This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Knowledge & Support Community

okay lc get ready for your mind to explode.

you know how your doc said there is no medicine to lower insulin? but then it turns out naltrexone does it? okay here's how you can also help your body from cranking it out - using dietary measures, which apparently also don't exist, whatever...

so here we go. this is an introductory excerpt from a little read that really freaked me out:

http://www.rense.com/general67/msg.htm

MSG - The Slow
Poisoning Of America
MSG Hides Behind 25+ Names, Such As 'Natural Flavouring'
MSG Is Also In Your Favorite Coffee Shops And Drive-Ups
9-12-5

I wondered if there could be an actual chemical causing the massive obesity epidemic, so did a friend of mine, John Erb.

He was a research assistant at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, (jimmylegs comment: woo hoo that's my school!) and spent years working for the government.

He made an amazing discovery while going through scientific journals for a book he was writing called "The Slow Poisoning of America".

In hundreds of studies around the world, scientists were creating obese mice and rats to use in diet or diabetes test studies. No strain of rat or mice is naturally obese, so the scientists have to create them. They make these morbidly obese creatures by injecting them with MSG when they are first born. The MSG triples the amount of insulin the pancreas creates; causing rats (and humans?) to become obese. They even have a title for the fat rodents they create: "MSG-Treated Rats".

okay so i stopped reading there. okay i lied i just went back and read some more, go read it! wow. anyway just in the above i like how there's a question mark by humans - good ol' murine studies again! but i did try throwing "glutamic acid" and "insulin" together into google scholar and there are hits galore. (glutamic acid = MSG) no time to understand it all but ya, maybe scratching the msg could be useful too. damn near impossible, but yea. a thought. so go visit that link, it's just a SHADE conspiracy theory but i think you could probably verify whatever you wanted and pretty easily since it's obviously a little old. for instance the cheeseburger bill it talks about as future possibility is fact. jeeeez.

Wow! Legs, thank you!!! I found this information so-o-o interesting!!!

Unfortunately, I found it this morning after a Taco Bell supper last night!

I am a believer--my worst times have been shortly after eating Kentucky Fried Chicken.

I will certainly be more aware of this and look into it more. Thanks again for alerting me to this; I never heard of this before!

A while back I mentioned to a friend that I had modified my diet as a result of my ms to exclude, amongst other things, gluten and also where I was aware of it msg. She told me that her father, a chemist and a retired don from Cambridge had a v dim view of msg too and refused to touch it.
Muu

When I eat anything with MSG, my head feels like it is in a vice. This is probably due to the goo and mush in my brain due to "unrelenting cerebral atrophy".

We tend to eat at home most of the time because MSG is in too many things and is impossible to avoid in restaurants.

gwa

yea i tend to avoid processed food, my grocery list doesn't tend to include much of it but jeeez, i bought some pesto yesterday to put in my dinner and there it is, in the ingredients: "flavourings" s-o-a-b! years ago i wrote an article on "convenience addiction". i was talking about environmental stuff but addiction... it applies so literally to this MSG issue!

went looking for a link between MSG and addiction but found a link between it and neurodegeneration first:

http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/abstract/130/4/901S
"Glutamic Acid, Twenty Years Later
S. Garattini

Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri, 20157 Milan, Italy

This review examines progress in understanding the physiologic functions of glutamic acid in the body since the first symposium on glutamic acid physiology and biochemistry was held at the Mario Negri Institute in Milan in 1978. The topics reviewed, although not exhaustive, include the metabolism of glutamic acid, umami taste, the role of glutamic acid as a neurotransmitter, glutamate safety and the development of new drugs resulting from the knowledge of the neurodegeneration induced by high doses of glutamic acid."

ah haaa! lights just went on - glutamic acid has been discussed at this site before, under the heading GABA.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... t=Citation
"GABA is converted from glutamic acid by the action of glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD)"

here's one of melody's earlier posted links mentioning GABA (there are a bunch of posts about it if you search the forums for GABA but we know how that goes, i don't want to flip thru all those pages right now!):

http://www.gordonresearch.com/autism_ar ... ation.html

don't know about all you guys but to me this is starting to seem like a classic example of journalese, what say?

