You don't need to look anymore

[Celeste485]

While I am waiting for my daughter’s test results I have a question for you, Jimmy. As you know I was taking for years meds for acid reflux and I had an Xray few days ago that shows spine fracture which I believe is caused by Nexium and all the other acid reflux medicines. Because there is only one piece damaged, I am running against time. A while ago I said it that I want to get all my vitamins from foods but I changed my mind. As I am constantly improving our diets we are nowhere near ready to say that diet is enough. I stopped taking Nexium 6 months ago and that means the bones have not recovered from my new diet. Anyway, I am taking calcium, magnesium, vit D3, vit K2, meat for iron and B12 and vit C from orange juice, oranges and fruits and vegetables. What else do I need to take to get the bones strong and quickly. The iron and vit C is mostly for the collagen between the spine. Is there anything that I am missing? I am pretty sure B6 will be needed as well and maybe other B’s.
Anyway, I am taking the supplements throughout the day so it’s not all at the same time. This should help. Also, if anyone is taking acid reflux medicines, stop and get calcium or you’ll have a lot more problems than just ms. I am hoping that by now you are all eating at least 3 small pieces of meat or fish, 3 times a day. As you can see degenerative disease can be easily created by our government, big pharma and our lovely doctors. It takes 3. I don’t have ms but I may have problem peeing in the near future just as well. At the end we’re all in this together.

[jimmylegs]

hi celeste! I share your suspicion that the meds are involved in this spinal fracture. it's an unpleasant hurdle to get over, accepting that diet might not be up to the challenge on its own!

for me there were several progressive hurdles - one: I can't do veganism on diet alone. two: I can't do veganism using supplements either, because there isn't enough research to tell me how to fix what I've caused here, or how to replace whole foods with isolated supplements. so the transition to omnivore. three: even that is not enough - I need supplements on top of switching to diverse omnivorous nutrient dense whole foods. four: recommended dailies won't cut it - I need megadose therapy to kick things back into gear, and then maybe I can think about going back to smaller daily amounts.

maybe one day i'll have the diet organized to the point that I won't need supplements any more. but seven years later I am not there yet! I spent 15 years digging a hole for myself before I realized the damage I was doing and started to turn things around. mine was never going to be an overnight fix, just took me a while to see it.

so. here you are nexium free with lots of dietary improvements and supplements in the mix. absolutely we can work on figuring out the best way forward for bone building.
can you tell me the forms and doses of the various supplements you are currently using? are you planning any nutrient blood work of your own in the near future? also describe which fruits and vegetables servings you consume daily, vs every other day, vs weekly etc?

when do you expect your girl's results? will be interesting to see how she has been progressing too.

[Celeste485]

The vitamins I take or started taking are: Calcium 500mg 2xday, Magnesium 250 mg 1xday, Zinc 50mg 1xweek, vit. D3 2000 2xday, cod liver oil 200 mg 2xday, B1 100mg 1xday, B2 100mg 1xday, B6 200 mg 1xday, vit. E 400 1xweek, B12 2500 mcg 1xweek. As you can see the B’s are much higher than the daily requirement and that makes me feel uncomfortable. I just don’t trust too much of anything. I do have BComplex so maybe I can try to take that instead of the singles and this one I can crush but it’s timed release so I am not sure how it would work.
As I mentioned before when I take vitamin c as ascorbic acid in amount 500 or 1000mg I am not feeling well and I will not take it. If I drank 3 cups of orange juice the sugar would give me some problem but never as much as the ascorbic acid. Basically every muscle is hurting, the same as with vinegar. I just feel very acidic. Some foods like bell peppers can make me feel funny too. So I eat them rarely.
My diet is high on meat. 3 times daily. Beef, chicken, turkey almost every day, small amounts 4 oz or less. No skin, lean meat. Fish 2-3 times. Sometimes I will add pork or shellfish. Bread once a day. Cereal once or twice a week. Vegetables all kinds. We eat non stop green beans, peas, beans, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, mushrooms, zuccini, carrots, corn 2-3 cups daily. Spinach, kale, squash, lettuce, frozen vegetables, canned vegetables from time to time, 1-2 times a week. We eat some rice, white and brown, potatoes white and sweet, very little pasta. Milk, cheese, yogurt, butter, almost every day. Eggs 3 times a week. And all kinds of fruits, bananas, strawberries, blueberries, kiwis, blackberries, raspberries, apples, the only juice is orange juice, organic.
I don’t know how long we’ll be waiting for my daughter’s results because they will be coming from the lab so it might take a while. My lab work will take place soon. If the bone density comes positive for bone loss I will ask the doctor to test the minerals. I would prefer if I didn’t have to pay myself for everything.
I hope this helps. Now, save me Vitamin Guru!

