Hemochromatosis and Autoimmune Conditions

Megan said:
voyageur said:
...My blood Ferritin came out high at 341 ug/L and she said that as such, the government will now pay for a full iron panel workup – so back to the hospital and more revolving doors back to the Lab to give more; which is helping me in small stages to get rid of blood at least. She said that if the results are such and such, the gov will then allow for gene tests. However, the good news is they will help me out with a routine of taking pints and monitoring my blood as applicable...

The last part is probably all you actually need. Do you have to jump through the other hoops first, or can you start decanting now? Apparently a major use for the DNA test is to deny treatment. It can't tell you with certainty if you have HH and it can't tell you if you don't. I mean it's interesting to know if you have one of the known mutations, and knowing that can provide extra incentive to go through treatment, but it isn't a direct measurement of the potential problem at hand -- iron overload -- where decanting blood does provide a direct measurement. I have ordered my own personal genetic testing, that I can choose to share with my doctors or not, mainly because I am curious.

Also, remember that taking repeated blood draws to measure iron status can have a "normalizing" effect, so that "full iron panel" might not tell the full story.

That was interesting about the repeated blood draws, it seems like so little, yet can see what you mean. It will be interesting what is revealed with the latest test. Thanks for the genetic perspective, too.

Psyche said:
That iron is really messing up with your metabolism. Yeah, decanting iron is a priority.

Forgot to mention that the physician wanted to take my blood pressure, and it was spot on. Have been at times however been super tired, having a couch nap after work. Also, have recently stopped the Vit C routine until the iron results were known. In the IE book, Rebeca talks about Nicotine being a carrier source of iron; i'll have to look up that page again.

Yes, decanting is the priority. It will either happen at the local hospital or will drive the 300 km. to get it done.

Edit: Changed from carrier to source.

Also, what is it about the "metabolism" that i can feedback to the physician, in terms of language, to help to expedite quickly their referral process to decant blood based on the Ferritin 341 ug/L result?
 
voyageur said:
Also, what is it about the "metabolism" that i can feedback to the physician, in terms of language, to help to expedite quickly their referral process to decant blood based on the Ferritin 341 ug/L result?

I had metabolic syndrome in mind considering that you are in a very low carb diet. You have higher triglycerides, low HDL, higher levels of glycated Hb considering the diet you've been following. I think once you decant iron, your levels will better reflect the low carb diet. :flowers:
 
Psyche said:
voyageur said:
Also, what is it about the "metabolism" that i can feedback to the physician, in terms of language, to help to expedite quickly their referral process to decant blood based on the Ferritin 341 ug/L result?

I had metabolic syndrome in mind considering that you are in a very low carb diet. You have higher triglycerides, low HDL, higher levels of glycated Hb considering the diet you've been following. I think once you decant iron, your levels will better reflect the low carb diet. :flowers:

Ok, following you on this, thank you. :)
 
This was apparently written by Mercola (_http://www.indiadivine.org/audarya/ayurveda-health-wellbeing/917107-hepatitis-c-iron-toxicity.html)

Is it Hepatitis C or Iron Toxicity?

E-mail to a friend

By Joseph Mercola, D. O.

I recently had a patient visit me from Ohio with a remarkable story that needs to be shared, as it will likely save a number of people’s lives.

This person is a 53-year-old healthy male who had absolutely no symptoms. He was the picture of health and from looking at him you would never believe he had any health problems. However, later we wound find out that he was rusting on the inside and had massive amounts of free radical damage.

Through a routine physical examination, his local traditional doctor found that he had elevated liver enzymes. So a hepatitis panel was drawn and he was found to have hepatitis C. He was not content with the traditional recommendations of going on Interferon as a treatment, so he visited my Web site and learned that high iron levels are frequently a major factor in most cases of hepatitis. This is where the story gets interesting.

He asked the doctors to check his iron level, but they basically laughed at him and refused until he persisted. The doctors ran a serum iron level and that came back only on the high side of normal. However, he had read my article on how to properly diagnose iron overload so he further insisted that they run the correct test to screen for iron overload, which was a serum ferritin level. This came back elevated, but they still refused to consider that this was contributing to his problem.

It’s not bad enough to be ignorant, which the vast majority of traditional medical doctors are, but they don’t have a clue about the real cause of disease. Instead, they focus their energy on diagnosing symptoms and then learning all about Band-Aid drug and surgical solutions.

The factor that annoys me more and more is that most of them compound their ignorance with arrogance. This is a potentially lethal combination for the patient. The doctors refuse to consider any other options outside of those their limited perspective allows them to see.

That is exactly what happened here, and if this person had relied on and trusted their recommendations he would likely be dead in a few short years with the “convenient” diagnosis of hepatitis C, rather than the correct diagnosis of death due to doctor ignorance.