http://www.msgtruth.org/multscle.htm
MS and vitamin B12

It has long been known that Vitamin B12 deficiency is linked to demyelinization of the nerve cells. It is also proven that Vitamin B12 protects against glutamate neurotoxicity. A sensitivity to MSG and symptoms of MS may be a clue to Vitamin B12 deficiency. Conversely, supplementation of B12 may be of benefit to persons with MS and MSG sensitivity. It should be noted that the B12 is found in foods of animal origin. The vegans out there should take note.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/ ... i_58726367
Glutamate glut linked to multiple sclerosis - Brief Article
Science News, Jan 8, 2000 by N. Seppa
Picture a crime scene at which a police officer is the criminal, indiscriminately killing bystanders who can't flee. Then, the rash officer calls in reinforcements, who not only shoot at passersby but poison some of them.

The berserk police are errant immune cells and their innocent victims are sheaths of a substance called myelin that surrounds axons--the impulse-carrying tendrils extending from neurons, or nerve cells. Damaging myelin sheaths kills axons, resulting in the numbness, weakness, slurred speech, and paralysis of multiple sclerosis.

Two studies now indicate that a second wave of immune-cell carnage follows this initial mutiny. In this attack, immune cells produce copious amounts of glutamate, a transmitter of neural signals. The overabundance wreaks havoc on nerve tissue, overpowering the resident nervous-system cells that make myelin.

The new studies of rodents, which appear in the January NATURE MEDICINE, suggest that drugs that counter the action of glutamate might fight multiple sclerosis in people.

Immune cells arriving on the scene of myelin-sheath damage discharge glutamate routinely. It binds to receptor molecules on the surface of nervous system cells, which respond by taking it in. The myelin-producing cells, called oligodendrocytes, thus accumulate too much glutamate.

Unfortunately, these cells can't handle this much glutamate, says Peter Werner, a biochemist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Beth Israel Medical Center, both in New York, and coauthor of one of the studies. The excess opens channels in the cell membrane and "can literally excite a cell to death," he says.

Using mice induced to have a condition similar to multiple sclerosis, Werner and his colleagues find that a drug that binds to glutamate receptors, preventing glutamate uptake, saves mice from neurodegeneration.

Comparing 20 mice given the drug, called NBQX, with 20 untreated mice, the researchers note that the treated mice retain the ability to use their hind legs and right themselves, whereas the other mice lose these functions.

In the second study, European researchers show similar success by blocking glutamate receptors. Rats and mice given any of four glutamate-receptor inhibitors, including NBQX, fended off the condition that mimics multiple sclerosis markedly better than untreated animals did, says Lechoslaw Turski, a pharmacologist at Solvay Pharmaceuticals in Weesp, the Netherlands, and a study coauthor.

The results "provide another avenue of potential therapy for multiple sclerosis," says Howard L. Weiner, a neuroimmunologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, both in Boston. "I think it's important work."

Scientists don't know why immune cells run amok or why myelin in particular attracts their wrath. Much work on multiple sclerosis has centered on these initial immune onslaughts, and scientists have discovered that immune cells release various toxic agents such as hydrogen peroxide. Yet these findings don't explain all the damage being done.

The new studies "suggest a whole other mechanism by which cell death might occur," says immunologist David S. Pisetsky of Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. He finds the idea that heavy exposure to a substance as common as glutamate might kill cells "very intriguing."

NBQX worked well on the rodents, but it can cause kidney damage in people. In a study of patients who have had strokes, researchers are testing a version of NBQX modified to avoid this side effect. During a stroke, when the blood supply is shut off to part of the brain, neurons die and release glutamate. The NBQX derivative has shown signs of inhibiting living cells from taking up this excess glutamate and thereby suffering further damage, Werner says, but results are not yet published.

an interesting site to peruse in general:
http://www.truthinlabeling.org/

One thing to remember with the MSG info is that orientals eat MSG by the bucket and yet they have very little MS.

gwa

an interesting point, could be that genetic variation idea again, or high consumption of protective factors. i read somewhere that the bottom of the healthy range for b12 in japan is 500. so that could be mitigating against the MSG. could be any number of explanations i suppose!