UV-B therapy

[jimmylegs]

SAD light, getting outside, dietary tryptophan, supplemental D3 in the winter, all sound like good ideas

the dietary tryptophan list looks tasty chicken, soybeans, tuna, turkey, venison, salmon, lamb, halibut, shrimp and cod.
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tnam ... t&dbid=103

oh look, a cod serving will get me 90% of the RDA, coincidentally that is what i'm having for dinner this evening

[lyndacarol]

lyndacarol, have you tried any light therapy?

I have a light box for SAD therapy.

[trisca]

>oh look, a cod serving will get me 90% of the RDA, coincidentally that is what i'm having for dinner this evening

But those studies are saying sunlight is something beyond vitamin d (not to say vitamin d is a bad thing.)

[jimmylegs]

posts from yesterday

http://www.thisisms.com/forum/general-d ... ml#p201604

it's key to separate the influence of light period, from the influence of vitamin d3. what the uv light is doing for symptoms is possibly related moreso to melatonin and hippocampal neurogenesis than straight vit d3.
http://wolfweb.unr.edu/homepage/vpravos ... memory.htm

ms patients have characteristic hippocampal atrophy, and the eae virus attacks and kills murine hippocampal pyramidal neurons.

dietary tryptophan is a key ingredient for melatonin production.[/quote]

so now the question is, does the wavelength matter. thought back to some chats we had about 5 yrs ago, found this tidbit: ...

i assume that the exposure is mostly sunlight filtered by windows so in theory no UVB exposure. ... I guess my understanding is that UVB are filtered by glass. Am I right on this?

i didn't answer that question about filtering originally, but the answer is yes..)

http://www.thisisms.com/forum/general-d ... ml#p201645

the dietary tryptophan list looks tasty chicken, soybeans, tuna, turkey, venison, salmon, lamb, halibut, shrimp and cod.

[trisca]

Does tryptophan boost t cells?

[jimmylegs]

re tryptophan and t cells

http://duckduckgo.com/?q=t-cell+tryptophan+regulate

http://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=t-ce ... _sdt=1%2C5

[trisca]

Do you think there's any downside to getting the light? (I'm not at all concerned about skin cancer.)

[trisca]

Finally, I found the Aberdeen study

Results
Median (interquartile range) narrowband UV-B received during the study was 39.1 (30.9) as standard erythema dose, comparable to a quarter of the median summer sunlight exposure received locally. This increased the 25(OH)D level from a mean ± SD of 34 ± 17 nmol/L to 58 ± 16 nmol/L after 2 weeks and 78 ± 19 nmol/L after 4 weeks. The mean proportion of circulating regulatory T cells increased from 0.5% to 1.6% CD3+ cells, which significantly correlated with the increased 25(OH)D level. UV treatment was also followed by reduced proliferative and IL-10 responses to anti-CD3/CD28 independent of the 25(OH)D level.

Conclusion
Narrowband UV light reduces systemic immune responsiveness via the induction of regulatory T cells. Light and 25(OH)D levels may affect particular immune functions independently. The levels of serum 25(OH)D over which these effects are apparent should guide future interventions.
http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091 ... 2/abstract

I don't know if that means anything.

[jimmylegs]

personally, re down side, just the price. i'm sure any such light would have an operating manual to help guard against any potential risks.

there doesn't happen to be a full text version of that study, does there? i'd be interested to look at the raw data, and info such as whether the patients eyes were open or protected during the uv treatment. on the face of it, no one in that study achieved a healthy optimal level of serum vitamin d3 .. they're still stuck in the elevated parathyroid hormone and osteoporosis risk zone hmm, i wonder what the indicators would have shown if they had been able to run it for longer, so that levels could get up over 100 nmol/L...

[trisca]

Their eyes were protected with googles, at least I think I read that, could be wrong (memory and all.)

You know how they say risks growing up relative to the equator, but if you move in puberty (or whenever) your risks are the same as the place you move to? Anyway, I wonder if there has ever been a study of people with MS that now live near the equator and how their symptoms compare to people in the North. If you get my drift.

[jimmylegs]

googles lol ;) i think if UVB was it, all the inuit would have died long ago instead of actually being traditionally pretty healthy folks. as a species we seem to have evolved some systemic redundancies that allow us to survive in a wide variety of ecosystems. but we need to eat right for the environment we're in. imho, by demonizing fat and red meat we of the northern latitudes have run ourselves into a fair bit of trouble health-wise..