Doctors are the leading cause of death in this country because of their documented mistakes, but believe me, that is only the tiniest tip of the iceberg. They are responsible for far more deaths from their ignorance of basic concepts. Iron overload is certainly one of them, but a lack of appreciation of the influence of insulin on health is another.

When I finally drew this man’s ferritin level in my office it was 1000--the second highest I have ever seen. A good number is 50. Anything above 100 should be treated, and anything above 300 to 400 is normally considered to be a problem by traditional doctors. So let me provide further expansion on the relationship between hepatitis C and iron toxicity.

First it is important to gain some perspective on hepatitis C. One study on the costs of hepatitis C provides a proper perspective, which I list below. You can also review the CDC’s hepatitis C information for further information.

Cost & Incidence of Hepatitis C Infection

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) cost the United States about $5.46 billion in 1997. The estimate puts the cost of HCV on par with the national costs of asthma and rheumatoid arthritis, two other chronic disorders.

The hepatitis C virus causes inflammation of the liver and is the most common chronic blood-borne infection in the United States. The virus can be spread by sex with an infected person, transfusion of infected blood or contaminated needles. HCV is the most common cause of liver transplantation in the United States, the study notes.

The investigators, from the University of California at Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, believe that the cost of HCV infection justifies requests for increased funding to expand efforts directed at prevention, screening, treatment and research.

Although HCV infection is not as costly as HIV infection, which in 1992 was estimated to cost $30 billion, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that:

HCV-related mortality could triple within the next 10 to 20 years.

According to the report, HCV infection that results in chronic liver disease accounts for about 92 percent of the costs while infection that leads to primary liver cancer accounts for the remaining eight percent of costs.

How to Properly Diagnose Iron Overload

Iron overload, or hemochromatosis, is actually the most common inherited disease. You can find out all the technical details from reading my article on how to diagnose iron overload.

Iron has been known to be associated with infection for 30 years.[1] [2] [3] It appears that iron chelators have great potential to become an important tool for fighting bacterial and viral infections.[4] When excess iron is present, the body’s normal antibacterial mechanisms become severely compromised.[5] [6] [7]

I am certain that high iron levels are what contributed to this person coming down with hepatitis C. Was the solution for him interferon? Absolutely not. The interferon itself may have killed him. It in no way, shape or form addressed the problem of excess iron, which was causing severe damage in his liver and creating massive amounts of free radicals.

Treatment for Iron Toxicity

If you were to listen to traditional medicine the only solution for iron overload is to donate a pint of blood every two weeks. This is not a very effective solution and may require many years before it works as up to 50 therapeutic phlebotomies may be necessary.

Measuring iron levels is a very important part of optimizing your health. However, simply measuring serum iron, as I said earlier, is a poor way to do this. Frequently the serum iron will be normal. The most useful of the indirect measures of iron status in the body is through a measure of the serum ferritin level in conjunction with a total iron binding level.

If you find elevated serum ferritin levels, you do not have to perform therapeutic phlebotomies. A simple extract from rice bran called phytic acid, or IP6, can serve as a very effective form of iron chelation that is non-toxic, inexpensive and can be done without a prescription.

Tsuno Food & Rice Company of Wakayama, Japan is the only manufacturer of IP6 in the world; any brand you purchase would come from this company. Since it is all the same product, the least expensive brand is probably the best one to choose, and Jarrow seems to have the best prices.

Iron chelators have also been used in the treatment of one of the most common infections in the world, malaria.[8] Over 200 million people are infected every year with the malaria parasite, and over 1 million die from the infection. IP6 was used over 15 years ago to treat malaria,[9] but there is a lack of recent trials on its use. This may be because IP6 only became commercially available in 1998.
 
Here's the link to an article on Mercola's site. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2003/06/04/iron-absorption.aspx Interesting that he wrote it back in 2003.

Another:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/07/19/excess-iron-leads-to-alzheimers.aspx
From 2012.
 
I don't quite understand why Mercola is against decanting blood - for most it's in my opinion not the slowest, but the fastest way of getting rid of excess iron. Yes, you may need up to 50 blood donations, but you can easily do 1 donation of week, which would bring down very high ferritin levels to normal within a year at most.

I have never seen studies done with IP6 and don't know how effective it is. Anyway, at this stage I will continue with oral EDTA, blood donations and tring to set up a course of iv EDTA.

If anyone has experience with IP6 I'm definitely interested!
 
nicklebleu said:
I don't quite understand why Mercola is against decanting blood - for most it's in my opinion not the slowest, but the fastest way of getting rid of excess iron. Yes, you may need up to 50 blood donations, but you can easily do 1 donation of week, which would bring down very high ferritin levels to normal within a year at most.

I have never seen studies done with IP6 and don't know how effective it is. Anyway, at this stage I will continue with oral EDTA, blood donations and tring to set up a course of iv EDTA.