[jimmylegs]

lol! ok first thoughts - given that the ppi issue we know about is magnesium depletion, I would watch your d3-mag and your mag-cal balance in supplements, and I would watch the overall mag phosphorus balance in food.

see if you can get your dietary mag intake as close to 400 as possible. you're taking mag glycinate I assume? make sure you take mag at the same time as d3, and then take more mag at a separate time from any d3. if you take too much, you'll probably feel it as mild weakness. i have a high mag diet and if i take one mag citrate and one mag glycinate I'm ok. but if i take another mag glycinate in one day, my thigh muscles start to feel slow on the stairs.

you might want to cut back on the daily supplemental calcium while working on mag. see if you can estimate your daily calcium intake from diet for starters, and consider dropping back to 500mgs calcium every other day if you are not comfortable taking a break from the calcium supplements. if you push mag and cut calcium, you might start to feel better re the muscle discomfort.

a few questions/comments:

have you measured or estimated your daily intake of zinc from diet? might be some room to bump up that weekly zinc.

don't take more than 100mg B6 on a daily basis. the other bs are ok. b complex should be fine too.

in addition to (better than) oranges, papaya, bell peppers, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and strawberries are great sources of vit c. all the other veg and fruit are great contributions as well. watch the phosphorus intake if you are focusing on orange juice for vit C. diversity is better.

what form of vit E are you using?

[Celeste485]

Thanks Jimmy. I’ve been busy eating the last couple of days and I lost it. Chinese, sandwiches, chips, soda, you name it. I am so mad at myself for being so stupid. Now my back is going to really crack. Anyway, there is a lot I have to work on but first I have to know if I really have osteoporosis. I am having the test done Thursday next week and it will take another week to get the results.
The vitamin E I take is d Alpha Tocopherol. I am pretty sure my magnesium levels are nowhere near the requirement. I used to eat pumpkin seeds on regular basis but now I can't tolerate them. When I get to it I'll try to count average daily intake of zinc and magnesium from foods and let you know. Up until now I was mostly concentrating on my daughter's diet. Her diet is much better than mine because I have to count calories and she doesn't.
Anyway, I am hoping I will get her test results tomorrow. Until then.

[jimmylegs]

oh sorry to hear you've been off the rails lately :S it happens to us all! don't beat yourself up.

re the vit E, that's fine if you only take it once a week. if you ever start taking vit E more often, be sure to find a natural source E8 complex with all four tocopherols and all four tocotrienols. interestingly, corn oil seems to have all 8 fractions. I haven't found an organic non-GMO corn oil though.. good luck with that one, huh!

i'll keep an eye out for counts on mag and zinc, and any new results that come in.

take care, ttfn!

[Celeste485]

I got my daughter’s test results. You’re not going to like it. Her Zinc is normal but at 58 the range is 25-148 mcg/dL. That’s lower from last time.
Magnesium is normal 2.0 the range is 1.5-2.5 mg/mL. Iron is normal 56 the range is 27-164.
Everything else is normal except Hemoglobin which is 11.3 (L) the range is 11.5-15.3, Vitamin B2 – Riboflavin 5.0 (L) the range is 6.2—39 nmol/L, and Ferritin 6 (L) the range is 14-79.
Her B12 is also normal but also lower from last time, it is 614 the range is 260-935. We were not doing vitamin D this time.
Last year around this time she was experiencing her first symptom, tingling in her leg and arm. I'd say, a year later she doing pretty good.

