Natural Therapy for
HEMOCHROMATOSIS
WALTER LAST
Hemochromatosis (or haemochromatosis) is a potentially fatal
iron storage disease with excessive iron deposits, especially in the liver. It
is one of the multitudes of medically incurable diseases. The only useful
treatment is frequent bloodletting to reduce the excess of iron. However,
frequently patients die anyway, mainly due to liver degeneration.
I
like to present the following case history to show that proper natural therapy
can be effective when there is no hope with conventional medical procedures.
While medical treatment generally tries to find and neutralise a specific
disease-causing agent, natural therapy in addition to specific treatments tries
to improve the overall health of the patient and so can be successful with a
much wider range of diseases.
Hemochromatosis
is generally thought to be a genetic defect. It usually occurs in males and
starts between the ages of 30 and 50. Iron is deposited in the 3-valence
form as ferritin or hemosiderin. Serum ferritin levels reflect tissue levels
and are greatly increased. The diagnosis is confirmed by a liver biopsy.
CASE
HISTORY
My
patient was a 51-year-old male. He had collapsed at work 3 years earlier. His
main symptoms were dizziness, tachycardia, profuse sweating, difficulty
breathing and extreme weakness. He was discharged from an Intensive Care Unit
without diagnosis and his weight loss and weakness continued. The diagnosis of
hemochromatosis was made 15 months later by liver biopsy and a serum ferritin
level of 1585 ng/ml, normal for males is 30-400ng/ ml.
One
litre of blood was taken initially fortnightly and later monthly by venesection
and that brought the ferritin level down to a low point of 440 ng/ml. During all this time the patient was very weak, and
as an additional complication a specialist diagnosed Meniere's disease.
Finally, his doctor told him that the therapy did not work, and he had about
five weeks to live. At this time, in December of 1990, three years after his collapse,
and 20 months after his diagnoses of hemochromatosis, he stopped having
venesections and started natural therapy.
NATURALTHERAPY
I
was not aware of any successful treatment reports in the literature. Therefore,
I started the patient on a vegetarian raw food diet with the main emphasis on
sprouted seeds, especially sprouted mung beans, self-made soy milk yoghurt
using acidophilus and bifido cultures, as well as freshly pressed juices of
vegetables, wheat-grass and rye-grass (a grass seed, not the cereal rye seed).
All the common food allergens, especially wheat, yeast and cows' milk products,
initially also eggs and the other gluten grains (barley, oats and rye) were
strictly avoided.
I
recommend intestinal sanitation, that is re-establishing a normal, healthy
intestinal flora, for everyone but it seemed to be of special importance in
this case as pathologically increased iron absorption may be due to a damaged
intestinal wall. This is also a main cause of food allergy. According to my
understanding, medical antibiotic therapy is the main cause of an unhealthy
intestinal flora and, with this, of damage to the intestinal wall.
Chemicals,
be they in the form of drugs or food contaminants, as well as gluten are also
known to cause or aggravate intestinal damage. Therefore, my patient used only
unsprayed or organically grown food.
SUPPLEMENTS
The
initial supplements were B complex, sublingual vitamin B12, Kyolic garlic, 1
tsp. of lecithin granules per meal, the trace minerals zinc, copper and
manganese, and high levels of antioxidants: 20 g of vitamin C, 1000 iu of
natural vitamin E and 10,000 iu of vitamin A, all in divided doses. In order to
minimize any increased iron absorption due to ascorbate, this was initially
taken with water or fruit well before meals.
Ascorbic
acid caused gastric problem, therefore sodium ascorbate
was used instead. One tablespoonful of cod liver oil emulsified with lecithin
and juice was taken orally in addition to skin rubs with cod liver oil to
overcome fat malabsorption problems (now I would recommend krill oil and astaxanthin
instead). Multivitamins were avoided due to their iron content. It is now known
that green tea and 300 mg of calcium with meals reduce iron absorption.
Of
special interest in this case is vitamin C. The medical literature states that
vitamin C supplementation should be avoided with iron overload diseases. Tissue
damage due to peroxidation of membrane lipids has been detected after low-dose
vitamin C supplementation.
