Why Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, fibromylagia, cancer & more.

This blog is about the on-going challenge I'm having to finish the book about CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis/UK) and several secondary diseases which can present as a result, i.e., fibromyalgia, depression, IBD, cancer (especially colon cancer), schizophrenia and Parkinson's, etc.
If you have followed the recent news that an American lab determined that the retrovirus, XMRV, was found in over 90% of people with CFS, although British and German labs have not been able to find this virus in CFS patients' blood, then you might assume that a cure is in sight. Vaccination is being talked about; the use of AZT (the same drug as HIV/AIDS patients take) is also being talked about, even though AZT can make a person who does not have AIDS very sick indeed. I tried to post my scepticism about the XMRV virus several times on the recent New York Times blog about the virus and CFS: I just mentioned that it is a well-known fact amongst CFS researchers that people with CFS are extremely prone to having antibodies to whatever virus is prevalent without actually ever coming down with a viral disease, and my comments got posted only once and were then quickly removed within a few days. So I doubt my that stating the non-viral cause is going to go down well either.

Friday, September 10, 2010

Celiac disease and carrageenan

Please excuse the mistake in paragraph 6 of the last blog: "glutamate" should be glutamine. Another crucial thing that you can do to reduce symptoms is to walk for a minimum of 20 minutes every 2/3 days. This tightens loose junctions in the intestinal wall.
Which reminds me of the hidden gluten and one of its main building blocks, glutamine, which i, as a person with celiac disease, i.e., cannot eat wheat, have to avoid.
It was, as far as I can remember without checking, during the mid-1990's that I was diagnosed with celiac disease (which affects a surprisingly high number of people - an estimated 1 in 133).
At first when I went on the restricted wheat-free diet I fet wonderful - better than I had done in years, but over a period of a few years I started to feel sick again. I could barely move. I tried reducing my diet to a very few foods but still kept on drinking buttermilk.
It wasn't until I went back to England and my symptoms immediately regressed - the improvement began during my stopover at Chicago's O'Hare airport - regression of nausea, fatigue, loose bowels, headache - that I gradually realised that drinking buttermilk was the problem - and the one additive that all modern buttermilk contains is the additive, carrageenan.
When I returned to the U.S. I joined a celiac group that met once a month at a local hospital. Many people at those meetings complained that they couldn't get their symptoms under control, just like I once also thought; that they were somehow eating or drinking gluten and if they could only find and eliminate that hidden gluten then their symptoms would disappear (it can be more dangerous than you might think: one woman had just returned from a stay in hospital because of this).
I decided to speak out at the next meeting: that their problem was likely not hidden gluten (or glutamine) but that of ingesting carrageenan which damages intestines, looses junctions between cell walls, and allows large undigested food particles into the body. No-one listened; no-one made any comments showing their interest; the only response I got was the one man who saw his opportunity to declaim mercury as the cause of celiac disease. I never went back.

1 comment:

  1. Hello, I can relate. But please continue sharing. I only just found out about carageenan's effects, and I am so much better.

    ReplyDelete

Any reasonable comments - even if diametrically opposed to mine - are welcome