If anyone has experience with IP6 I'm definitely interested!

I imagine there's a downside to it. I know that for those with HH that need to do it every week or two it can be pretty hard on the veins.

If you aren't at a critical stage and can benefit from simply giving blood at normal intervals then you have time for healing in between.
 
Megan said:
I imagine there's a downside to it. I know that for those with HH that need to do it every week or two it can be pretty hard on the veins.

It is hard on the veins, especially with a 14G needle ... Did try a 16G needle last time I decanted some blood and it worked equally well, but is a bit less damaging to tissues (BTW, the higher the number before the G, the smaller the needle).

I guess the best way to approach high iron levels is to do all these things in parallel, which is what I am trying to do ...
 
nicklebleu said:
I guess the best way to approach high iron levels is to do all these things in parallel, which is what I am trying to do ...

I think you hit the nail on the head there. EDTA works other metals pretty hard - decanting hits iron pretty hard - and a little phytic acid running around in the blood and gut probably helps too if the lectins don't get out of hand. The mixture of these should probably be adjusted individually for each person. A small amount of nuts with a meal might be good for those without sensitivities.
 
nicklebleu said:
I don't quite understand why Mercola is against decanting blood - for most it's in my opinion not the slowest, but the fastest way of getting rid of excess iron. Yes, you may need up to 50 blood donations, but you can easily do 1 donation of week, which would bring down very high ferritin levels to normal within a year at most.

Another problem are the medical / bureaucratic obstacles. A couple of days ago, I went to donate and they would not let me. The hospital I go to, told to must spend two months to return to donate (I still have two weeks). I'm thinking of buying one of these machines at home to decant, but should also make a nursing assistant course or something.

I would like to tell you that I am quite worried about my father. A couple of years ago was detected a tumor in the colon that branched to the liver. He had surgery and then chemotherapy and apparently it's all "controlled"... well, we started talking about HH and problems of excess iron in the blood, but he not listening.
My father is an anesthesiologist, and despite what has happened, is still very cocky (and ignorant, like the examples given by Mercola in the note cited by LQB). Well, the point is that the other day I went to meet with a plastic surgeon who also holds a degree in orthomolecular medicine. We talking about heavy metal cleaning in general, but by the questions that I make, I found he knew very little about HH. I take to my father a session of "anti-age vaccine" (which has EDTA and other chelators), since my father refused to other long-term therapy. This points to "the aesthetic" but I hope that it can also affect his health. I know that this is all STS on my part, one can not help anyone who does not want help, but is my father and I need help on what I can, now that I know this information. maybe I should control myself better and not be so reactive and look at the situation in another way (but is very difficult). Believe that some of this medicine orthomolecular could improve a bit the picture?
 
l apprenti de forgeron said:
nicklebleu said:
I don't quite understand why Mercola is against decanting blood - for most it's in my opinion not the slowest, but the fastest way of getting rid of excess iron. Yes, you may need up to 50 blood donations, but you can easily do 1 donation of week, which would bring down very high ferritin levels to normal within a year at most.

Another problem are the medical / bureaucratic obstacles. A couple of days ago, I went to donate and they would not let me. The hospital I go to, told to must spend two months to return to donate (I still have two weeks). I'm thinking of buying one of these machines at home to decant, but should also make a nursing assistant course or something.
...

You would ordinarily need a prescription before you could go more often. I'm not so sure that is a bureaucratic obstacle. The problem seems to be with physicians that are unwilling to write a prescription because they don't see decanting as a preferred path to a diagnosis ("treatment confirms diagnosis") when test results indicate possible hemochromatosis. They may dismiss it as imaginary or resort to more invasive tests.
 
l apprenti de forgeron said:
Another problem are the medical / bureaucratic obstacles. A couple of days ago, I went to donate and they would not let me. The hospital I go to, told to must spend two months to return to donate (I still have two weeks). I'm thinking of buying one of these machines at home to decant, but should also make a nursing assistant course or something.

I would like to tell you that I am quite worried about my father. A couple of years ago was detected a tumor in the colon that branched to the liver. He had surgery and then chemotherapy and apparently it's all "controlled"... well, we started talking about HH and problems of excess iron in the blood, but he not listening.
My father is an anesthesiologist, and despite what has happened, is still very cocky (and ignorant, like the examples given by Mercola in the note cited by LQB). Well, the point is that the other day I went to meet with a plastic surgeon who also holds a degree in orthomolecular medicine. We talking about heavy metal cleaning in general, but by the questions that I make, I found he knew very little about HH. I take to my father a session of "anti-age vaccine" (which has EDTA and other chelators), since my father refused to other long-term therapy. This points to "the aesthetic" but I hope that it can also affect his health. I know that this is all STS on my part, one can not help anyone who does not want help, but is my father and I need help on what I can, now that I know this information. maybe I should control myself better and not be so reactive and look at the situation in another way (but is very difficult). Believe that some of this medicine orthomolecular could improve a bit the picture?