SO INTERESTING this study, MAN i wish i still had full text access to research

Macronutrient, Mineral and Fatty Acid Composition of Canadian Arctic Traditional Food
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 7502910665

Traditional food resources of indigenous peoples provide a wealth of information on use of unique food species, and their harvest and preparation. Studying the nutrient contents of these food items presents several challenges; for example, adequate sampling to define variability, and conducting multiple nutrient analyses in limited sample portions. In this report, 236 independent samples of Canadian Arctic food species tissues are analyzed for macronutrients (protein, fat, moisture, ash, calculated energy), minerals (Ca, Fe, Cu, Zn, P, Mg, Na, Mn, K, Se) and fatty acids (SFA, MUFA, n-3 PUFA and n-6 PUFA). Many new values are reported for the first time (particularly for Se, K, and PUFA), and other values are compared to earlier reports on similar tissues from our laboratory. Samples were selected as food items reported being frequently used in recent randomly collected food intake survey data over a broad geographical range of Yukon First Nations and Inuit communities.

[trisca]

Maybe the Inuit don't have the genetic component. But yes, I don't think it's any one thing. UVb and diet together?

See, I have hardly read anything about this, in 20 years everything I've read has essentially been in the past few days, I thought it might be a widely known thing. What are the socio-economic and habits differences?

I saw that Japan's rate was really really low but has significantly increased in the past x years, are they eating more Western food?

[jimmylegs]

inuit msdx stat: 19/100,000 so it does happen, but not as often. i'd love to get a look at the bloodwork of those patients!

overall, there's genetics, uv, soil fertility, water source, air quality, altitude, socio economic status, positive and negative diet/lifestyle choices, etc etc etc.

re the japanese, this study is old but interesting

Impact of westernization on the nutrition of Japanese: Changes in physique, cancer, longevity and centenarians
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 3578902463
The traditional Japanese diet changed dramatically between 1950 and 1975: the intake of milk (15 fold), meat, poultry and eggs (7.5 fold) and fat (6 fold) has increased, while that of barley (), potatoes () and rice (0.7) has decreased. This westernization is more pronounced in the younger generation, rich people, non-farmers and city dwellers. However, the quantities of western foods consumed in Japan are still much less than those in the U.S. or Europe. The quality of the nutrients is also very different: amylopectin, long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids and indigestible polysaccharides are abundant in the Japanese diet.
During this period, Japanese became taller and heavier. Breast, colon and lung cancers increased 2–3 fold, but those of the stomach (0.6) and uterus (0.3) decreased. As life expectancy has been extended (male 12, female 14 years), the number of patients in the same age group increased. Areas of longevity containing many centenarians (888 in 1977) were studied, in order to determine beneficial effects of westernization such as a decrease in apoplexia resulting from increased fat intake. More than the average amounts of animal proteins and vegetables were consumed in these areas. Among the Japanese, those in Okinawa were found to have the lowest total energy, sugar and salt, and the smallest physique, but had healthy longevity and the highest centenarian rate.

re the inuit people, this article is interesting too:

Western Diet Fuels Spike In Blood Pressure Of Canada's Inuit
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 085256.htm

[trisca]

Are there malabsorption issues with ms?

[jimmylegs]

short answer yes. long answer, there's membrane permeablity issues all over the place in ms. bbb, intestinal wall, etc. so. intestinal permeability is a problem. zinc is implicated here, in its structural role. search the forum for posts by me with the search terms +tight +junction +zinc

also, malabsorption related to food intolerances. to gluten for example. gluten is a zinc sucker. you need protease enzyme to digest gluten. protease seems to be a zinc dependent enzyme (there are loads of them) so this is zinc in its enzymatic role. zinc supplementation increases serum protease [in rats that is] among other things. gluten avoidance significantly improves zinc status in people with poor zinc status (and non-significantly improves it in people with adequate zinc status). when i was zinc deficient i had lots of GI issues associated with gluten consumption. when i fixed it, they went away. i just take zinc every day and eat relatively small amounts of gluten. i ate sandwiches and half a scone today so will probably have none tomorrow.

Large doses of zinc oxide increases the activity of hydrolases in rats
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15068813
"...ZnO supplementation dose dependently increased the plasma Zn concentration and significantly increased amylase, lipase, trypsin and total protease activity in pancreatic homogenates and small intestinal contents. The statistical analysis showed significant protein and ZnO interaction on the activity of amylase in the pancreas, and amylase, trypsin and total-protease in the small intestinal content. Therefore ZnO at high dietary concentration may influence the digestion of nutrients via increased hydrolase activity."

omg lol i went looking for research on protease status and gluten free diet and found this gem

Highly Efficient Gluten Degradation by Lactobacilli and Fungal Proteases during Food Processing: New Perspectives for Celiac Disease
http://aem.asm.org/content/73/14/4499.short

the title speaks for itself without adding the abstract - of course, of course we will add the proteases to the gluten first, rather than fixing celiac patients' zinc deficiency so that they can make their own damned protease (and that zinc deficiency is an established fact, the only argument is, is it cause or effect and i say it's both. with far-reaching consequences for the individual that go waaaay beyond gluten tolerance)

by the way the other role for zinc besides structural and enzyme stuff, is its role in genetic transcription and replication. it's my hero. well one of them