A personal blog, named in honor of the novel Petticoat Government by a favorite author, Emma Orczy. The novel is about a fictional woman, Lydie d'Aumont, who attempts to inject some fairness and good governance into the court of France's Louis XVth despite the corruption and selfishness there.
When I moved to a new state just before starting fifth grade, I didn't adjust well. My social skills were slower to develop than average, and I ended up being bullied and mostly alone at school for the next two years. Simultaneously, I went from being a fairly skinny, active girl to being a rather chubby one. Maybe it was cortisol from the stress of being bullied, or maybe it was spending recess in the library instead of being active. I don't know the exact cause, but I then spent nearly all of the next three decades or so being overweight. I've had five children in the last 15 years, and my BMI last fall was over 27, which is officially "overweight."
Last fall, I read Jason Fung's The Obesity Code and started to apply the principles in it. I think Fung's conclusions about treating obesity are brilliant: 1) slow down and break up the utilization of carbohydrate-provided energy in order to reverse insulin sensitivity, and 2) fast intermittently to use up energy stored in adipose tissue.
Following the principles Fung lays out--and tweaking them with my own additions (would any readers of my blog expect any less of me? :) )--I have lost 30 pounds over the course of a year. My BMI is "normal" now. I can jog for 20+ minutes at a time and actually enjoy it, so I exercise more vigorously than I used to. Exercise is not how I lost the weight, though. Nutrition changes (and I was already a moderately healthy eater by US standards) and intermittent fasting were the primary factors in my weight loss.
In case my variations on Fung's principles are helpful to others, I'll post them later. I'm currently testing a recently-invented variation that shows great promise. In the meantime, if you haven't watched Fung's videos on the etiology of obesity and you want to understand weight gain/loss better, I highly recommend watching them. The first one is at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpllomiDMX0.
Back in June of this year, I recorded a short presentation about glucosamine possibly helping prevent developing pneumonia in connection with an influenza infection. I wasn't especially pleased with my diction during the presentation, but I haven't made a better video since.
It is winter now, so I'm posting the recording in case it can help people. I now take glucosamine capsules in moderately large doses when I come down with a respiratory illness, and it does seem to help protect my throat, larynx, and lungs. Here's the video:
There is a complex that is supposed to be formed by the proteins TSC1 and TSC2 which is then supposed to decrease mTORC1 activity (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2735030/). A 2014 study reported that androgen causes a shorter version of TSC2 to be translated which cannot properly form a complex with TSC1 and is ineffective at decreasing mTORC1 activity:
TSC2 (Tuberous sclerosis complex 2) is an important tumour suppressor gene, mutations within which are linked to the development of tuberous sclerosis and implicated in multiple tumour types. TSC2 protein complexes with TSC1 and blocks the ability of the Rheb (Ras homolog enriched in brain) GTPase to activate mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin), a crucial signal transducer which regulates protein synthesis and cell growth. Here, we report the characterisation of a novel isoform of TSC2 which is under direct control of the ligand-activated androgen receptor. TSC2 isoform A (TSC2A) is derived from an internal androgen-regulated alternative promoter and encodes a 508-amino acid cytoplasmic protein corresponding to the C-terminal region of full-length TSC2, lacking the interaction domain for TSC1 and containing an incomplete interaction domain required for Rheb inactivation.Expression of TSC2A is induced in response to androgens and full-length TSC2 is co-ordinately down-regulated, indicating an androgen-driven switch in TSC2 protein isoforms. In contrast to the well-characterised suppressive efect on cell proliferation of full-length TSC2 protein, both LNCaP and HEK293 cells over-expressing TSC2 isoform A proliferate more rapidly (measured by MTT assays) and have increased levels of cells in S-phase (measured by both Edu staining and FACS analysis). Our work indicates, for the first time, a novel role for this well-known tumour suppressor gene, which encodes an activator of cell proliferation in response to androgen stimulation.
What to do when the body won't translate the correct form of a protein? I started searching for another source of TSC2. Other mammals make it, but I suspect the necessary cooking and sterilizing processes would damage the TSC2 we obtain from other mammals' secretions and tissues.
I found another TSC2 source: it's the mostly ignored (except by researchers, who use it all the time) wild yeast called Schizosaccharomyces pombe (S. pombe). S. pombe, unlike the Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast used in nearly all brewing and baking (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2735030/), contains versions of TSC1 and TSC2 that are similar to the human versions (http://www.jbc.org/content/279/13/12706.long).
Guess where S. pombe often shows up? In the making of hard apple cider and its subsequent product, apple cider vinegar. S. pombe is a wild yeast that is frequently found on grape and apple skins; given enough sugar, it multiplies very quickly. Have you ever wondered why apple cider vinegar--and not other kinds of vinegar--is so widely recommended as a home remedy for a vast variety of ailments? I have. I've heard it so often that my immediate reaction is to start rolling my eyes when I see it popping up in my search results yet again. Nevertheless, while the placebo effect is real, I can't easily disregard so many anecdotes claiming that apple cider vinegar has helped them. However, I can accept that some apple cider vinegar fermentations include more S. pombe yeast than others and so contain more proteins from S. pombe that are uniquely able to help with mTORC1-related conditions; I can thus accept that non-equivalent fermentations lead to non-reproducible results from raw apple cider vinegar.
I'd love to know whether a researcher has tested TSC2 from disrupted S. pombe on something fairly simple (yet annoyingly difficult to treat) like acne. Any takers out there on the global web? If it works, you might have harnessed a way to help treat prostate cancer, too. Not a bad use for your extra pombe.... (In the meantime, I've got a jar of water, sugar, and cut apples sitting on my counter in hopes that the pombe fairy will visit me.)
Dd14 read the short story "Harrison Bergeron" today for language arts. A pre-reading question asked her the following:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..." (Declaration of Independence) Are people truly created equal? Explain your answer.
I really liked her answer, despite its freshman feel. I thought it was great how she incorporates things I've told her about the importance of good diet and lifestyle during pregnancy. So today's blog post is her answer to the question above:
Well, I suppose the answer to that question would involve knowing what the definition of "created equal" is. Does it mean that everyone has the same rights and obligations in life? Does it mean that everyone starts with the same personality at birth? Does it mean everyone has the same circumstances that they're born into?
If this means everyone has the same personality at birth, then this would be false, because there are reports of twins having different personalities very early on due to one getting more space in the womb prior to birth. This also proves that "all men are created equal" would be false if "created equal" means "everyone being born under the same circumstances," especially given that even within a family, siblings can be radically different from each other because of what kind of diet and physical activity the mother did when she was pregnant with them.
However, if "created equal" means that we all have the same rights and obligations, then it is true, because no matter how we're born everyone needs to care for themselves as an obligation because if everyone stayed dependent on someone, people would die out. Since people must care for themselves, they can, and have the right to, find joy. That's a right.