Being an anesthesiologist, maybe your father would be willing to at least look at his iron panel - then you could go from there. But if he just won't consider it, there is nothing to be gained by pushing it.

On the orthomed stuff you can have a look here: www.doctoryourself.com/index.html (originally referred by Perceval). There is some good info here.
 
Megan said:
You would ordinarily need a prescription before you could go more often. I'm not so sure that is a bureaucratic obstacle. The problem seems to be with physicians that are unwilling to write a prescription because they don't see decanting as a preferred path to a diagnosis ("treatment confirms diagnosis") when test results indicate possible hemochromatosis. They may dismiss it as imaginary or resort to more invasive tests.

Yes, Megan, sorry for not clarifying well. I want to meant by "bureaucratic" that I can not donate more often as a volunteer. I must to get a doctor's prescription, allows me decanting more often . Otherwise, as a volunteer, I can only donate every two months. What bothers me is that given the results of my test, they should allow me to donate. But erroneously say that the values ​​that I have are "within normal"... Well, I will continue looking for a physician to make the order. Thank you Megan.


LQB said:
Being an anesthesiologist, maybe your father would be willing to at least look at his iron panel - then you could go from there. But if he just won't consider it, there is nothing to be gained by pushing it.

On the orthomed stuff you can have a look here: www.doctoryourself.com/index.html (originally referred by Perceval). There is some good info here.

Thank you LQB -and Perceval- for the informative link. I will watch it carefully.
I try not to pressure my father, but God! One must see the evidence in the public links. Is there!. Ok, I'm justifying my attitude, anyway. If I continue pressing he probably will close more in his narcissism.
Maybe when my father see the surgeon in a few days, take the issue more seriously (eg. his iron panel), because that will recommended by a colleague and not by me, who don't know anything.
I can, and sorry for thinking this now, show my analysis to the same surgeon and perhaps he could give me a prescription. But I don't know, I repeat that I found that he knew little about HH.
 
Megan said:
You would ordinarily need a prescription before you could go more often. I'm not so sure that is a bureaucratic obstacle. The problem seems to be with physicians that are unwilling to write a prescription because they don't see decanting as a preferred path to a diagnosis ("treatment confirms diagnosis") when test results indicate possible hemochromatosis. They may dismiss it as imaginary or resort to more invasive tests.

I am just starting this journey with higher ferritin levels and understanding, and if not for this thread, my ignorance and iron would remain. Just starting the process, at least in public healthcare, what the government sanctions in allowable fee diagnostics, seems one problem; so perhaps physicians just don't go there based on the fee not being easily accepted. Yet another aspect in the system i'm in, is the system is being charged according to how many times you revolve through the door. In my initial testing, two visits to the physician and two Lab tests to produce a known value. After today trying to call to get them to issue a requisition to the hospital so i can get ride of a pint, was told that likley i'll have to schedule an appointment back to the physician and then to the hospital - that is now six billing fees, and more to follow. In the IE book, Rebecca seems to infer that physicians are just plain uncomfortable with the thought of taking peoples blood. Is this from their mental pictures of actions during the medieval days of bloodletting, don't know, however it is curious. The other aspect may be that physicians seem to like to set up tests by referrals; an MIR here, ultrasound there (which may have value in some cases) or as is the case of people with arthritis, who in reality have high iron, they are bounced off to a Rheumatologist for possible years of treatments and ultimate deterioration.

The last aspect is that as profitable as it may seem by the fees charged, this is nothing compared to what can be made by letting iron run its course, as disease descriptions indicate. If in fact iron is such a problem, getting rid of blood does not require the pharma influences, getting well does not help the system's machine to continue. Just from the few questions i've asked in the Lab and with two different physicians, it is not often considered and focus is elsewhere. And so it seems that the physician who said that understanding iron overload by medical students, physicians, lawyers and governments will change the way medicine is practiced, well it seems to have died for the statuesque. :(

Laura said:
Here's the link to an article on Mercola's site. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2003/06/04/iron-absorption.aspx Interesting that he wrote it back in 2003.

Another:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/07/19/excess-iron-leads-to-alzheimers.aspx
From 2012.

Thanks for these links.
 
I just want to say that unloading over a hundred points of ferritin did me a world of good. I survived the "sins" we all committed during the wedding with very little hitches.

Also, our daughter with the serious problems who has been prescribed regular phlebotomies has made enormous improvements over the past few weeks. She decants about a pint every two weeks. Obviously, if someone was really HIGH they would need to get it down as quickly as possible, but this schedule seems to work after she did two in rapid succession.

It really is amazing to see how her energy/mood has improved and her inflammation has quieted down with just getting rid of some blood.
 
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