This story relates to my girlfriend who had Dermatomyositis/Psoriases/Eczema and how what worked for her, helped me with my CFS/Fibromyalgia.
Story 1 - Girlfriend (Non - CFS/ME):
When my girlfriend was about 10 years old, she contracted what was diagnosed at the time as Dermatomyositis. She couldn't keep food down, and became incredibly weak, couldn't walk down stairs, and almost starved to death. The Doctors in a last ditch effort gave her steroids and the state of her health improved quickly, to the point she was free of problems until she was about 20 years old. Then at 20 she began battling a flare up of Psoriases/Eczema which subsided after a year. Keeping food down wasn't an issue at this time. Same thing happened when she was 26. And now again at 29 the Psoriases like symptoms & Eczema came back.
I hunted down the best Naturopath I could find and he recommended she do the
DetoxiGenomic Profile from Genova Diagnostics.
Here are her results:
View attachment 3530
What's important to note here are the polymorphisms on the genes coding for Estrogen metabolism.
-CYP1B1 - Up-regulated.....responsible for 4-hydroxylation of estrogen
-CYP3A4 - Down-regulated (40% supposed) ........responsible for metabolism of cortisol, estrogen, testosterone, etc.
-COMT - Down-regulated (40% supposed)..........responsible for estrogen metabolism
Now how does this all relate to each other?
View attachment 3531
Follow the orange arrows for the dominant pathway given the stated polymorphisms.
The combination of polymorphisms CYP3A4 and COMT have the effect of double down regulation on the production of good estrogen and an up-regulation via the most damaging pathway. A double whammy of sorts. Not good.
The polymorphism up-regulation on CYP1B1 exacerbates the problem by shuttling estrogen down for Quinone production massively increasing oxidative stress and putting a huge unnecessary load on Glutathione. My current theory is that this is what the root cause is behind dermatomycoytis, psoriases and eczema.
So what to do about it? - Supplements:
- I3C & DIM - These provide nutritional workarounds by helping estridol convert into the favorable 2-hyroxy-estradiol instead of the harmful 4-hyroxy-estradiol. In effect they support the CYP3A4 pathway.
- Calcium D-Glucarate- Supports the glucoronosyl transferase enzyme
Within 2 days of taking these, she had massive improvements in decreasing her symptoms and after a couple of weeks is almost completely healed. Success #1 !!!
Story 2 - Me the guy with CFS/Fibromyalgia
I came down with CFS/Fibromyalgia when I was 15 years old. I am 27 now, so I have been battling this for almost half my life. My primary symptoms are chronic fatigue, tired but wired, anxiety, excessive high body temperature...especially at night, muscle achiness, brain fog, poor concentration, poor memory, headaches, no appetite for 3 hours after waking- nausea associated with this, IBS, allergies & very poor recovery after exercise. I am textbook ME/CFS/Fibromyalgia. In contrast to my gf, I do not have Dermatomyositis/Psoriases/Eczema. My skin is fine and for the most part has been most of my life.
What I decided to do was take all the same supplements that my girlfriend was taking just to see what would happen. Within 24 hours, I had a huge burst of energy, brain fog cleared up, concentration improved and muscle achiness diminished. My emotions felt more stable and waking up in the morning I felt somewhat rejuvenated and not like I had been hit by a semi- truck which was the norm for me. Success #2!! I hit the gym, my cardio endurance improved, and when lifting weights my strength had also improved. Oddly my upper body sweats more now as well, and I appear to release heat better. Wow, I was elated. I hadn't felt like this in over a decade.
And then a few days later I had a setback. Fatigue started to return and I became exhausted. What I didn't mention is I had also started taking Sulforaphane (I figure may as well take all the broccoli supplements) and then subsequently learned it was an inhibitor of CYP3A4. Not good. So myself and my gf (who was also temporarily set back) stopped taking it and the benefits I3C & DIM began to return quickly.
Now I myself have not yet done the DetoxiGenomic Profile so I am merely
guessing I have a somewhat similar of a genetic profile to my girlfriend. I have the test on order so hopefully in about 1 month's time I'll have a better idea of what's going on for myself from a genetic stand point.
For now my theory is that a lot of
my CFS/Fibromyalgia is somehow linked to Xenoestrogens. The big assumption I am making here is that xenoestrogens are metabolized using more or less the same pathways as estrogen and that supporting those pathways may help. In retrospect I remembered the CFS/Fibromyalgia started almost right after I did a stint of Accutane when I was 15. Accutane is a potent xenoestrogen. And the CFS/Fibromyalgia symptoms I experienced for the last 10 years all line up quite well with the symptoms of a male with low effective testosterone and estrogen dominance. I currently believe that Accutane may have started a negative feedback loop of some kind.
I wrote an
extensive article on
Xenoestrogens and posted it to my website here:
--->
http://www.gestaltreality.com/2012/05/19/fake-estrogen-a-modern-health-epidemic/ <---
Now while I have made drastic improvements I still do not feel quite 100%. I have Amy Yasko's
Comprehensive Methylation Panel on order for myself and my gf, so I can address perhaps other underlying and potentially related issues.
Important Note: I have other problems that I have had since birth which indicate issues with Methylation prior to the onset of CFS/Fibromyalgia. My mother used thyroid meds to get pregnant with me, her mother died of thyroid cancer, my grandpa on my dad's side has prostate issues and his mother had b12 issues, my dad and his mother both got grey hair in their late 20's, my cousin on my dad's side has CFS....all of these things are linked with polymorphisms in methylation. So thus I have a sneaking suspicion I inherited issues from both my parents in regards to this. The toxic exposure (Accutane), again just made everything worse and was the straw that broke the camel's back so to speak and began the CFS. I was a colicky baby, had dry bleeding skin, numerous allergies, anxiety, and nightmares since I was born. All this got worse with the onset of CFS. As a child I also apparently reacted violently to MMR vaccinations.
Note I also recently added this:
- SAMe - Supports COMT in enhancing the methylation of 2 and 4-hydroxy-estradiol instead of quinone production.
It seems to be really helping my gf as well. And for myself I "think" it helps.
I have tried a gazillion supplements over the last decade or so, and been to countless doctors/Naturopath's and tried many therapies & diets. I even went to the Mayo clinic and after $10,000 worth of work they told me I was perfectly healthy according to their tests and to go home and learn to live with it. Yea right!
So far what I have found has worked for me was massive doses of glutamine 10-20g a day. This increased my energy from about 30% to 60% and a high protein diet took me to about 70%. The glutamine was a magic bullet in terms of the insane catabolism I had experienced with the associated achy muscular pain which had been virtually debilitating. Also acidophilus worked as well. And now the I3C & DIM. The journey continues.
I am curious if anyone else has experimented with IC3 & DIM? Again this may not work for everyone, depending on your genetic predispositions. The DIM I got is a very potent kind, double strength from Enzymatic Therapy. Supposedly the best.
How can we access to the SNP´s used by genova now? I will investigate globalpilot These are good news for me. With all my CYP1A1, CYP1A2 and CYP1B1 mutations DIM makes sense.