Today we discovered that my secondborn child, a girl only 11 years old, appears to have grown taller than me. Right after that discovery, she happily lifted me off the ground and held me up for a while as I mock-screamed with unfeigned shock. This is the child that I brought into the world just a little over a decade ago; 11 years ago she was drooling on everything, sharing a new, happy smile with the world, and waking me too often in the night to nurse. A bit emotionally, I said to my husband that this was the baby I bore, and he responded easily, "The circle of life." Simple enough for him to say. He's half a foot taller than I. If she outgrows him, too, he'll understand my shock.
My once little baby, who could probably beat me up now.
August is coming to an end, and with it ends our family's month of focusing on Scotland. In connection with Scotland, we've eaten trifle ("tipsy laird" without the tipsy-making part), mock haggis, rutabagas, and fish and chips topped with malt vinegar (which is tastier than ketchup on fried potatoes). We've learned about Shetland Ponies, Black Agnes, and clan tartans. The children enjoyed the excuse to watch Disney's Brave again; two of them even made a tapestry for me that was inspired by Scotland and featured the wisps from Brave:
A kilt-wearing wisp playing the harp with two wisps dancing to its sides.
This was a fun summer--penguins, jerky, and chocolate bars for Antarctica; pita bread and Amr Diab for Egypt; bagpipe music, fish, and oats for Scotland; Balkan harp music, bell peppers, and swimming for Montenegro; and bison and water conservation for Colorado.
My mother turns 78 years old soon. She is quite worried about developing Alzheimer's disease, so I've looked to see if there is any overlooked thing she can add to her diet to try to help protect her from age-related cognitive decline. She doesn't want to eat horseradish (see my hypothesis paper about horseradish and its possible connection to protection from dementia at https://www.medical-hypotheses.com/article/S0306-9877(17)30123-8/fulltext), so I looked for another diet element with potential to help her.
So my mother is now putting lots of sage in her soup and bread. Will it make a difference in her cognitive ability? I don't know. She and I both think it worth the try, though.
Over the past three years, I've read a fair amount about different forms of vitamin B12 (cobalamin). I discovered early on that one of my toddlers seemed to chew her hair and other things more after taking methylcobalamin. So I didn't give it to her. After all, this was a child who would sometimes chew on the wooden TV stand for no apparent reason.
Last night we had homemade mock haggis for dinner because we're learning about Scotland. Haggis is basically minced liver and onions combined with meatloaf. We don't make a habit of eating liver because I don't like the taste. But the toddler with the strange reaction to methylcobalamin actually liked the haggis and ate a lot for her size. Later in the evening, I noticed one of our pillows had a large wet spot on its corner. Then I found a wet, chewed hairband--we don't own a dog. This little girl turned out to be the culprit. She was so caught up in chewing that she had also started gnawing on her wallet, which she loves. Liver does contains methylcobalamin, although it seems to be much higher in other forms of vitamin B12. (See https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/D0391C340D6A638D1A5C86F60EB83129/S0007114576000147a.pdf/forms_of_vitamin_b12_in_foods.pdf.) I'm curious whether there's a causative link between high B12 intake and her occasional outbreaks of gnawing. Not curious enough to give her a hydroxocobalamin capsule, though. I don't appreciate her slobbering on the furniture.
A few days ago at a family get-together, I gave a bottle of molybdenum to a fellow mother so she could have it on hand for any future "stomach bugs." She told me later that in the time since I had given her the bottle of molybdenum, she had an occasion to try it for a headache that over-the-counter pain medications weren't helping her with, and the molybdenum apparently resolved her headache.
Then yesterday I found out that another member of my extended family regularly suffers from migraines. She happily accepted a bottle of molybdenum from me when I told her that it helps many people with migraines. She didn't mention that she had a headache coming on, and she took some molybdenum without telling me at the time; later on before we parted for the night, she told me that she'd already taken it and her headache was lessening.
So there's two more molybdenum anecdotes in which it appears to help with migraines. Of the many women I know who have tried molybdenum for migraines, only one reports that it hasn't helped her significantly. That's a pretty decent performance by an overlooked trace micronutrient! Especially when one considers how much some migraine medications cost.
(Disclaimer: I do not prescribe the use of pharmaceutical drugs in any way. I am not a physician, and I reject out of hand any attempt to hold me liable for what boils down to a discussion of food. Any use of a molybdenum supplement should be prudent and guided by the tested tolerable upper intake levels for its usage (see http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/minerals/molybdenum for those limits). Any use of an isolated molybdenum supplement during pregnancy should be under the direction of a medical professional as such supplements have apparently not been tested during pregnancy.)
Yesterday, I said at the end of my post on diarrhea and molybdenum that I have had only had one person report that taking molybdenum--which she did for migraines--gave her diarrhea. She says that she changed her diet and no longer gets diarrhea from taking molybdenum glycinate.
Notice that sulfate ions can cause osmotic diarrhea. In the last post, I talked about molybdenum's beneficial role in the small intestine in preventing secretory diarrhea. Hence molybdenum can have contradictory effects on two different mechanisms--secretion and osmosis--involved in diarrhea.
And I haven't even gone into intestinal sulfate-reducing bacteria, which turn sulfate into H2S, which is a precursor of sulfite; the gut microbiome affects gastrointestinal motility (for example, see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27477318). I think the many factors of intestinal environment shifts, liver and biliary tract function, commensal bacteria in the intestines, immune system activity, diet, etc. make the issue of diarrhea quite complex. Molybdenum is an overlooked player in diarrhea-related processes that merits research attention.
(Disclaimer: I do not prescribe the use of pharmaceutical drugs in any way. I am not a physician, and I reject out of hand any attempt to hold me liable for what boils down to a discussion of food. Any use of a molybdenum supplement should be prudent and guided by the tested tolerable upper intake levels for its usage (see http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/minerals/molybdenum for those limits). Any use of an isolated molybdenum supplement during pregnancy should be under the direction of a medical professional as such supplements have apparently not been tested during pregnancy.)
There are several types of diarrhea: osmotic diarrhea, secretory diarrhea, inflammatory diarrhea, and diarrhea resulting from intestinal motility problems. (See http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/smallgut/diarrhea.html) Cholera, which kills via dehydration from awful diarrhea, has been extensively researched. Partly from the work done on it, we know the following about secretory diarrhea:
Secretory Diarrhea Large volumes of water are normally secreted into the small intestinal lumen, but a large majority of this water is efficienty absorbed before reaching the large intestine. Diarrhea occurs when secretion of water into the intestinal lumen exceeds absorption. Many millions of people have died of the secretory diarrhea associated with cholera. The responsible organism, Vibrio cholerae, produces cholera toxin, which strongly activates adenylyl cyclase, causing a prolonged increase in intracellular concentration of cyclic AMP within crypt enterocytes. This change results in prolonged opening of the chloride channels that are instrumental in secretion of water from the crypts, allowing uncontrolled secretion of water. Additionally, cholera toxin affects the enteric nervous system, resulting in an independent stimulus of secretion.
