What do canker sores, bone spurs or chest pain reveal about your susceptibility to Alzheimer's or heart disease?
Curiously, each condition seems to be connected.
Forty-plus years of research suggest that the relatively minor conditions pulsate the warning that your tissues are dry kindling for fire of Alzheimer's or heart disease, if not a who's who list of chronic degenerative conditions, including: arthritis, gout, diabetes, non-healing wounds, psoriasis, multiple sclerosis (MS), and even cancer.
You're not alone. The lava of chronic ills bubbles under the crust of apparent good health in just about everyone. The leading cause of death, they're not to be taken, lightly. Fortunately, something can be done to prevent or reverse them.
Forty years ago, when cardiologist, Kurt A. Oster, M.D., and Fairfield University professor, Donald J. Ross, Ph.D., began their study of atherosclerosis by examining the initial injury to the artery lining, they discovered an enzyme, XO, worming Swiss cheese holes within it, making affected sections a brittle garden hose prone to leaks.
Noting that the composition of arteries is similar to the myelin coating of nerves, to connective tissue under the skin, and to brain tissue, they realized that each tissue is also vulnerable to the action of XO. It led to an understanding of considerable consequence.
Oster and Ross concluded that inflammation introduces xanthine oxidase, (XO), and that the enzyme is involved in a nearly identical, cascade of events at the start of each chronic illness. In other words, nearly the same disease process occurs in diverse tissues and organs yet each condition is assigned a different name according to the nature and to the locale where symptoms become manifest.
The two researchers published the hypothesis that "a multitude of apparently unrelated diseases may be actually only one many-faceted disease."1,2
In the last two decades, investigators at the cutting edge of inflammation research in dozens of institutes, worldwide, have largely validated the thesis that inflammation is the common denominator of virtually all chronic degenerative diseases. Inflammation has become the focus of intense study.
And the word is getting out. The significance of inflammation at the start of all chronic degenerative diseases has propelled the subject to the cover of Time magazine (Feb. 23, 2004).
-A Look at Ground Zero of Chronic Illnesses-
Oster and Ross advanced the thesis that internal inflammation is characterized by the activation of the bee venom-like enzyme, PLA2, triggered by calcium and stress hormones. The action of PLA2 on the fat component of cell membranes, they pointed out, frees up space for XO to move in and complete the digestion of the fat component. In other words, it's a two-phase, ignition process, starting with what amounts to the fire insulation within a cell membrane being stripped, followed by the spark of XO igniting the cell.
Digging deeper, after XO torches the fat component of cell membranes, fire alarms are sounded and chaos ensues on the cellular level, with inflammation signals apparently reaching distant parts of the body, where they resonate in different ways. In the brain, inflammation may resonate as a headache.
In any event, tissues don't burn cleanly. A smoky fire generates free radical byproducts. Cigarette smoke and sunlight also produce free radicals but nowhere near as many as XO.3 A chain reaction of cell death ensues, accelerated by nitrites and sulfites from commonly consumed, preserved foods and drinks. Lesions are created when damage outpaces repair. When lesions outpace healing, oxidative stress to a tissue interferes with function.4 A diagnosis is then made - diabetes, arthritis, Lupus and the like. The name of the disease depends, most often, on where XO nests up.
"Link Between Heart Disease, Alzheimer's," is a story aired on ABC World News with Diane Sawyer, (January 14, 2004). In it, reporter John McKenzie investigates evidence of an apparent connection between the two.
The broadcast focuses on observations made by a scientist whose job is to determine the cause of death in deceased persons as well as the timing - when death occurred - by staining and analyzing relevant tissues under the microscope. Comparing brain and artery slides, he makes a noteworthy finding. Quoting from the transcript:
"While working in the Kentucky medical examiner's office, Larry Sparks was checking brain tissues looking for early signs of Alzheimer's disease."
"He noticed that those who had the telltale plaques of Alzheimer's had one thing in common:
'I took the slides... and put them into two piles, those with heart disease and those without heart disease. And all the plaques and tangles showed up in the pile with heart disease,' said Sparks."5
The information represents yet another cog in the thesis that Alzheimer's, heart disease and other chronic conditions are the same illness in different locations.
-Reassessing Traditional Theory and Taking Charge of Health-
Curiously enough, the ranks of a new generation investigating XO include a good number who have never heard of Oster and Ross yet their latest findings dovetail with those made by the two pioneers.
Independent confirmations are powerful testimony in science.
After decades of advice to lower cholesterol and saturated fat, an epidemic of epidemic chronic degenerative diseases is maiming society like cannon-fire at close range. An out-of-control health situation is raising questions.
"Might it be that the nutritional advice has been wrong, all along? Might it be that it is the cause of the train wreck in health?"
Considering the rather abysmal record of the medical-pharmaceutical industry in reversing chronic illness, ordinary folks are starting to take charge of their health by reading up, by getting second opinions and by making educated choices.
