(Here I go again showing that my disagreement with the standard protocol is too strong to ignore. Hopefully, it will be understood that I think Dr Donohue seems to be a respectable and concerned physician – - otherwise, why would he be trying to help people? But since it is my nature to question so many things; and my good fortune to have read plenty of Dr. McDougall and Loren Cordain (Paleo Diet), well I just gotta speak up. Later – - at the end of article. Jan)
TO YOUR GOOD HEALTH
Paget’s disease often isn’t treated
Dr. Donohue answers letters only in his North America Syndicate column but provides an order form of available health newsletters. Write him at P.O. Box 536475, Orlando, FL 32853-6475.
Q #1: I am a 75-year-old woman who was treated for breast cancer in 2008. What I am concerned about is that my oncologist tells me I have Paget’s disease. I asked how he knows I have it. He said from my X-rays and bone scans.
I went on my computer, and the information I found tells me to have an alkaline phosphatase test. Should I?
Q #2: Will you write about Paget’s disease? My son-inlaw has it, and it has brought pain in his left leg. He went from being an active roofer to requiring a wheelchair. He is in great pain. Do you know anything that could help?
A: Bones are in a state of constant flux. That entails bone breakdown followed by bone buildup.
With Paget’s disease, for reasons that are not clear, bone breakdown goes ballistic. Rebuilding tries to happen, but the new bone is often deformed and easily broken. Quite often, the new bone is limited to a few small areas and causes no symptoms. It’s discovered when an X-ray or bone scan is done for an unrelated reason. Paget’s disease is found in 3 percent of people older than 40, but few need treatment.
Alkaline phosphatase is an enzyme found in bones. With Paget’s disease, its level in the blood rises and is proof of disease activity. (ya think something might be wrong here?) If an oncologist thought a test was necessary, he would have ordered it. The pelvis, the backbones, the skull, the femur (upper-leg bone) and the tibia (lower-leg bone) are the ones most often targeted by Paget’s disease.
As treatment, the same drugs used for osteoporosis are used for Paget’s disease. Pain control might be difficult but should be achievable. Perhaps a consultation with a pain clinic would help the son-in-law.
The best friend that Paget’s disease patients have is the Paget Foundation. Call the foundation at 1-800-23-PAGET or visit www.paget.org.
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Q: What is the difference between regular table salt and sea salt? I always thought salt is salt and, used in excess, something bad for health. I understand that regular table salt has a place in health because it provides iodine. According to a Hollywood star, sea salt is supposed to be good for you. She claims that it lowers blood pressure. What is your take on this?
A: Sea salt comes from the evaporation of salt water. It has trace amounts of magnesium, copper and iron but not enough to be a health benefit. It can be considered the same as table salt without iodine.
As promised, starting with that pain from the bones. First, to extrapolate from Cordain at Paleo Diet:
Though calcium intake in our country is about the highest in the world, nevertheless, we also have one of the highest rates of osteoporosis or bone demineralization unlike any other country. As Loren Cordain of the Paleo Diet says, bone mineral content is dependent not just upon calcium intake but upon net calcium balance (calcium intake minus calcium excretion). Most nutritionists focus upon the calcium intake side of the calcium balance equation, however few realize that the calcium excretion side of the equation is just as important.
Dr Ccrdain goes on to state that bone health is substantially dependent on dietary acid/base balance. Foods upon digestion are seen by the kidney as either acid or base. When the diet yields a net acid load (such as low-carb fad diets that restrict consumption of fruits and vegetables), the acid must be buffered by the alkaline stores of base in the body. Calcium salts in the bones represent the largest store of alkaline base in the body and are depleted and eliminated in the urine when the diet produces a net acid load. The highest acid-producing foods are hard cheeses, cereal grains, salted foods, meats, and legumes, whereas the only alkaline, base- producing foods are fruits and vegetables. Because the average American diet is overloaded with grains, cheeses, salted processed foods, and fatty meats at the expense of fruits and vegetables, it produces a net acid load and promotes bone demineralization. By replacing hard cheeses, cereal grains, and processed foods with plenty of green vegetables and fruits, the body comes back into acid/base balance which brings us also back into calcium balance. The goal is to avoid a net acid load on your kidneys. (Thank you Dr. Cordain, this could not be clearer)
Next, just touching on Dr. McDougall and remembering some of the things he teaches, one does not need to supplement with calcium as the body gets all the substance it needs from the plant food and through its marvelous genius, generates enough calcium from the raw materials of green leafy plants to build and sustain substantial bone structure. (just like the big animals do – eating the growing plants of the land available to them.) McDougallers and most vegans do not consume dairy (and its not necessary for good bones!) He has much more to say in a post I did – - “I worry about Sally Field” (2-25-09) Just scroll thru my rambling til you get down to Dr Mc Dougall.I want to discuss one more subject that I believe can help us all understand in a larger picture just how important it is to eat plenty of the healthful, organic, unpolluted, chemical free foods we can find. The words are “FULVIC ACID” and most will not even have heard of this before. One can go online and google the “Fulvic Acid report” – - I did and down-loaded it and will now extrapolate just a little to make a point. (The report is around 50 pages):
Fulvic Acid
Although the majority of research and experimentation that has been done on fulvic acid is in relation to plants; it is important to realize that human beings have been ingesting fulvic acid complexes regularly for over 60 years in supplemental form, and for thousands of years from natural food and plant sources. The new discoveries involving fulvic acid are very similar in nature to the recent important discoveries of valuable phytochemicals in vegetables that have always existed, but were hitherto unknown. Fulvic acid has always occurred naturally in organic plants and soils, yet its recent discovery and tremendous value is now just beginning to be recognized.