Exposure to toxins from several other types of bacteria (e.g. E. coli heat-labile toxin) induce the same series of steps and massive secretory diarrhea that is often lethal unless the person or animal is aggressively treated to maintain hydration.
In addition to bacterial toxins, a large number of other agents can induce secretory diarrhea by turning on the intestinal secretory machinery, including:
some laxatives
hormones secreted by certain types of tumors (e.g. vasoactive intestinal peptide)
a broad range of drugs (e.g. some types of asthma medications, antidepressants, cardiac drugs)
certain metals, organic toxins, and plant products (e.g. arsenic, insecticides, mushroom toxins, caffeine)
In most cases, secretory diarrheas will not resolve during a 2-3 day fast.
Secretory diarrhea can be caused by many things. In fact, inflammatory diarrhea often ends up stimulating secretory diarrhea:
The immune response to inflammatory conditions in the bowel contributes substantively to development of diarrhea. Activation of white blood cells leads them to secrete inflammatory mediators and cytokines which can stimulate secretion, in effect imposing a secretory component on top of an inflammatory diarrhea. Reactive oxygen species from leukocytes can damage or kill intestinal epithelial cells, which are replaced with immature cells that typically are deficient in the brush border enyzmes and transporters necessary for absorption of nutrients and water. In this way, components of an osmotic (malabsorption) diarrhea are added to the problem.
Based on the number of people who've told me that molybdenum glycinate (a supplement form of the trace micronutrient molybdenum) significantly lessens or ends diarrhea, I think dietary molybdenum helps explain why many people don't get diarrhea despite having cholera. How might it be doing so? Molybdenum is used as a cofactor by five known enzymes in the human body. All five of these enzymes have functions that tend to lessen the total activity of adenylyl cyclase:
Sulfite oxidase--catalyzes the conversion of sulfite to sulfate. Sulfur dioxide (a sulfiting agent) and its derivatives have been shown to increase the activity of adenylyl cyclase. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4047873/, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17923104/) By decreasing sulfite in the small intestine, sulfite oxidase would thus apparently have the effect of decreasing sulfite-caused stimulation of adenylyl cyclase activity.
Getting enough molybdenum in the small intestine therefore appears to be very important to moderating activity of adenylyl cyclase and in that way alleviating secretory diarrhea.
I've been told of an acquaintance with part of his small intestine removed who was suffering chronic diarrhea, probably because less small intestine surface means less removal of the water secreted into it early on in the digestive process; taking a molybdenum supplement once a week has given him great relief from the chronic diarrhea. I've heard of another man whose medications were giving him diarrhea, so he likely had secretory diarrhea as a drug side effect; molybdenum supplementation ended his diarrhea. And, as posted on this blog several times already, I've observed and been told of many people in whom molybdenum supplements greatly reduced or even eliminated diarrhea from viral gastroenteritis, which is likely secretory diarrhea overlaying inflammatory diarrhea. In over two years of telling people about molybdenum, I have only heard of one person who experienced diarrhea as a result of taking molybdenum; I will write about her experience in my next blog post [Update 7/20/2018: here's a link to that post] and explain the mechanism by which I think molybdenum induced diarrhea for her.
(Disclaimer: I do not prescribe the use of pharmaceutical drugs in any way. I am not a physician, and I reject out of hand any attempt to hold me liable for what boils down to a discussion of food. Any use of a molybdenum supplement should be prudent and guided by the tested tolerable upper intake levels for its usage (see http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/minerals/molybdenum for those limits). Any use of an isolated molybdenum supplement during pregnancy should be under the direction of a medical professional as such supplements have apparently not been tested during pregnancy.)
"Heal yourself from nausea and vomiting and diarrhea with this one simple trick."
You know how internet webpages and spam email often say obnoxious things like the three sentences above? These hyperbole-filled claims almost always waste time and can hurt gullible people. I despise them.
How did I find myself in a situation where those statements are actually true? For that is where I find myself with molybdenum. Molybdenum glycinate supplements are "one simple trick" that treats nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Doctors by and large are ignorant of its desirable effects; if one is lucky, one has a doctor who even knows that molybdenum is an essential trace micronutrient for human health. And, lastly, pharmaceutical companies have sunk a lot of money into antiemetic and norovirus vaccine research, and here a couple housewives in Colorado have stumbled upon a highly effective treatment for viral gastroenteritis symptoms, a treatment that costs them $6.25 per bottle of 100 pills--it's absurd, and it's enough to make one want to go short certain pharmaceutical stocks. (Don't worry, I haven't done that. I don't play the stock market.) If I weren't living this story, I'd never believe it.
Please, prove my claims yourself. Go buy an inexpensive bottle of molybdenum glycinate (Amazon has a few brands) and test it the next time you have a norovirus infection. The doses that typically work are usually about 20 times the RDA and yet still less than the upper tolerable intake limit for molybdenum supplementation. People typically need just one or two doses. To my knowledge, I have no financial interest in any company that mines or sells molybdenum. I have nothing to gain from all these blog posts about molybdenum except for the satisfaction of helping many people suffer less.
If you are in the medical field or know someone in the medical field, once you've seen how dramatically molybdenum helps with nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, for the love of all that is good, don't keep it to yourself. With great knowledge comes great responsibility.
(Disclaimer: I do not prescribe the use of pharmaceutical drugs in any way. I am not a physician, and I reject out of hand any attempt to hold me liable for what boils down to a discussion of food. Any use of a molybdenum supplement should be prudent and guided by the tested tolerable upper intake levels for its usage (see http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/minerals/molybdenum for those limits). Any use of an isolated molybdenum supplement during pregnancy should be under the direction of a medical professional as such supplements have apparently not been tested during pregnancy.)
For some time, I've been wondering why young children under 5 years of age tend to be more severely afflicted by gastroenteritis. Per the Medscape website:
Acute gastroenteritis is a common cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Conservative estimates put diarrhea in the top 5 causes of deaths worldwide, with most occurring in young children in nonindustrialized countries.
But children in these poorer, nonindustrialized countries are also being fed legumes....why are they dying from diarrhea in such large numbers even when their usual diet is relatively high in molybdenum? I think the tendency to avoid eating beans when feeling nauseated helps explain to some degree why people, including young children, continue to feel nauseated after they are already vomiting and starting to have diarrhea. But why doesn't molybdenum ingested earlier and stored in the body have more of an ameliorative effect in very young children? We store molybdenum in many parts of the body, especially in the liver. (See references at https://www.imoa.info/HSE/environmental_data/human_health/molybdenum_uptake.php.) Because the liver, via the biliary tract, is well-situated to deliver molybdenum to the part of the digestive tract where the action of vomiting starts (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retroperistalsis), the liver is the most logical source of stored molybdenum that could have an impact on emesis.
