[aphay (OP)]

Does it help to improve mental retardation like what had been said about it benefiting down syndrome people. How about epilepsy as well?
 
thanks..

[chris]

I've not heard anything specifically on this, but I'll look into it for you.

Chris

"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception"
 - Groucho Marx

[psophist]

I have heard about a few people where the glyconutrients have actually improved their health condition.  

I found a report that might shed some light and some thought to what to avoid.....

[?]Plant-induced seizures: reappearance of an old problem.

Burkhard PR, Burkhardt K, Haenggeli CA, Landis T.

Department of Neurology, University Hospital, CH-1211 Geneva 14, Switzerland, Pierre.Burkhard@hcuge.ch

Several plant-derived essential oils have been known for over a century to have epileptogenic properties. We report three healthy patients, two adults and one child, who suffered from an isolated generalized tonic-clonic seizure and a generalized tonic status, respectively, related to the absorption of several of these oils for therapeutic purposes. No other cause of epilepsy was found, and outcome was good in the two adult cases, but the course has been less favorable in the child. A survey of the literature shows essential oils of 11 plants to be powerful convulsants (eucalyptus, fennel, hyssop, pennyroyal, rosemary, sage, savin, tansy, thuja, turpentine, and wormwood) due to their content of highly reactive monoterpene ketones, such as camphor, pinocamphone, thujone, cineole, pulegone, sabinylacetate, and fenchone. Our three cases strongly support the concept of plant-related toxic seizure. Nowadays the wide use of these compounds in certain unconventional medicines makes this severe complication again possible.[?]

Here is another report I found....[?]Treatment of four siblings with progressive myoclonus epilepsy of the Unverricht-Lundborg type with N-acetylcysteine[?]

Of what I have learned in my research, glyconutrients are not dis-ease specific.  These essential sugars are 'life to a cell' and help a dis-eased cell recover from its trauma and assist a healthy cell in its normal 'workday' function.  

There are several books out [ newbielink:http://store.dexlen.com# [nonactive]s ] about glyconutrients.  You can read the first chapter of one of the books "Sugars that Heal" at newbielink:http://glyco.dexlen.us/SugarsThatHeal.htm [nonactive]

[Ylide]

Here's the deal:  Your body can synthesize any saccharide it requires from protein intake.  There is no such thing as an essential sugar.  So, unless you have a genetic mutation which alters an enzyme that catalyzes one of the synthetic pathways from amino acid to a particular sugar, most glyconutrients are a waste of your money.  

Some of the more complex glyconutrients might be worth taking...but that last link in psophist's post (sugars that heal) is complete nonsense.

This message brought to you by The Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People

[bezoar]

Now I do remember reading that a certain amount of sugar was necessary for brain development in the first trimester of pregnancy.  But as a cure after the fact on epilepsy and mental retardation?  I wouldn't think so.  I alos remember readying a while back on vitamin B therapy for schizophrenia.  Seems like most of the stuff I've heard is about how sugar is bad for you.  Now it heals.  Go figure.

[Ylide]

Well, sugar ultimately kills you, no matter who you are or what you eat.  Glycolysis produces pyruvate which enters the TCA/Kreb's cycle for energy production, from which the electrons generated are picked up by oxygen forming superoxide radical, the main progenitor of free radical damage in your body and the ultimate cause of aging, genetic damage,  and many diseases.  But you can't live without it.  =)  

I've also heard that glycosylation of proteins in the circulatory system is a huge cause of heart disease, especially in diabetics who tend to have higher blood glucose concentrations.  



This message brought to you by The Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People

[bezoar]

So maybe antioxidents are the way to go.

[Ylide]

Antioxidants are definately the way to go.  One of my mentors over the summer worked in the Webb-Waring Center for Antioxidant Research.  I saw research detailing oxidant imbalances related to diabetes, heart disease, and several types of cancer.  This can be a result of either inhibited production of antioxidants or excess production of oxidants, that hasn't been determined specifically yet....only that there are far more oxidants present in diseased tissues prior to disease manifestation.  

Scary, eh?

This message brought to you by The Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People

[bezoar]

Yep, I'm scared now.  I'm going out to get some Co Q10.

[Ylide]

I'll try and dig up some of the research that some of the people at Webb-Waring were doing and see what antioxidants they experimented with.  I believe some of them were readily available as supplements.  



