antioxidant has two sulfhydryl groups situated right next to each other. As such, each sulfhydryl group can donate an H• to a free radical and the two remaining sulfur atoms, R-S•, will bind to each other forming a disulfide bond, R-S-S-R (note that R symbolizes the rest of the molecule). In essence, lipoic acid can reduce two free radicals without becoming a free radical itself. A similar process occurs with ascorbic acid, except that here it is the R-OH bond located next to a carbon carbon double bond (C=C) which donates the H• and is converted to an R=O bond. This process is identical to what occurs with epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) in green tea except that there are many more R-OH's available, 8 in EGCG versus 2 in ascorbic acid. This is what makes EGCG a more potent antioxidant.
So, now that we understand that hydrogen peroxide produces free radicals and thereby induces oxidative stress, it is important to note that oxidative stress is one of the means by which the immune system attacks foreign invaders such as cells infected by bacteria or viruses or cells which posses epitopes which the immune system mistakenly identifies as foreign such a myelin proteins in MS. In essence, oxidative stress can worsen MS. Injecting a substance such as hydrogen peroxide which increases oxidative stress is thus biochemically counterintuitive.
Another example of the dangers of oxidative stress is with an overdose of acetaminophen. The metabolites of acetaminophen are toxic and are rendered less harmful by the liver by using up some of its stores of glutathione (a naturally occurring antioxidant in the body). Under normal dosages, the body is able to compensate for this activity. However, an overdose of acetaminophen will use up a large percentage of the liver's available glutathione resulting in liver failure.
In summary, I would be very afraid of IV hydrogen peroxide.
Again, I don't know any of the specifics about the doctor in the article or how the treatment was administered, but I have no first hand proof of any issues.
OK. But do you have "proof" of some benefit from hydrogen peroxide’s benefits with respect to MS? If you do a search of
PubMed using
"hydrogen peroxide" AND "multiple sclerosis" as your search parameters, you will find many papers in peer reviewed journals which discuss the negative effects of hydrogen peroxide and oxidative stress in MS. Indeed, my brief perusal of these papers failed to yield one that claimed a positive effect.
I think knowledge is so important in this process. With the internet available, we can find just about anything we want to prove or disprove almost any allopathic medication, natural medicine or other healing. I am sure there are articles for and against the supplements you recommended in your post, and maybe even some major ill effects of those.
Please feel free to read through my prior posts to the forum on the supplements that I mentioned. In addition, perform your own search of the literature database on PubMed. Although I have found many articles supporting the use of those supplements as a complementary therapy for MS I have found little to no contradictory information. However, I look forward to reviewing your results.
MS takes that to a new level, because so many are quick to throw out remission as the cause of healing instead of the treatment you are getting. I joined this forum because I watch so many MS sufferers around me that have no hope and are limited in the information they have about MS. I have read every book I can find on MS, asked every doctor/medical professional I know, and am constantly trying to find more information to process with what I have learned. You really surprise me about how quick you were to shoot down what we have personally experienced.
I was not quick to shoot down your personal experience. I have no doubt that your wife did indeed improve. However, I disagree with your interpretation of why she improved. I also strongly disagree with the promotion of a dangerous treatment for which there is little to no peer reviewed published evidence of benefit in MS and for which there is much contradictory evidence available.
What you don't know is that we have used these treatments along with others to stop and reverse attacks multiple times. We have also been able to keep my wife from progressing because of what we have done. We have also watched as other MS sufferers have used the same exact treatments to help with their symptoms and find healing.
Here's my hypothesis... Oxidative stress is known to induce apoptosis in cells. This is the means by which the body uses controlled cell death to get rid of damaged or unwanted cells. It is entirely possible that your wife’s experience with hydrogen peroxide is consistent with the hypothesis of it inducing apoptosis in white blood cells thereby having some effect on an MS attack. This would be similar to the effects that IV corticosteroids, such as prednisolone, have. However, in contrast to IV steroids which many doctors use to help shorten an MS attack, hydrogen peroxide will have much less specific effects and will induce an overall oxidative stress damaging molecules throughout the body. This appears to be analogous to using a grenade instead of a bullet.
If we had done this once or had not seen the others around us having the same results, I guess I would be skeptical too. My wife is not cured, and we still have struggles daily. I don't know the course of your disease, but my wife has not had it easy. She has never had the kind of remission you have enjoyed. We have truly fought for every good day.
If you take the time to actually read through my posts, you’ll discover at least two things. First, I’m entirely for using complementary alternative treatments (CAM) which have demonstrated benefit, and second, since my diagnosis a little over 8 years ago I experience continual symptoms on a daily basis. While these can be considered mild in comparison to others on this site, it has been pointed out to me by other forum members that they are worse than some had suspected.
We definately don't have it all figured out, but we have experienced so many things that I truly believe could benefit so many MS sufferers in the world. My wife was one of the first known mother/daughter MS cases ever diagnosed. Her mom has been in a wheelchair since her teens, and is now unable to take care of herself. She has taken the neurologist/medicine route and it has done very little to help her, and we are pretty sure it has only made her worse. My wife was diagnosed in 1990, and has had symptoms every since. We are surrounded with medical professionals with a pharmacist, doctor and anasthesiologist in our immediate family, which provides a wide array of opinions on how we should treat her disease. We have chosen the route we are taking specifically because of the results we have personally experienced. I am sorry this post is so long, and I could add so much more, but I wanted you to understand that we are not uninformed or blindly taking treatments.
I really do wish you and your wife well. However… Putting on my volunteer moderator hat, I must state that promoting treatments for which there is considerable evidence consistent with such treatments having a negative impact on MS, and human physiology in general, will not be allowed to stand uncontested. In addition, promoting treatments in which you personally profit, if that’s still the case, is against the forum’s stated
rules of the board. Moreover, the subject of your post was "IV vitamins, anyone?" and while I have no problem with anyone using vitamins in reasonable quantities (for example a vitamin B6 overdose can induce some peculiar negative side effects with respect to loss of proprioception and a vitamin A overdose can be lethal) hydrogen peroxide can hardly be considered a "vitamin." Lastly, I believe that I've given your post the benefit of the doubt, however, if your purpose was to promote hydrogen peroxide as an "IV vitamin", then it may have been misleading.
NHE