I think a clue to why very young children tend to be more severely affected by viral gastroenteritis symptoms might lie in the absence of CD10 in the liver bile capillaries (canaliculi) of infants and children under 2 years of age. (See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5805126/ and https://www.nature.com/articles/3700677.) CD10 is also absent in the liver bile capillaries of people with Alagille syndrome (https://www.nature.com/articles/3700677), a major feature of which is liver bile ducts which are narrow, malformed, and reduced in number (https://rarediseases.info.nih.gov/diseases/804/alagille-syndrome). Perhaps the tiny bile capillaries of small children, due to being without CD10 for the first two years of life, are malformed in such a way as to decrease the ability to mobilize molybdenum out of its liver-located storage; then after the bile capillaries start to have CD10 at about age 24 months, the livers continue to grow and liver cells undergo normal turnover, allowing substantial bypassing and repair of the earlier bile capillary defects by around age 5 years.
If insufficient delivery of molybdenum from the liver tissue to the proximal small intestine (duodenum) in very young children helps explain their greater mortality from gastroenteritis symptoms, then we should expect to see that obstructive jaundice--generally caused by an obstruction between the liver and the duodenum--is associated with nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. It looks like that could indeed be the case, for nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea are noted as symptoms that have been observed to occur together with jaundice. (https://www.medicinenet.com/jaundice_in_adults/article.htm#what_are_the_signs_and_symptoms_of_jaundice_in_adults, https://www.merckmanuals.com/home/liver-and-gallbladder-disorders/manifestations-of-liver-disease/jaundice-in-adults). It would be interesting to investigate whether people with gallstones or other bile duct obstructions are more severely affected by norovirus than people without. It is already accepted that it is a bad thing to obstruct the biliary tract; maybe an impaired ability quickly to utilize molybdenum stores in the liver is an additional negative result of biliary obstruction. Due to the prevalence of parasites in many developing countries, it would also be interesting to investigate the effects of parasites on the transport of molybdenum within the biliary tract.
There is much new space opened up for inquiry into diseases of the gastrointestinal tract by the discovery of molybdenum's ameliorative effect on the viral gastroenteritis symptoms of nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Despite notifying many researchers and public health officials at the beginning of 2018, I have no knowledge to date of any researchers or medical practitioners following up on my reports of molybdenum glycinate's effectiveness in preventing/treating those symptoms. Molybdenum keeps working as I've been reporting, and the number of successes I hear about keeps ticking upward. I'm disappointed in the medical world. A housewife in Colorado shouldn't be the only one trying to fit all this together.
(Disclaimer: I do not prescribe the use of pharmaceutical drugs in any way. I am not a physician, and I reject out of hand any attempt to hold me liable for what boils down to a discussion of food. Any use of a molybdenum supplement should be prudent and guided by the tested tolerable upper intake levels for its usage (see http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/minerals/molybdenum for those limits). Any use of an isolated molybdenum supplement during pregnancy should be under the direction of a medical professional as such supplements have apparently not been tested during pregnancy.)
I've been hesitant to post about this because only two people, my sister and myself, have tried it. But she is a voice teacher, so she's generally reliable on issues of vocal performance. Around the beginning of 2018, she asked me whether there was anything she could do to help her lungs not hyper-react to the grooming products used by a student. So I looked into it for her and suggested that she try chondroitin sulfate since it seems important to building healthy support structures for the surfaces of the trachea and bronchi.
She took chondroitin sulfate for a couple of weeks, and the bronchial hyperreactivity to her student's products went away. But even better--at least for a singer--her vocal range extended noticeably. So I tried chondroitin sulfate, too, and noticed that it helped me sing more easily and with a clearer tone. I find I get a noticeable result in my singing voice even if I take it only once in a while; the effect seems to kick in within a couple of hours.
The vocal cords (or folds) are supported by cartilage, and chondroitin sulfate is an important component of cartilage. Also, chondroitin sulfate has been found in the cover, ligament, and interstitial cells of the vocal folds (see http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000348949610500102 and https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1808869416301045). One or both of these things could contribute to the mechanism by which she and I are finding that chondroitin sulfate helps us sing better. I'd love to hear if anyone else has noticed similar vocal performance effects in themselves after taking chondroitin sulfate.
I just posted a short video about the possible connection between high cartilage content in the Brazilian national dish feijoada and the high occurrence of microcephaly subsequent to Zika virus infection in pregnant women in Brazil.
Our family is learning about Egypt during the second half of June. We have eaten baba ganoush, kushari, pita bread, kofta kebab, fava beans, falafel, and lots of hummus. We found out from a friend who lived in Egypt that the word "hummus" just means garbanzo beans. So the next time you see black bean "hummus" at a store, go ahead and giggle at the silliness of calling it that.
While the food has been quite tasty, it has been unfriendly to weight loss efforts. I think our higher intake of pureed beans are mostly to blame. Breaking apart the cell walls of beans approximately doubles the insulin response after ingestion, per a 1986 study posted at http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/9/3/260. So pureeing the garbanzo beans for hummus is not a good idea for those looking to minimize insulin responses. Also, mashing the fava beans in one's ful medames is going to cause an increase in insulin responses.
As the news recently has erupted with stories about the extreme violence in Central America--El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and southern Mexico--I think possible nutrition-related correlations with violence deserve scrutiny. In fact, that is the most productive avenue of research and advocacy I can imagine for those who would like to reduce violence there, for there are only three explanations for the horrific intentional homicide rates in that region of the world: 1) government, 2) culture, 3) genetics and/or nutritional interactions with genetics.
The governments of those countries are different and have varied widely over the past century, but the murders just keep happening. If we look back further at the great Mayan civilizations, despite their high intelligence and accomplishments, they kept devolving due to killing each other. So I don't think government changes are the answer.
Culture? No, we see from the ethnic enclaves of Central Americans in the USA that they do not reproduce the extreme homicide rates of their homelands.
Genetics and/or nutritional interactions with genetics....now that I'm willing to blame. Not just genetics, of course, for as noted before, ethnic enclaves of Central Americans in the USA do not reproduce the extreme homicide rates of their homelands. So I think nutrition, including the way it interacts with genetics, is a significant, overlooked factor in Central American violence. Moreover, I think that poverty-caused restrictions on diet enhance the influence of nutritional differences as a factor in violence.
Here's another segment of the library lecture I gave earlier this week. In this one, I talk about molybdenum. For more information on this topic, please refer to the past 2.5 years of this blog. :)
(Disclaimer: I do not prescribe the use of pharmaceutical drugs in any way. I am not a physician, and I reject out of hand any attempt to hold me liable for what boils down to a discussion of food. Any use of a molybdenum supplement should be prudent and guided by the tested tolerable upper intake levels for its usage (see http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/minerals/molybdenum for those limits). Any use of an isolated molybdenum supplement during pregnancy should be under the direction of a medical professional as such supplements have apparently not been tested during pregnancy.)
