I have nothing to sell you but hope, and that I give you for free.

December 7, 2009

The "answer" to CBD?  I wish I had it.  If I did, I would tell you.  But I do have some ideas that I'll bet you will like to know about.
 
First off, you can't depend on one source for your information.  You can't depend on one person or one message board.  If you are looking for answers, you will have to look at many sources.  That takes a lot of work.  It takes a lot of reading and taking notes of important terms, following leads, trails, and maybe even barely visible footprints in the grass.  Message boards pose a particular problem.  It is very tempting to rely totally on the other members of message boards to keep you up to date on the latest news and developments about CBD.  It can happen, but don't count on it.  If the other members are also depending on other members, no one goes outside the message board community to look.  And then there is the problem of censorship on message boards.  You have to realize that message boards are not free and open, and often times, certain ideas and pieces of information are kept from you because someone else has decided what's good for you to know.
 
Second, let's discuss those substances that might help people with dementing illnesses.  Look these things up for yourselves.  Do your own homework, and decide how you want to use the information.  My goal is to point you in directions to save you time.  Where you go from here is up to you.
 
In order to determine the regions of the brain that are being affected by the various neurodegenerative diseases, researchers often look for areas where the simple sugar "glucose" is not being used.  This is often called "glucose hypometabolism".  Glucose is the body's normal fuel.  It is obtained from sugars and proteins in the diet.  In the case where one is not getting enough carbohydrates and protein in their diets, the body starts burning fats.  This causes the production of "ketones".  The body, in particular the liver, produces ketones because our cells can also use ketones as an energy source.  It is a backup power supply, so to speak.  A researcher had the idea that maybe glucose hypometabolism in areas of the brain was more than just a symptom of disease, but the cause of disease symptoms.  He reasoned that if he provide these chronically starving neurons with ketones, he could relieve symptoms.  It turns out that when "medium chain triglycerides" (MCT) are added to one's diet, the liver will produce ketones and dump them into the blood even if carbohydrates are available.  Therefore, the glucose hypometabolism problem can be addressed without resorting to starvation.  The result of this research is the prescription "medical food" called Axona.  But you don't need a prescription to get the active ingredient in Axona if you don't want to.  This substance is an MCT called "caprylic acid" or "caprylic fatty acid".  It's an oil derived commercially from coconut oil.  In fact, coconut oil is composed of several MCT oils, all of which cause the liver to produce ketones, albeit at different rates.  Dr. Mary Newport on her website, http://coconutketones.com details her experiments and experiences with using coconut oil and purified MCT oils for her husband.  Dr. Newport's husband is battling early onset Alzheimer's disease, but since CBD also shares this characteristic of glucose hypometabolism, there is a good reason to think this regimen might work for CBD too.  Coconut oil and MCT oils are readily available from health food stores.  Coconut oil can sometimes be found in grocery stores.  Even whole coconut in the form of the raw meat, in "coconut milk", or flakes (coconut macaroons, Mounds bars) may help some people.  All you need is about 20g of the coconut oil (think "fat") 1 to three times per day.
 
It is not known which biochemical characteristic shows up first in CBD.  Another characteristic at the cellular level is the accumulation of clumps of proteins inside the cells.  This protein is composed of a normally occuring substance called "tau".  It is thought that this clumped up tau protein is involved with in the disease process, and that if this step is interrupted, the disease process itself might be interrupted.
 
There are 5 chemicals that I am aware of might be able to address this tau protein problem.  However, I will only talk about the four that you would be able to obtain.  The fist is a form of vitamin B6 called "niacinamide".  It is inexpensive and readily available at most health food stores.  The second are the water-soluble components of the spice cinnamon called "proanthcyanidins" and "cinnameldahyde".  It is easily obtained in the raw form as the spice, but some people may want to avoid the cassia cinnamon species since it contains high levels of coumarin.  Ceylon cinnamon may be a better choice since coumarin levels are almost undetectable, but it is often more expensive and not as easy to obtain.  One can also buy a water extract called 'cinnulin" from some health food stores, or one can make a water soluble extract on their own.  The third is an old medication called "methylene blue".  This is prescription medication, but some people have reported finding physicians that will prescribe it.  Such physicians are not easy to find.  The fourth is a component of "grape seed extract".
 
Of course, there are people who have put together "cocktails" of supplements, each of which is thought to have a beneficial impact on some aspect of the disease.  I invite you to read this thread from the Alzheimer's Association message board:
http://alzheimers.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/762104261/m/63910335
 
Yes, the person is writing about a woman with Down Syndrome who has Alzheimer's disease, but as I wrote above, these ideas may help people with CBD too.  I hope it does.  Keep in mind too that neurologists are notoriously bad at diagnosing CBD based on symptoms.  About 50% of the time, they are wrong.  But you can't know this until a pathologist examines samples of a person's brain under a microscope.
 
Some people think that all you can do to help find a treatment is to get CBD patients to donate their brains to science.  I don't buy that.  Not at all.  There are things people can experiment with on their own.  By trying things, making careful observations, and talking to other experimenters, maybe we can give "science" a little push.
 
I didn't expect to find anything that had even the remotest chance of helping.  When I joined the Yahoo CBGD_support group, all I was told was, "there isn't anything".  But then I started to look for myself.  I found that there are cracks in the walls of conventional wisdom, and that there are people doing all they can-- for what reason I can not fathom-- to keep others from noticing.
 
There is much, much more I haven't told you, mostly because my fingers are starting to cramp up.  Make friends with Mr. Bing, Ms. Google, and Sir Yahoo.  You have the ability through these search engines and the vast store of knowledge on the Internet to find out things that in ages past would have taken access to a major university library, and hours and hours to sort through the stuff.
 
I hope you find something usefull in all of this.




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Updated: December 22, 2009
Inception: November 27, 2009