However,
ferric iron is known to destroy vitamin C and iron overload patients are
clearly severely deficient in vitamin C and other antioxidants. This may well
be the main reason for their susceptibility to liver cirrhosis, diabetes, heart
disease and cancer. I suspected that the cell membrane damage was not due to
too much but too little Vitamin C.
A
small amount of vitamin C supplementation would liberate some iron from its
stores but it would be combined with oxidised vitamin C and present as ferric
dehydroascorbate, which then causes the peroxidative membrane damage. With
sufficiently high antioxidant, levels, on the other hand, iron would be
liberated as beneficial ferro-ascorbate.
It
is well known that iron can only be liberated from ferritin stores if it is
temporarily reduced to the 2-valence state. With a severe antioxidant
deficiency this reduction may not be possible. Most affected is the liver.
Every day about 25 mg of iron arrive here from the breakdown of old red blood
cells in the spleen. Because, of its very high ferritin stores, the diseased
liver is likely to be more antioxidant deficient than other organs. Therefore,
the body would pick up its iron needs to form new blood cells mainly from the
intestines which then leads to further overload.
THE
RESULT
With
the start of natural therapy the patient began to feel well for the first time
in three years with rapidly increasing strength and disappearance of all signs
of Meniere's disease. The symptoms of Meniere's disease are progressive
deafness, dizziness, ringing in the ears, headache and nausea.
The
formerly below normal red blood cell count became normal, haemoglobin improved
to the middle of the normal range, and after twenty days the ferritin level was
393ng/ml, within the normal range for the first time since diagnosis.
After
this, the diet was relaxed to include also cooked and flesh foods. Vitamin C
intake was reduced to 5 g per day and vitamin E to 500 mg. Blood tests
initially every six months and later yearly showed normal ferritin levels. All
the other individuals with hemochromatosis diagnosed at the same time as my
patient and treated in the conventional way have died in the meantime of
various liver diseases.
One
recent episode confirms the crucial importance of vitamin C. After 6 months on
the Zone Therapy with a high intake of animal protein, he gradually
deteriorated and experienced weakness and abdominal problems. A blood test
revealed an elevated ferritin reading of 429 ng/ml. Returning to a diet low in
animal protein, and doubling the daily amount of sodium ascorbate from 5 g to
10 g, reduced the ferritin level to 300 ng/l in about
6 weeks, again within the normal range.
There
were two other times when the ferritin level temporarily went above 400 ng/l, these were associated with, and most likely triggered
by periods of emotional stress. Any kind of stress requires increased amounts
of vitamin C, and less is available to protect the liver from oxidative stress
due to ferritin. Therefore, I now recommend for high-risk individuals to routinely
take 10 g of sodium ascorbate in divided doses before meals, and to double this
amount in times of stress, with another dose of ascorbate at bedtime.
By
the way, DNA tests confirmed that the hemochromatosis of my patient was
genetic. This confirms once again what natural therapists know all along,
namely that the expression of such disease-related genes is a function of
environmental factors in general and the internal body condition in particular.
This kind of genes do not cause diseases, they only make us more susceptible.
Another natural therapist had a similar good result with a hemochromatosis
patient.
UPDATE
December 2012
The
hemochromatosis patient mentioned in this article did
not have any further hemochromatosis problems for
more than 20 years, I did not maintain contact with others who seem to have
been helped. According to my present understanding the number one issue is to use
lots of all kinds of antioxidants (including turmeric) with as much spaced out
sodium ascorbate as possible without getting bowel
tolerance problems. It does not matter if taken with meals or at other times,
e.g. 2 to 3 grams 5 or 6x daily.
Natural
food is always good but does not make much direct difference for hemochromatosis. More important are intestinal sanitation, anti-inflammatory
remedies and antimicrobial therapy as in The Ultimate
Cleanse, and especially antifungal
therapy as in OVERCOMING
CANDIDA. The most important general remedy is probably DMSO, see MSM
and DMSO, also helpful is COPPER SALICYLATE. An
additional possibility is the use of natural chelating agents. I am now a
health writer and have not worked with patients for many years. Please do not
try to contact me in this matter as I do not have any additional information. Also
see Antioxidants
for Haemochromatosis.