Earlier this week, I gave a lecture at a local library in which I talked about some of my hypotheses. My daughter helped me record the lecture so that I could post parts of it on YouTube. Here's the first segment of it, in which I introduce my main sources for information when I'm working on a health-related mystery:
We're learning about Colorado right now. Not only is it Rocky Mountain high and the land where the columbines grow, but the state of Colorado inspires many songs of longing. Such as this one:
Every summer we study different cultures/countries/states for 2 weeks at a time. We learn about their music, their language(s), and their food, and we do activities related to them. It is very enjoyable and gives a nice form to our summer.
We finally decided on our study subjects for the summer: Colorado (the US state), Egypt, Montenegro, Antarctica (not really a country, but continents count now, too!), and Scotland. In looking for music to listen to this summer from each of those areas, I was introduced to Amr Diab. I am currently more than a little obsessed with his song "El Leila":
Luckily, my offspring like it, too. Doesn't it make you want to dance, habibi? (That means "my darling" in Arabic.)
One study in France even said that "iron supplementation (80 mg/day) appeared to improve ADHD symptoms in children with low serum ferritin levels....Iron therapy was well tolerated and effectiveness is comparable to stimulants." (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18054688)
Hyperactive children in US classrooms are a common sight. Combine the apparent connection between ADHD and low serum ferritin with the frequent inclusion of dairy, which interferes with iron absorption, in the typical US school lunch, and it looks as though we might have a simple way to reduce hyperactivity via tweaks to school lunch menus. (See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15831123 for a survey of diet factors affecting iron absorption in meals.) Why couldn't we have dairy-free, iron-rich meals that enhance iron absorption twice a week? We could easily serve orange juice instead of milk on those days. It would certainly make the Florida orange growers happy. Sure, "milk does a body good," but it doesn't have to be consumed at every single meal.
This last Easter, I boiled dozens of eggs for my children to dye. During the next few days, despite my limiting of Easter candy to a very small amount, my two youngest children (3 & 6 years old) were hyperactive and "crazy." Their behavior differed markedly from their normal temperament. One thing we noted was that they were living off egg whites as much as they could; they love peeling boiled eggs and eating the whites, but they avoided the yolks. So I looked into whether there was something in egg white that could explain their changed behavior.
Phenylalanine. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylalanine) It is an amino acid that is very high in eggs. It is used by the body in two different pathways, one that leads to the production of dopamine and the other that leads to the production of NMPEA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-Methylphenethylamine), which has a similar effect on the body as amphetamine. The first pathway depends on an iron-containing enzyme (AAAH). My children weren't getting enough iron from their diet, I believe, for they were doing their best to live off of rice, eggs, cheese, and milk, all of which are either low in iron or hinder absorption of iron. I think that due to low iron, their body was utilizing the second metabolic pathway at a higher-than-usual level and so making much of their ingested phenylalanine into NMPEA, meaning that they were being affected to some degree as though they'd been taking amphetamines. Oops.
We took the boiled eggs away from them and instead gave them more foods high in iron, and our children calmed down within two or three days. I hesitated to blog about this observation, but today I was visiting a friend whose her young children were acting "crazy" during our conversation. I told her about what happened with our children at Easter time, and she said that her children do eat a lot of eggs.
Moral of the story: If unusual food patterns are occurring alongside unusual behavior, look for possible causation.
My thirteen year old daughter has been trying topical application of UHT milk--for its alkaline phosphatase enzymes--on her face twice a day for just over a month now. (I explain why in part one of this series.) At the one-month mark, I checked the acne-prone areas of her face and found that her acne looked about bad as it had at the experiment's start a month earlier. That was weird, for her skin had been doing better several days before that.
I went to the refrigerator and smelled her liter of UHT milk, and it was quite sour. She'd been using the same liter container for a whole month. I did check it around the 3-week mark and it was still sweet then, but it soured since without her realizing it.
When milk goes sour, its pH decreases, meaning it becomes more acidic. (https://thedairydish.com/is-milk-acidic/) Alkaline phosphatases are so named because they have optimal activity when the pH is alkaline. Skin itself is acidic. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18489300) My daughter's sour milk applications thus probably didn't result in much alkaline phosphatase activity.
She is using a fresh liter of UHT milk now, and her face is doing better, too. I need to find a source of small UHT milk containers so that she can use a fresh one every week or so without it costing so much. Not that $1/liter is expensive, but it can add up if one has to open a new milk container every week or two.
However, I feel like I should give the UHT milk alkaline phosphatases a week or two more of trial time before changing the type of phosphatase we use. It's not the milk's fault that I didn't notice it had gone sour. When I do switch to wheat germ acid phosphatase, one thing I need to remember is not to mix the acid phosphatase with alcohol; ethanol inhibits acid phosphatase. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15762484)
Almost two years ago, I was starting to worry about how to help my daughters with the inevitable onset of teenage acne and wrote about how manganese might be able to help: https://petticoatgovernment.blogspot.com/2016/07/skin-care-and-manganese.html. Now I have a thirteen year-old child, and she is dealing with some acne. It started to get quite bad up around her hairline. So she tried some lotion with some chelated manganese mixed in, but if the manganese helped her, it wasn't obvious that it did so. She also cut her milk consumption, since milk consumption is related to acne. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21335995) That did help a little, but she likes her morning glass of milk. And she likes peanut butter, which always tended to increase the number of pimples for me and my siblings. So I looked for recent research on what causes acne breakouts, and found that much has been discovered:
In the last years, a clear link between the endocrine signalling also influenced by Western diet and the pathogenesis of acne has emerged. In this context, a crucial role has been attributed to the hyperactivity of the conserved serine/threonine kinase mTORC1. mTOR is a nutrient-sensitive regulator of cellular growth, proliferation, lipid synthesis and protein translation, exerting its effects through two distinct signalling complexes: mTORC1 and mTORC2. In particular, the rapamycin-sensitive mTORC1 promotes cell growth and proliferation whereas mTORC2, rapamycin-non-sensitive, is involved in the regulation of cell polarity and in the functional phosphorylation of cytoskeleton actin fibres. mTORC1 is able to integrate multiple intra- and extracellular mediators such as growth factors (insulin, IGF-1) and energy-sensing signals (glucose, AMP/ATP-ratio), controlling the adequate availability of amino acids, especially the BCAA leucine, necessary for its own activation. Multiple diseases, either neoplastic, dysmetabolic or inflammatory, show dysregulation of mTOR pathway, which might be also involved in inflammatory skin diseases such as psoriasis, atopic dermatitis and allergic contact dermatitis. Enhanced levels of leucine [peanut butter is really high in leucine] and other amino acids, insulin, IGF-1 and glucose, deriving from meat, milk/dairy intake and high glycaemic load, permit mTORC1 activation through specific mechanisms. Consequently, by the phosphorylation of 4E-BP1, the lipin1 activator of SREBP-1 and S6K1, mTORC1 is able to enhance protein and lipid synthesis, as well as growth and cell proliferation. This could be translated into proliferation of acroinfundibular keratinocytes and increased lipid biosynthesis in sebaceous glands, responsible for seborrhoea. In two recent elegant papers, Melnik integrated mTORC1 signalling into the complex scenario of acne pathogenesis, highlighting the antagonistic interaction between the metabolic transcription factor FoxO1 and the nutrient-sensitive kinase mTORC1 . Nevertheless, either for the role of FoxO1 or for the modulation of mTOR in the pathophysiology of acne, direct evidences in humans are lacking.
"Mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) expression is increased in acne patients' skin." Monfrecola G, et al. Experimental Dermatology 2016(25):153-155. online at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/exd.12885/full (references omitted).
In the Monfrecola publication, the researchers show that activated, i.e., phosphorylated S6K1 (P-S6K1), is more prevalent in the acne patient skin and is even more prevalent in the lesional skin than in the non-lesional skin. That points to the possibility that reversing the phosphorylation of S6K1 could decrease acne, which reversal could hypothetically be accomplished by topical application of phosphatase enzymes, for phosphatases remove phosphate groups.
Not being a funded research scientist, I looked around for inexpensive, readily available sources of phosphatase and came across just one: UHT milk. Milk has alkaline phosphatases (so named because they have optimal activity at alkaline pH) which are deactivated by pasteurization. However, the UHT process allows for subsequent reactivation of the alkaline phosphatases in the milk (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/988062, https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/41912/Ninios%20AI_Master%20thesis-1.pdf?sequence=1), and the longer the UHT milk sits around in its carton, the more active the enzymes become. The idea of using milk enzymes to promote clear skin has some historical backing for it: Cleopatra used to take milk baths, and for centuries milkmaids, despite high milk consumption, were praised for their complexions (some people think that was because of cowpox-caused immunity to smallpox, but that reason has apparently been debunked--http://www.jameslindlibrary.org/articles/the-origins-of-vaccination-no-inoculation-no-vaccination/).
I happened to have a liter of UHT milk in our pantry that was approximately a year past the "best by" date, so my teenage daughter and I are now doing an experiment with it to see if it helps her have less acne. On February 18, 2018, she started applying UHT milk to her hairline twice daily and all over her face once a day; she also stopped applying the lotion with manganese. This is what her hairline looked like:
Not terrible (although much of the skin damage is hidden by hair), but this was also taken when she was restricting her milk intake.
After a few days of the topical UHT milk treatment, she didn't have any new pimples forming, so I said she could drink as much milk and eat as much peanut butter as she wanted to. Then her father chimed in with concerns about whether she was washing her face enough, so I told her to use Cetaphil cleanser on her face every day. Unfortunately, she is not good at rinsing her face all the way off, and Cetaphil cleanser takes a lot of rinsing to remove completely. I think the Cetaphil residue blocked her pores, for she soon got pimples in places she hadn't had to worry about before, including one on the tip of her nose. So now she is washing her face with just water most days. Her hairline looks much better, but she is still dealing with pimples on other parts of her face. So yesterday, I instructed her to apply the UHT milk to her entire face twice daily. I hate to restrict her diet, but if the UHT milk phosphatases don't stop the acne, she will have to go back to restricting her milk intake. One thing we will not do is turn to coverup/foundation; if just Cetaphil residue can cause pimples in her skin, imagine what foundation would do to it!
I'll post follow-up pictures in a couple of weeks. She doesn't have cyclic eruptions, so if her skin is clear, then maybe we'll have found an easy intervention to save her from the teenage curse of acne. If not, it might be worth looking into what acid phosphatases are available; after all, skin pH is acidic, not alkaline.
I have many new ideas swirling around in my head these days--and making it so I have too many browser tabs open--because I've been trying to keep my blog focused on molybdenum recently in case some gastroenteritis researchers (I emailed hundreds of them in the past couple months) come across my blog during an internet search. Here's one of the new ideas, a result--as is often the case--of something thought-provoking posted by Glenn Reynolds at his Instapundit blog.
If garlic consumption can help rejuvenate old bodies, then we should be able to see some sort of correlation between countries with high garlic consumption and longevity. One such piece of evidence has been apparent for some time: the life-extending effect of a "Mediterranean diet." (https://www.livescience.com/19868-centenarians-longevity-mediterranean-diet.html) People living around the Mediterranean Sea use a lot of garlic in their cooking. But the all-time highest consumers of garlic appear to be the South Koreans, who eat as much as 8-12 cloves per day. (https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/unlocking-the-benefits-of-garlic/) South Korea, interestingly enough, is forecast to lead the world in life expectancy for women:
There is a 90% probability that life expectancy at birth among South Korean women in 2030 will be higher than 86·7 years, the same as the highest worldwide life expectancy in 2012, and a 57% probability that it will be higher than 90 years. Projected female life expectancy in South Korea is followed by those in France, Spain, and Japan.
I think it's safe to say, at least on a population-wide basis, that eating large amounts of garlic can help rejuvenate our bodies without the necessity of turning to vampirism. That's amusing and ironic in light of the traditions about garlic supposedly being able to repel vampires. (http://www.garlic-central.com/vampires.html)
As I've often discussed here on my blog and outlined in my published hypothesis about sulfite, "morning sickness," and molybdenum, I think that increased hydrogen sulfide (H2S) usage in the body leads to excessive sulfite levels during pregnancy, and the sulfite excess then causes nausea and vomiting of pregnancy (NVP).
Today while researching a different topic, I came across an article talking about how the organosulfur compounds in garlic are H2S donors. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691516302368) I think I finally know why I couldn't stand the smell of garlic during early pregnancy! We often tend to avoid --the scientific term for it is "conditioned taste aversion"-- things that have made us throw up in the past. (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1985.tb27082.x/full; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780080450469001121) If garlic made me more likely to throw up during my early pregnancies, then it is logical that I would have developed an aversion to garlic that manifested during subsequent periods of morning sickness. Even now, years later and not pregnant, I cringe a little internally at the sight of a ranch dressing bottle because of pregnancy memories of hating the smell of the garlic-containing ranch dressing within.
I found some good quotes about discovery by an author/writer named Steven Magee. His current areas of focus appear to be what many would consider "fringe" because he warns of dangers from ubiquitous electromagnetic radiation. Some of his ideas aren't out of the mainstream, though. For instance, talking about toxic effects of certain kinds of light is warranted in light of what has been learned about blue light suppressing melatonin at night. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26017927; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29101797) And then there are the recent mysterious injuries to US diplomats in Cuba, which some think might have been a result of radio waves. (https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/12/cuba-attacks-cold-war-technology-244787)
Regardless of whether every one of Magee's warnings about electromagnetic radiation exposure is warranted, he has some good things to say about why medical science exists:
“The human mind and body contains a myriad of secrets awaiting discovery.”