Fulvic acid is an organic natural electrolyte that can balance and energize biological properties it comes into contact with. An electrolyte is a substance that is soluble in water or other appropriate medium that is capable of conducting electrical current. When the electrolyte potential was taken away during the test, the cell ruptured and disintegrated into the surrounding fluid causing death. Upon reintroducing electrical potential the cell reconstructed and became active and healthy.
Fulvic acid has proven to be a powerful organic electrolyte, serving to balance cell life. If the individual cell is restored to its normal chemical balance and thereby in turn its electrical potential, we have given life where death and disintegration would normally occur within plant and animal cells. Fulvic acid has the outstanding ability to accomplish this objective in numerous ways
Enhances Nutrients
Fulvic acid enhances the availability of nutrients and makes them more readily absorbable. It also allows minerals to regenerate and prolongs the residence time of essential nutrients. It prepares nutrients to react with cells. It allows nutrients to inter-react with one another, breaking them down into the simplest ionic forms chelated by the fulvic acid electrolyte.
Fulvic acid has been discovered to be one of the most important natural miracles related to life itself. Fulvic acid is part of the humic structure in rich composting soil It is an acid created in extremely small amounts by the action of millions of beneficial microbes, working on decaying plant matter in a soil environment with adequate oxygen. It is of low molecular weight and is biologically very active. Because of its low melecular weight, it has the necessity and ability to readily bond minerals and elements into its molcular structure causing them to dissolve and become mobilized fulvic complexes. Fulvic acid from humic deposits usually carries 60 or more minerals and trace elements dissolved into its molecular complexes. These are then in ideal natural form to be absorbed and interact with living cells. plants roots and cells readily absorb high amounts of fulvic acid, and maintain it in their structure. In fact it has been discovered that these fulvic acid complexes are absolutely essential for plants to be healthy
Fulvic Acid is Lacking in Food Crops
It seems obvious that most of the agricultural and food crops of today would also contain adequate amounts or at least some fulvic acid and its related mineral complexes, but few do. As human beings it would be reasonable to assume that we should be consuming fulvic acid complexes in the plants we eat, and consequently have fulvic acid in our systems. It is obvious that this is the way nature intended it. But this not the case, nor has it been for a long time.
Our soils are sick from poor agricultural practices, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, erosion, and mineral depletion as well as sterile conditions brought on by these practices, that prohibit microbial activity. Because of this our plants are sick, containing very little nutrition, especially minerals. For generations adequate fulvic acid that should have been contained in the plants we eat has been missing from our diets, yet it is essential for our cell metabolism. Scientists have found that nutritionally we need 90 different nutrients in our diets. Over 60 of these are minerals and trace elements. We are simply not getting them today from the plants we eat.
Re-mineralization of soils would be of little benefit without fulvic acid and return to better farming practices. Re-mineralization of our bodies without the fulvic acid that should be contained in the plants we eat, has proven just as useless. People are sick with degenerative and deficiency related diseases now more than ever. With fulvic acid supplementation and return to proper diet and farming practices these situations have the potential to be reversed.
There is much information in the Report – hard to pick and choose. Wanted only to give you an idea of it and if you are interested, check it out yourself. This coincides with current displeasure with Agri-business and the depletion of the soil, the genetic modification of favorite foods to the point that we can no longer eat them in good conscience and of course, the GMO seeds – no end in sight.
Natural Celtic Sea Salt is not refined, or demineralized
Finally, the last point – - that of SALT. Dr Donohue is really off the mark here. Salt is not all alike. I used to belong to the Grain and Salt Society and paid what I thought was exorbitant prices for their salt. Happily, I find it available at Whole Foods and popular usage seems to have brought the price down.
Morton’s salt is a refined product, is an acid substance and is not healthy. It contributes to an acid state in the body. Whereas the Celtic Sea Salt is fully, naturally mineralized with 82 trace minerals and is actually an alkalinizer. No supplementation can equal the wealth of minerals, in the right balance, found in natural sea salt.
Okay, I just don’t have common sense anymore – - I’m up too late again! G”night Jan