This message brought to you by The Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People

[chris]

Antioxidant supplementation is probably very context-specific. In other words, the antioxidants present in 'green leafy vegetables' work well when they are administered as 'green leafy vegetables', but not when popped as a pill. Recent publications show that vitamin supplementation is a waste of money. More worryingly, one past study looking at the anti-cancer effects of anti-oxidants involved administering vitamin A (an anti-oxidant) to smokers and following up their rates of lung cancer. The study had to be stopped prematurely owing to a huge excess of lung cancers amongst the vitamin A treatment arm of the study.

The best advice is probably therefore to eat a helathy balanced diet that already contains all of the things jammed into supplement pills - you'll certainly save money, and you could save your life.

Chris

"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception"
 - Groucho Marx

[bezoar]

But Chris-
I'm an American.  We don't know how to do that here!

[Ylide]

quote:Originally posted by chris

Antioxidant supplementation is probably very context-specific. In other words, the antioxidants present in 'green leafy vegetables' work well when they are administered as 'green leafy vegetables', but not when popped as a pill. Recent publications show that vitamin supplementation is a waste of money. More worryingly, one past study looking at the anti-cancer effects of anti-oxidants involved administering vitamin A (an anti-oxidant) to smokers and following up their rates of lung cancer. The study had to be stopped prematurely owing to a huge excess of lung cancers amongst the vitamin A treatment arm of the study.

The best advice is probably therefore to eat a helathy balanced diet that already contains all of the things jammed into supplement pills - you'll certainly save money, and you could save your life.

By waste of money, I assume you're implying that vitamin supplements have a very low bioavailability, right?  That being the case, how do biologically unavailable vitamins have any effect on lung cancer, positive OR negative?

I agree that the best way to get your nutrients is to eat heathly foods.  It's not very easy to eat a fully balanced meal all the time, and not all supplements are created equal...some have a higher bioavailability than others.  This depends greatly on source, processing, and delivery, and is vitamin dependent.  (i.e. some supplement better than others)  

Anyway, I think I failed to mention that high oxidant levels are as much a symptom as they are a disorder.  Treating the oxidants alone doesn't cure the disease, but can slow the onset.



This message brought to you by The Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People

[chris]

Well, actually no. It's not the bioavailability that seems to be the issue. It's the context and the total dose. Vitamin E is now actually implicated in increasing the risk of certain disorders - possibly heart disease.

I think the best way to think of it is that humans (and other animals) evolved to eat the diet that was naturally available to them. Our biochemistry therefore depends upon, and is optimised to use, trace elements, minerals and vitamins, at the concentration and in the context in which they are found in nature.

Popping a pill is a very artificial situation and does not accurately recreate the digestive chemical milieu that would exist if you had just eaten a decent meal.

Take iron as an example - this has a low bioavailability so we have very efficient scavenging systems to extract it from the diet. So supplementing with iron can push some men into iron toxicity.

I'm not saying that some people, through geography or dietary fad, are not deficient in some things, but the vast majority of people do not need to waste money on expensive supplements - eating the right foods is a cheaper and probably more effective way to maintain good health.

At the risk of being repetitive, taking a tablet does not present minerals, vitamins and trace elements to your body in the way it has evolved, over millions of years, to absorb them. Rather than seeing these dietary goodies in the correct concentrations, and associated with other beneficial chemicals, your digestive system sees the equivalent of a deluge, which can have all kinds of toxic effects. Vitamin A is great for keeping your eyes healthy, but eat a slice of polar bear liver and you'll go blind. It all comes down to too much of a good thing.

Chris

"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception"
 - Groucho Marx

[Ylide]

So what's worse...being deprived of a vitamin or mineral that your diet doesn't provide, or taking vitamin supplements that might overexpose you to other nutrients which you already have an adequate supply of?  Assuming you don't have a dietician at your disposal, this may be a tough decision for the average person.



This message brought to you by The Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People

[tweener]

It's great to eat a "balanced diet", but much of the produce we can buy in supermarkets has been picked early and then spent so much time in shipment that it is no longer "fresh" and usually lacks much of the nutritive value that truly fresh food should have.