In pioneering days, self-sufficiency was synonymous with survival. Curiously, it's no less true with respect to health, today.
However, the sheer volume of information plus separating fact from fiction is no ordinary task for persons without a science background. How does one find a nugget of health truth when 1 million search responses weigh down the screen, along with one's patience?
As an aspiring researcher and author, I happened to stumble upon a gold nugget after taking the first step, about 30 years ago. The information became the title: "Homogenized Milk & Atherosclerosis." Nearly, 1 million copies were printed.6
True, numbers don't always correlate to substance but walls of shoeboxes bulging with letters of gratitude suggest that it wasn't just the cover that readers came to value.
Theory that was so contrarian, back then, is becoming Wikipedia mainstream, today. But it's not a fad. They come and go. The topic of XO has begun to clog servers as fast as it has been clogging arteries. "You see, it's not cholesterol."
Just tapping "xanthine oxidase" (XO) into a search engine gives a decibel appreciation for the laboratory buzz. The info rush is tied to the finding that XO is responsible for more than just heart disease.
"In medical schools across the U.S., cardiologists, rheumatologists, oncologists, allergists and neurologists are all suddenly talking to one another - and they're discovering that they're looking at the same thing."7
While researchers continue to debate whether XO originates from homogenized cow's milk, in which it's plentiful, or from the human liver, it's not excluded that both sources are involved in chronic illness. However, cow's milk XO is roughly 15 times more potent, apparently, the tipping point factor in overcoming the body's anti-radical defenses and forming lesions. Cow's milk XO is hard liquor; human XO is 2.8% beer.8
Virtually, any tissue or organ except the liver is prey to its action - arteries, nerves, joints, skin, and the brain. Even the lens of the eye is vulnerable. Clearly, XO is big.
Much like a callus or a bunion forms over a blister or layers of pearl form around an irritating grain of sand, the body reacts to caustic XO by layering plaque around it.
The symptoms of a chronic degenerative disease can be viewed as complications resulting from cyclical episodes of XO-instigated damage and healing. Cholesterol actually contributes to the healing phase. It's why its levels sometimes increase. The irritant, XO, remains. Resulting plaque and scars that encase it are gunk that interferes with the hum of a fine-tuned organ. Illnesses ending with "sclerosis," like multiple sclerosis (MS) or atherosclerosis, are so named because of a thickening or hardening of a body part. The hardening occurs around the irritant - XO.
Again, the name of the disease depends, simply enough, on where XO nests up. For life.
Plaques and tangles cannot be the result of something as inert as cholesterol or fat. To blame cholesterol is like blaming Bambi for devouring a lamb. The only lions in the human system with adequate bite and a large enough appetite for tissues that pathologists see chewed up, regularly, are enzymes. XO is a digestive enzyme. When it ends up outside of the digestive system it starts to digest body parts instead of food.
In the title, Something Called XO, the novel thesis is advanced that canker sores - those little, whitish sores in the mouth - are also XO-instigated lesions but without attendant plaque, scars or organ meltdown.9
Such is the bite into the bad news.
The Nobel laureate good news is that one disease pathway means that each condition - more than 50 of them - is amenable to nearly the same treatment. Oster and Ross suggested the same. A common therapy makes the discovery of XO's role in many chronic degenerative diseases the "mother lode of health breakthroughs."
And canker sore flare-ups are markers - warning lights on the dashboard of common sense suggesting that tissues are ripe for inflammation and that body chemistry is in need of urgent correction.
-The Proof of the Pudding is in the ORS Method-
Everyone knows that guarantees don't exist in health but if one, effective therapy could be found for reversing many diseases, wouldn't it dramatically improve the odds for millions afflicted with incurable conditions? Many drugs for many diseases are money-makers for industry, something that might be tolerable if the drugs worked, yet they are largely hit-or-miss, mostly miss. A single, viable therapy would certainly make them a thing of the past.
In Oster's private practice and at St. Vincent's/Park City Hospital in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where Oster served for 25 years as Chairman of the Department of Medicine and Chief, Section of Cardiology, Emeritus, for an additional 14 years, he transformed theory into real-life results in hundreds of patients by blocking the action of XO, allowing incurable conditions to be reversed with remarkable success.
Oster is on record for having successfully treated, without surgery, non-healing leg wounds, complications of atherosclerosis and diabetes.10 Each year, 5.7 million persons in the U.S., alone, are affected by the condition, the majority of them needlessly losing a limb because of physician ignorance about amputation alternatives.
Oster employed the vitamin folic acid not as a nutritional supplement but as a drug, in mega doses, to inhibit the activity of XO allowing healing to outpace tissue damage. Patients were prescribed 80 mg, daily. Despite well-documented results published in esteemed medical journals, along with photos and support materials, the FDA has yet to catch on to Oster's success story or, perhaps, it did catch on, opting to remain beholden to lobbyists, pampered by industry. The medical-pharmaceutical-food industry complex, after all, is no small octopus.