“Sickness is the motivator for research by those that recognize
improved health is just a discovery away.”
“Curiosity is what powers discovery.”
“When walking alone on the path of discovery, have faith that you are
illuminating the way for others to follow.”
“Research is an endless loop of failures interspersed with occasional
profound discoveries.”
I like that he recognizes that a multitude of failures is an inevitable part of research but is still optimistic about all that awaits us as we continue to reach for more knowledge.
I like to research many things that don't have clear answers. I have only been taking so much time to post about molybdenum because it's relatively unknown and quite effective for nausea/vomiting and migraines. But the headlines these days have some scary stories about influenza and its toll. A friend lost her uncle a few days ago to post-influenza pneumonia. So here's what I've dug up on an overlooked nutritional intervention that appears to help protect against dying from influenza-caused pneumonia:
1) The flu infects chondrocytes, the cells in cartilage. They are the only cells in hyaline cartilage, which type of cartilage is coincidentally found in places--joints, rib ends, nose, larynx, trachea, bronchi--that are among the hardest hit by influenza. (https://www.britannica.com/science/cartilage)
2) Influenza-infected chondrocytes don't seem to actually experience obvious damage until the body's immune system goes on the attack. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC422866/; http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-2567.2003.01621.x/full) [Edited 2/17/2018: Someone pointed out to me that chondrocytes are within an extracellular matrix that has no blood vessels, so other cells, including attacking immune cells, can't reach them. I looked more into that issue and found a 2015 cartilage transplant study which found that cartilage isn't as immune-privileged as it used to be believed it was (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4522233/). I suspect that chondroblasts--the immature chondrocytes next to the blood-vessel-containing perichondrium--are the first chondrocytes which the immune system cells attack, and then due to their destruction the cartilage matrix becomes compromised; if that compromised state becomes severe enough, immune cells can then gain access to the mature chondrocytes within, as well.]
5) Damaged cartilage in the trachea/bronchi could allow for more penetrating infection by viruses/bacteria that normally would not be able to do much harm and in that way make flu sufferers much more susceptible to pneumonia. Most of the people who died from the 1918 flu died because "bacteria that normally inhabit the nose and throat invaded the lungs along a pathway created when the virus destroyed the cells that line the bronchial tubes and lungs." (https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/bacterial-pneumonia-caused-most-deaths-1918-influenza-pandemic)
So if you're worried about influenza, it might be worth it to buy some glucosamine and take it when you're exposed to influenza so you can protect your hyaline cartilage and thus make yourself less likely to develop pneumonia. I tried glucosamine myself last week (I teach part-time, and influenza has been going around my classroom), and I never coughed at all despite having slight nasal secretions and some very short episodes of mild chills. I bought the glucosamine in loose powder form, mixed it into water, and sipped or gargled it, for the point was to protect my respiratory tract, not my intestines.
At the very least, drink some animal broth--which should typically contain a little glucosamine--when sick with influenza. I don't think it's prudent to be a vegetarian when dealing with influenza. A few years ago, a China-Diet-following relative of mine got the flu, then pneumonia, then barely survived ARDS. Also, India's 1918 flu statistics could be read to support the existence of some sort of protective effect correlated with acceptance of beef consumption.
Here's the timeline for something that happened in our family almost a month ago. Enough time has elapsed that I feel pretty confident that it wasn't a norovirus, so I'm posting a blog entry about it now (February 24, 2018):
Jan. 29, 2018, Monday afternoon: I went shopping and bought some clearance produce, including a 2-lb package of pre-washed whole green beans. As I put them in the cart, I thought to myself, "I'd better wash or cook those before we eat them." The expiration date on the green bean bag was stated to be January 31, 2018.
Jan. 31, 2018, Wednesday afternoon: My teenage daughter needed treats for an activity that were supposed to be red and green colored. I said she could take the bag of green beans and a bag of red apples out of the refrigerator. I thought to myself, "I hope she remembers to wash them," but never said it to her.
Jan. 31, 2018, Wednesday evening, 7:00-8:30 pm: My teenage daughter ate 2-3 medium-sized handfuls of the green beans at the activity. She didn't notice anyone else eating them.
February 1, 2018, Thursday morning, 8 am: My teenage daughter made herself a sunny-side-up egg and did not cook the yolk all the way through.
February 1, 2018, Thursday morning, 11:25 am: My teenage daughter noticed "a faint, black rectangle pattern that was shimmering on the edges of her left eye." She thought it was due to looking at her computer screen for too long. It continued for about 15 minutes.
February 1, 2018, Thursday, 11:30-12:00: She ate a large lunch.
February 1, 2018, Thursday, 12:15 pm: While driving in the car, she was suddenly hit with a headache.
February 1, 2018, Thursday, 12:30 pm: While still in the car, her stomach began hurting and she asked for some molybdenum. I gave her some.
February 1, 2018, Thursday, 12:40 pm: I had to pull over because she felt like she was about to throw up. Fresh air and getting out of the car helped her not to throw up. I gave her more molybdenum.
February 1, 2018, Thursday, 1:15 pm: After getting her to our house (with a break for her to sit in a parking lot for a while and try a piece of hard candy to increase saliva), I gave her more molybdenum, a container to throw up in, and a blanket to cover her while she rested on the sofa. She fell asleep on the sofa. She woke up about thirty minutes later and threw up. And then she felt much better. She still had a very mild headache and her stomach didn't hurt anymore.
February 1, 2018, Thursday, 3:30 pm: She was acting normally and eating (practically dancing around in the kitchen next to all the family food preparation surfaces, to my chagrin). She says she had "the faintest headache [she'd] ever had." I gave her some more molybdenum since she'd thrown up the contents of her stomach earlier.
February 1, 2018, Thursday, 6:00 pm: She thinks she was totally recovered by then. She has not had diarrhea at all. To the contrary, she was constipated for a day or two afterward, which makes me wonder if excessive molybdenum can cause constipation.
Based on her headache and gastrointestinal symptoms and the suddenness with which they hit her, the most likely culprit for her illness appears to be listeriosis, i.e., infection with the bacteria Listeria monocytogenes. The incubation period fits (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23305174), the visual disturbance symptom sounds similar to what one of her aunts experienced from suspected mild listeriosis in the past, and the apparent source--fresh produce--is a moderately common source of listeria (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5368540/).
My daughter has since checked with other people who were at her Wednesday night event, and only one other person recalled even eating any of the green beans, and that person ate just a few of the green beans. No one else got sick except for my daughter, who ate handfuls of the green beans.
I am fairly confident in ruling out norovirus or a similar virus because of the brain-related symptoms (e.g., visual disturbance and headache) and the fact that no one in the family has had an illness anything like this. After the past few months, we unfortunately have a good knowledge of how the more common gastrointestinal viruses affect our family.
