Sorry not to write you back more quickly. Thanks for your comments about the speech and I’m glad you find it interesting!

About the Barry Marshall connection – Barry Marshall is an Australian scientist who is not related to Dr. Trevor Marshall. Several decades ago Barry Marshall was the first scientist to show (in conjunction with his colleague Dr. Robin Warren) that most ulcers are not caused by stressed by are instead the result of infection with the bacterial pathogen h.pylori.

When Barry Marshall first put forth his findings he was apparently mocked by most of his colleagues who didn’t believe bacteria could be involved in the disease state. People even walked out on him during several of his speeches. Yet, after several decades he finally succeeded in showing the medical community that he was right. At that point he was awarded the Nobel Prize.

So the story is a wake up call to researchers who are unwilling to accept new ideas because they stray from the current consensus. Also, it demonstrates that change in the scientific community takes time. Rarely is a new discovery ever accepted without a long, hard fight. Finally, the situation bears resemblance to the struggle which Dr. Marshall and his colleagues such as myself face in trying to get the medical community to consider that chronic bacteria could also be at the root of many other disease states. Except in our case some could argue we have an even greater task at hand (if we are correct) in terms getting others to accept our work when we are implicating many different species of bacteria in a single disease state.

Here’s a bit more about the Barry Marshall/Robin Warren story:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall

Hope this helps!

Best,
Amy

I was just directed to this video by a friend, and I am absolutely fascinated. Many thanks to you and your colleagues for your dedicated work in this area.

Can you elaborate (or point me in the right direction) regarding the H. pylori correlation? This was discussed at the very end of the video, unfortunately I didn’t clearly understand the commenter.

Thank you very much,
Kelly

I’m so glad that you are doing well on the MP. Keep it up!

Amy

You were the first to answer my questions about MP, I´m on it for 8 months now and doing quite fine..

Thank you !

In my personal opinion, the amount of vitamin D you and your fellow group members are taking is radically high and completely detrimental to your health.

Does Dr. Simonis realize that vitamin D is a powerful secosteroid with properties very similar to serious immunosuppressive medications like prednisone? Taking such a secosteroid at the doses he recommends essentially completely shuts off the innate immune response.

You must wonder then why your hair might actually come back when you take vitamin D or why you may feel temporarily better. The reality is that by slowing the innate immune response, “vitamin” D suppresses the ability of the body to kill the slow-growing, chronic bacteria that are increasingly implicated as the cause of hair loss. Because there is no immune response, the bacteria don’t die and hair may actually come back for a while. But the end result is terrible – your bacteria, including bacteria that may be involved in a wide variety of other diseases will spread with much greater ease. This will make you much more ill over the long-term.

Dr. Simonis says he knows “all the evidence” regarding “vitamin” D. Well, he apparently hasn’t read the publications put forth by our organization or any molecular biologists who clearly define “vitamin” D as a secosteroid. Clearly he didn’t realize that our organization recently chaired the entire session on vitamin D at the International Congress on Autoimmunity where researchers including a member of the FDA presented research stating exactly the opposite of what he is saying.

You may want to read the following paper:

“Vitamin D: The Alternative Hypothesis”
http://autoimmunityresearch.org/transcripts/AR-Albert-VitD.pdf

It’s at least always good to know that there are two sides to a debate. In your case and in the other members of your group I greatly fear for your health.

Best,
Amy

Sorry to hijack this thread with the following response to your Vitamin D synapsis, but you seem to lack a way to contact you on your site directly, so I don’t seem to have any other option.

Please read the following entire post:

http://www.imminst.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=19878

At ImmortalHair.org, most of us supplement with thousands of IU of Vitamin D-3, and none of us get sick and are in some great health. I, personally, supplement on 8,000 in the winter months when sun is minimal.

As the founder of ImmortalHair.org, Brian Simonis has 9 years of experience in Orthmolecular Medicine practice, and had the following to state:

“Based on all the evidence, Vitamin D is critical to optimal health. One thing that is clear to me is that low vitamin D is associated wit premature death and virtually all ICU patients have low levels of D3, but those who live long tend to have high D3 levels.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17846391

If one gets tested they would want to aim for between 70 and 100 ng/mL Most have far below these levels. The safe upper limit of D3 is 10,000 IU daily.”

BTW, I look forward to a future life when most of my posts will be during normal hours of the day like you and Amy!! As a fellow CFSer and “ex”-athlete, I have real hope of getting well after reading both of your stories. Thanks so much for sharing.

That should explain everything.

Best,
Paul

Thanks so much for writing. I appreciate your supports and kind comments very much!

Rosie – my sleep has definitely improved, although at that point I had been up for at least 24 hours. But you are right, compared to the “old” days things are very different.

About the prevalence of chronic disease in China vs. the US – Paul has been searching for data on that topic lately but has not been able to find anything very specific about chronic disease incidence in China. But we’ll keep searching – if anything next time I speak with the researchers at West China Hospital I’ll ask them if they know of any such statistics.

In the meantime, this article touches on chronic disease prevalence in the US:

http://mpkb.org/doku.php/home:pathogenesis:epidemiology

Thanks again for your comments!

Amy