Also, archaeological records show that malnutrition and related diseases (scurvy, rickets, etc.) were quite common in prehistoric times.  That coupled with the fact that human life expectancy was in the mid to upper twenties makes me think that the "cave man" diet might not be the best diet for modern humans.

Chris, I'd like to see some of the studies on the toxicity of vitamins and anti-oxidants.  I know there are toxic levels, but they are usually considered fairly high in the studies I've seen.

----
John - The Eternal Pessimist.

[chris]

John, further to my comments about vitamin toxicity, including vitamin E, and your request for some evidence, please see this news story released by Reuters today :

"By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Vitamin E supplements, which millions take in the hope of longer, healthier lives, may do more harm than good, researchers reported on Wednesday.

In fact, people taking high doses of vitamin E may in some cases be more likely to die earlier, although the reasons are not clear, said Dr. Edgar Miller of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who led the study.

"I think people take vitamin E because they think it is going to make you live longer, but this (study) doesn't support that," Miller told reporters.

Miller and colleagues re-analyzed 19 studies of vitamin E and health between 1993 and 2004. The trials involved more than 136,000 mostly elderly patients in North America, Europe and China.

People who took 200 international units of vitamin E a day or more died at a higher rate during the study, which lasted three years, than people who did not take supplements, they told a meeting of the American Heart Association.

"It's about a 5 percent increased risk at 45 years in the trials pooled together," Miller said.

"That doesn't sound like a lot but if you apply it to 25 percent of the (U.S.) adult population taking vitamin E, that is significant."

Miller, whose findings are also being published online by the Annals of Internal Medicine, said two-thirds of people who take vitamin E supplements take 400 IU or more.

"We don't think that people need to take vitamin E supplements, that they get enough from the diet," he said. Nuts, oils, whole grains and green leafy vegetables are all rich in vitamin E.

MUCH MORE THAN NEEDED
The average U.S. diet supplies six to 10 IU of E, Miller said. The Institute of Medicine (news - web sites), which sets recommended doses of vitamins and minerals, gives 1,500 IU of E as a daily upper limit.

"I would say it is too high," Miller said. The U.S. government's Food and Drug Administration is barred by law from regulating dietary supplements so the limits are voluntary.

People take large doses of vitamin E in the belief that it helps counter oxidation by unstable "free radical" molecules, which damages cells and can accelerate aging and lead to heart disease and cancer.

Miller, who was surprised by the findings of the study, said there could be several ways the vitamin supplementation is damaging the body.

While vitamin E in low doses is a powerful antioxidant, in higher doses its effects may promote oxidative damage, and may also overwhelm the body's natural antioxidants, he said.

Dr. Raymond Gibbons of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, said the evidence has been building against vitamin E supplements.

"Despite this ... I see many, many patients still taking vitamin E and I have to convince them not to," he told a separate news conference.

But the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a trade group for supplement makers, criticised the report.

"This is an unfortunate misdirection of science in an attempt to make something out of nothing for the sake of headlines," said the group's John Hathcock.

"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception"
 - Groucho Marx

[Uly]

This is the kind of thing that is driving me insane! I'm getting to the point where I'm too scared to take any supplements because we still don't know the true effects on us. I am also skeptical about all the fresh / Raw or heathly foods I eat always wondering have the been picked too early? Do they have all the vitamins minerals that that are designed to have in them. Are they filled with chemicals ect

I have been giving my mother 2010 iu of vitamin e a day, thinking that it will help her! She wont eat fruit and has very little veges!

Uly []

[tweener]

Thanks Chris.  That's a very interesting study, and like Uly says, it makes things even more confusing.  

I think one conclusion to all of this is that there is no magic bullet.

----
John - The Eternal Pessimist.

[chris]

There are other ways to improve your overall diet without having to resort to paying a fortune for highly refined 'supplements' which probably have very different actions when taken out of the context in which they are found naturally.

For faddy (fussy) eaters a good approach is to include fruit juice (freshly squeezed) in the diet. Then make some soup which contains pureed vegetables (thus masking their texture). You'll be surprised how many people who 'hate vegetables' will happily slurp their way through a big bowl of 'delicious' soup that contains heaps on tomatoes, carrots, potato.

Give it a go and give the supplements a rest - the only people they help are the people who sell them to you.

Chris

"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception"
 - Groucho Marx