I find it interesting that she hasn't had any diarrhea, as that is the one of the most common symptoms associated with mild listeriosis. (http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199701093360204) Maybe the molybdenum she took helped prevent it. But molybdenum didn't stop the initial vomiting episode, even if it might have helped delay it. I suspect we've just run up against a limitation of molybdenum. This is the first time, to my knowledge, that we've used molybdenum for a probable bacterial illness. We have since watched this little animation of how the listeria bacteria infects and poisons our cells, and it made me very grateful for my child's well-functioning immune system:
I contacted the customer service hotline of the store and told them about her symptoms. They asked many questions and directed us to freeze the bag of green beans in case it becomes necessary for them to send someone to collect it and test it. I'm happy to see they take possible listeria in their produce so seriously. The green beans are still in my freezer. I wonder how long they expect me to hold on to them?
(Disclaimer: I do not prescribe the use of pharmaceutical drugs in any way. I am not a physician, and I reject out of hand any attempt to hold me liable for what boils down to a discussion of food. Any use of a molybdenum supplement should be prudent and guided by the tested tolerable upper intake levels for its usage (see http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/minerals/molybdenum for those limits). Any use of an isolated molybdenum supplement during pregnancy should be under the direction of a medical professional as such supplements have apparently not been tested during pregnancy.)
This is not a blog about feces. I think about feces as little as I can, as do most humans. A sure way to create a political firestorm appears to be mentioning feces. If you can't stand feces discussions, ignore this post.
When my sister and I first started trying molybdenum in our families and getting successful results in dramatically shortening and averting gastroenteritis symptoms, we did not discuss stools much. It seemed to me that we still had a little diarrhea sometimes in my family, but I didn't care that much about it. Diarrhea gets flushed down the toilet and so is less messy than vomiting, and as a mother of five children, the level of messiness was what I cared about. Well, that and my kids not going through the misery of vomiting.
In fall of December 2016, a friend from church who successfully tried molybdenum for migraines reported that it gave her really bad diarrhea and so she wasn't going to use it very often. But later, she said she'd "fixed her diet" and could now take molybdenum for her migraines and that diarrhea had ceased to be an issue. I don't know what diet changes she made.
Then a few weeks ago, another friend started giving her adult post-traumatic-brain-injury son molybdenum because his medications made him feel sick to his stomach. She was surprised and very pleased to discover that the molybdenum ended his diarrhea; he'd been having diarrhea constantly and required 6-7 clothing changes per day. Now he doesn't require any clothing changes outside the usual.
After I started emailing researchers, one responded back and mentioned that molybdenum, if as effective as I'm reporting, could help many young children. That gave me pause. I'd been thinking of molybdenum as more of a convenience intervention, something to end the gross vomiting. I looked into what he was talking about and realized that each year norovirus kills around 50,000 children < 5 years of age. That is a large, sad number! But the way it kills is dehydration, of which diarrhea is the major cause (although vomiting certainly doesn't help). Can molybdenum help all these little kids not die of diarrhea?
I went back and asked my sister and friends who were using molybdenum for gastrointestinal viruses and had young children whether molybdenum was having an effect on the presence of diarrhea. The answer was a clear "Yes!" Loose stools sometimes still, but the molybdenum is somehow helping them avoid most of the diarrhea which they would normally experience from these viruses. That indicates molybdenum has the potential to be a significant life-saving intervention in poorer countries.
How is molybdenum helping prevent diarrhea? I'd really rather leave that puzzle for the diarrhea experts. If pressed to state a hypothesis, I would suggest that sulfite might induce diarrhea and so molybdenum--by aiding the conversion of sulfite to sulfate--decreases diarrhea. Why? Because of my migraineur friend above. Molybdenum gave her diarrhea until she changed her diet. Why did molybdenum do so? I suspected back when she first reported it that molybdenum was helping her more quickly convert sulfite to sulfate in her stomach and so resulting in more sulfate reaching her small intestine. A sudden increase in sulfate ingestion has been observed to cause diarrhea. (http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/eh/wells/waterquality/sulfate.html) That indicates to me that she might have had an excess of sulfate-reducing (i.e., changing sulfate to sulfite and then hydrogen sulfide (H2S), which the body can turn around and catabolise, creating sulfite again) bacteria in her small intestine previously and that her diet shift changed her gut microbiome so as to substantially reduce the amount of sulfate-reducing bacteria. But that's just a guess.
One issue though: In poorer countries, they tend to eat a lot of beans and lentils, and yet they still have serious pediatric diarrhea issues. If molybdenum--which is highest in beans and lentils--is helpful against vomiting and diarrhea from gastrointestinal viruses, then shouldn't it already be protecting the people there? I think it does. There is a prevalence of asymptomatic* norovirus in many countries (which also means a lot of people are passing around viruses without knowing it--https://www.news-medical.net/news/20171106/Research-suggests-asymptomatic-infection-as-source-of-norovirus-outbreaks-in-Indonesia.aspx), and those countries seem to be ones where the diet has a higher whole bean and lentil content. Young children may be eating more starch and less of the pulses than are the older children and adults. Also, I've noticed that the effects of molybdenum appear to be dose-dependent. The larger the dose I give, the more dramatic the relief from gastrointestinal virus symptoms. I now often give my family the upper tolerable intake level of molybdenum when viruses come to visit us, and that makes a bigger difference than the smaller doses I used initially.
Naturally, I'd like to know when the doses are too high, and so I really need the professionals to research this and make official recommendations and protocols based on more evidence than I currently have. But my children's lives don't depend on whether I'm using molybdenum properly. That is unfortunately not the case in many poorer countries, so I hope that some researchers will energetically research and then effectively promote molybdenum as a viral gastroenteritis intervention.
* Or mostly asymptomatic. Many taxis in Manila advertise medicines for "LBM," which means "loose bowel movement."
[Edit: My friend with the post-TBI adult son also has a diabetic husband who constantly suffers "digestive issues" and diarrhea. She told me today that she started her husband on 150 mcg molybdenum every other day, and it has greatly alleviated his digestive issues and diarrhea.]
(Disclaimer: I do not prescribe the use of pharmaceutical drugs in any way. I am not a physician, and I reject out of hand any attempt to hold me liable for what boils down to a discussion of food. Any use of a molybdenum supplement should be prudent and guided by the tested tolerable upper intake levels for its usage (see http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/minerals/molybdenum for those limits). Any use of an isolated molybdenum supplement during pregnancy should be under the direction of a medical professional as such supplements have apparently not been tested during pregnancy.)
I research regional cuisine differences and juxtapose them with medical research and epidemiology. Sometimes, I end up with new hypotheses as a result, which I revisit to modify or refine from time to time. Molybdenum glycinate's efficacy for treatment of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and migraines is my hypothesis that has the most evidence (real-life) for it.
