Thanks to all of you who have written to ask when I'll get back online.
For the past six months I have been working on two sticky problems. One has been what you do if you have hemochromatosis (the iron overload disease) and you can't get the standard treatment, phlebotomy. The idea behind the conventional medical treatment of iron overload disease, and it usually works, is you draw enough blood to cause anemia, and then excessive iron won't be a problem.
Anemia, of course, can be the problem. Also, some people just can't have a pint of blood drawn every week. In the referral that started the inquiry, a man had a pint of blood drawn and his heart stopped. He had a near-death experience (and was met by his dead cat). He was revived, but then had no way to treat hemochromatosis he could afford.
Dying and going to the hereafter to meet your cat is a really undesirable side effect of treatment. This doesn't happen with desferrioxamine, the chelation drug, but chelation can easily run $100,000 or more. So, I started calling experts in countries that have gone through financial crises.
Finally, a pharmacologist who managed to get through the financial crisis following the breakup of the Soviet Union suggested treatment with alpha-lipoic acid. Not just any formulaton of alpha-lipoic acid soaks up the excess iron, however. It has to be R-lipoic acid.
So after six months of trying, the man who called me for help persuaded his doctors to supervise (and not play games with his insurance) when he took alpha-lipoic acid. After three weeks of treatment, his iron levels are down, and his diabetes is greatly improved. And he's spent $240 instead of about $10,000.
Doctor-supervised phlebotomy really is a better treatment. Alpha-lipoic acid is wonderful if it's what you can get. You can check here to see the results, but my guess is the alpha-lipoic acid will be a lot less effective than drawing blood once or twice a week, but about as effective as desferrioxamine. Don't stop medically directed treatment to try this if you have hemochromatosis, however.
The other project in the works is a "detox" for what we are told is exposure to depleted uranium for a community in Kosovo. We're looking at what we can do that actually helps people but doesn't interfere with medical treatment. Once again, the right formulation of the right supplement can do a lot of good. The trick is knowing what you can do, and what you can't. There's not a dollar or a dinar to be made from the effort, and plenty to be spent, but why not?
Thanks for your faithful reading of this blog. And please feel free to send any questions.
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2 comments:
Given that there is no one to detoxify from DU in Kosovo, I guess that makes you a "snake oil salesman" or "quack". How much have you made out of your travelling medicine show wagon? The UN Environment Programme did extensive testing in Kosovo and found no one in need of detoxification, nor an environment that was toxic in DU (just a slightly higher than normal level of uranium is some limited isolated locations. Go to http://postconflict.unep.ch/publications/uranium.pdf for that nearly 200 page complete report "Depleted Uranium in Kosovo Post-Conflict Assessment".
DUStory-owner@yahoogroups.com
Assuming you are Roger Helbig, you have an intense investment in this topic. What I'd be glad to hear from you, and I'd post, is your personal knowledge of DU surveys in Kosovo or elsewhere. I didn't edit the link out of your post, but everybody has access to search engines.
I do not, by the way, make one thin dime from my involvement in this, and the political implications are not comfortable for me. But there is a pretty obvious natural therapy looking for an application, no matter from whence the DU came. If you yourself know it's not a health hazard from your own observations, please tell us all more.
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