[jimmylegs]

hmm zinc could stand to be WAY better. but not until that iron is sorted!!

curious - have you had serum copper done for her at all?

mag needs to be lots closer to the top end.

the hemoglobin should probably be at least 13..

how do you get on re sources of dietary riboflavin? plenty of greens, eggs, nuts and such?

eep! the ferritin numbers should be more like where her iron numbers are!

fyi for future reference, check out fig 1, serum ferritin, 95th percentile for women by age in this (older) study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article ... 3-0025.pdf

b12 looks great, no worries there.

this pesky iron issue though! grr. on the absorption side, hows the vit C component? on the interference side, what do you give her in the way of calcium rich foods? how much grain daily? are you guys tea drinkers?

curious, curious.. grr!

glad she is doing better this year.

how about you? doing better food wise?

[Celeste485]

Jimmy, you worry about my daughter’s iron? Why? Her iron is going up, she is not displaying any symptoms of anemia, zero, she has this super energy, her cognitive part I don’t even recognize, she gets A’s in almost all subjects except history which she gets A’s and B’s and she used to get C’s and D’s. She has never been like this in her entire life. She is unrecognizable. And all that happened because of heme iron. Ferritin is to hold non heme iron. Who needs it. My daughter is a living proof that you don’t need high Ferritin levels. In 5 years if not sooner my daughter will be cured of MS. Of course nobody is going to just say that, they’ll say she is clinically isolated syndrome. Not one person is going to say that ms is curable except me. The hard part is not just diet but the removal of the blood in men and women over 50. To be healthy you need to remove the blood that’s inside you. Your own body will clean you up and will patch you up, all you have to do is just help it a little by giving it what it needs.
However, I worry about something else. My daughter’s last time vitamin B12 was over 1000 which was above the range. How can a body absorb so much vitamin B12? How can absorb it more than it needs? And what happened to the half of her vitamin B12? Was it entirely used for the blood cleaning and replacing red blood cells? Maybe. But I have another theory. Similar to my iron theory. If B12 doesn’t come from foods, the one that comes from supplement is just as useless as the non heme iron. Maybe even more. I believe that my daughter’s body dumped the B12 it absorbed from supplements and now her levels are reflective of B12 taken from foods. Natural foods, that is. Not B12 enriched foods.
And let’s just assume that I am right. What would that mean to the rest of the vitamins we take from supplements? What if they don’t work? What if they give us false readings while we maybe deficient in some of the nutrients and not knowing it? The recent studies that came out made me think twice about taking supplements, then I got scared with my crumbling spine and again started taking them but now because of my daughter’s test results and her vitamin B12 results I paused again. I am again afraid of taking supplements because they may not work at all. Only food can deliver the real thing.
If you look at iron. High amounts of non heme iron is found in nuts, beans, whole grains but mother nature provided them with phytates, fiber, oxalates all of which prevent iron absorption. The iron in plants is not easily absorbed because? What if it’s not supposed to absorbed? The nature doesn’t want us to absorb things that are not good for us so why do we do it? Because somebody said so long time ago.
I am seeing the difference in my real life. My daughter who gets predominantly real foods, how she is doing, how healthy she is and me who is popping pills. I am falling apart while my child who was diagnosed with incurable disease is doing so well. If this is not a good example of how it’s supposed to work then I don’t know what is. I have to revamp my diet, there is no time to waste!

I'll be back.

[jimmylegs]

glad she is feeling better

question - where does this information come from?

Ferritin is to hold non heme iron

and how does it jive with this study, in which serum ferritin increases as heme iron intake increases?

Body Iron Stores and Dietary Iron Intake in Relation to Diabetes in Adults in North China
http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/31/4/e26.full
"We found that mean serum ferritin levels increased across heme iron intake quartiles but decreased across nonheme iron intake quartiles. The mean serum ferritin levels across heme iron intake quartiles in our data were 97.17, 99.70, 109.20, and 115.58 μg/l, and the mean serum ferritin levels across nonheme iron intake were 113.43, 110.99, 98.72, and 98.40 μg/l."

food is certainly a fundamentally important contributor to health status but I would never suggest that level changes in response to supplements don't have any effect. there's way too much science out there to the contrary.

food is the foundation. but ensuring that dietary intake is sufficient for daily use plus long term storage can be tough. and we know iron is one of the most common deficiencies out there. supplements can play a useful role if diet doesn't make the cut.

serum levels are important, and that serum ferritin level indicates there is still room for your daughter to improve her iron stores significantly. she may have better circulating iron that she has had before and be feeling lots of benefits, but that doesn't mean it's okay to ignore a depleted stockpile.. I would contend that there would be a lot of value in building that ferritin up so that she has a reserve in place against times where life gets busy and the attention to daily iron intake slips!