Drugs that inhibit XO, such as Allopurinol, have very nasty side-effects, making it essential to accomplish the same, naturally.
Working closely with Oster and Ross, over a seven-year period, in addition to the privilege of having edited their work, Homogenized Milk May Cause Your Heart Attack: The XO Factor, provided access to materials and personal insights that led to the formulation of an ideal solution - a natural means to inhibit XO.
It's called the ORS Method. It can be viewed as the penicillin of chronic illnesses only it's not a drug.
Its guidelines steer persons seeking to prevent or reverse chronic illness away from foods containing XO, while inhibiting renegade XO already resident in the body. Each degenerative disease has its nuances in terms of how each one should be treated yet the general guidelines comprising the ORS Method are applicable to virtually, every chronic condition. The ORS Method not only eliminates the spark that lights the fire in cells but it also reduces their flammability. The nutritional guidelines do the equivalent of reducing the flammability of firewood by soaking it in water.
Thus, controlling and managing XO boils down to reworking kitchen recipes.
Guidelines in the ORS Method also identify nutritional supplements that activate XO and those that inhibit it. Correct, certain commonly, consumed vitamin and mineral supplements increase XO activity so consuming them can be highly counterproductive.
As just one example, multivitamins containing riboflavin (B2) nourish XO and increase the risk of free radical overload, especially consequential during inflammatory events. Even much-trusted vitamin C can be both an antioxidant and an oxidant under certain conditions, meaning that it can be healthy as well as harmful with respect to chronic illnesses. No less important, vitamin C heightens the immune response, which is undesirable because collateral damage increases. Because of this, physicians prescribe immunosuppressant drugs to lower rather than heighten the immune response during inflammatory episodes.
Without the fine-tuning that the ORS Method provides for controlling XO, attempts to prevent or reverse chronic degenerative diseases by way of diets, supplements or drugs are destined to remain as ineffective as the voodoo of a medical system struggling to redefine itself.
I have been asked why anyone should spend even just $20 on two eBooks when the basic information can be covered in some 4 pages plus one crib sheet listing what to consume and what not to consume.
Chronic degenerative diseases are serious, life-threatening conditions. There is much at stake on both sides of the equation, that is, for patients and for industry. David ended the arrogance and conceit of Goliath with one stone. The life-work of three persons has to be the stone that hits the mark. Only then can its value be appreciated. It's why nearly 400 pages, backed by some 250 references, are needed.
I've now seen enough evidence to guarantee results. And, yes, the punctuation mark maligns, like canker sores or bone spurs, can be easily treated - the same way as the long-winded diseases, like atherosclerosis.
A comma and a period may be small but they tell us much. Without them a sentence is incomplete.
Copyright 穢 2011 N. Sampsidis
Permission to reprint this article is granted free-of-charge by the Publisher upon receipt of requests, in writing.
-References-
1. "Is an Enzyme in Homogenized Milk the Culprit in Dietary-induced Atherosclerosis," Medical Counterpoint, K.A. Oster, 5:26-36, Nov 1973.
2. "Homogenized Milk May Cause Your Heart Attack: the XO Factor," Oster, Ross, Dawkins, Park City Press, 1983, pp. 77, 264, in "Homogenized Milk & Atherosclerosis - Healing Heart Disease from A to XO," Nicholas Sampsidis, Sunflower Publishing Company (Sweden), 2011.
3. "Modulation of Radiation-Induced Changes in the Xanthine Oxidoreductase System in the Livers of Mice by its Inhibitors," Radiation Research, M. Srivastava, D. Chandra, R.K. Kale, 157(3):290-297; 2002.
4. "Free Radicals: their History and Current Status in Aging and Disease," Ann Clin Lab Sci, J.A. Knight, 28(6):331-46, Nov-Dec 1998.
5. "Link between Alzheimer's, Heart Disease," ABC World News Diane Sawyer, John McKenzie, Jan. 14, 2004.
6. "Homogenized Milk & Atherosclerosis," Copyright 穢 1980, 1983, N. Sampsidis (First Editions) Sunflower Publishing Co., New York, ISBN 0-943550-00-9 Book format.
7. Time magazine cover story (Feb 23, 2004).
8. "Molecular Characterization of Human Xanthine Oxidoreductase: The Enzyme is Grossly Deficient in Molybdenum and Substantially Deficient in Iron-sulphur Centres," Jour. Biochem, B.L. Godber, G. Schwarz, R.R. Mendel,D.J. Lowe, R.C. Bray, R. Eisenthal, R. Harrison, June 1, 2005, 1;388 (Pt 2):501-8.
9. "Something Called XO," Nicholas Sampsidis, Sunflower Publishing Company (Sweden), 2011.
10. The Health Hazards of Milk, - "Xanthine Oxidase - Therapy by Pharmacological Doses of Folic Acid a Xanthine Oxidase Inhibitor," K.A. Oster, Edited by David L.J. Freed, Bailli癡re Tindall, London, 1984, pp 250-251.