[Celeste485]

Non heme iron is absorbed differently than heme iron. And ferritin is where the non heme iron goes.
Here is just one example: “Serum ferritin was logarithmically and inversely associated with nonheme-iron absorption .”

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/69/5/944.full

This example is poor but it will have to do until I find what I want. Remember they are all saying that Ferritin and non heme iron is biovable but that may or may not be true. And that’s my opinion based on what I saw in my daughter and Dr. Terry Wahls. The changes in both happened because of heme iron, nothing else. I was listening to Wahl’s webinar and she said that she was vegetarian since high school. So trust me when I say, ms it’s all about heme iron.

Here is another link you may like: "Heme deficiency may be a factor in the mitochondrial and neuronal decay of aging"

http://www.pnas.org/content/99/23/14807.full.pdf

[jimmylegs]

thanks for that celeste

re "Serum ferritin was logarithmically and inversely associated with nonheme-iron absorption"
that means when non-heme iron absorption is high, that serum ferritin is low and vice versa - when non heme iron absorption is low, that serum ferritin is high.
so I'm not sure how that can possibly mean that non heme iron goes to serum ferritin. it sounds like the exact opposite.

re the study "Nonheme-iron absorption, fecal ferritin excretion, and blood indexes of iron status in women consuming controlled lactoovovegetarian diets for 8 wk"
I think about all that particular study demonstrates is that 8 weeks isn't a long enough time period over which to observe changes in iron status from diets with varying amounts of heme vs non heme iron, in spite of the fact that vegetarians are far less successful at absorbing even non-heme iron compared to omnivores.

dr wahls having been vegetarian makes tons of sense. many of the nutrient deficits for which vegetarians are at higher risk are commonly low in the average ms patients too. iron is just one of several important nutrients to consider. I've definitely found serum ferritin a useful indicator of iron status over time.

as far as other indicators of iron status, the trusty old klenner protocol for ms specifies a hemoglobin of at least 13 and I know when I was given the extensive blood work when I was diagnosed (before making any dietary changes), my Hb was around 11. it's much better these days.

I personally was a strict vegan for well over a decade, prior to diagnosis. I've tracked deficiencies and improvements for lots of nutrients including but absolutely NOT limited to iron.

as far as the iron is concerned, as my status has improved, serum ferritin has consistently gotten higher, indicating better iron stores now than I can ever remember seeing on any pre-dx test.

all the same, I definitely would never lay all my improvements at iron's door. ignoring the rest of the picture, particularly zinc, would be done at the patient's peril. fortunately, heme iron foods usually contribute zinc in a way that is not the case with non heme iron foods. I would not be surprised if the zinc component of your daughter's heme iron food intake is at least partially responsible for her improvements. she still has a way to go however. serum zinc should be much higher - closer to 120 if you can get her there.

re iron zinc interactions, I refer you again to :

also recall our earlier chats from last year:

http://www.thisisms.com/forum/introduct ... ml#p217668

hey there, please go back and read these posts again

balancing zinc and iron
http://www.thisisms.com/forum/introduct ... ml#p217468

iron dysregulation in zinc deficiency
http://www.thisisms.com/forum/introduct ... ml#p217482

gummy supplements, thoughts on a dietary approach
http://www.thisisms.com/forum/introduct ... ml#p217483

your daughter is iron deficient (ferritin = 5.. FIVE!!!) you still need a zinc result, without delay. you can consider having them run a full iron panel, if you are not satisfied with the ferritin info alone. serum targets for ferritin and zinc (and magnesium) are provided in the 'balancing zinc and iron' post above.

...

zinc deficiency iron dysregulation: http://www.thisisms.com/forum/introduct ... ml#p217482
Zinc Deficiency-induced Iron Accumulation, a Consequence of Alterations in Iron Regulatory Protein-binding Activity, Iron Transporters, and Iron Storage Proteins
http://www.jbc.org/cgi/content/full/283/8/5168

[Celeste485]

This is just an excerpt from the article but it gives us an idea that the inorganic iron may not actually be usable. This is how they were thinking in the 1800’s and early 1900’s. And I believe they were correct because I have the proof from a very unlikely source. But read this first.

http://jn.nutrition.org/content/120/2/141.full.pdf

INORGANIC IRON AND ANEMIA
it seems clear that comparisons had been selected (albeitunconsciously) that favored the author's expectation that inorganic iron would prove to be unusable. A further finding that seemed to support the concept was that when ferrous sulfate was given to dogs by intravenous injection it had a toxic effect.
A very surprising paper appeared in a peer-reviewed journal in 1925 (25). Its conclusions ended thus: "In the light of the foregoing experiments, the administration of inorganic iron has no therapeutic value in anemia."
What were these experiments? They used 386 rats and 32 dogs, but the authors say that "the dog is not asuitable animal for this type of work.."
Finally, they would not, even if their results had stood up to criticism, been justified in concluding that "inorganic iron has no therapeutic value in anemia. "The only justifiable conclusion would have been that the rat could not be used as a model for study of iron deficiency in humans, because the two species apparently showed a clear difference in their utilization of inorganic iron. The above criticism is valid irrespective of any in sights gained from later experiments. In fact, later work has shown that iron salts can be at least as good sources of "available iron" for rats as organic sources (27). It has also been found that a purified diet containing 0.5 mg of Fe/100 g as ferrous sulfate (which is as good as any iron salt for availability) was inadequate for normal hemoglobin production in rapidly growing rats. One must suspect therefore that the rats that continued to thrive on a diet believed to contain only "0.072 mg Fe/100 g" were receiving more iron in one way or another, perhaps from rusty feeding utensils or inadequately galvanized wire cages.

[jimmylegs]

that article is going over the history of early misconceptions about iron absorption. it's a systematic review and critique of the flawed scientific methodologies of a bygone era.

"they would not, even if their results had stood up to criticism, been justified in concluding that "inorganic iron has no therapeutic value in anemia." The only justifiable conclusion would have been that the rat could not be used as a model for study of iron deficiency in humans, because the two species apparently showed a clear difference in their utilization of
inorganic iron"

good serum ferritin status is an indicator of good stores from heme iron. see if you can get your girl's serum ferritin up to 50 - I bet you would see the hemoglobin jump up to at least 13.
also, serum zinc up to 120, and serum magnesium up closer to 2.5.

[Celeste485]

How about this?
"The administration of inorganic iron cannot be said to produce any constant alteration in the course of an experimental hemorrhagic anemia."
http://books.google.com/books?uid=11458 ... shelf_list
or this?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8847541
"Brain iron is a major contributor to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast in normal gray matter, and its role in the pathogenesis of different neurological disorders has also become apparent. Non-heme brain iron is present in the brain mainly in the form of ferritin."
Non heme iron in ferritin in the brain? And lets not forget that only non heme iron has been implicated in everything bad in humans, never the heme iron. So, what form heme iron is in?

Below you can learn something about pigs, the unlikely source of how the non heme iron is good for them and us. Little pigs are born anemic. Aren’t they fed Ferrous Sulfate with their meals? Their mothers don’t get enough of the Ferrous Sulfate? How about all the enriched breads and pastas I consumed when I was pregnant with my daughter? Wouldn’t my foods enriched with ferrous iron made my daughter anemic too? I don’t believe the research that says this ferrous iron is good for us, I just can’t.

Surprisingly, here you can also find about the ferritin as non heme iron storage.

http://www.livestocktrail.illinois.edu/ ... ntentID=70
“The majority of body iron is bound to proteins as heme complexes or nonheme complexes. The most common heme complexes are hemoglobin and myoglobin, while common nonheme complexes consist of two storage forms, ferritin and hemosiderin, and one transport form, transferrin.”